God-Inspired // the barbarian way by Erwin McManus

God's ultimate end for our transformation is to unleash the untamed faith within. When His Spirit is poured into our lives, we are inspired to an extraordinary level of living. Barbarians never just get through the day. Barbarians wake to live and live life fully awake. To be filled with the Spirit of God is to be filled with dreams and visions that are too compelling to ignore. Live or die, succeed or fail, Barbarians must pursue and attempt such dreams and visions. The barbarian spirit dreams great dreams and finds the courage to live them. The barbarian call confronts us with all we love and all we fear. 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. Every dream born of God is fueled by love. EVery conversation to be had with God challenges the boundaries of our imagination. When we turn to God, His love transforms us and ignites a new passion of a new heart. We discover the power and force of love in its purest form. At the same time, when we turn our hearts toward God, all of our fears are consumed by one fear. We are called to fear only God. There is an important reason for this. What we fear is what we're subject to; our fears define our master. Where there is no fear, there is no control.

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 of the fears that know us by name and haunts us in the dark of the night become powerless when we know the fear of the Lord. And if this is not enough, we discover that perfect love casts out all fear. Not even God will hold us or control us by fear. When we fear Him, we in essence begin to live a life where we are fearless.

The freedom to love and the freedom from fear make the barbarian an entirely different species within the whole of humanity: the freedom to live out dreams greater that ourselves. Yet if we were honest with ourselves, the church would be the last place most people would go to have their dreams nurtured, developed, and unleashed.
-Erwin McManus, The barbarian way