Hero In All Of Us
Biblical Hero’s Journey and Christ’s Transformative Power
You were created for a story larger than yourself. Every one of us has been crafted with the innate desire to be part of something extraordinary, something transcendent. I remember speaking at a film school in Los Angeles where students were dissecting the elements of compelling storytelling. They were shocked when I pointed out that the narrative structure they were studying—the hero’s journey—wasn’t invented by Hollywood but was embedded in the human experience by our Creator. When Joseph Campbell identified this pattern across world mythologies, he was uncovering something God had already written into the fabric of humanity. This universal pattern—the call to adventure, crossing thresholds, facing trials, experiencing transformation, and returning with newfound wisdom—isn’t just found in Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. It’s woven throughout Scripture as the primary way God shapes His people.
Think about it—from Genesis to Revelation, God is calling ordinary people to extraordinary journeys. And that’s because transformation never happens in the comfortable places. It happens in the crucible of challenge, in the wilderness of uncertainty, in the valley of decision. God is less interested in making your life easy than in making your life meaningful. He’s less concerned with your comfort than with your character. The hero’s journey isn’t just a storytelling device; it’s the divine mechanism for human transformation.
Look at Abraham—comfortable in Ur until God’s voice shatters his ordinary existence: “Leave everything familiar and go to a land I will show you.” Can you imagine that moment? Abraham had security, community, identity—everything we cling to—and God asked him to release it all for a promise without a map. Abraham stands at that threshold of decision, steps into the unknown, and encounters obstacles that would break most men. The famine that drives him to Egypt. The painful separation from Lot. The decades-long wait for the promised son. The heartbreaking compromise with Hagar. The ultimate test on Mount Moriah. Each trial was a chisel, sculpting Abraham’s faith from a hesitant flicker into a blazing torch. And through each trial, Abraham is transformed from a man of hesitant faith to the father of nations, returning to his community carrying the blessing God promised would flow through him to all families of the earth. When God looks at you, He doesn’t just see who you are; He sees who you can become through the journey He’s designed specifically for you.
Moses follows this same pattern—a prince turned fugitive, living a quiet life in Midian until confronted by a burning bush that becomes his supernatural call to adventure. Moses wasn’t looking for significance anymore; he had settled for safety. But God hadn’t settled. His threshold guardian isn’t Pharaoh but his own inadequacy: “Who am I that I should go? I am slow of speech and tongue.” Haven’t we all felt that? That moment when God’s call seems too big for our capabilities? Yet he crosses that threshold, faces seemingly impossible trials—confronting Pharaoh, parting the Red Sea, leading a complaining people, providing water from rock. Each challenge wasn’t just an obstacle to overcome but an opportunity to experience God’s power working through human limitation. Moses experiences transformation on the mountain with God, and returns with not just stone tablets but a face so radiant with divine glory it must be veiled. The man who once claimed he couldn’t speak became the voice of God to a nation.
David, too—the overlooked shepherd boy anointed king, thrust into battle with Goliath, forced into wilderness years fleeing Saul. What strikes me about David’s journey is how long he had to live in the tension between promise and fulfillment. Anointed as king, yet serving a king who wanted him dead. Promised a throne, yet living in caves. This is where so many of us find ourselves—caught between the revelation of what God has called us to be and the reality of our current circumstances. But it was in those cave-dwelling years that David wrote some of his most powerful psalms. It was in the wilderness that he learned to lead the distressed, the debtors, the discontented—precisely the leadership training he needed before he could lead a nation. When he finally emerges as Israel’s greatest king, carrying the promise of an eternal throne, he’s not just wearing a crown; he’s wearing the character forged in the crucible of waiting.
I remember meeting a young woman who felt her life had been derailed by tragedy. Her plans for medical school were interrupted when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she became his primary caregiver. “I feel like my life is on hold,” she told me. But what she couldn’t see was that God was preparing her through this valley for a deeper purpose than she had imagined for herself. Like Joseph in Egypt, separated from his family and dreams through betrayal and false accusation, she was being positioned for impact. Joseph’s journey is perhaps one of the most dramatic in Scripture—from favorite son to slave to prisoner to prime minister. Each descent seemed to take him further from his God-given dreams, yet each was actually a divine stepping stone. When he finally stands before his brothers and says, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good,” he’s not just offering forgiveness; he’s articulating the mysterious alchemy of God’s redemptive work. God doesn’t waste our pain; He weaves it into our purpose.
