Guilt is something that I have always battled with. Coming on this trip, it was something I wanted to work through, to truly understand what it meant to be forgiven. I always knew that I was forgiven because of what Christ did on the cross but I always thought that God still remembered and counted all my past sins against me.
God broke me of my guilt in a Filipino prison filled with 35 juvenile delinquents. Shannon had roughly 5 minutes to prepare a bible study for the teenagers of the prison and I could feel that I needed to pray that God would give her the words.
She began by asking the musty room of teenagers why Jesus died on the cross. Many of them raised their hands and shouted, “So we could be forgiven.” She then asked why he rose again. The room went quiet and I realized I couldn’t truly answer that question myself.
In Romans 4:25 it states, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” I had read this verse before but would skim over the word justification, never truly understanding what it meant. Shannon explained that the meaning of the word is “as if it never happened.” Not only are we forgiven but to God these sins are forgotten, as if they never even occured.
Shannon held up a piece of white paper and wrote on it a sin from her past, she then ripped it up in front of the room—her sin was forever gone, as if it had never even been printed on that white piece of paper.
Passing out slips of paper to each of the boys, she asked them to write down sins from their past that they wanted forgotten. The room full of once loud teenage boys grew quiet and only the sound of scribbling pencils could be heard. In Tagalag, the boys wrote down everything that they wanted forgiven, you could see the longing on their faces for these sins to be erased. Shannon ensured them that even past mistakes they didn’t write down would be wiped clean. She then had them hold up their paper and tear it up into many pieces. The boys cheered as their pieces of paper fell to the ground and were forgotten among the dirty prison floor.
A sense of freedom and love came over the prison that day and what better way to solidify the forgiveness of past sin than to have a prison dance party. So that is exactly what we did—the entire group of boys joyfully danced to the Cupid Shuffle as on lookers watched from over the wall, wondering how such joy could be present in a prison yard.
Leaving, I realized that God was speaking directly to me in that prison and I finally felt free from all of my past guilt. Back at Children’s Garden, it began down pouring outside and many of the boys started running and rejoicing in the rain. Shannon and I decided to sacrifice our dry clothes and join them. As I was running down that Filipino street with 15 cheering boys, I felt God whispering,
Washed by the water
Check out this amazing video by my teammate Ashley Edwards about the boys of Children’s Garden:
