Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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If I have every gift from Heaven itself…
If I possess versatile abilities, talents, and strengths…
If I see angels and speak in a language unknown to human ears…
If I passionately rattle cages and the gates of hell…
If I breathe fire and have faith that can move mountains…
If I do all kinds of good works all around the globe…

…but don’t have love…

I am nothing.
 

Anything I set my hand to…

Means nothing.
 

Any past victories, growth, or strengths…
Are worth nothing.

Without love, nothing I do or am, nothing I have done or will be, matters.

 
 
I want to be patient.
I want to be kind.
I don’t want to envy anything or boast.
I don’t want to be proud.
 

I don’t want to be rude.

I don’t want to seek anything for selfish reasons.
 
I don’t want to get angry or frustrated easily.
 

I don’t want to keep a record of wrongs.
I want to live in a place of sheer excitement about the truth.
I want to protect.
I want to always hope.
Always trust.
Always, and in all circumstances, persevere. Never, ever give up.

I can prophesy, but that will cease.
I can speak in tongues, but that will be stilled.
I can have knowledge, but that will pass away.

The only thing that does not cease, pass away, and will not be stilled… is love. And upon re-entry into America, I feel the pains of expansion in my heart… a stretching. I see how much more love is required of me.
 
Love is hard for me to wrap my mind around. Everyone says a lot of different things about it… for centuries people have eloquently written about it, sung about it, and tried to come up with brand new ways of expressing what they feel it is or what they’ve learned about it… I have nothing to say, except that I desperately need it in it’s purest form, and that, a lot of times, I know I’m really not good at it.
 
I DO know that it was Love that drove Jesus to the cross… and Love that kept Him there. And to be like Him, the same will be required of me.
Love is grace and mercy, and those are the only things that can melt my rough exterior, my spitfire, tell-it-like-I-see-it mode… love, grace, and mercy are the only things powerful enough to soften what becomes hard in me.
 
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I‘ve got to be honest, it’s hard to be back in America. This has not been such an easy transition for my mind and heart, and ‘life goes on’ with tension and struggle these last 72 hours.

The injustices we saw… I go to sleep thinking about them, and I wake up thinking about them… there is not an hour that passes by that I cannot see their faces in my head, and “it’s not just their problem…” resonates in me.

Sometimes, I want to crawl out of my skin. I sometimes want to yell. I sometimes want to curl up into a ball, break down and cry. Sometimes I know that my best bet is just to be silent. I want to do more than I know I am capable of alone, and I want to run harder and fight longer than I know I’m trained for yet… and there’s so much to do, so many people who are not even on the map that need help, and I feel overwhelmed…

I’m tired… I want to sleep a lot… They called it ‘culture shock’. They told me to be prepared. But I don’t know how I could’ve been really. Everywhere I go, something is called into question, and I have few answers. Still, there is peace. Walking around Southern California in all its
affluency and wealth, I didn’t feel choked. I can breathe easily. But I see right through what I couldn’t see before… my eyes are a little more trained to see the unseen than they were 11 months ago.
 

One word rings louder and more clearly than anything else: Love.
And Love is holding hands with Grace on one side, and Mercy on the other.
I need them… Love, Grace and Mercy. I’m more aware today of how much I need them then ever before…

Answers to my questions won’t still my mind; they’ll only make more questions.
Innovating new ways to help won’t solve the world’s problems.
All hippie-ness aside, it is only love that will melt the rough exterior of the world, and of me. Though God has given me things to say, truth without grace is not love.

I don’t feel like I have much to offer except that which has been given to me because of pure, unmerited, undeserved grace. I have passion, but without love, that passion will only be a bulldozer. I have ideas, but without love, those ideas are empty. I have hope and faith, but without love, they don’t have any foundation to stand on.

 
I may not agree with some of
the ways we Americans do things, our attitudes, or our paradigms, and
it may annoy the mess out of me at times and make me want to call down
the fire of heaven… but if I can love orphans in Africa and the girls in the
bars in Thailand but somehow have less love for those of us caught in
western trappings, then there is a problem.
 
The truth is, there is a spiritual climate over America, just as
there is one in Africa, as there is in India, as there is in Asia. And
we are not fighting wars here between flesh and blood, but against the
rulers and authorities of hell.

Love covers a multitude of things…

 
And without it, anything I say will sound like a loud, annoying gong. Or worse… nails on a chalkboard.
 
“Child, in all humility, consider others better than yourselves. In
humbleness, go low. Make yourself nothing, taking on the nature of a
servant. This is what love looks like. And THIS is how you will be used
to change the world. I realize you’re complicated… I like that
about you. But don’t complicate this. Just Love. My
Kingdom is not one of talk, but of power… and My power flows from the
intensity of My Love. Let Me love you… so that you can be Love, too.“

 

“Faith will become vision,
hope will become possession,
but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever.”  -Brennan Manning
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