Hero - an ordinary man willing to do the mission God put in front of him

I'm currently reading Eric Metaxas' book Amazing Grace, a biography on William Wilberforce. Oh my word. This book is good.

 Below are a couple excerpts:

And thus, history: three men, each named William, each twenty-seven years old, talking at the base of an ancient oak tree on a hill in May: one prime minister, one prime-minister-to-be, and one who would stand from that moment forward at the center of something so big and beyond any single man that a tree whose life had begun several centuries earlier, and would continue for nearly two more, was the humble creature chosen to bear mute witness to the conversation. (ch 9) 

Wilberforce did not yet know that he lived on a planet that was, in Luther's famous phrase, "with devils filled" - that he was part of a rearguard action well behind enemy lines. (ch 10)

The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, on angstrom wide. Wilberforce was quite right that a flame had been kindled and would not go out until it had done its work, but he had no idea that it would be twenty tortuous years in the burning before its work was done. And if the "work" in question was not the abolition of the slave trade but the abolition of slavery itself, the flame would continue burning for another forty-five years. (ch 10)