This trip has been the adventure of a lifetime. I have done things I never thought I would be doing in a million years. From traveling to three different continents in less than a year, to playing with elephants, to sharing the gospel with so many different religions and nationalities, to living out of a backpack with the bare necessities, this trip has been a trip I will never forget. I will never forget the friends I made. I will never forget the memories I created. I will never forget the time in the Phillipines where my team and I started kayaking into the headwinds of a typhoon. I will never forget in Thailand meeting my friends Wu and Wong, and how meeting them taught me about humbling myself. I will never forget the time that myself and my two friends, Shiloh and Jenny, decided to go hiking in the mountains in Malaysia and ended up getting lost with thorn trees all around us, and every step downhill risked us slipping and sliding through the mud straight down. I will never forget the time that me and my good bud Theo were walking in Malaysia at 8pm at night down a dark road with three random guys we barely knew, and for the first time ever sharing my faith with someone who wasn’t a believer. I’ll never forget in Lesotho meeting a man who couldn’t walk without the use of a cane, and after praying for healing, watching him literally walk and bend his knees in ways that he couldn’t before. I’ll never forget in Swaziland being in the worst rainstorm of my life, but also watching the sky and realizing that God puts on the best light shows. I’ll never forget in South Africa cage diving with great white sharks, whose dorsal fins were bigger than my entire body. I’ll never forget in Nicaragua boarding down a volcano, voted by CNN as the number two crazy adventure that you need to do! I’ll never forget in Nicaragua playing a pick up game of baseball, only using two bases and half of the field to play, with only five players per team. I’ll never forget in Costa Rica being asked to be the masseuse for a health clinic for a day. I’ll never forget in Panama working on a coffee farm, and having my host every morning ask “Que pasa Shawn? What happened mi amigo?” And I still have so many more memories I didn’t even mention, and I still have so many more memories to make in these next two and a half months.
But most importantly, I will never and can not forget how big the God I serve is. Like, for real, He is so good. And His love is so real. It’s so real guys. Gosh I can’t get over his love. Without His love I am nothing. Without His love I don’t know what love is. Without His love my life has no purpose. He has radically changed who I am from the beginning of this race. The Shawn at the beginning of this race was meek, scared, doubted himself a lot, didn’t know his identity in Christ, felt unloved, felt unworthy, thought his voice wasn’t powerful. Man, looking back at these past 9 months and looking at how God has molded my heart absolutely makes my jaw drop. But then I immediately close it again, because it’s God. It always has been God, it always will be God, it’s never going to stop being God. Man, I am just so grateful for how much mercy and how much grace He has for me. I’ve been addicted to pornography for 13 years, and it has been the hardest thing I have ever dealt with, and it’s something I still struggle with to this day. I’m going to be transparent because I realized we as Christians cannot afford to hide our sin and act as if Jesus’ grace covers our hidden sin. We can’t. Romans 6 says that we have died to sin and we can’t live it any longer! So why do we think we can go to church on Sunday and ask for forgiveness but then the rest of the week keep on sinning? We cant! Man, I’m not saying this to condemn! That’s the last thing I want to do! I just want you to know how much life you’re missing out on! You’re missing out on so much! The reason I bring this up is because this is how I have acted for the past 13 years! I thought I could watch porn and hook up with girls on the weekdays, and that I could go to church on Sunday and ask God for forgiveness and I’d get into heaven! That’s not biblical! It’s demonic! It’s demonic to say that God’s grace is a license to sin! It’s not true! But I believed it was! I thought I could perform miracles, have great words of knowledge for people, lead in ministry, and that my sin was covered by grace because of my works! But it’s not! It never will be! If you’re trying to get into heaven by how good you are, you’ll never get there! Because it’s not about what we do! It’s about Jesus! And what He did for us! Yes, God will take you as you are. Yes, He loves you for who you are. But the gospel calls for change! We can’t stay the same! You can’t just say you’re a Christian and not actually live it out! That’s like saying that you’re a football player, but in reality you never play football. We cannot afford to water down the Christian faith. Christian literally means little Christ, which means we should look like Jesus! What did Jesus look like? Look at the Bible. I’m not calling you to be perfect, because in reality, if we try to achieve the level of perfect, we will always be striving and never abiding in Jesus. Jesus makes us perfect. I’m tired of the world knowing Christians as hypocrites. As hate mongers. As liars. I want to act, be, and think like Jesus did. I want to imitate Him. And you may think that’s crazy. That that’s impossible. But all things are possible through Jesus. Love should be my number one agenda just like Jesus’ was. Jesus never condemned sinners. He dined with them. If anything, he condemned the religious leaders! There’s a part in the gospels that’s called the woes to the religious leaders! They knew everything about religion but nothing about relationship! They were using religion for their own gain. Which is exactly what we do when we use Jesus as a get out of sin free card. It’s no longer a relationship but a cop out. Jesus wants your heart. But He doesn’t want part of your heart. He wants all of it. He says he would rather have you be either hot or cold, not lukewarm. The Bible legit says that he will spit people out of his mouth who are lukewarm. All I want is for you to be on fire for Jesus. And you’ll be able to experience what true freedom is. Free from guilt, from shame, from condemnation. Free to be you.
