Heroes

Sometimes we hear about someone who does something outrageous. They fight for a worthy cause, challenge the status quo and make a difference. People like Billy Graham who spread the gospel to billions, or Mother Teresa who picks babies out of the garbage and loves lepers with words and deeds in the name of Jesus. We call them heroes.

We get inspired. We get passionate. We almost stand in awe of these people. Hope starts to flood in with ideas and possibilities of making the world a better place. Yes we can make a change. We can make a better tomorrow for our children. It can happen. It is possible. We are charged with a new optimism and a living hope. We are charged up and ready to go. We are like a stick of dynamite!

As we begin to make a game plan and put passion into action, we get tested a bit. Are we really willing to pay the price for it? Will we stop at nothing to see a change for the better? Can we truly fight the good fight? Will we finish the race and complete what we started?

We get tested when our passion makes us hyper-sensitive. These tests can take on different forms. It can be a person who doesn’t agree that it can happen. It can be resources that won’t come through. Sometimes we get so passionately sensitive that we become offended by the tests. We respond by cutting off the dream or find a new fellowship. Sometimes we even give up and discouragement sets in and trauma and doubt. Could it all be for nothing we ask? Was I wrong? Can we really make this place a better world for tomorrow? Were the heroes really right?

But the tests are meant to strengthen our resolve. They test the work to see if it will last or if it is true and pure and right. Will we still stick it out? How do we stay in the race? What can we do to avoid discouragement and trauma? Expect it! Expect tests to come on the path. Find a way to respond in a productive fashion. A way that doesn’t compromise the vision but brings in more force and multiplies the momentum. We need to respond in a way that makes others catch the vision and maybe even dare to come on board. We need to be over comers and conquerors doing it with the right motives and means. Not conquering each other but conquering the unseen forces that work against us.

We also need to guide passion with wisdom and love. We need to have passion guided by a love that is not easily provoked. A love that bears all things and believes all things and hopes all things and endures all things (1Cor 13). A love that lays downs his/her life for a friend (John 15:13).

We need a model to follow as well. Jesus is perfect. He had the love and vision and he even laid down his life for it. When we study him, understand him, follow him and even worship him, we become like him. We heed his words which can increase faith. After we go through the tests that show if our work is true and pure and right, we realize that our vision was actually His. When we continue to obey him his resources become our resources! His Father our Father. His Spirit our Spirit. His passion our passion. Those heroes who inspire us, who fight good fights with pure causes with righteous means point us back to Jesus. And we live out what we were meant to live!