The Bible tells us that we are Christ's ambassadors to the world (2 Corinthians 5:20), that we are His witnesses (Acts 1:8). Everything that we do should be for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31).
If you know me at all, then you've heard me complain about my job. I'm a telephone interviewer, I do follow-up surveys for banks. It's a 3-4 minute survey about how the teller/employee treated you on your recent visit, and no matter how dorky some of the questions sound, a bunch of scientists worked really hard to create that survey and the bank is paying my company millions upon millions of dollars for me to ask them. I'm not selling anything at all, and I don't have access to your personal or account information.
However, I'm a faceless person on the phone, and since time is so precious to so many people, I don't even correct people when they think my name is Tracy or Kailey or even Terry instead of Kaycee, so I'm even a nameless person sometimes. I'm a voice at the other end of the phone, and after a long day of facing this stupid world, I'm a bright red emotional punching bag. I get people's sob stories, frustration, and anger hurled at me all night long at work.
My work-friend who sits behind me struggles with this as much as I do, and one time decided to do a little research of his own. He wrote down the numbers for the answering machines that had greetings like "Praise the Lord" and "God Bless" and such in them to try calling them back later instead of just tossing them back into the system for somebody else to try. You know what he found? When he called back and they answered, they were among the nastiest people he spoke to. He's disillusioned toward Christianity because he very rarely sees/hears Christians treat other people with dignity or respect, let alone love.
We are ambassadors and witnesses for Christ, and if EVERYTHING we do is to be for the glory of God. Why aren't we aware of the responsibility that we have? I may be just a faceless voice, I may be asking some boring and slightly redundant questions without a whole lot of emotion (if I get too excited, I get a call tag for "leading the respondent," I dislike speaking with that flat of a tone just as much if not more than you dislike hearing it), and maybe it has been a long day for you, but what if I'm not a believer? What if God sent your number to my terminal because he wanted to use you in my life? What if you blew that chance because you had a hard day at the office and I just didn't mean that much to you because you aren't looking me in the eye?
The cashier at the grocery store with unbearably long lines, the customer service employee for the company you're mad at, the new teller at the bank that you don't know or who made a mistake, the person who calls in the middle of your dinner (my apologies for not committing to memory the dinner schedules of every household in the country), all of those employees that you come in contact with are people whose souls are at stake. How are you representing Christ to those people? Not that you have to preach a salvation sermon to every single person you come in contact with (if you're called to do that, then more power to ya!), but the way you address people, the tone you use, the manner in which you carry yourself, all of it says something about the God you are representing. When you lash out at a faceless person or someone whose only place in your life is to provide some service because it's their job, you are either telling a lost person that God isn't the answer because a life for Christ is all talk but no love, or you are telling a saved person that they are just as alone as they feel half the time.
We serve a God who sent His Son to suffer death for us so we could be holy and blameless in His sight and be free from sin to openly have a personal relationship with Him. After we are saved, we are left here on this earth to be a statement, to be a testimony to God's immense, immeasurable love for us and for the rest of humanity. Is that the message that you're sending, or are you just another angry consumer?
