Christians too often play the part of God’s good little children. Our churches are filled with self-edifying rhetoric and sermons that may help us but may hurt us as well. Because the stage or platform is arranged facing the audience, which we’re not, we get the idea that we are the point. Church is not a spectator sport, yet we treat it as such. Church is only the huddle. It isn’t about us, and sitting in a pew or chairs is not the point of us being there. The point of this holy huddle is give us instructions, Johnson you take point, Smith, run a deep hook and curve in right, Wilkerson, you lateral in the backfield, etc. Forgive the football ignorance, if I got it wrong, I am a geek. You, help these children learn about God, you, take a hot meal to Tim, who broke his leg. That is the kind of stuff church and its purpose are to serve.

The problem is that even though we even tackle some church functions today, like hospitality and service, we are not focusing on anyone outside our doors. This is completely backwards from Jesus calling on us. He first states that He has been given ALL power over EVERYTHING FOREVER in heaven and on earth. In the greek, He is saying LISTEN UP, I AM THE BOSS! Then He says go into all the world and preach the gospel. As St. Augustine said, “If needed, use words” (paraphrase mine). All the world includes the dark parts. Every day people get raped, killed, devastated, crushed, beaten up and beaten down, among hundreds of other painful things. Where is the church then? Having a potluck or picnic. Sharing in the joy of God’s grace and good family and friends. Is this bad? No, it is good, however something good can get in the way of God’s plan if it is all we ever do. God made us for a dangerous mission, to drop our comforts like Jesus did, to walk unafraid into the darkest light-less night where evil knows no bounds. We are the heroes, we are the only thing stopping the staggering from slaughter. We have the opportunity like no one in history to save souls from hell. That is a big responsibility, but we don’t notice, or get noticed trying to rip people from the grip of their own death.

It is time to get in the game or get out of the church. If you’re a Christian or are trying to be, great. If not, stay home and watch the game, it isn’t worth fighting and trying your whole life in vain to be something you’re not, or is it?

This world heart is breaking, one look at the news and the good Christian looks away to watch some sort of comedy. We can’t handle the agony our fellow humans are in. We policiticize every disaster and uprising in places such as darfur, bosnia, rwanda, and others, but what do we really do about it? It is forgotten in a few months when Oprah’s new bookclub book arrives, shrinkwrapped and tantalizing. It isn’t that we shouldn’t enjoy the blessings of God in our lives, but we need to adjust our perspective to see that God gives us blessing not for our own benefit, but so the forgotten can be cared for by the literal extensions of God’s arms He left on earth to care for them.

The darkness needs some heroes. Jesus said the sick need help, not the healthy. We only focus on the healthly, and the reason is that most pastors hope that someday a few will leave their pew and hit the streets to do battle. Well, despite too many of us sitting back and never listening to the truth being spoken, it does work, so pastors are smarter than we credit them for. They do occasionally awaken sleeping souls, because God takes their words and taylor-makes a duly sharp arrow and embeds it deep in the thick forehead of someone like me.

God is raising up, or at least my hope is that He is raising up a generation of dark knights. We are the scary people in your church service. We aren’t afraid of the dark, evil, or death. This fearless faith in a few of us is what God will use to reach the world outside the walls. We are the angels in the alley, the Jesus in the places Gods people would never go. God made the darkness too, so He knows what goes on there, and it breaks His heart the same as the people ignoring it in the light.

So, yada yada, we know, guilt has set in. Guilt is not the point, though it can be used to produce fruit. Practically what does ending your streak on the bench look like? You look at hurting or needy people in some area and you find what breaks your heart. Let yourself think about, feel it, and ask God to show you how it hurts Him too. He will reveal His heart to you if you ask Him. Find that which you cannot tolerate that is going on in our world, and find a ministry, start one, or do something to fix it. Unwanted pregnancies, relationships, abuse, pain of any kind. We are NOT HERE FOR US! We are saved, death just means we have a new address. The people we ignore are going to die and it can’t be reversed. This is the time. This is the moment we have, and we must act.

