Skip to main content

Pray for Your Heroes

"I'll celebrate the truth, His work in me ain't through, I'm just unfinished."-Mandisa, "Unfinished"

Last month, I heard about the death of Amy Bleuel, founder of Project Semicolon, and I was shocked to hear that someone who was an advocate against suicide would take her own life. There were a lot of people who found hope from her story, and I wondered how many more deaths would happen 
because they lost this hope, and I thought it was horrible that she had done this to them.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I shouldn't be condemning her. I can attest to the fact that even though I have defeated the temptation to commit suicide, Satan won't give up very easily, and keeps trying to lure me back to the place where I was 13 years ago. Life doesn't magically get easier just because a person shares their struggles. In fact, it can actually get harder because sharing our struggles, and especially how God gets us through them, puts a target on our backs. Satan absolutely hates anything that makes God look good, and he will do whatever he can to silence us.

The song quoted above came out of one of those times. A few years ago, Mandisa wrote the song "Overcomer" to help cheer up a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. She was so convinced that her friend would overcome the cancer that when the friend died, she was shaken to her core. She began to doubt God and sunk into a deep depression. She wrote "Unfinished" as a way of both dealing with her pain and sharing her story with her fans. The song "Even If" by MercyMe also speaks of the difficulty of encouraging others when we are struggling ourselves.

Being a hero to others is hard. Not only do you need to be strong for yourself, but also for everyone who looks up to you. The pressure can easily become overwhelming. That's why it's so important to pray for those people in our lives who we consider our heroes. Just because someone inspires others doesn't mean that that person has it all together. We all have times when God feels far away and we don't feel like being strong, so we need friends praying for us to have the strength we need to face the day. So right now, think of the person who inspires you the most, and say a prayer for them. You never know what that person might need, and what that prayer might do.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outside Looking In

(My post Life>Death  chronicles my struggle with suicidal depression. This story is based on the vision God used to save my life.) It all started after the knife sliced through my wrist. As I watched my life drain away, I felt a sense of peace. I knew my pain was finally over. Soft arms lifted me up and carried me off to Heaven. There I watched as my parents found my body. They started to cry, which I had expected. What I hadn't expected was what they were saying. "What did we do wrong?" they cried out. "Nothing!" I screamed. "You did nothing wrong!" But they couldn't hear me. What had I done? As my friends and other family members found out about my death, they said the same thing, and I continued screaming that it wasn't their fault. Their reactions caused me to be in agony, which struck me as strange. If indeed I was in Heaven, wasn't I supposed to be pain free? That is what I had always been taught. Then came my funeral. It...
2 comments
Read more

Scars in Heaven

 "The thought that makes me smile now Even as the tears fall down Is that the only scars in Heaven Are on the hands that hold you now." ~ " Scars in Heaven " - Casting Crowns     The sermon this past Sunday was about Jesus appearing to His disciples after the Resurrection, Thomas not being there, and his subsequent doubt. While this is a typical sermon topic for the Sunday after Easter, this time I started thinking about how this story relates to the song quoted above. What Thomas needed to see to believe in the Resurrection were the scars on Christ's body.     Revelation 21:4 states, "Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." To me, that means that any limitations we had in our lives, including our scars, are gone once we enter those pearly gates. I know a woman who struggled with mobility problems her whole life, which required her to wear ugly orthopedic shoes. After she died earlier...
Post a Comment
Read more

Just a Girl

"And he came and said to her 'Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.'" - Luke 1:28 Last week we celebrated the birth of our Savior, and people around the world read about the miracle of His conception, the trip to Bethlehem, the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men. There are many characters in this wonderful story of our faith, but I want to focus on one in particular: His mother Mary. Of all of them, she was the first to know about what was about to take place, and the first to have to accept her part in the story. Most of the images depicting Mary show a lady in her mid-twenties at least, the age many would associate with someone engaged to be married. However, this is likely not the case. In that time, it was common for a girl to become betrothed when she was still in her early teens, often to a man who was much older and had already established a career. Jewish betrothal was as binding as a marriage, with the only difference being that the man had n...
Post a Comment
Read more