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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.
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