Heroic

​Jeff plays the game of soccer.  He is not an impact player who by great talent can take over a game.  In fact in many ways he is limited.  But he gives all he has.  At a fifty-plus age in a league where most players are in their late 30’s and early forties, he is quite amazing.  You see he never stops looking for an opportunity to score.  By sheer persistence he manages occasionally to do what better players fail to accomplish—put the ball in the net!  In my book his play is the stuff of the heroic.

The dictionary defines heroes as persons noted for courageous feats or nobility of purpose, especially those who risked or sacrificed their lives.  We tend to be mesmerized by the spectacular and worship the incredible.  Yet in some ways the heroic person is the one who makes the ordinary the extraordinary.
 
Meditation
2 Chronicles 31:18--To those registered by genealogy—with all their infants, wives, sons, and daughters—of the whole assembly (for they had faithfully consecrated themselves as holy).
 
Do you ever get tired of the regular rhythm of life? Does it seem like your relationship with God is about as exciting as canoeing down an irrigation canal?  Then stop paddling. Recognize there is a current at work.  

If your idea of a heroic follower of God is the crowd-enthralling evangelist, the talented pastor, or the monastery monk, is it possible you have defined importance by vocation?  While any and all of those people may be heroes, in God’s eyes the heroic follower is the faithful follower.  Nowhere does the Bible pronounce the job as the focal point.  It is the relationship we hold with God throughout the work that we do that He values.  Therefore, you are heroic by getting up each morning and dedicating the day in prayer to the Lord; by taking joy in mopping the floor or cooking or teaching or selling or building because in your heart burns a never-ending blaze to know and please God.  

Solomon wrote, in Proverbs 20:6, “Many a man proclaims his own loyalty, but who can find a trustworthy man?” Don’t let the blur of time rob you of the joy of the eternal.  Your relationship to God will be seasoned with joy if you see the ordinary as your opportunity to make a statement.  “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for God’s glory” (1 Corinthians 10:31).  That’s heroic.
 
Inspiration
It would be a terrible thing to lose the sense of the heroic, because the sense of duty is only realized by the sense of the heroic.  Our Lord calls us to joyful, heroic lives, and we must never relax.—Oswald Chambers in Grow Up Into Him
 
©2000 Daniel York  ARR. Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  If you would like to receive these devotionals go to www.firstcause.org and click on the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.      
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)