Significant differences distinguish Christian ambassadors from motivational speakers.
The first is authority. A motivational speaker relates experiences from his own life; a Christian ambassador relates God’s word, whether or not he has personally experienced it. (We are commanded to be Christ-like. We aren’t told to be silent if we aren’t. Indeed, if all disciples could teach about Jesus only what we have practiced, we would mostly be silent). The second is purpose. A secularist can urge others to overcome a problem, a disease, a failure because he has. A Christian has only one message to the lost: God through Christ wants to forgive your sins so you can be restored to fellowship with him. The Bible, as seen in Berea, Acts 17:11-12, is our textbook, not our personal experience. The third is potential. The secularist offers possibility, the Christian inevitability. A call to hope exists in any success story: if it happens to another, it CAN happen to me. The Gospel message isn’t, “it could happen to you”, but “you absolutely will be forgiven and restored to God’s presence if you accept Christ and are baptized.” The fourth is permanence. Overcoming a near-death experience now prolongs our life only temporarily, for we still die. In Christ, blessed promise, believers “cross over from death to life” John 5:24, meaning eternal life with him begins at our baptism and continues past physical death. Since Satan had no power to prevent Christ’s resurrection, Acts 2:24, death has none to keep God’s people from rising from the dead at the Last Day, no tubes poked into our nose into our vitals, no extensive, stressful therapy needed, no consultations with medical practitioners to make us whole. No...but instantly renewed in body and brain—alive as never before, alive forever and ever by the Presence of God’s Spirit! In short, what Peter preached on Pentecost remains the uncrossable divide between motivation and proclamation: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact” Acts 2:32. Proclaim Christ’s resurrection every way possible: by word, by example, by song. HIS guarantees OURS! Fini
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