Becoming the hero others need you to be

Heros. They come in all shapes and sizes. Many who are claimed to be heros I personally wouldn’t consider a hero, and others who are not lifted to the hero level actually deserve to be up there. Heros are circumstantial. Winston  Churchill was a hero in his time due to his efforts for the war. And yet after he wasn’t needed anymore he was thrown away and is often ridiculed by low thinking individuals. Circumstances made him a hero. When those circumstances were gone he went back to being who had started as. Some Heros are actually tagged as villains, but when you take a good look at what they have done and why, you can see their cape flutter slightly under their clothes. As one hero once said, ‘if I have to be a villain in the eyes of those who don’t understand then I will he a villain and get the job done.’
Why bring this up?
Things have been twisted in our world. Evil is seen as good and those who fight that evil are seen as the bad guys. It makes me think of my dog. One time while camping a set of off leash dogs attacked my dog and I. He was injured a bit but not badly, and only by the grace of God was he okay. I still don’t like him around off leash dogs after that and it was years ago. Later a friend of the owner of the two dogs who had attacked us came and confronted me because her dogs were bleeding and they said mine was to blame. I…. won’t go into what I said to that. But my dog was able to get away from those dogs. He fought for my sake. He became the hero that circumstance needed. And he was ridiculed for it. We were doing what we should have been doing. They came out of no where and attacked us and we got blamed. You see, the hero doesn’t always look like a hero, and the true villain can disguise himself to look like a victim.
As Christians we are often shown to be the bad guys. Even when we are helping people, even when we are risking ourselves to stop a bad thing from happening, we are still labeled as the villains. But so was Jesus. He healed people. Fed the hungry, loved the leper, raised the dead and every action was shown by his enemies to be wrong. I don’t mean just the Pharisees. The government saw Him as a threat. People would follow and mock His deciples. They were beaten and tortured for doing what God tells us to do. They rose as the Heros the world needed. Even now we look to tye deciples teachings and writings. Martin Luther burned at the stake for spreading the gospel. David Livingston was under threat from mercenaries when preaching and tending to the sick in Africa. Billy Graham had death threats and slanderous ( false) accusations. David Wilkerson had everything from death threats and physical attacks to poverty and personal health challenges. Kathrine Coolman had chronic pain from illness all her life.
The list goes on and on and on. God’s people have raised themselves up to become the heros other people needed them to be since the beginning. And they have been attacked and called every evil the simple minds of people could think of. But they kept going. They said, ‘if the world sees me as a villain because they don’t understand, then I will be a villain and get the job done.’
We aren’t weighed and measured by man. We are weighed and measured by God. And if we are pushing through rock wall because God has told us to, then we are doing the right thing no matter what people say about us. Go for God’s glory and you will succeed where it matters.

Nebuchadnezzar was cursed by God for his pride and made to spend seven years living as a wild animal in a state of madness until he repented.
Seven years as a crazed man, humans only being a real preditor when holding a weapon and having the thought to create a trap, so in this environment- he was prey. Living in the wild with lions and crocodiles and wild dogs. How did he survive?
God had prophesied through Daniel that Neb would repent. To do that he had to be alive. So God sustained and protected him.
Even in punishment Neb was protected by God. God fulfilled His prophecy.

Even when we screw up completely and God is punishing us, He is still with us, protecting and loving us.

Are we willing?

What does your dream, goal and ambition mean to you? When the government tells you that you can’t be a teacher, lawyer, politician, doctor, and so on, unless you accept certain sins as no longer sin what will you do? Is the dream worth so much that you will buckle and bow to the death system. Death system was a term that came up when I was a kid. In books, in TV (mostly anime) it means a system unacknowledgably careening toward destruction, sort of like Chaos Theory. Back then even the secular world could see it coming and what it would bring. Now even Christ followers bow to the death system. Not the death of the planet, though much of the shows that winked at the death system did cover the death of nature, but instead we should focus on the death of our souls and the rape of our minds. Do we even know what’s wrong anymore? Or are we taking a pen and crossing out the parts of our Faith that offend us? I was reminded recently of what Christians face in countries that don’t support the Christ belief. People with high IQs and great talent have demeaning jobs, can’t attend certain schools or social events and live in shamble, because they refuse to deny even a tiny part of Jesus, they embrace Him even though they are left in the street by the world. Do we? Are we willing to take the humble road rather than deny even a speck of our Lord? So often we see “christians” praised for taking a job in a secular setting because they can, “promote their witness” there. But do they? How much of Jesus did they have to deny to get that job? What sins did they accept so that they would be accepted? The devil sits back and gestures to a goblet, “drink this, accept the darkness and I will give you everything.” Jesus takes our hand and says, “don’t! It’s a trap.” We pull away from Christ, “if I drink what he offers then he will give me a place in society where I can promote you better, it’s just a little sip, I’ll be fine.” Our bold statement dies as we drink the whole glass and join the devil. If Jesus says something is wrong then it is wrong no matter our good intentions. Are we willing to live as ditch diggers and serve Jesus by denying the devil? Or have we already taken of the death drink, and now we serve the devil under the badge that used to say ‘Christian’, but now says ‘deceived’?
We are so lost in this death system that we have forgotten what life is. Go back to Jesus. Reach for Him. Don’t let the devil deceive you. Don’t let your heart become poisoned. Give yourself to Jesus. Whatever you end up doing, no matter how valueless it feels, remember- if you are doing it for Jesus, if you are sacrificing it for Jesus, if you are suffering it for Jesus, then what your doing is right. The easy road of compromise leads to death. Not death in this world, but death of your soul. Don’t give in. Fight back. Dare to take God at His word no matter the cost.

Thing to note.
The same people who yell that banning books from classrooms is wrong. Are the exact same people who protested to have Bibles banned from classrooms, even to the extreme that kids have had their Bibles taken from them when they have brought them to school to read privately during free period.