In this motivating episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes guides listeners through the profound responsibilities and privileges of serving as Christian ambassadors. Delving deep into the scriptures, Hughes illuminates how each believer is appointed by God to carry out His divine plan. He emphasizes the role of ambassadors in the Bible, reminding listeners of the critical nature of representing the Lord Jesus Christ in all aspects of daily life.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just only about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, as our announcer said, and no manipulation, no con games, no gimmicks, no asking for money, not trying to sell you any Christian material. We just want to give you some information where you can understand God’s plan for your life if you’re interested. If I can verify and identify that plan, then you can orient and adjust to the plan. It’s always up to you. You have volition. You are a decision-making machine. You make thousands of decisions every day. I encourage you to make decisions in regards to your spiritual life if you’re a Christian. If you’re not a Christian, then the most important thing you could ever do is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him as your personal Savior. It’s a simple act of faith. That’s all I did. I just prayed one night when I was 22 years old. And I asked God to save me. I told God I would like to receive Christ as my Savior, and it happened. I didn’t feel weird, but it happened. God did exactly what he said he would do. I never dreamed I would wind up in the ministry. I never dreamed I’d wind up doing some of the things I’ve done over the past 54 or 55 years now. And yet here we are on the radio with you this morning, getting new information, closing in on a thousand Sundays that we’ve been presenting this radio show. You know, we’re in an election year. You realize that. You well know that. And if we have a change in the executive branch and elect a different president, then whoever it is, he or she will be tasked with appointing a new group of ambassadors. Ambassadors of the United States are persons nominated by the president to serve as the United States diplomatic representatives to foreign nations, international organizations, whatever, and as ambassadors at large. Under Article 2, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, their appointment must be confirmed by the United States Senate. Ambassadors are the highest-ranking diplomats of the United States, and they are usually based at the embassy in the host country where they are assigned. They are under the jurisdiction of the Department of State and answer directly to the Secretary of State. However, ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President. meaning they can be dismissed anytime he wishes, anytime she wishes. They can also face tremendous opposition, and on occasion, murdered by opposing political forces. You may remember the murder of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya who was killed along with four American soldiers at the US compound in Benghazi in 2012. During the days of the presidency of Obama and the Secretary of State at that time was none other than Hillary Clinton. It was a very sad day in American history. At the moment of your salvation, here’s something you might not realize, God appointed you. God appointed you to be his personal ambassador to this current world. You are an ambassador, I am an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. Let that sink in. So in case you decided to allow your flesh to take control of your thoughts, or you follow the lure of the world to distract you from your responsibilities, you will understand that you have compromised your position and you are bringing dishonor to your Lord who appointed you as an ambassador to this world. In 2 Corinthians 5 20, this is verified by Paul saying, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making his appeal through us. We invite you on behalf of Christ to become reconciled to God. This verse tells us that as members of God’s royal family, we are all ambassadors for him, for God, as long as we’re on this earth. We are spiritual aristocracy as members of the royal family of God. And Jesus Christ is the king who has sent us into a foreign country, the cosmic world. This is one reason God leaves us here after we get saved. You might wonder why, after I get saved, why doesn’t he just take me on to heaven? Why doesn’t God just say, okay, you’re saved. You’re going to heaven. Let’s take you now. But here’s one reason why. because every church-age believer is royal family of God, and we represent the King of kings and the Lord of lords during our tenure on this earth. This means that each one of us, you and I, are in full-time Christian service, not just your pastor, not just me. It’s not just your preacher, not an evangelist, not a missionary. Everybody, you and I, we are all divinely commissioned ambassadors of the devil’s world. and you better believe that Satan keeps tabs on you. He’s eavesdropping on your activities so as to plan a strategy to defeat your effectiveness as an ambassador and a representative of God the Father in this cosmic system. My very own pastor once taught a series on this subject and he listed the profile of the Christian ambassador. I want to share that with you this morning with his permission. Number one, An ambassador does not appoint himself. We are appointed by God at the moment that we believe in Jesus Christ. And God also gives us the power and the ability to handle this job. Number two, the ambassador does not support himself. The church age believer, that’s you and I in the church, as an ambassador for Christ, is provided by logistical grace provisions. He takes care of us. This is taught in Matthew 6, 25 through 34. A lengthy passage, but I’d like to read it to you, if you’ll