Brennan Manning Quotes
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While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
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Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
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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.
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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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All I have learned through trial and error is to stay alert and aware, especially God smiling @ our silliness.
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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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Ruthless trust ultimately comes down to this: faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise.
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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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The secret of the mystery is: God is always greater. No matter how great we think Him to be, His love is always greater.
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The only kind of love that helps anyone grow is unconditional love.
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In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity.
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When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.
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I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me.
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In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.
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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.
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The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.
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The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.
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Do the truth quietly without display.
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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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We are made for Christ, and nothing less will ever satisfy us.
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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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Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
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By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.
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To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.