QUOTING: "The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within"

Quotes from "THE BARBARIAN WAY" by Erwin Raphael McManus:

p.70 - "The more your identity is rooted in GOD'S value for you, the less you are controlled and limited by what others think of you."

p.44 - "...to walk in the character of Christ is always the right choice, regardless of outcome or consequence."

p.16 - "...Jesus did not suffer and diet so that we could build for ourselves havens, but so that we might expand the kingdom of His love."

p.47 - "True religion always moves us to serve others and to give our lives to see those oppressed find freedom."

p.48 - "I wonder how many of us have lost our barbarian way and have become embittered with God, confused in our faith because God doesn't come through the way we think He should."

p.59 - "John [the Baptist] didn't fit into the organized religion of his time because God didn't fit either."

p.48 - "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."

p.53 - "A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path. If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished."

p.60-61, 63 - "...He spoke only what He heard the Father saying and did only what He saw the Father doing. He called His disciples to make this their pattern for living... we have to learn to see the invisible, and hear the inaudible... to know the barbarian way, you must receive your instructions from God Himself."

p.64 - "Discipleship is translated into standardizing everyone into the same pattern. We have equated the promise that we would be conformed into the image of Christ with a belief that all of us will be the same. Discipleship has become the mechanism for uniformity rather than uniqueness.
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. [Romans 12:2] Not to make us compliant, but to make us creative. His intent is never to domesticate us, but to liberate us."

p.66 - "I think there's a problem when people talk about meeting God or knowing God, and yet remain unchanged."

p.66 - "You are not intended to be a spiritual zoo where people can look at God in you from a safe distance. You are a jungle where the Spirit roams wild and free in your life! You are the recipient of the God who cannot be tamed and of a faith that must not be tamed. You are no longer a prisoner of time and space, but a citizen of the Kingdom of God ~ a resident of the barbarian tribe. God is not a sedative that keeps you calm and under control by dulling your senses. He does quite the opposite. He awakens your spirit to be truly alive...you are most fully alive when you're on an adventure with God!"

p.69 - "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 who 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."

p.82 - "...a Spirit tribe... this tribe would bear evidence of His Spirit. They would be God-taught, God-moved, and God-inspired.
Our spiritual legacy is that we belong to the barbarian tribe."

p.101 - "We are called to fear ONLY God."

p.101 - "What we fear is what we're subject to; our fears define our master."

p.101 - "When we fear God and God only, we are no longer bound by all of the other fears that would hold us captive. The fear of death, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of insignificance ~ all...become powerless when we know the fear of the Lord... Perfect love casts out all fear."

p.128 - "It is true that the enemy will essentially leave you alone if you are domesticated. He will not waste his energy destroying a civilized religion. If anything, he uses his energy to promote such activity. Religion can be one of the surest places to keep us from God. When our faith becomes refined, it is no longer dangerous to the dark kingdom."

p.128 - "Barbarians, on the other hand, are not to be trusted. They respect no borders that are established by powers or principalities. They have but one King, our LORD, and one mission. They are insolent enough to crash the gates of hell."

p.133 - "I am saying that we need to find the courage & freedom to be ourselves. We need to let ourselves become the unique individuals that God created us to be. We need to stop trying to be what everyone else wants us to be, and stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. Barbarians live as if they are naked before God, and naked before men. They have nothing to hide; they don't waste their time or energy pretending to be something they're not."

p.122 - "If our children are going to walk away from Christ, we need to raise them in such a way that they understand that to walk away from Jesus is to walk away from a life of faith, risk, and adventure, and to choose a life that is boring, mundane and ordinary.
For Aaron, the jump was fraught with danger. From my vantage point I could see that, though the jump was terrifying, he would find himself triumphant. It was important that he jumped, and perhaps even more important that he knew me as the kind of father who would always call him to greater endeavors rather than send him back to the safe place."

"You cannot meet the Creator of the universe
and remain the same."
(p.65)