Brennan Manning famous quotes

The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God. "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting..." (Luke 15:7). In his brokenness, the repentant prodigal knew an intimacy with his father that his sinless, self-righteous brother would never know.
-- Brennan Manning

#Brother #Father #Self

The love of Christ embraces all without exception. Fire of love, crazy over what You have made. Oh, divine Madman. (Prayer of Catherine Siena) Simply do the next thing in love. I have no sense of myself apart from you. Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem. (In loving me, you made me lovable.)
-- Brennan Manning

#Prayer #Crazy #Fire

To lend each other a hand when we're falling, perhaps that's the only work that matters in the end.
-- Brennan Manning

#Fall #Hands #Matter

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Selfish #Butterfly #Eagles

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Humble #Son

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.
-- Brennan Manning

#Backyards #Desert #Kind

[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

#Jesus #Giving #Promise

The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust — not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.
-- Brennan Manning

#Spiritual #Gratitude #Suffering

One of the the loveliest lines I have ever read comes from Brother Roger, the Prior of the Protestant monks of Taize, France: 'Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' It is still difficult for me to read these words without tears filling my eyes. It is wonderful.
-- Brennan Manning

#Brother #Jesus #Eye

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

#Christian #Jesus #Taken

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.
-- Brennan Manning

#Hurt #Believe #Soul

We are made for God, and nothing less will ever satisfy us
-- Brennan Manning

#Made

Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, "God told me..." As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness.
-- Brennan Manning

#Simple #World #Speech

For several centuries, the Celtic church of Ireland was spared the Greek dualism of matter and spirit. They regarded the world with the clear vision of faith. When a young Celtic monk saw his cat catch a salmon swimming in shallow water, he cried, "The power of the Lord is in the paw of the cat!
-- Brennan Manning

#Cat #Swimming #Water

The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.
-- Brennan Manning

#Christian #Depth #Persons

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

#Eye #Important #Purpose

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Passion #Biblical

Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, WE HAVE BEEN RESTORED to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of Grace
-- Brennan Manning

#Son #Grace #Merit

Prayer is first and foremost an act of love
-- Brennan Manning

#Prayer #Firsts #Acts Of Love

The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.
-- Brennan Manning

#Sweet #Lying #Mean

God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.
-- Brennan Manning

#Spiritual #Needs #Cosmetics

Experience has taught me that I connect best with others when I connect with the core of myself. When I allow God to liberate me from unhealthy dependence on people, I listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, and am more compassionate and playful. I take myself less seriously, become aware that the breath of the Father is on my face.
-- Brennan Manning

#Father #People #Faces

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

#Brother #Jesus #Fear

Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem. (In loving me, you made me lovable.)
-- Brennan Manning

#Lovable #Made

Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Acceptance #Compassion

The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses this: "Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Compassion #Divine

Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence.  It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many.  It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us
-- Brennan Manning

#Names #Ideas #Identity

Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Enchanting

The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust
-- Brennan Manning

#Spiritual #Gratitude #Suffering

The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.
-- Brennan Manning

#Gratitude #Expression #Order

A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.
-- Brennan Manning

#Saint #Goodness #Goodness Of God

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Father #Men #Grace

Be daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burnt in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how phony you are.
-- Brennan Manning

#Real #Mistake #Humble

The gospel will persuade no one unless it has so convicted us that we are transformed by it.
-- Brennan Manning

That which is denied cannot be healed.
-- Brennan Manning

#Healed

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!
-- Brennan Manning

#Doors #Grace #News

The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can't save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Matter #Prayerful

The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Heart #Butterfly

In explaining the growth of his faith, psychiatrist Gerald May writes, "I know that God is loving and that God’s loving is trustworthy. I know this directly, through the experience of my life. There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant I would not be hurt. But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain it embraces them both." Ruthless Trust, pg 22
-- Brennan Manning

#Hurt #Pain #Believe

Jesus reveals a God who does not demand but who gives; who does not oppress but who raises up; who does not wound but who heals; who does not condemn but forgives.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Giving #Doe

I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship. And my word is this: I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are, and not as you should be. Because you’re never going to be as you should be.
-- Brennan Manning

#Prayer #Love You #Past

Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that's really worth following in this world or the one that's coming.
-- Brennan Manning

#Real #Fall #Getting Back Up

We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.
-- Brennan Manning

#Names #Mouths #His Love

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
-- Brennan Manning

#Believe #Defining #Spirit

Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life--be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others...I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba's child [a child of God] becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused
-- Brennan Manning

#Children #Confused #Compassion

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Done #Awareness

The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.
-- Brennan Manning

#Real #Book #Philosophical

Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.
-- Brennan Manning

#Religious #Jesus #Book

When absolute control and rigid obedience pose as love within the family and the local faith-community , we produce trained cowards rather than Christian persons.
-- Brennan Manning

