By Shawn Smith
Former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan knows about going to battle, having served both Iraq and Afghan Wars, but he and outspoken Christian athlete Tim Tebow focused on a different warfare — spiritual — on Ryan’s podcast.
Ryan shared that what led him to Christ was his encounter with spiritual warfare. As a public figure who addresses topics such as children and transgenderism, he struggled with doubts if he was on the right side of the issue, which caused an “internal battle.”
“I felt like I was the only one. I wasn’t, but I felt like I was the only one that was, like, really taking this all in,” he told Tebow.
“It got to the point where I was like, ‘Shawn, Why do you even care?…Maybe you’re the one that’s wrong here’” he admitted.
It was on a trip to Sedona that he said God used two people who impacted his faith.
He met a Vietnam vet who immediately started talking to him about transgenderism and kids, telling him, “‘That’s not your fight, man’” Ryan recalled. “And then he started talking about China, because I’m really spun up on a lot of the stuff that’s going on in there…[H]e freaked me out. I was like, how are you in my head right now? How do you know what my thoughts are?”
Soon after that encounter, Ryan got a call from the daughter of a close friend who had passed away before his trip, who shared that her dad wanted to let him know how special of a friend he was.
“That was like the icing on the cake for me,” Ryan said.
While he was a spiritual person before, he knew it was God revealing Himself. The podcaster brought the experience back to spiritual warfare.
“I feel like it’s this never-ending battle within our hearts and within the world. And then there’s just always going back and forth,” until good or evil eventually wins,” Shawn Ryan said.
Tebow countered his statement by saying that as Christians, we believe that we can have hope knowing that the battle isn’t forever and the victor has already been declared.
“Because of the hope that we have in Jesus, it’s not a never-ending battle;” the Heisman trophy winner said. “It is a battle that will end, and it’s a battle we already know who won because of the cross.”
“God’s still working,” he went on to say. “He’s using screw ups to impact the world, but then also expectation and one of my favorite things to think about of expectation is heaven. “
At the same time, Tebow encouraged people to remember that Satan comes to “kill, steal and destroy,” as it says in the Bible, and called on believers to be vigilant, as he shared from his own experiences when he feels an attack of the Enemy.
Related: Tim Tebow Fights Trafficking in Thailand with New Protection Center
“I really believe that’s a really big part of fighting it, is getting in God’s word, putting on the armor of God, knowing what His Word says and through that, the renewing of our mind,” he said.
Speaking of being in God’s Word, Shawn Ryan dedicated his new studio to the Lord by writing various scriptures on the foundation of his new studio.
One of those scriptures was Ephesians 6:12: “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”
Meanwhile Tebow surely has seen his share of spiritual warfare as his organization Tim Tebow Foundation as part of their mission is rescuing children from sex trafficking.
His foundation recently celebrated in a post that, in partnership with the National Child Protection Task Force, they were able to locate 71 missing children in an operation in New York.
Let’s lift both Tebow and Shawn Ryan in prayer as they use their platforms for God’s glory.
Read Next: Mel Gibson Calls for an End to Child Sex Trafficking: ‘The Future is Our Children’
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