This afternoon I listened again to Erwin McManus, senior pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, preaching his sermon, The Barbarian Way. Wow, what a needed reminder that I should be living on the edge for Jesus. McManus also wrote a great book by the same title.

Read this quote from his book, The Barbarian Way:

Perhaps, the tragedy of our time is that such an overwhelming number of us who declare Jesus as Lord have become domesticated–or, if you will, civilized. We have lost the simplicity of our early faith. Beyond that, we have lost the passion and power of that raw, untamed, and primal faith.

Jesus did not suffer and die so that we could build for ourselves havens, but so that we might expand the kingdom of His love….Christianity has become docile, domesticated, civilized.

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.

What about you? Can you remember how passionate you were about Jesus during those early days? Do you remember how burdened you were for your family members and friends who were not followers of Christ?

May God help us to return to that simple, unhampered, all-out, barbarian approach to following Christ!