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Continuing my What I’m Reading series, this week I’ve been getting into Longhairs Rising by Dean Briggs. I feel like God kind of dropped it into my lap when I was at the Onething conference in Kansas City in the last few days of December. I was browsing the bookstore when I heard two people behind me talking.

“Hmm, interesting, it looks like it’s about the Nazirites,” a guy said.

Immediately, my head whipped around to see him handing a thin book back to a woman, then he walked away.

“Excuse me,” I asked the woman. “Where did you pick up that book? I heard you guys talking about Nazirites and I had to find out.”

“Oh, it was on that table near the front,” she said, pointing. “But you know what? You take this one. I’ll grab another copy.”

I accepted the book from her and started flipping through it, getting more and more excited. It was only $9 and the only book I bought the entire conference.

If the word Nazirite is new to you, you’re probably very confused right now. The Nazirites were individuals in the Bible who had taken a vow of special consecration to the Lord. Anyone could do it, and it could be for a limited time or lifelong. Well-known Nazirites include Samson and John the Baptist. According to Numbers 6:1-21, Nazirites made three main vows:

1. Abstain from wine and all grape-derived foods
2. Abstain from cutting their hair
3. Abstain from going near a dead body, even that of a family member

This idea of the Nazirites means a lot to me because close to ten years ago, when I was in college, I first read a powerful booklet by Lou Engle called Nazirite DNA. (I did a What I’m Reading post on Nazirite DNA a year ago.) That little 38-page book stirred up a desire in me to be wholly set apart for God, even to the point of giving up “lesser pleasures” that might distract me from pursuing Him wholeheartedly.

Longhairs Rising reads like a sequel to Nazirite DNA, diving deep into more of the heart motivation behind making such a radical vow. Dean’s premise is that it’s all about LOVE. As simple and obvious as that claim might seem, I was surprised by how powerfully it caught my heart.

“Love ultimately originates with God, from God… love overcomes all, even the fear of death itself. This kind of love, not legalism, fuels the Nazirite vow, which is precisely what makes a young Nazirite so dangerous on the earth.”

Longhairs Rising by Dean Briggs, page 7, emphasis added

It’s so easy to see such radical vows as excessive, even legalistic. Why would God care if I cut my hair or not? But if it’s a lavish response to the lavish love of God– that changes the equation. Whether or not a modern Nazirite chooses to grow their hair, the heart is the same: desire to be completely set apart in culturally-conspicuous ways, to be wholly given over to the love and purposes of God.

Ultimately, a Nazirite is “someone willing to die for love.” The more we pursue God, the more we become transformed into His likeness, until the Lamb who was slain has an army of lion-hearted lambs bearing witness to His love in radical, costly ways, up to and including their own death.

That’s what the Nazirite vow is about. It’s right next door to what others have called the “fasted lifestyle”, living a radically Sermon on the Mount life and choosing to die to self so that Christ would be formed in us.

This short book, only slightly longer than Nazirite DNA at 57 pages, is written with teens in mind, but was a huge encouragement to me at 28 to say YES again to the vision that caught my heart when I was 18ish. The loud, bold call to “become love” resonated in me (partly because Holy Spirit, partly because Dean is a really poetic and captivating writer!) and stirred my desire to restart the conversation with God about what it looks like to live wholly consecrated for the sake of love.

Find Longhairs Rising on Amazon