But the hero’s journey isn’t reserved for these towering biblical figures. Ruth embarks on her journey when she refuses to abandon Naomi, crossing the threshold into a foreign land, facing the trials of poverty and vulnerability. “Where you go, I will go; your people will be my people; your God, my God.” That declaration of loyalty becomes the doorway to her destiny. Through Boaz’s redemption, she experiences transformation from widowed outsider to ancestress of King David and, ultimately, Jesus Himself. Esther steps into her heroic journey when Mordecai challenges her: “Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” She crosses the threshold of fear, faces the trial of approaching the king uninvited—“If I perish, I perish”—and returns with salvation for her people. Do you see the pattern? God positions ordinary people at extraordinary crossroads of history and invites them to participate in redemption.
Even Paul—the zealous persecutor—encounters his call on the Damascus road, crosses into blindness and uncertainty, faces trials beyond measure. Listen to his own accounting: “Five times I received forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea.” Most of us would have abandoned the journey after the first shipwreck! Yet Paul presses on, transformed from Christianity’s greatest threat to its greatest advocate, returning from each trial carrying the gospel to the Gentile world. When he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” he’s articulating the core transformation of the hero’s journey—the death of the old identity and the resurrection of a new one aligned with God’s purposes.
What makes these stories so powerful isn’t just their narrative structure but the revelation that none of these heroes journeyed alone. Christ was present in every step—the pre-incarnate Word guiding Abraham, the I AM speaking from the bush, the Spirit empowering David, the providence protecting Esther, the risen Lord directing Paul. This is the magnificent truth that should shake us to our core: Christ doesn’t just call heroes—He creates them. He takes ordinary people—flawed, fearful, and finite—and writes them into His redemptive story. The hero’s journey in Scripture isn’t about self-actualization; it’s about divine transformation. It’s not about finding yourself; it’s about losing yourself and finding Him.
Consider Peter—impulsive, inconsistent Peter who denied Christ three times. Yet Jesus saw in him “the rock” upon which He would build His church. The journey from fisherman to apostle, from denier to martyr, wasn’t smooth or straightforward. It was messy, marked by failures and restarts. After the resurrection, Jesus doesn’t lecture Peter about his failure; He simply asks, “Do you love me?” and then reinstates him with the command, “Feed my sheep.” That’s the beauty of journeying with Christ—He’s not waiting for you to become perfect before He can use you. He’s using the journey itself to perfect you. As the Japanese art of Kintsugi takes broken pottery and repairs it with gold—highlighting rather than hiding the breaks—Christ takes our brokenness and makes it the very place where His light shines through most brilliantly.
I’ve met too many Christians who are waiting to begin their hero’s journey until they feel qualified, capable, or worthy. They’re waiting for some mystical moment when doubt disappears and courage materializes. But that’s not how God works. Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress—hiding from his enemies—when God called him a “mighty warrior.” God doesn’t call you based on your current condition but on His transformative vision. Noah was called to build an ark before the first raindrop fell. Joshua was called to cross a flooded Jordan before the waters parted. Mary was called to bear the Messiah before her mind could comprehend how. Faith isn’t the absence of questions; it’s the presence of action despite them.
Your life right now is a hero’s journey in progress. The call has been issued. The threshold stands before you. Trials await that will forge your character. And Christ is not a distant observer but the active guide who walks beside you, fights for you, and lives within you. He doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. When Moses said, “Who am I?” God essentially responded, “It doesn’t matter who you are; what matters is who I AM.” Your inadequacy is the perfect canvas for His adequacy. Your weakness is the stage for His strength. Your ordinariness is the setting for His extraordinariness.
I’m reminded of Jehoshaphat facing overwhelming odds against three enemy armies. His prayer reveals the heart of the hero’s journey: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” That’s it! That’s the secret! The greatest heroes in God’s kingdom aren’t those who accomplished the most but those who surrendered the most. They aren’t the strongest but the most dependent. They aren’t the most talented but the most available. When you feel least equipped for the journey before you, you’re in the perfect position for God’s power to be displayed.
So what threshold is Christ asking you to cross today? What comfort zone is He calling you to leave? What conversation have you been avoiding? What gift have you been hiding? What dream have you been dismissing? What forgiveness have you been withholding? Whatever it is, step out—not because you are sufficient, but because He is. Your hero’s journey awaits. And the story God wants to tell through your life is more beautiful, more powerful, and more redemptive than anything you could write for yourself.
In the end, we’ll discover that all our individual journeys are threads in the grand tapestry of God’s ultimate hero story—the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Christ Himself embodied the ultimate hero’s journey: leaving heaven’s glory, crossing the threshold into human flesh, facing the ultimate trial at Calvary, experiencing the transformation of resurrection, and returning to heaven carrying humanity’s redemption with Him. And the beauty of this cosmic story is that He invites us not just to witness it but to participate in it. As we journey with Him, we become like Him. As we face our trials with Him, we share in His victory. As we die to self with Him, we experience His resurrection power. This is the magnificent invitation before us: to live not just any story, but the greatest story ever told.
Pastor Mitchell Royel