Meeting Our Heroes

Meeting our heroes is always a dicey proposition. I've read and heard many stories of those who met theirs, and walked away very disapointed. "He or she was my hero? Really?" Most of them do not live up to anything resembling hero status. From a distance they can look pretty good, but when we meet them we are usually sorely disappointed.

I met my spiritual hero Saturday. John Lynch, who has given the greatest message ever given (search him on YouTube and it'll pop up as the mis-titled Two Roads. It should be called The Room of Grace). Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfy03PEVUhQ

It gives language and hope to a lot of things going on in our hearts and spirits. It even seems way too good to be true, this Original Good News John calls it, True Grace, the True Gospel. And other than Steve Brown of Key Life Ministries, I'd never heard anyone else speak it as John does. So a part of me wonders, IS this too good to be true? Is this just tickling my ears with what I want to hear? And then God leads me to Galatians 3 where I'm told that it's the same faith that keeps saving me that initially saved me. And Romans 4 where the faith of Abraham is held up as our model! He hadn't done anything but believe and was declared forevermore righteous by God. No one else gets to speak a word about that! And Luke 15 where Jesus shows us the heart of a Father whose son rebels and burns up his inheritance...even while Dad knew what the outcome would be. And when he returns home, there's a party instead of a beating. I want a God like that, who loves me no matter what, who is willing to rescue me from the deepest darkness.
John lives up to it, the hero status. Others are now giving voice to the Grace Message, Tullian is perhaps leading a New Reformation, the one that says, it's done, you can rest, you have nothing to bring anyway! His genuinness and transparency and vulnerabilty and invitation to enter in are so un-doing. If Jesus is any less, I'll be sorely disappointed. And I know that John will be equally humiliated and proud of such commentary! For he knows his lack, his inability to live up to such lofty ideals, and at the same time, knows that his butterfly wings are spread wide as he sails in the open sky for Jesus. The real Jesus. The One who loves us, no matter what, and draws us into Him because of that. This is what happens when God restores our Original Glory (2 Cor. 3:18 for the curious). I want to fly like that.