In the midst of homeschool preparation and dealing with chaotic schedules, reading “Reborn to be Wild” to catch up on a belated book review post was a convicting reminder of the common theme of how busy our lives are and how busy we tend not to be for Him.
From page 96 of “Reborn to be Wild”,
“Studying God’s written Word consumed us. What we failed to notice, as the devil smiled, was that we were ignoring the living Word, the One who washed us from our sin in His own blood, the One who made Moses, Isaiah, and Paul and inspired the to write down the words we were pouring over.
His name is Jesus. Tragically, the more we focuse our laser focus on His Word, the less we saw of Him.”
….not by good works….not by good works. As busy as we can be or filling up our schedule or pouring….how beneficial is it all if we don’t live and feel Him too?
“Wouldn’t you have to agree that since you’ve become so preoccuppied with following the Law, you have been thinking less and less of Jesus”? (page 104 of “Reborn to Be Wild”).
What is telling about the book is that it’s not about focusing on the “talking points’ of Christianity but on the person of Christianity, our Heavenly Father and the price, Jesus paid at the Cross. It asks if somehow, we have fallen from all that and instead picked over Christianity in a way that suits more of our lifestyle or personal beliefs over what He is sharing and calling us to follow.
Here’s an excerpt from “Reborn to be Wild”:
Excerpt taken from Reborn to be Wild by Ed Underwood © David C Cook, 2010.
The Outsiders
It intrigues me that Springsteen used the same word the apostle Paul used to describe those who now find room for their ideas in a revolution—outsiders.
Paul used the Greek term three times to remind Christians of their responsibility to live in a way that “outsiders” (NIV, NASB) or “those outside” (NKJV) would want to know more about Jesus (1 Cor. 5:12; Col. 4:5; 1 Thess. 4:12). Outsider is his technical theological description of people who live outside of God’s mercy and grace. Outsiders were those living in the domain of darkness, outside the borders of the kingdom of the Son of His love (Col. 1:13).
Even if I didn’t know what the Bible called it, I couldn’t think of a better title for the place we lived before God’s love brought us inside—darkness. The revolution reached into the darkness outside, where we lived:
• Tough, hip neighborhoods where God was for dorky church kids and the only thing we liked about Jesus was that he wore long hair and sandals.
• Busy, preoccupied homes that didn’t have time for the silly charades of religious folk.
• A culture in which grace was when a well-starched family took the booth next to yours in a restaurant, bowed their heads and folded their hands in a way that made everyone around them feel weird.
• Neighborhoods where loyal, lifelong friendships seemed to be unraveling from the pressures of growing up, where mercy was what you called for just before blacking out when the big neighbor kid caught you in his famous “sleeper hold.”
Oh, it was darkness all right. But it didn’t seem dark to us then, before we saw the light. It was just life, our reality, our dark reality. From the core of our blackened souls to the gloomy, immoral rhythms of our everyday lives, to the sinister generational evil we were trying to ignore, we were incapable of knowing anything but darkness.
I think our hopelessness had a lot to do with our revolution that became a revival. From the darkness of our lives, we couldn’t see the light, had never seen it before. We didn’t entertain ideas about how much the light might need us or how it could improve our lives in ways that would enhance our career or get us to heaven when we were through doing what we wanted to do down here. We were blinded by the light.
Before we met Jesus, we were outsiders and we knew it. After we took Him at His word, we were insiders, and we knew that, too. And we knew how we got on the inside. Jesus rescued us from darkness. We couldn’t quote it from memory because we probably didn’t know where to find it in our crisp new American Standard New Testaments, but when we read His words, we knew Peter was talking about us when he said:
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10)
If you’re going to have a revolution, you need to have new ideas. If you’re going to find new ideas, they will never come from those who are comfortably inside. They come from the outside, from outsiders. Even though we were now inside the borders of the kingdom of the Son of God’s love, the old insiders never did embrace us. To them we would always be outsiders.
It didn’t bother us much. Actually, it didn’t bother us at all. To be totally honest, we dug it. Our hearts were on fire with the love of Christ and we didn’t really trust them with the fire anyway. All they wanted to do was douse it, control it, or worse, take credit for it.
And so we did what outsiders often do, we started a revolution fueled by a passion insiders can’t know… unless they reach out to us. And like revolutions everywhere, our fresh expressions of truth didn’t move along the protected stain-glassed corridors of the institutional church. Our revival happened in the very places that had been deserted by most religious insiders as they watched in horror, threw up their hands, and screamed bloody murder from inside their cloistered fortresses of irrelevance. It happened on the street.
The scary thing that “Reborn to be Wild” shares is…are we either too afraid to reach out to society or are we too much a part of society that either way, rather than sharing His word and leading others to Christ, we are tempering our call to be His voice and light to the world.
“Reborn to be Wild” is a call to come out of our comfort zones, not seek within our community or like minded but as Ed Underwood shares,” If you’re going to have a revolution, you need to have new ideas. If you’re going to find new ideas, they will never come from those who are comfortably inside. They come from the outside, from outsiders. Even though we were now inside the borders of the kingdom of the Son of God’s love, the old insiders never did embrace us. To them we would always be outsiders.”
At 314 pages, “Reborn to be Wild” was a reminder to me, even in the midst of a busy schedule and the onset of the school year, that it isn’t about going with the flow of others that is what makes a different, but like that of Jesus Christ, who went against the norms of society and what was comfortable with others, to be able to reach out to others.
Sometimes it may make other people uncomfortable, and “Reborn to be Wild” reminds us that when we stand up for our Father and what we know He calls for, we may not make friends, but we have hope and promise in and through Jesus Christ and that is what matters.
Not what the neighbors next door thinks. Or *gasp* the church, or today’s world and culture, but Him, Jesus Christ.
He is the one who matters.
Not mere men.
Are you a tame evangelical?
Maybe it’s time for a wild revival.
In today’s world where anything goes and people look the other way or escape or find ways to avoid, our Father needs us to use for His greater purpose, to wake, to encourage and to lead people to Him.
Being a Christian isn’t a tame walk. Being a Christian, means being a follower of Christ and experiencing a life filled with growth and challenges.
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