It is not okay with me that many kids from my generation and younger ones are KILLING THEMSELVES. Cutting, suicide, and other horrible things. I must repent and ask God for forgiveness that I haven’t cared until now. It breaks my heart. It tears me to shreds. It isn’t okay to sit back and watch TV anymore. I have to do something. What is it for you? What is it that gets you so bad you can’t handle it? God wants all of us to chase down that thing, whatever it is and take hold of the place God has carved out of His plan for us to fit into it.

If we take a moment to think about who God made us and how we can use our lives as a concert of love, and stop caring quite so much about the celebrities and their latest episodes, stuff will happen.

We are the hands of God on earth to apply the pressure of His love to relieve the pain of life for this hurting world. Let’s own it, be it, do it, and run with a passion never seen before. Who’s with me?

No one likes traffic, me included. Traffic is an evil that is foisted upon most of us at some point during the week. If you sit in traffic long enough, you start to notice some interesting things.  A lot of people aren’t going anywhere. So many of my fellow trafficians go as slow as possible, and don’t accelerate when there is room to do so in front of them. Why not?

I think it has to do with life. For a long time I felt the same way, and I still do sometimes. I have no where that matters that I need to be, no where to go, so why would I hurry? God is there, but there is nothing going on between us, so why should I spend the time, and try to go somewhere, there is no point. That’s how I used to think. God has recently tried to wake me up, and unless this was His plan all along, I for some reason started paying attention.

I am slowly finding out every day that He is the point of all this. That He is where I am going. I know it sounds weird to say, but I was made expressly for Him. That all sounds good and warm and fuzzy, but so what? Well, my life has always been adrift. Always vague, undefined, worthless, unnoticed and ignored. Not anymore. There is this guy in the sky it seems who isn’t just in the sky, but comes down to meet with me, He cares what I think, how I feel, and what I do. He has saved me from sin, death, hell, and everything else I have always heard about, but also from the nothingness I am. I was a puddle. A big wasted puddle of smelly gasoline, and He is the spark that lit the explosion in my heart. God sets the human heart on fire when we allow Him to see the mess we’ve made.

After God gets you to allow Him to get a grip on you, and starts something in your heart, you change forever. You begin to see the world through a different lens. You start to understand what He made you for. You get a whole new life, and despite sitting in traffic, you’ll know why and where you’re going. Let God have you. I promise it is worth it.

Every hero has their own battles to fight, but the hardest are always the ones you fight with yourself. Fighting to read God’s word, fighting to have a prayer time. These are the things I am struggling with right now.

First, I know I will triumph over this obstacle. Right now it feels like I’ll never be able to get this portion of my life under control. The portion of my life that connects me to God. If I don’t figure out how to spend time alone with God, to be honest, my life means nothing. The figuring out part is the hardest. I think to myself, I’ll just get up earlier. Not that easy. I have to actually go to bed before the alarm tries to wake me up for this plan to work. It isn’t as bad as that, but even though I am up late most nights doing something to advance the kingdom, I need to spend time with God, it should be more of a priority. I will eventually get there, I will, I have no doubt about that in my mind, because it is a burning desire in my heart. The actually doing of it though, getting my body and my mind to accept the fact that my habits are bad and change them is harder. The software always works until you install it.

So, the way to reach any goal is to make small adjustments, because you will accept them easier, faking yourself out in a way, and it is waht makes a difference in the long run. Make large jerky strides toward something and you will burn out faster than you want to. Make small incremental adjustments, and you will find that you have accidentally reached the place you want to go.

I am going to make a lot of attempts at getting up the slightest bit earlier, which means going to bed earlier, and anything else that could help me move it in the morning. Once I get past this hurdle, there will be a ton of others, but having this once generally in place will make all the difference.

What is currently fighting you, and what do you have to do to get to the next step as a hero? Let me know!

