An Ambassador’s Heart: Love, Truth, and Legacy

Today, as I write these words, my parents are celebrating their 57th wedding anniversary. The significance of this milestone isn’t lost on me. It falls on November 2nd, a date that has become meaningful in our family’s story. In just two months, my father will turn 79, and I find myself reflecting on what nearly eight decades of faithful living can teach us about being Christ’s ambassadors in a world that desperately needs both truth and love.

My father still reaches for my mother’s hand with the same tenderness I witnessed as a child growing up as the oldest of four siblings. The gesture is simple, yet it carries the weight of 57 years, years filled with joy and hardship, triumph and loss, unwavering commitment and daily choices to love when feelings alone wouldn’t sustain it.

Thirty-one years into my own marriage, with two children who now forge their own paths of faith, I’m beginning to understand what my parents modeled all along: Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t a greeting card sentiment. It’s a transformative call that reshapes how we move through the world, how we build our homes, and how we represent the One who sent us.

The most profound spiritual lessons rarely arrive through sermons. They’re forged in the crucible of everyday life, in moments when competing values threaten to pull us apart. My parents understood something that shaped everything about our family: authentic love and unwavering truth aren’t opposing forces locked in eternal conflict. They’re complementary expressions of God’s character, two sides of the same divine coin.

Their home became a sanctuary where truth was spoken but judgment was absent, where biblical standards stood firm but grace flowed freely. I remember my parents supporting me and my wife, whose marriage was collapsing under the weight of poor choices nearly fifteen years ago. They didn’t judge. They simply showed up. They listened deeply, spoke truth gently, and refused to abandon us even when the path forward looked impossibly difficult.

This is the tension we’re called to hold as Christ’s ambassadors, and it’s where so many of us lose our way. The culture whispers that love requires agreement with every choice, that compassion demands we blur the lines God has clearly drawn. But that’s not the love Jesus modeled.

When He encountered the woman at the well, He didn’t ignore her history or pretend her choices were inconsequential. He spoke truth about her life while offering living water that could transform everything (John 4:1-26). With the woman caught in adultery, He demonstrated both grace and direction: “Neither do I condemn you” followed immediately by “Go and sin no more” (John 8:1-11). Truth and grace, walking hand in hand through every encounter.

In our generation, these tensions have intensified beyond what my parents faced in their early years. We navigate pressures that would have seemed unimaginable to them, a culture that insists feelings define reality, that identity is self-constructed, and that truth itself bends to accommodate personal preference. Yet as Christ’s representatives, we cannot surrender the foundation: God created humanity male and female, each bearing His image with intentional design and purpose.

This isn’t rigidity; it’s the bedrock of human dignity. If God made you as a woman, you reflect His image as a woman, with all the beauty, strength, and purpose He embedded in that design. If He made you as a man, you reflect His image as a man, with a distinct calling and responsibility. Affirming what God has established isn’t harsh; it’s the most loving response we can offer.

My wife and I have walked our children through these conversations, helping them understand that genuine love never requires us to lie about reality. We wouldn’t tell our son that 1+1=3 simply because he felt strongly about it. We love him too much to let feelings override truth. This same principle extends to every area where God has spoken with clarity.

The ambassador’s heart holds both simultaneously: unwavering commitment to truth and relentless pursuit of love.

Five Pathways of Kingdom Care

Through three decades of marriage and watching my parents’ enduring example, certain patterns have emerged, ways Jesus consistently cared for people and ways He’s calling us to replicate.

Proclaiming Good News

God has entrusted us with the message that transforms everything: Jesus is the answer to humanity’s deepest problem. Not a trite religious answer, but the actual solution to our separation from our Creator. I understand this intuitively. I don’t manufacture religious moments; I simply live aware of God’s presence and speak naturally about the Savior who died for us all.

I share the Gospel over backyard fences and in hospital waiting rooms, during crisis moments and casual morning conversations. There is no formula or pressure, just an authentic relationship and genuine conviction that Jesus changes everything.

For those preparing for marriage or longing for that season, understand that your primary mission field begins at home. The Good News you speak to your future spouse, the faith you’ll eventually model for your children, this becomes the foundation for how they’ll carry the Gospel forward. The legacy my parents built started with daily faithfulness in moments that felt ordinary at the time.

Comforting the Brokenhearted

Everyone carries wounds. Some are visible; most remain carefully concealed beneath smiles we’ve perfected for public consumption. After 31 years together, my wife has developed a remarkable sensitivity to hearts that are breaking beneath surface-level conversations. She sees past the performance, recognizing grief, disappointment, and fear that others miss entirely.

In our early marriage, I thought comfort required eloquent words and perfect theological explanations. Life has taught me that comfort more often requires presence and showing up when there’s nothing helpful to say, sitting in someone’s pain without rushing to fix it.

