[Selections from]
|I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. [Matthew11:11]
|Jesus wanted to make it clear that the greater the kingdom responsibility, the more a barbarian is required.
|Jesus and John [the Baptist] were considered barbarians...Their lives could not be explained apart from God.
|Somehow Christianity has become a non-mystical religion. It's about a reasonable faith
|We have become believers rather than experiencers.
|Who you are at the core is spirit. God is Spirit. To walk with God is to journey in the spiritual realm.
|Although you can learn important things about God from others, in the end to know the barbarian way you must receive your instructions from God Himself...there's a level of insanity that comes with the barbarian way.
|Yet if we learn anything about God through John, it is that God has no problem with spiritual eccentrics. The point, of course, is not that God makes us mentally or emotionally imbalanced, but that He makes us passionately and spiritually unbalanced. God steers us in the direction of his kingdom, His purpose, His passions. His desire is not to conform us, but to transform us. Not to make us compliant, but to make us creative. His intent is never to domesticate us, but to liberate us.
|You cannot meet the Creator of the universe and remain the same.
|When you join the barbarian tribe, you begin to live your life with your eyes and your heart wide open. When the Spirit of God envelops your soul, your spirit comes alive, and everything changes for you. You are no longer the same. And to those tho cannot see the invisible, to those who refuse to believe it exists, the path you choose, the life you live, may lead them to conclude that you are not simply different but insane. People who are fully alive look out of their minds to those who simply exist.
|If only fools fall in love and people who are in love act like fools, then those who are changed by God's love really do become fools for Christ.
|Sometimes it's easier to believe in love you can touch than love that is real.
|God is not a drug, and He certainly does not create experiences and emotions that makes us feel better but not become better.
|The civilized build shelters and invite god to stay with them; barbarians move with God where He chooses to go. The civilized Christian has a routine; the barbarian disciple has a mission. The civilized believer knows the letter of the law; the barbarian disciple lives the spirit of the law. The religiously civilized love tradition; the barbarian spirit loves challenges. The civilized are satisfied with ritual; barbarians live and thrive in the mystical. For the civilized disciple, religion provides stability and certainty; for the barbarian, a life in God is one of risk and mystery. And maybe even a little insanity. There's no way to escape that barbarians can appear out of their minds. No reasonable person would ever fully follow God everywhere He calls. God is simply unreasonable.
|Hearing God is not only to be normal, but also to be an essential proof of belonging to God.
|To study the Bible is important, but it is not a primal evidence that you belong to God. Anyone can study the Bible, but only those who know Him can hear His voice and are taught by Him.Although the barbarian may not be formally trained, she is always God-taught. Jesus expected that those who were His followers would hear His voice, know His voice, and follow only His voice, even as He calls us out by name and leads us on the barbarian way.
|So many of us have put our hope in teaching our children about God rather than guiding them into an experience with God.
|Our goal must not be to populate the Christian religion but to bring people into a genuine relationship with God.
|[Ezekiel 35:22-23] He will prove He is God and He is holy not through His actions but through the actions of His people. A civilized faith relates to right and wrong as a moral obligation. A barbarian faith loves good and hates evil.
|From the moment we become citizens of the kingdom of God, we become aliens and strangers in a world that chooses to live absent of God.
|You are a stranger to them, an alien among them, a nomadic wanderer who, while refusing to be rooted in this life, seems to somehow enjoy this life most.
|Every one of us who hears the barbarian call of Christ and chooses to follow will become a foreigner and perhaps even an outcast in the time and place in which we live.
|All who belong to the barbarian tribe are like Moses, who stepped toward the fire and heard the voice of God. For them the whole earth is holy ground. They do not separate between sacred and secular or real life and spiritual life. All of life is sacred; every action is spiritual. God is everywhere for them and in all things at all times.
|Barbarians never exist simply to survive. Barbarians never just get through the day. Barbarians wake to live and live life fully awake.
|When the church becomes an institution, people are nothing more than volunteers to be recruited. When the church is a movement, our stewardship becomes the unleashing of our God-given gifts, talents, and passions.
|My goal is not to cast a vision that everyone buys into, but to create a visional community where everyone who enters in begins to have wild and God-sized dreams and visions. There is a price to pay, of course, when you choose this particular path; you end up with an unruly barbarian tribe. They keep getting called by God to do things you didn't expect or really didn't want them to do.
|While modern man keeps hoping we will evolve into something that will be godlike, the barbarian way unveils that our best future is found in our primal beginnings. Evolution is not the key to humanity's freedom; transformation is.
No comments:
Post a Comment