One very important trait of a hero is the ability to stand alone, even when no one else agrees with you. It is this “against all odds” tenacity that makes you press on, push the envelope, and no give up or turn aside from the mission you’ve been given. There have been times in my life where I was told by friends, family, and others to do something that I know in my heart was a way out of what I was drop-shipped here to earth to do. Things like “just go to school” or “once you have a good job you can do that” or other such “advice”. Heroes and their intentions are many times misunderstood. People who have no vision for life and no idea what they are doing fall into their daily drivel of routine, without a thought for the core of the soul and the purpose of their life.

I refuse to live that way. I have a mission, and I want to be on it, doing what I was made for. I spent too many years sitting in the stands, not doing anything but whining about how I wasn’t growing. No more. I won’t let anyone sway my focus, no matter how well intentioned they are.

Now, the one exception to this is allowing Godly counsel through that filter. If I see those doing God’s work and following His call, I am more than ready to sit at their perverbial feet and listen in humble anticipation of the word from God they could counsel me with and the new things I could learn and even correct in my own life. I am not perfect and I need that in my life, the checks and balances. Being teachable is very important if you and I want to be effective for God’s kingdom.

It is one of the hardest things to do when you have to follow God’s leading and everyone around you is telling you to settle, to give up, to be average. Jesus said in Luke 14:26 that anyone who doesn’t not hate his father, mother, siblings, etc. to follow him cannot be his follower. Jesus doesn’t want you to slash you dad’s tires or cut your mom’s brake line on the car, he is saying that you must forsake all others to follow and listen to only him, and it will feel like dying. I have had to leave all my friends and family behind because they did not agree with the calling God has on me and His will in my life. It is hard, but living a life of faith, following my master is the only thing that matters to me.

The willingness to follow Christ to the bitter end is the mark of His hero, His soldier. I am not a soldier in the way that I crusade against anyone who doesn’t follow the way of Christ, but I am an agent of His grace, and Christ-followers wage war against heartache and pain in this world, we fight for the end of injustice, and we scream out for the silent.

This is why heroes are always depicted, arms folded, cape waving happily in the wind, hair rustling at the costume’s edges and the hero remains unmoved, staring off into the distance. This willingness to believe in the truth no matter what and stand up for what you believe in makes you a hero, it isn’t just one of the traits.

First find out what you believe, why, then never back down. Follow Christ, and let me know how you have stood alone, or with others and how you are learning to follow Jesus. I bet there are some amazing stories of how God has come through while you thought you were all alone.

How do we deal with pain? How do we respond when others are hurting in our world? Too many of us say things like “you’ll get over it” or “life isn’t that bad, is it? I think sometimes God allows us to go through some very minor pain to understand what it feels like, how it hurts. After all, that was part of why Jesus came. He felt our pain, literally, He lived here with us.

Part of our role as heroes in this world is to seek out the hurting, look for the woman alone in a dark alley being molested and beaten by sin, by her own choices, and the evil done to her by others. Sometimes, the pain is in the past, but it still hurts, and we can’t stop the pain from hurting, but we know the only person who can. Don’t underestimate pain and what it can do to people. Suicide, cutting, and other destructive behaviors are a result of raw unhealed pain in our world.

Pain can be healed by our powerful God, but we need to remember that our unconditional acceptance, our unbridled love for people, especially those who are hurting badly, is the only way many will find the medicine they need. When we mirror the love of God, which has no requirements and no conditions, the hurting have a chance to end up healed forever. Not only that, but the hurting can end their life as a victim and become a beautiful thing, blossoming into a hero themselves, with a deep, amazing story to spark hope in many other hurting ones. God’s love is a healing virus. Spread it like wildfire in the world you are in. Read God’s word and spend time with him, as you do, you will cultivate a heart sensitive to pain and suffering, which will make you more of a hero every day.