let me. Matthew wrote, therefore I say unto you, as the Lord Jesus Christ said it, Matthew quoted him, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Take a look at the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? Which one of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto its stature? And why do you take thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t toil and they don’t spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you? That’s the logistical grace provision. Oh, ye of little faith. Listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ said. Oh, ye of little faith. Therefore, take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or how shall we be clothed? For after all of these things the Gentiles seek, but your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things. Verse 33 of Matthew 6, Seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these will be provided for you. So take therefore no thought about tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof. So there’s your divine promise. You don’t have to worry about it as an ambassador. You have a job. You have provisions. The Lord will provide for you. He’ll take care of you. That’s a divine promise. So here’s the third principle. Let’s back up for a minute now. Number one, the ambassador does not appoint himself. Number two, the ambassador does not support himself. Number three, the ambassador’s instructions are always in written form so that the ambassador has no doubt as to what he’s supposed to do. We have the policies. We have the problem-solving devices. We have instructions, principles, doctrines, and concepts all in written form in the Bible. So number four, the ambassador does not belong to the country to which he is sent. You and I are not citizens of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, the Greek word ouranos. We are also citizens of a client nation to God. In this case, you and I know it to be the United States of America. Number five, the ambassador does not live in the foreign country for his own personal interest. We only live here on this earth solely to serve the interests of our Lord. Therefore, we subordinate all our personal interests to the function of our ambassadorship, which includes for you and I the attainment and the function of the spiritual skills. What is that? It’s the filling of the Holy Spirit. learning and applying the Word of God, and execution of the protocol plan of God in our lives, which means that a right thing has to be done in a right way. You can pray all you want to, but if you’re not doing it in the right way, you’re not gonna get answers. We have a bookmark, by the way. We just reprinted it. It’s one of our most popular bookmarks, 10 Reasons God Will Not Answer Your Prayers. If you’d like to get one of those, just contact me through the website, send us your name, address, and say, I want to get that 10 reasons, that bookmark, and we’ll mail it right on out to you. All right? So think about that. Here’s number six. The ambassador does not treat any insult to himself as personal. The ambassador does not treat any insult to himself as personal. This is the royal ambassador’s function in both spiritual self-esteem and impersonal love for all mankind. We, you and I, tolerate other people. We don’t hold grudges. When we’re insulted or treated unfairly or ridiculed, we have tremendous problem-solving devices in the Bible that show us how to handle this adversity. Remember, you’ve heard me say adversity is inevitable, stress is optional. You’re going to have adversity. Some of it is self-induced. As a matter of fact, probably if I had to guess, I would say 90% of the adversity we face is self-induced. But we will have adversity. And there are problem-solving devices taught in the Bible how we can handle the adversity so that even though the adversity is inevitable, stress that comes along with it is optional. Number seven, here we go. When an ambassador is recalled, That’s called him back home. His recall is tantamount to a declaration of war. This is analogous to the rapture of the church when it happens, the exit resurrection. That’s when the tribulation will begin, and that’s analogous to the period of war. where God will rage war on the Antichrist and eventually subdue him, lock him up in the bottomless pit, and the Lord Jesus Christ will rule and reign on this planet in David’s throne for 1,000 years. And if you are a mature believer, you will be ruling and reigning with him in this world. So our ambassadorship is the function of every Christian who witnesses, and it’s the special function of the believer with the gift of evangelism, You and I are to witness through verbal communication of the gospel, of the word of God. We’re to tell people how to be saved. But we’re not just to witness only through our lifestyle. That’s what some people say. Well, I don’t talk about it, but I live it. Well, that’s a coward’s way of witnessing. Give the gospel. Tell people what it says. Paul said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe it, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. So remember that. Don’t be a coward. Speak up. I was having breakfast one morning in a restaurant, and my friend and I bowed our head to pray, and the waitress, I’ll never forget what happened. This was many years ago, and she walked up with her heads bowed, and she blurted out, are you praying? And my friend just looked up and said, uh-huh. And of course, we had a chance to give her the gospel. So remember that. Your ambassadorship, your appointment is basically made up of two factors. How you live your life is one of them. And what you say as a result of what you think is the other. How you live your life and what you say as a result of what you think In private, your function for God is your priesthood. You are a believer priest. You can go to the throne room of God on your own. You