Do you have any heroes? Growing up I suppose we all have heroes of some type. As a boy mine were very typical. I had a sports hero—Mickey Mantle (I have since repented and become a Red Sox fan); a comic book hero—Batman; and heroes from history—Achilles and Davey Crockett. Obviously, depending on gender, and what era you grew up in, your heroes would have been very different from mine, but I’m sure you had them just the same!
    I suppose there are lots of reasons to have heroes in our life, those characters that we wish to imitate or be like. And it doesn’t
matter if the characteristics or events attached to our hero ever really happened, were exaggerated or purely fictional. Heroes give us something to dream about, something to aspire to, or something to imagine could be true in our own life.
    And then, of course, we grow up! But that doesn’t mean we have to let go of having heroes. It just means that our heroes should become more real, and our desire to emulate them more realistic. As adults our heroes should be those individuals (either real or fictional) whose character we would most like to reproduce in our own life. Thus while our childhood heroes were larger than life, our adult heroes are probably more like us, that is, human.
    So while we as Christians are to imitate Christ, and put ourselves into God’s hands that He might mold us into the likeness of Christ, our heroes most likely are those believers who show us the way to be transformed into His image by showing us how they did it, even if imperfectly. I have always appreciated Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 11:1 when he writes, Follow my example (or imitate me in the NKJV), as I follow the example of Christ (NIV). He wasn’t holding himself up as the model Christian, but rather that he was modeling how to follow Christ. Jesus is the standard by which we are all measured, but Paul (among others) is one we can copy in being a follower of the Lord. This is the mark of and benefit of real heroes for us. Not that we try to be just like them (that is setting our standard way too low), but rather that we seek to be like Jesus in the same way they are also seeking to imitate Christ. Thus our hero(es) can be real (and flawed) but still help us to grow, try and overcome, and achieve victory in Christ.
    Our Vacation Bible School theme this year is Heroes, and our children are going to be introduced to some ordinary children in the Bible who are examples of heroism, not because they were great or smart or brave, but because they were faithful and trusted their Lord. We will look at these heroes too. This summer we will learn from an Israelite servant girl, a young David, an unnamed child, a boy with a lunch and the nephew of Paul, that all of us can do heroic things if we put our hope and trust in God, and rely on His strength rather than our own.
    Hopefully you have some godly heroes in your life, from the Bible, or Church history, or someone in your life right now. Who are you looking to as an example of becoming more like Jesus? And are you living in such a way that somebody else might see you as their spiritual hero?

Denis Whittet