-Sym

Jesus isn’t on the earth today that we know of. His exodus from here started the water swirling down the drain til the end, and started our “great commission.” We are to serve Jesus here on the earth, but in what ways? Matthew 10:42 says that anyone who gives even a cup of cold water to the little ones, he is my disciple and will not lose his reward. What Jesus is saying here is that the tangible physical needs of people matter to him. Why? Because his caring for our needs is part of why He came and is part of how He loves.

Jesus came to see, feel, and touch us and understand what we go through. He did this to be our priest, which means he helps us be the children God wants us to be. Without the empathy, the sympathy and walking among us, Jesus would not have really understood how broken and desperate we are. He took off his crown, laid it on his throne, and still the king, he came down to meet with us. This is the essence of Philippians 2:6-8, that he became nothing like us to touch us with his hand. When He went to the cross, His motivation must have been that He loved us so much, that He couldn’t bear to let us die. He must have kept thinking of us, and how He wanted to save us. When it came time to be crucified, I wonder if seeing how helpless we are to save ourselves, like dumb sheep jumping off cliffs and stuff, He had us in mind when He faced the hard stuff.

Now that it is all done, and He is back in glory now, He still cares about us here on earth. He cares in a different way. He left and set us in place, His followers, His adopted kids, to care for the world in His absence. We are literally the hand and feet of Christ. The bible calls us, the church, the bride of Christ. This is figurative, but what if it means that we are to be his loveliness in the world, to allure and draw all men to Him?

So, if you were to answer the question, “Would you give Jesus a dollar?”, what would you say? Sure, of course. Who doesn’t have a dollar they could give Jesus? What I wonder is if we were to see the homeless on our streets, those out of work, those down on their luck, or just in need of a beer, as Him. He said give a cup of cold water to the little ones, or the least of these. Doesn’t that mean anyone who needs a cup of cold water? What if they need a drink of milk, a hot meal, some clean socks, or whatever else? Doesn’t that mean we should be giving those who need it what we have, as an act of love back to our savior like a loving bride would? Yes. It does.

What if homeless people only use the money for beer or for cigarettes?

What if I am enabling homeless people to be homeless and not actually helping them?

What if these guys really aren’t in need and are doing it for kicks or to study humanity?

What if I don’t have the money to be handing out dollars all the time at every stoplight?

What if none of these questions were the point, and the point is that we are to be givers and lovers of people, as Jesus did for us? Jesus left much more than a dollar to come and die an awful death to save the world because He loves us, and that is the same love He wants to be in our hearts. Too often we drive by, trying not to catch their eye, and ignore the pain all around us. We can’t do that anymore. We are made to be heroes. All it takes is getting a little creative. Maybe you buy McDonald’s gift certificates or grocery store certificates to allow them to eat something good.

Maybe you put in your budget to cash part of your check in singles so you have $20 or $30 dollars to give away in the course of a few weeks? The point isn’t what you do or how much. Where is your heart, and are you doing something? Religion that God accepts, or in other words, acts that please God are these: taking care of the widows and orphans. That doesn’t just mean orphans, but those who are orphaned, so not just kids.

Another thing is that while you are giving, don’t make it about forcing the gospel on someone or giving them a dollar if you make them listen to your sales pitch on Jesus. Jesus didn’t have to sign people up on the 0% APR plan before he healed them, he just did. He touched, He gave, and He didn’t require anything. Even for those who didn’t understand Him, Jesus helped them out of love. Don’t try to get them saved. you can’t do it anyway. It isn’t about them being saved as much as it is about us caring that their needs are met. They need to be saved yes, but God has His own ways of doing that. If you start to develop relationships with homeless people, they may eventually come to Christ because of you doing what God asks you to, but the main goal here is caring about someone else. Being a light is about shining, not creating more lights. The maker will handle that himself. All you can do is provide the spark, who knows what will happen.