don’t need a priest to do it for you. You are a believer priest, and that’s your private Christian life, but in public, You are an ambassador as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. So don’t forget that. In your private life, you’re a priest. In the public life, you function as an ambassador. Everything you do in your life becomes part of this ambassadorship. For in effect, the Christian makes a pulpit out of his circumstances in his life. People are watching you, as you know. And every one of us, you, me, and everyone else that’s a believer, we are all in full-time Christian service. We don’t take a break. We don’t say, okay, God, I’m going out of duty now. I had a friend of mine that’s now with the Lord and used to have a joke. We’d go out to eat and I’d say, you want to lead us in prayer? And he’d say, I’m off duty, you pray. It was a joke. But there’s no off duty for a Christian. We don’t go off duty. Every believer, every one of us is in full-time Christian service. This is a decision that God made, not one you made. God made this decision. As long as you’re here, as long as he leaves you here, you are his personal ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers as ambassadors are the personal representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ during their time on earth. Keep this in your mind. When you get dressed in the morning to go to work on Monday morning, you are an ambassador for Christ. When you show up Monday night, wherever you may go out to eat or go to his function, you are an ambassador for Jesus Christ. If you get in your car and you drive to the grocery store and go shopping, you are an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ, not just on Sunday, not just on Wednesday night. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you are an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. You understand that, it’s critical you do. I got some questions I want to ask you. I’d like for you to answer them if you will, but not out loud, this is private. It’s just between you and God, but I’d like for you to think about it if you would. Here’s the first question. Are you fulfilling your duty as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you fulfilling your duty? What’s your duty? Well, the Bible says you’re to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God can’t use an ambassador that doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. He didn’t appoint you an ambassador for you to wander around and sit in a corner and suck your thumb all day. He has a plan for your life. You’re supposed to know what you’re supposed to be doing. And your duty is to represent Jesus Christ in what you think and what you say and what you do. So that’s the first question. Are you fulfilling your duty as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ? Here’s the second question. Are you bringing honor to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you bringing honor to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Think about that. When you walk out into the world, do you honor him or do you hide behind something else? Are you afraid to talk about him to your friends? Are you afraid to let people know that you’re a Christian? Are you afraid to bow your head in a public place and say a blessing? Are you afraid to mention to your waiter or your postman or the delivery man Have you ever asked anybody this question, if you died today, do you think you’d go to heaven? That’s a legitimate question. That’s how you bring honor to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He left you here to represent his son. You are an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s another question. Do you understand your written orders? Can you understand them? They’re found in the Bible. The scriptures have it full of your orders. Here’s one, Ephesians 5.18. Don’t be drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot live the Christian life. You cannot function as an ambassador in the flesh. That means you’re carnal. And so if you have sin in your life, whatever sin it might be, it could be a mental attitude sin of worry or anxiety or fear or guilt. It could be a sin of the tongue or gossip, slander, lying, maligning, criticizing. It could be an outward sin. It could be stealing. It could be crime. It could be fornicating, adultery. If you have a sin in your life, do you rebound? Do you confess your sin? Do you go to your Heavenly Father and admit it? Because the Bible says if we will confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. That’s the only way you can stay filled with the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit is not guaranteed. The sealing of the Holy Spirit is guaranteed. In Ephesians 1.13, the Bible says you were sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day that God calls you home. So God’s not going to take the Holy Spirit away from you. But you might not be filled with the Holy Spirit because you let the flesh take over. And that’s a sad state of affairs if you’re trying to live as an ambassador in the devil’s world and you’re operating in the energy of the flesh. Do you understand your written orders? Do you understand you’re supposed to use a faith-rest drill? That’s problem-solving device number three of those 10 problem-solving devices. Standing on the promises of God. We have a wonderful book that I’d be glad to send to you free of charge. It’s called Bible Promises and Principles. Bible Promises and Principles. In 1 Corinthians 2.5, the Bible says, Put your faith in the power of God and not in the wisdom of men. If you don’t know the promises, how can you claim them? How can you use them? It’s like money in the bank, and you’ve got to be able to claim it and use it. Excuse me. Oh, I had to sneeze. So use the faith rest drill. Stand on the promises of God and grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 