Hercules: How To Grow Into a Hero’s Heart

Transcript

Hercules is an amazing film that shows us what it truly means to be a hero.

As the son of a god, it seemed as though Hercules was born to be someone great. But when Hades took this away by making him mortal, Hercules struggled through life.

Even his incredible physical strength made him feel like an outcast. Growing up, everyone saw him as someone who only would eventually cause trouble and this brought him a lot of loneliness and confusion. Hercules’s greatest desire was to find where he belonged and he knew that becoming a hero was part of that destiny.

Each of us is meant to be a hero in our own way. To God being a hero means to learn to love others deeply and unconditionally. When we embrace the things that make us different, God can use that to give us a greater purpose just like Hercules. I’m Kenzo and this is Deep Spirituality.

Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Hebrews 12:11 NRSV

When we’re being trained by God it’s not always going to feel good. But when we’re trying to do great things we need to be ready for greater obstacles ahead of us. Being a hero doesn’t come naturally to anyone and everyone needs to be trained by God and people or the GOAT Danny Devito.

When Hercules was a kid he never felt like he belonged. He had a great gift of strength, but was undisciplined and prone to accidents which created problems for the people around him. He was eager to do good, but without the proper training and discipline a hero can never reach his full potential. He needed someone to not only train him but to believe in him. This is how God is with us.

Phil is talking about what it takes to be a hero.
God trains us through opportunities in our lives. It’s not something that is just a physical and emotional endeavor, but a spiritual one. Understanding who you are and who God wants you to be.

Matthew 23:5-7 ERV“The only reason they do what they do is for other people to see them…[6] These men love to have the places of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues. [7] They love for people to show respect…

Something that’s very important for a hero is his or her motives. We can become so focused on getting credit or acting like a hero we lose the heart of it all. The pharisees in the bible didn’t just wake up one day and decide to pretend and look like heroes or good people. They probably initially genuinely wanted to help people, but their undealt with motives of wanting attention and credit made them self-focused. Before we do anything great we need to look at our motives.

After Hercules was trained, he thought people would see his physical strength, skill, and understanding and recognize him as a hero. But no one did. Like Hercules, we have to learn that having a hero’s heart isn’t just all about grabbing glory for yourself, but to think of others.

When people start to get a lot of attention, the trap we can often fall into is we become more motivated by gaining more respect rather than actually loving the people around us. Hercules was someone who always wanted to find where he belonged. But he got so fixated on trying to fit into the world around him that he lost sight of what it meant to be a true hero. Being a true hero isn’t about being liked by everyone, but doing what it takes to love anyone.

“So this is my command: Love each other deeply, as much as I have loved you. [13] For the greatest love of all is a love that sacrifices all. And this great love is demonstrated when a person sacrifices his life for his friends. [14] “You show that you are my intimate friends when you obey all that I command you.

John 15:12-14 TPT

Doing what it takes to love anyone isn’t easy, because it often involves opening yourself up to hurt. Hercules became closer to Meg over the course of the movie, and trusted her. When it was revealed she was working with Hades to defeat him, he felt hurt and betrayed. But when she was in trouble, he didn’t let this hurt stop him from sacrificing his life for hers. This was when he truly became a hero.

Being a hero is not about being the strongest, bravest, or most disciplined person. Being a hero is letting God give us the strength to accept that anyone is capable of hurting us, but to move past that and choose to love them anyway just like He does. Zeus said it best:

“For a true hero is not measured by the size of his strength, but the strength of his heart.“

– Zeus from Hercules movie.

The amazing thing about having a hero’s heart is the purpose that comes with it. Many lives end up never really being lived to their fullest when we hold ourselves back with the fear of pain. Sure we can be like everyone else, just fit in, and never get hurt, but is that life really worth living?

For if you choose self-sacrifice and lose your lives for my glory, you will continually discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will forfeit what you try to keep. [26] For even if you were to gain all the wealth and power of this world with everything it could offer you—at the cost of your own life—what good would that be? And what could be more valuable to you than your own soul?

Matthew 16:25-26 TPT

Hercules understood that he belonged to a purpose-filled life, not weighed down by bitterness or separation, but deeply connected to others, helping each other keep growing no matter what. And that’s exactly what a hero does, they keep growing.