“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah 6:8
The talk that had the biggest impact on me, without a doubt, was Mama Maggie Gobran. Her talk was on Tough Callings. In it, she said this, “We don’t choose where we are born, but we do choose to be sinners or saints to be nobody or heroes.”
That is something that will stick with me forever. We all want our lives to matter, to count, to make a difference, but often, we simply don’t know how to make that happen. We let so many things hold us back from becoming heroes. We let our past hold us back, we let negative things that people have said to us hold us back, we let fear of what people might think hold us back, we let fear of failure hold us back, the list goes on and on.
In his talk, Erwin McManus said, “There has never been an ordinary child born, and yet most of us die extremely ordinary.” So how do we make our lives count? How do we ensure that we won’t die ordinary?
The answer is found in something Maggie said: “If you want to be a hero, do what God wants you to do.”
One theme that was common throughout the entire conference was: Stand up and Do Something. That is the key to becoming a hero. Standing up, drawing a line in the sand, and saying, “God, here I am, use me! Send Me!” and then acting on what he leads you to do.
God will lead us all to do different things. He’ll call some to ministry, some to write, some to business, some to education, some to government, some to work with the poor, some to be missionaries, you name it. But you can be sure of this, whenever we say “Here I am” to God. He will not waste our time. If he wastes our time, He’s wasting His time. God has a plan to make your life count. To make you a hero.
You may or not be “successful” in the world’s eyes, but that doesn’t matter. If you’re doing what God wants you to do, you’ll make a bigger impact than you could ever make on our own with your plan and your agenda.
So what is it going to be? Are you going to be a hero or a nobody? The choice is yours.
Do what God wants you to do and don’t let anything hold you back.
