Brennan Manning Quotes
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Leadership in the church is not entrusted to successful fund raisers, brilliant biblical scholars, administrative geniuses, or spellbinding preachers...but to those who have been laid waste by a consuming passion for Christ - passionate men and women for whom privilege and power are trivial compared to knowing and loving Jesus.
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The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.
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Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
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The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself become the prayer. You leave the prayer room able as Jesus' hands and feet on earth. This is what it means to pray continually (without ceasing), to see with the eyes of Jesus and to hear with His ears with every waking moment.
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God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us.
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Stop comparing or boast at your victories. He was referring to enormous vitality and strength of God of Jesus seeking union with us. The living acts of a Christian become somehow the acts of Christ.
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God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.
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When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.
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Jesus matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weaknesses he gives us strength and and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity." (Dallas Willard in Ruthless Trust - Brennan Manning)
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A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.
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I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.
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The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.
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Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.
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We are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace.
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Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the woulds inflicted by others.
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God is loving us - you and me - this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.
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The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can't save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.
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The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions.
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Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God.
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Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.
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Do the truth quietly without display.
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Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself.
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May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is the Father, Son and Spirit.
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Ruthless trust ultimately comes down to this: faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise.