Brennan Manning Quotes
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Whatever we have done in the past, be it good or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only NOW that we are in the presence of God.
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The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace, that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God's loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.
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You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.
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On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.
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Hope your wildest hopes, dream your maddest dreams, imagine your most fantastic fantasies. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the love of my Heavenly Father only begins.
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The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God's mercy!
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In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.
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Justification by grace through faith' is the theologian's learned phrase for what Chesterton once called 'the furious love of G-d.' He is not moody or capricious; He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only G-d man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods- the gods of human manufacturing- despise sinners, but the Father of (Yeshua) loves all, no matter what they do.
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In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
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The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust.
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We unwittingly project onto God our own attitudes and feelings toward ourselves... But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves -- unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.
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I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself... God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants.
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As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.
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When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
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Won't the awareness God loves us no matter what lead to spiritual laziness and moral laxity? Theoretically, this seems a reasonable fear, but in reality the opposite is true. . . . The more rooted we are in the love of God, the more generously we will live our faith.
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The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become - the more we realize that everything in life is a gift. The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving. Awareness of our poverty and ineptitude causes us to rejoice in the gift of being called out of darkness into wondrous light and translated into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.
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What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation, God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.
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God loves us as we are...not as we ought to be. because we are never going to be as we ought to be.
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Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
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At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.
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The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.
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Prayer is first and foremost an act of love.
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Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.
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Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father.