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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.
Brennan Manning -
The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.
Brennan Manning
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Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
Brennan Manning -
Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
Brennan Manning -
Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
Brennan Manning -
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.
Brennan Manning -
The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.
Brennan Manning -
We are made for Christ, and nothing less will ever satisfy us.
Brennan Manning
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Charles de Foucauld, the found of the Little Brothers of Jesus, wrote a single sentence that's ahad a profound impact on my life. He said, "The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything." Never to be afraid of anything, even death, which, after all, is but that final breakthrough into the open, waiting, outstretched arms of Abba.
Brennan Manning -
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)
Brennan Manning -
Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the woulds inflicted by others.
Brennan Manning -
Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
Brennan Manning -
Ruthless trust ultimately comes down to this: faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise.
Brennan Manning -
Without fear I can acknowledge that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life.
Brennan Manning
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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.
Brennan Manning -
I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me.
Brennan Manning -
God is loving us - you and me - this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.
Brennan Manning -
The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all.
Brennan Manning -
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.
Brennan Manning -
To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
Brennan Manning
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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.
Brennan Manning -
When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.
Brennan Manning -
Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.
Brennan Manning -
In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.
Brennan Manning