I was going to post a reprint from Our Daily Bread from Sunday that talked about how realizing you are an example will influence how we behave in a godly way.  But I read a story from one of our missionaries (who couches football players in his country) and I thought it would be a good example of being an example.  Here is what he said, “Whenever we do bear crawls, I find the person who is struggling the most and I get down with them and do the bear crawl with them and I encourage them along the way. Tonight, a person in the last group was having a really hard time. His name is ____. I got down with him for the last 40 yards. As soon as I got on the ground, I heard something that sounded like a stampede. When I looked up, I saw that all of the guys who had already finished had joined us. They came back to ____, got down on the ground with him, and started yelling out encouragement to him, pushing him forward and helping him to finish strong. It was a beautiful moment.
As I got home and I thought about it more, I had a realizations about this. Nearly all of the guys that joined us for the last stretch have been the one that was struggling, the one that I got down on the ground with and yelled out an encouragement to. To see them come and do this for another was AMAZING. Its never happened before.”