People are fickle. They love you one minute and hate you the next, especially if you stand for something.

Mike and I have titled this phenomenon, ‘The Hero to Zero in One Second Syndrome’ and nowhere is this better illustrated than Luke chapter 4.

In verses 15 and 22, Jesus is a hometown Hero, but by verses 28 and 29 his neighbors are ready to throw him off a cliff! In a matter of minutes He is reduced to Zero because He speaks truth.

Standing up for what is true and right in a culture that is loosing its moral compass will cost us Hero status for sure. But when we understand our validation comes from God alone, we can respond to those who quickly demote us to Zero with love and grace, as Jesus did.

After all, we are not commissioned to prove everyone else wrong, but to demonstrate the Love of God spread abroad in hearts and minds, makes everything right (Romans 5).
Remember, your Hero/Zero status of today, could be reversed by tomorrow. Looking to people as your lone source of approval and security is like standing on wind blown sand.

If we base our purpose, identity and validation on what others think, we’re in big trouble.

Be a Hero in the Kingdom of God where it really counts. Zeros don’t even exist there.

Luke 4:14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free,
19  and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” 22 Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

23 Then he said, “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.’ 24 But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.

 25 “Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the heavens were closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine devastated the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them. He was sent instead to a foreigner—a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian.”

28 When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. 29 Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, 30 but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.