Speaking Freedom

We all know people trapped by something, addiction’s relentless grip, financial chaos that produces sleepless nights, destructive patterns repeated across years, secrets that isolate and diminish. I model a profound posture here: speak truth that can liberate, but never from a position of superiority.

In my life, I’ve learned we’re all trapped by something until Jesus sets us free. That humility makes people receptive to hard truths they might reject from someone else.

One of the most difficult conversations I’ve navigated was with a close friend ensnared in an affair. The culture told him to “follow his heart,” to prioritize his feelings above covenant and commitment. But I loved him too much to echo comfortable lies. I shared what Scripture says about covenant, about the destruction that follows broken trust, about God’s design for marriage as a reflection of Christ and His church.

It cost me the friendship for a season. But Jesus promised truth would set people free, not make them comfortable. Real love risks discomfort for another’s ultimate good.

Bringing Light to the Spiritually Blind

When you see someone you love making destructive choices, silence isn’t love. It’s abandonment disguised as respect. This doesn’t mean becoming intrusive or self-righteous. It means caring enough to speak truth even when it’s uncomfortable.

I think of conversations with my own children when they couldn’t see the consequences looming ahead on certain paths. As their father, remaining silent would have been easier in the moment. But Jesus calls His ambassadors to help others see clearly, to offer biblical perspective and point toward resources that illuminate truth.

Sometimes this means difficult conversations at the kitchen table. Sometimes it means connecting them with Scripture passages, wise counselors, or mentors who can provide clarity. It always means loving them enough to risk temporary discomfort for their long-term flourishing.

For those who are single: practice this with friends now. Learn to speak truth wrapped in genuine care. These skills you’re developing will serve you profoundly when you’re navigating marriage and eventually guiding children through their own spiritual formation.

Defending the Oppressed

The oppressed aren’t always easy to identify. Sometimes they’re the quiet ones, consistently overlooked in social settings. Sometimes they’re facing systemic injustices that require sustained advocacy. Sometimes they’re simply exhausted by life’s relentless demands and need someone to notice their struggle.

Jesus wants His ambassadors to see what others miss and then to act.

Here’s what I’ve learned through 31 years of attempting to represent Jesus in marriage, parenting, and community: you cannot be His ambassador well from behind church walls alone. Ambassadors venture into the world, build authentic relationships, and engage with people where they actually live their lives.

This means treating everyone with dignity because they bear God’s image, even people whose choices we cannot affirm and those who actively oppose everything we believe. Dignity isn’t agreement; it’s recognition of inherent worth that transcends behavior.

It means being diplomatic without compromising truth. Peter instructed us to answer others with gentleness and respect. James reminded us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. These aren’t suggestions for when it’s convenient. They’re the non-negotiable posture of Christ’s representatives in every interaction.

It means building bridges instead of walls. Paul said he tried to find common ground with everyone so he could tell them about Christ. This doesn’t mean abandoning conviction. It means loving people enough to connect with them where they are, creating pathways for the Gospel to travel naturally into their lives.

The Legacy That Sustains

As this anniversary celebration continues, I’ll watch my parents interact with their children, grandchildren, friends, family, and neighbors. Fifty-seven years of being Christ’s ambassadors, imperfectly but faithfully, have produced a legacy extending far beyond what they could have imagined on their wedding day in 1968.

This is God’s promise to those who live as loving ambassadors: “Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else” (‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭9‬:‭13).

Your life, lived as Jesus’ representative, will point others to Him. Your marriage, whether you’re preparing for it, living it, or hoping for it, can become a testimony to covenant faithfulness that reflects Christ’s commitment to His bride. Your parenting can demonstrate truth spoken in love, boundaries held with grace. Your friendships can model conviction without condemnation.

The world desperately needs Christians who understand that loving our neighbors means offering them the greatest gift: the truth about their Creator, their identity, and their need for a Savior. Not truth delivered with arrogance or superiority, but truth wrapped in genuine care, backed by a life that demonstrates what following Jesus actually looks like in the mundane and the magnificent moments.

As I reflect on this significant day, I’m struck by Jesus’ words: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Every act of love, every moment of truth-telling, every sacrifice made for another person’s good, He receives it as service to Him.

That’s what it means to carry a Christ ambassador’s heart. That’s what love thy neighbor truly requires. And that’s the calling we’re privileged to fulfill, one faithful day at a time, building a legacy that extends beyond what we can see, into generations we may never meet but will be shaped by the choices we make today.

A Christ ambassador’s heart beats with both truth and love, never choosing between them, always holding both as sacred trust. This is the legacy my parents are building. This is the inheritance they’re passing to their children and grandchildren. And this is the call extended to every follower of Jesus: represent Him well, love people deeply, speak truth clearly, and trust Him with the results.