You'll remember they were not so long ago, but they wrote a song called The Hero and the song The Hero was based on this man's journey. What they did was they went and found him again and he's a father of six children, he's a farmer working somewhere in the backblocks of Tanzania and he became an honorary ambassador to China because he represented courage. He represented what it's like to be a valiant man and so they made a video of him as part of that song and they played it at the Olympic Games. What an amazing person, came from nowhere, no chance of winning but he refused to quit. What an amazing thing when it looks like you can't win and you can't succeed and you can't do what you thought you'd do, but you just don't quit. That's courage. That's a valiant man and I believe God is looking for valiant men.
I believe our nation's looking for valiant men. God is looking for valiant men. Throughout the Bible God looked for valiant men and the interesting thing is valiant men aren't always obvious. We have to actually pull out of a man or pull out of any person what God has put inside them and it's quite interesting to see how God treats men. Often in our culture men get criticised, run down, the faults are pointed out, so men live in a culture which is quite hostile to being valiant. Men struggle with all kinds of inadequacies and all kinds of different things, but when God deals with a man God treats men with a great deal of respect and I want to show you just a few people in the Bible and how God treated them. To be valiant is to be bold, to be courageous, to hold fast to the commitments in the face of adversity, to face your fear and wrestle with it and still deal with it anyway.
A valiant man is a person who's got moral courage, knows what's the right thing to do and does it, knows what needs to be said and says it. That's a valiant man. God is looking for valiant men, but what God calls a valiant man we wouldn't call a valiant man. We would look at criticise and find fault, but God always speaks to what's in our heart, what's in our potential. He always sees what you could be. Let me just give you a few examples. Here's a man in the Bible and this man was illegitimate. He was the son of a prostitute, born out of wedlock, born in an adulterous affair, but God raised him up and called him a mighty man of faith, a mighty man of valour. His name was Jephtha and he changed a nation. There's another man and this man was extremely fearful. In fact he was so fearful he was hiding. It was very difficult times and he was hiding himself and God spoke to him. God's words were to him, to this fearful man in hiding, you mighty man of valour.
God always sees what you could be. He sees what he's designed you to be. He's designed every one of us to be mighty men of valour and so that man's name was Gideon and he changed his nation. There's a man that you would know of by the name of Samson and Samson's generally associated with sexual sin and sexual failure, but in the New Testament God talks about him as a mighty hero of faith, a valiant man. God dismisses the failure, not that it wasn't important, but God's grace overcomes failures and turns ordinary people who've failed into great people. So Samson is acknowledged by the Holy Ghost in the Book of Hebrews as being a valiant and a mighty man.
There's another man in the Bible who had a real anger problem, followed him through all his life, actually never got the victory over it. He'd just have outbursts of anger and in fact one of his outbursts he actually intentionally killed and man and yet God calls that man a mighty man of valour and his name was Moses. He's known in the Bible in Hebrews 11 as a great man of valour, so why is it that God can see, God can speak and call a person a great man of valour when when we look at them we see someone who's fearful, someone who's failed, someone who's got all kinds of issues? Because God sees what we can be and when we respond to God, then we become the very thing He wants us to be.