3.18 makes that clear. If you’re not growing, if you’re not advancing, you can’t stay a baby Christian your whole life. You got to learn the word, apply the word, use the word, represent God in that way. Is that you? Do you understand these written orders? Do you understand those 10 problem-solving devices we talk about? Here’s another question I want to ask you. Do you communicate with the home office by prayer and your resources that way? You should, that’s how you communicate with your home office, praying. You can instantly go before the throne room of God, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you can bow your head and say, Heavenly Father, if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, now if you’re quenching the Spirit, if you have unconfessed sin in your life, that prayer’s not gonna work. But if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, you don’t have any known sin in your life, you can go to your father and pray, take your petitions before him. You can offer adoration to God for who and what he is. You can offer intercession for me or for your family members. There’s so many ways you can pray. And so are you doing that? Are you communicating with your home office by prayer on a daily basis? And here’s another question I’d like to ask you. Do you conduct yourself as a spiritual professional? Do you conduct yourself as a spiritual professional? I can assure you, God doesn’t want you to look like a slob. I can assure you, if you’re going to represent your Lord Jesus Christ, he would like for you to be able to be able to represent him in manner, speech, appearance, and commitment. In manner, are you manner, do you have manners? Are you able to be polite to people? In speech, this is how you represent God, in speech, what you say, in your appearance, and in your commitment, in your consistency. Do you conduct yourself as a spiritual professional? Number six, can God count on you to perform your duties or do you spend most of your time in the frantic search for happiness? Can God count on you or are you letting your emotions rule your life as they take you on a roller coaster ride with highs and lows? Because their emotions can do that. If you don’t get control of your emotions, they will destroy you. They will take you up, they will take you down, you’ll be depressed, you’ll be high, acting weird because your emotions will destroy your objectivity and your confidence in God’s plan. Sure, you have problems. Sure, you fail. Sure, you mess up. Sure, you run into difficulty. Do you cry about it? Do you sit there and weep and say, oh, I’m just having it so bad. Things are so bad. I don’t know what to do. Why doesn’t God help me? Why doesn’t God help me? If you’re letting your emotions run your life, you are making a terrible mistake, and your emotions are like a roller coaster. They’ll take you up and take you down. You won’t know which way’s up and which way’s down. You can’t live the Christian life on emotions. That’s why you have the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s why you have contentment and capacity for life. It comes from the mature individual who acts like a professional. So, seven, if you are so self-centered as a Christian that you don’t have time to fit God into your schedule, then why, listen carefully, why should he try to fit you into his schedule? If you’re so self-centered as a Christian that you don’t have time to fit God into your schedule, then why should he fit you into his schedule? In other words, why should he keep you around? What’s the sense of letting you stay around here if you’re not going to do your job, if you’re not going to represent him effectively? Eight, do you consider his will for your life when you make major decisions? Or do you just do what you want to do when you want to do it? What about it? And nine, if you ignore your divine commission, don’t go crying to God when things get tough. Don’t go complaining to God when things go bad since you did not need God in the first time. When things were good, you weren’t interested. Then when things got bad, there you are going knocking on the door, oh God help, oh God help. Like where were you when things were good? If you ignore your divine commission, don’t go crying to God when things get tough since you did not listen to him in the good times. And my final challenge to you is either get with it or get ready for a life of divine discipline. Either get with it or get ready for a life of divine discipline. In Hebrews 12, six through nine, the writer of Hebrews said, those that the Lord loves, he chastens, that’s discipline, and he scourges, that’s intense discipline, every son that he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with a son. For what son is he whom the Father does not discipline? But if you be without discipline, which all have to partake in, then you’re not really a son, you’re just a bastard. And furthermore, we’ve had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? If you’re not going to live for the Lord, if you’re going to do what you want to do, if you’re going to live the way you want to live, if you’re going to let your flesh control your life, why should he keep you around? Why? You are an ambassador. It’s time you got with it. It’s time you fulfilled your divine commission, your divine appointment. It’s time you stepped up to the plate and did what you’re supposed to do. I pray you’re listening. I pray you’re paying attention because your very life depends on this. God gave you a commission. You are a royal ambassador. It is time for you to step up to the plate, time for you to do your job, time for you to represent him with honor and integrity as his servant in the devil’s world. I hope you’re paying attention. I hope you’re listening. And I pray you’ll come back with me next week, same time. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
