Barbarians

As I've recently returned to the country of my birth, the place that seems so different now to me than it once did, I have to face myself. Sometimes what I've seen seems so far away not even real. Yet, I know more than ever that the pain and suffering and need still exist. It is still my responsibility and joy to do what I can to bring light and hope to those in darkness.

While overseas I read a book called "The Barbarian Way" that I think holds a lot of truth. I'd like to share some quotes that really struck me from this book.

"The safest place to be is in the center of the will of God...I've always had a great disdain for this statement, but I have to admit that this particular context (the diary of Corrie Ten Boom) shows me how far we've strayed from how it must have been understood...Clearly neither of them (Corrie or her sister Betsie) concluded that this expression conveyed a belief that God would keep them from suffering hardship and even death. Betsie's statement was a declaration that to walk in the character of Christ is always the right choice, regardless of outcome or consequence. We have somehow perverted this more primal understanding to a far more civilized one. Instead of finding confidence to live as we should regardless of our circumstances, we have used it as justification to choose the path of least resistance, least difficulty, least sacrifice. Instead of concluding it is best to be wherever God wants us to be, we have decided that wherever it is best for us to be is where God wants us. Actually, God's will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so that your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life."

"How have we come to this sanitized view of the faith to which Jesus calls us? Somewhere along the way the movement of Jesus Christ became civilized as Christianity. We created a religion using the name of Jesus Christ and convinced ourselves that God's optimal desire for our lives was to insulate us in a spiritual bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing, worry about nothing. Yet Jesus' death wasn't to free us from dying, but to free us from the fear of death. Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live. Jesus Christ wants to take us to places where only dead men and women can go."

"The original call of Jesus was so simple, so clean, so clear: "Follow Me." He wants us to surrender our lives to Him and follow Him into the unknown. And if it means a life of suffering, hardship, and disappointment, it will be worth it because following Jesus Christ is more powerful and more fulfilling than living with everything in the world minus Him. Have we forgotten this?"

"We resist love to avoid pain and squelch our dreams out of fear of failure. For the Spirit of God to unleash dreams and visions within our souls, we must become free to risk and to fail."

"Anyone who chooses the barbarian way will learn quickly that love and sacrifice cannot be separated. This is perhaps why so many of us who know love fear love. We know that love is not the absence of pain. If anything, love is the promise of pain. No one has loved more deeply than God. Has anyone ever been more betrayed? God would not know suffering if He did not know love. But because He is Love, He chose to suffer on our behalf. Without love there is no glory in suffering."

"The more civilized we seem to become, the more detached from the pain of others we end up finding ourselves. Good needs to be done, but someone else will take care of it. The barbarian revolt tolerates no such abdication of responsibility. Every citizen of the kingdom of God is brought into the heat of the conflict between good and evil. Everyone who swears allegiance to Christ bears responsibility for humanity. The power and force of the barbarian way are that each once who chooses His path must find the courage to jump."

"Jesus leads us into the heart of the dark kingdom, into the soul of what is most evil. He takes us where mankind has chosen to live. He calls us to where the darkness has made those who wander there desperate for light. He leads us as warriors of light to risk our lives for the deliverance of others. Again, our own weapons are love, hope, and faith, and they are our only defense. Yet we above all know that they and only they liberate us and fulfill the deepest longings of our souls."

We all have a choice.

This doesn't mean that we all have to move across the world, not at all. But it does mean that we have to be trusting enough to get up when He calls us and follow where He leads wherever that may be. We need to live in such a way that we aren't seeking our comfort but His glory. Not our safety but His fame. Is our God absolutely loving? For sure. He was loving enough to send Jesus for all of humanity, do you not think He is loving enough to send us for those who don't yet know Him? To be allowed to be an instrument of His love...that is something worth living for and worth thanking Him for. I'm being reminded yet again of the worth of living life for Him only. Sometimes we can think that there is something more important to live for...yet I don't want to get to the end of my life and realize that I traded serving the Lord Almighty for vain idols which didn't profit.