I have many spiritual heroes, and discover more all the time, but here are some different ones:

1) Pastor Charles Spurgeon, who even as a twenty year old spoke with an incredible depth and biblical insight and whose sermons and writings, full of grace and truth (and unsurpassed eloquence), always draw me to Christ. He led his church in building seventeen homes to help care for elderly women, and a large school for hundreds of children. Spurgeon and his church built homes for orphans in London, rescuing them from starvation and vice on the streets.

2) Olympic champion and missionary to China Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire), whose “rest of the story” was told me by a woman in England who was a teenager in the Japanese interment camp in China, where Liddell refused to leave the children behind, and ended up dying of a brain tumor in the camp. She spoke of how Liddell kept up the children’s morale and held the camp together by his devotion to Christ and his care for the children, who after Liddell’s death were dramatically rescued by American paratroopers.

3) Keith Green, whose songs resonated with my soul as a young Christian. I can still hear him pounding on that piano and singing “There is a Redeemer.” (“Thank you oh my Father, for giving us Your Son, And leaving Your Spirit, till the work on Earth is done.”)

4) Francis Schaeffer, intellectual and Christ-lover, who responded with a wonderful hand written letter to me after I wrote to him as a college student, telling him how God had shaped me through his books.

5) C. S. Lewis, who not only wrote books that have touched me to the core, but in a spirit of humility and kindness answered letters from those who had nothing to offer him, and gave away the great majority of his royalties to the needy.

6) John Perkins, tortured and humiliated in a Mississippi jailhouse, for the crime of being black, but who rose above the hatred to become the Voice of Calvary. I have never seen greater love coming out of a man. Except for the grace of Jesus, there is no explanation for such a life.

7) Joni Eareckson Tada, who is one modern Christian celebrity whose life resonates with Christ’s joy and depth and honesty and compassion. Through adversity God has made a diamond out of her. We’ve made an appointment to run together in a meadow on the New Earth. I’m sure she’ll have to slow down to let me catch her.

These are some of the many people whose writings and lives have shaped mine, and to whom I will repeatedly say “Thank you” in the ages to come (always thanking Christ, the Source of all joys, for them). What a pleasure to know I will live forever with my heroes. And likely many of those I will come to admire most, and ask to sit next to at dinner, are ones whose stories I don’t yet know. I can’t wait!

This article appeared on Randy Alcorn’s personal blog, March 9, 2009. Visit the blog at http://www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com to read Randy’s latest thoughts on the Christian life, discipleship, books, family, and more.