Not my will, but Yours

A friend gave me this book last Christmas but I never got a chance to read it during the school year. It's called The Barbarian Way by Erwin Raphael McManus. It distinguishes between a civilized faith that is stuck in the way of religion, tradition, and ritual from a barbaric faith that is not afraid to step out of society and the norm to live passionately for Christ. It's not that novel of an idea, but it's one that I believe many Christians need to hear. Many of us tend to get caught up in the rules, regulations, and church dogmatics but somewhere along the way we forget to love and live radically. One of the main lines from the book is "Barbarians love to live and live to love." That is such a great motto to live by. I am almost done with the book, but there were a number of short passages that really caught my attention. Here is one of them:

"Just do whatever Jesus calls you to do the moment it is clear to you. Do not procrastinate; do not hesitate; do not deviate from whatever course of action He calls you to. But I want to warn you, the closer you walk with Christ, the greater the faith required. The more you trust Him, the more you'll risk on His behalf. The more you love Him, the more you will joyfully embrace a sacrificial life."

I truly believe this. The closer you walk with the Lord, the more faith and trust is required. I believe spiritual warfare is stronger and the devil has his eye on you that much closer. He desires to find the cracks in us where he can penetrate and feed off our weaknesses. But at the same time, a closer walk with Jesus produces a greater desire to love. I have observed both sides of this equation in my life - the stronger attack by the devil and the even stronger longing to love God and love others.

The passage continues to say...

"Barbarians hear a call different from that of civilized Christians. We understand clearly that we follow the God who chose the way of the Cross. 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 relief 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 you rheqad, you will still clearly hear the voice of Christ and His barbarian call if you listen carefully enough."

This passage stood out to me because over the last few months, I feel like the Lord has been showing me that He may require things of me that the world might identify as ridiculous or outrageous. I am learning day by day how to listen more carefully to His call and how to be more obedient to what He requires of me. The world might scream at us - "You don't owe anything to anyone!" But the truth is, I owe God everything! He created me with the one purpose of living and loving and using whatever measures to reach those two goals. I keep asking myself, "Why, why, why?" But really, that is the wrong question to ask. I need to trust that God knows why and He has my life in His hands. All I can do is rely on Him to the best of my ability as He leads me out of this darkness into the light.