"Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine" (1Samuel 17:40 TNIV).
“…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.” ~ Erwin McManus
“If Jesus would not avoid the ‘place of the skull,’ then we should not be surprised where He might lead us. If even He found Himself sweating blood at Gethsemane, then we should be certain we will stand at crisis moments where all we can do after asking for relieve is declare, ‘Not my will, but Yours.’ In those moments you may find very few who stand by you to provide you comfort and strength, and strangely enough, you may find far too many trying to reason with you that God would never require so much of anyone. Yet even with all the noise pounding inside your head, you will still clearly hear the voice of Christ and His barbarian call if you listen carefully enough." ~Erwin McManus
“We are called to join the barbarian tribe and to embrace our call as mystical warriors. 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. If this isn’t enough to drive you crazy, I don’t know what is. Which I guess leads me to the point: there’s a level of insanity that comes with the barbarian way.” ~Erwin McManus
“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 envelopes 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.” ~ Erwin McManus
“He (Jesus) has no ambition to make you normal. The healthier you become, the freer you are to simply be yourself. 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.” ~Erwin McManus
“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 barbarian’s can appear out of their minds. No reasonable person would fully follow God everywhere He calls. God is simply unreasonable.” ~ Erwin McManus
“Anyone who ever risks listening to God and following His voice knows that to everyone else who is deaf to His voice, your actions will seem as if you’ve gone crazy.” ~Erwin McManus
“But maybe the most insulting thing that Jesus said or did was to become the friend of sinners. He focused His ministry on women and men who were despised by those in spiritual authority. The path God chose for Himself was far too common for their sensibility. They couldn’t imagine that God would choose that kind of life for Himself, God would be above such things.” ~Erwin McManus
Luke 5: 27-32 for example:
‘After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."’
“…we need to find the courage and 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. Civilized people measure one another by their robes and signet rings. The barbarians measure only the heart and actions. Barbarians live as if they are naked before God and naked before men. They have nothing to hide; they do not waste their energy pretending to be someone they’re not.” ~Erwin McManus
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