When you are a kid you look up to the superheroes. The Famous Five always caught the smugglers (before mobile phones were invented) and so on.
As you grow up your heroes become a bit more human, and there are plenty presented in the media: The footballer who scored the winning goal, the athlete who won all the gold medals, the singer with all the industry awards. The problem is, under the surface, these people are often not as wonderful as the hype would make out, and to be honest are nothing to look up to. The footballer is now alcoholic, the athelete cheated, and the singer is on drugs.
The brother sharing at work was saying he was on Leicester square evangelising, but having a tough time getting anyone to stop and talk when some famous bloke came out of one of the theatres after a premier. Everyone was screaming and making a fuss over this bloke. The brother said he felt like saying "Hello, I am here and Jesus is here... how about making a fuss for Him"
In church history there are lots of "heroes of the faith". Even folk who went off into the desert to be alone with God found that the crowds followed them. In our day people might want the autograph of a famous person, but the fashion then was to have "relics" in the churches. This means a bone from a dead saint built into the altar or such like.
In our church we look to godly men and women as our role models, but it is no good to put people on a pedestal 'cos they will fall off. There are some people who have a very prominent ministry and could be dubbed "heroes" but some of those have fallen and hurt a lot of people who looked to them as an example.
Myself, the people I look to tend to be the "wounded soldiers". These are the people who have been through battles and are still sticking it out. In celibacy in particular I get more encouragement from people I know have struggled and found the grace to go on than I do from the people who seem to glide along effortlessly.
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