If you brought your Bibles today, I want you to turn to two passages, Hebrew's chapter 11 and Nehemiah, chapter 1, a new testament and Old Testament passage.

Ezra Nehemiah, Esther Job, if you need some direction there.

Hebrews 11 in Nehemiah 1.

We're in a series called heroes.

And we've been looking each week,

we've been presenting individuals

whose heroic acts are a part of the heritage of our faith.

The first week,

Pastor Dave Smith talked about our hero, John the Baptist.

He made himself no issue in order that Jesus Christ could become the issue in people's lives.

And then last week, Pastor Preston talked about Noah,

a man who in the midst of a crazy situation he made a decision of obedience that led to deliverance

for himself and his family and for mankind.

And today I want to talk to you about my hero,

Nehemiah.

Now we've defined a hero in this way.

A hero is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things.

Everyone in this room has the potential of being heroic in our behavior.

I think that a hero, if I were to expand on that, I would say a hero is someone

whose action has such impact that it changes the course of a life or a group. Or it's someone who applies their abilities and

resources without consideration of personal risk to make a dramatic

difference.

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