Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Riding the ferry to the island of Ometepe, where we’re working with an orphanage in an amazing place this month!

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
– I Corinthians 13:1
Who am I? A pilot, a mountaineer, a network engineer? A bricklayer, dishwasher, preacher, evangelist? I don’t even know anymore.  This is our last month on the World Race, and we’re working on a beautiful volcanic island in Nicaragua.  But things are changing.  Questions are being answered, and I’m once again learning what really matters in life, in ministry.  I’m learning how we are to share Jesus.

The past few days, I’ve felt broken, inept at anything right now. I feel imperfect, which to me still at times translates to being worthless if I’m not careful, at my first time ever laying bricks building a new school here on our island in Nicaragua. Yet it doesn’t matter whether I’m right or wrong, perfect or imperfect. God wants me to be humble, to be broken. And through it all, God’s showing me that He delights in me; it doesn’t matter what I think, it doesn’t matter what others think. I don’t have to define my identity; my creator has created me to be exactly who I am, with a glory unique from anyone else.

And once again, I’m having one of those weeks where I want to crawl up and hide inside my sleeping bag because of the pain inside of me. The pain of love. The thought of engaging and loving new people seems to be the last thing I could possibly do. The thought of working through conflict with my team and learning to be broken and to love seems to be the last thing I want to do. And yet it’s who I am – loving is the most important thing I am created to do, love is the very thread of who I am created to be. Everything else is a distraction that soon leaves me feeling dead.

And yet I think this is a struggle we all have – we all run away from true love. We close our hearts because we feel inept, empty, or ashamed. To receive love requires brokenness and often exposes our pride. And to give love requires a strength we don’t have. We risk so much to love. Rejection, pain, feeling knifed on the inside, feeling dead, feeling inadequate – all reasons to steer far away from exposing our hearts. It’s easier to drown ourselves in our work, ministry, sleep, alcohol, drugs, pornography, masturbation, eating disorders, television, or video games, isn’t it?

Yet love will be the one thing that drives us to have the faith, to have the courage to follow Jesus wherever He leads us. Love will be the one thing that drives us past all fears; love will give us the tenacity to pass through impossible roadblocks.

 
Why am I in pain? I don’t understand it all, and I’m not ready to explain what I do know yet. But it’s really easy to try to run away from that pain, try to find a way to deaden it. But perhaps I’m feeling pain because God wants to give me more of His heart even though I feel like there’s no way I can handle it. Pain is often the road soon leading somewhere amazing.
 
We were all created to love deeply; we’re desperate because that need isn’t being met.  Because we long to be loved — to be loved by and with the love of our creator!  We’re desperate for His touch, we’re desperate to share it!  We’re desperate to let go and lead lives of radical faith, radical obedience, radical love.  But to do so requires a faith, a trust that seems too scary, maybe impossible until we try it.  But I think life’s too short for living half-hearted anymore, life’s too short to be afraid of being alone with Jesus, too short to seek anything, anyone else first, too short not to be surrounded by His perfect love.  We were designed for intimacy with a creator who would give Himself to us…who has given Himself to us.