I know it is tough to roll down your car window and hand someone a dollar, but it is much easier if you plan to do so in the first place, as a part of a heart that wants to love others, because you love Jesus. If you can figure out how to help the homeless or someone else in this way, leave a comment here and let me know, I’d love to see what God is doing in your life and in others lives because of your listening to His heartbeat.

-Symulacra

Wow, I think I am random today. Whether or not you know it, you wear a cape. There is something you fight for, and you may not even know it. You are a hero waiting to happen.Maybe you aren’t waiting, but who is? The world, that’s who. My natural reaction to that statement is probably much like yours. Um, what? I don’t know the world…I know, like, Steve. That’s about it. Well, Steve aside, the rest of the world needs what you have. Again, that’s nice, support a child in some other country, but what does that even mean? Let me put it this way. You were made for something. You are skilled, talented, and “bent” towards a certain task, job, area of expertise, a field of knowledge, or other idea. There are no meaningless and useless people. Just people unfulfilled, undiscovered, unrelated to the normal, the usual. Many people find themselves in the strangest places. They find peace, happiness and joy in life in a place no one else would ever go.

Yup, I am talking about the point of life, the essence of existence, the chief end of man, why we live, what we are doing on this blasted planet. The blastedness of our planet is quite debatable, but we’ll leave that to college forums for discussion and analysis. If I asked you why you were here on the planet, the specific reason you, not anyone else is here. Specific to your abilities, your hair color (artificial or natural), your DNA, you. Why are you here?

Most of us would studder, shrug, and sputter, “I don’t know why I’m here,” and rightfully so. I can’t tell you how long that question has scared me to death. We all don’t know why we’re here. Scary as that is, there is an answer. It is not the same answer for any of us. It is an answer we may never find if we don’t seek it out. We all fall into the pattern of doing life, and we wake up 50 years later wondering what happened. I am not yet 50, no where near, but I wonder where the last 10 years of my life has gone. I really can’t tell you. I hate that. I am not alive to be average, to deal with traffic, to watch TV? What kind of life has that as the point? Aren’t you looking to be  someone, to do something with your life that is more alive than this? Don’t you want to be remembered for something? Don’t you want to make a difference in someone else’s life? I do.

What exactly? Well, that is a large multi-faceted question that you need to answer for yourself. A quest for discovery, a journey to find your calling. We all will face our own internal reckoning system at some point, that will nail us if we fail to find our meaning, our purpose. Don’t delay, do it today. How? Well, that is what Unveiled Heroes is here for, to help you discover what it is you were made to do. The world needs a hero, that hero is you.

Some days I feel the beat down, the crushing weight of this world I am holding up. I don’t need a vacation, I need a reprise, a short rest, a break. I will not ever live as a neutral again. This is an all-out war we’re fighting. Heroes fall. We burn-out. We need to pace ourselves sometimes. We need a helping hand…or two. Today, I feel like I am falling apart. My body hurts, my mind is nice and mushy, I haven’t slept much, so today I feel like slacking off, losing the opportunity of today to affect the world around me. It is at this place, called sick, tired, beat down and empty when I need to summon all the last drops of energy and power left in me (most likely hiding in my colon, spleen, tonsils, appendix and other needless body parts) and hit the world with my sonic boom anyway.

Evil waits for no one. The powerless ones are dying. No matter how bad I feel, they feel worse. I also need to remember where my power comes from. My source is more than north. I once was dead, now a dead man walking anyway. Like a zombie I am relentless, I stop at nothing, I desire to consume the injustice in this world. This is the heart of a hero. Solid as a rock, even when the material it is made of is being ripped apart. I will not lay down my arms, I will not stop fighting. I am driven not by fame, not by praise, not by blood, money, greed, or anything else but this: love and an idea. The idea is stronger than death, deeper than love, and it was written long ago. It is the deep magic that moves all life to breathe one more time. It is His love and sacrifice.

Don’t be afraid to fall, don’t be afraid to do something. Feel the rush of not being average.

Welcome to unveiled heroes.