#Christian #Community #Coward

Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity—that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain—that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole being rejects it. Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be.
-- Brennan Manning

#Morning #Jesus #Rain

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.
-- Brennan Manning

#Mean #Dark #Light

And Grace calls out, 'You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.' Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jobs #Insecure #Men

The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.
-- Brennan Manning

#Men #Light #Darkness

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Father #Risk #Path

Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Risk #Growing

For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened," He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.
-- Brennan Manning

#Love #Jesus #Disappointment

The outstretched arms of Jesus exclude no one, not the drunk in the doorway, the panhandler on the street, gays and lesbians in their isolation, the most selfish and ungrateful in their cocoons, the most unjust of employers and the most overweening of snobs. The love of Christ embraces all without exception.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Selfish #Gay

Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.
-- Brennan Manning

#Pain #Reality #Ideas

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Art #Prayer #Broken

Today on planet Earth, may you experience the wonder and beauty of yourself as Abba’s Child and temple of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Children #Temples

Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Identity #Christ

In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.
-- Brennan Manning

#Giving #Encounters #Drains

Jesus comes for sinners, for those outcast...and those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.
-- Brennan Manning

#Dream #Jesus #Choices

In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
-- Brennan Manning

#Love #Soldier #Spiritual Life

The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God. God created us for union with himself. This is the original purpose of our lives.
-- Brennan Manning

#Heart #Desire #Purpose

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
-- Brennan Manning

#Broken #Grace #Needs

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
-- Brennan Manning

#Love #Self #Identity

What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Biblical #Wind

Reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Reality #Jesus Christ

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed.
-- Brennan Manning

#Fear #Lying #Self

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.
-- Brennan Manning

#Loneliness #Journey #Evil

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.  This is the true self.  Every other identity is illusion.  God's love for you and his choice of you constitute your worth.  Accept that, and let it become the most important thing in your life.
-- Brennan Manning

#Self #Choices #Important

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Hate #Believe #Angel

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.
-- Brennan Manning

#Fashion #Live Life #Men

My trust in God flows out of the experience of his loving me, day in and day out, whether the day is stormy or fair, whether I'm sick or in good health, whether I'm in a state of grace or disgrace. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am.
-- Brennan Manning

#Sick #Grace #And Love

Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone... Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.
-- Brennan Manning

#Heart #Compassion #Essence

God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.
-- Brennan Manning

#Love You #God Love #God Loves You

I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Father #Desire

Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have been not only forgiven, but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Thus, my friend archbishop Joe Reia says, "A sad Christian is a phony Christian, and a guilty Christian is no Christian at all.
-- Brennan Manning

#Christian #Men #Blood

The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.
-- Brennan Manning

#Our Love #Tests #God Love

There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.
-- Brennan Manning

#Beautiful #Faces #Honest

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Spiritual #Past #Simple

Those who have the disease called Jesus will never be cured.
-- Brennan Manning

#Jesus #Disease

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Past #Evil #Done

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.
-- Brennan Manning

#Heart #Flesh #Stones

The secret of the mystery is: God is always greater. No matter how great we think Him to be, His love is always greater.
-- Brennan Manning

#Encouraging #Encouragement #Love Is

The engaged mind, illuminated by truth, awakens awareness; the engaged heart, affected by love, awakens passion. May I say once more - this essential energy of the soul is not an ecstatic trance, high emotion or a sanguine stance toward life: It is a fierce longing for God, an unyielding resolve to live in and out of our belovedness. - pg. 152
-- Brennan Manning

#Love #Passion #Heart

It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.
-- Brennan Manning

#Fall #Cheese #Crackers

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Real #War #Grace

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
-- Brennan Manning

#Christian #Ice Cream #Self

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God's "crooked but straight path". It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.
-- Brennan Manning

#Christian #Humility #Thinking

I am wonderfully content with a God who does not deal with me as my sins deserve.
-- Brennan Manning

#Doe #Sin #Deals

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

#Struggle #Self #People

This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.
-- Brennan Manning

#Son #Night #Blood

God is enough. That is the root of peace. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.
-- Brennan Manning

#Roots #Enough

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father.
-- Brennan Manning

#Father #Winning #Treasure

The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.
-- Brennan Manning

#Reality #Decision #Promise

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.
-- Brennan Manning

#Children #Father #Son

We are not cowed into timidity by death and life. Were we forced to rely on our own shabby resources we would be pitiful people in deed. But the awareness of Christ's present risenness persuades us that we are buoyed up and carried on by a life greater than our own.
-- Brennan Manning

#People #Life And Death #Would Be

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.
-- Brennan Manning

#Healing #Past #Light