Quotes from Brennan Manning

A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.

The spiritual future of ragamuffins consists not in disavowing that we are sinners but in accepting that truth with growing clarity, rejoicing in God's incredible longing to rescue us in spite of everything

In his landmark work The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann says, "We have made the bitterness of the Cross tolerable to ourselves by learning to understand it as a theological necessity for the process of salvation."3 Of course, theological necessities do not sweat blood in the night.

Faith in the present risenness of Jesus carries with it life-changing implications for the gritty routine of daily life.

The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?

To the extent that we allow the relentless tenderness of Jesus to invade the citadel of self, we are freed from dyspepsia toward ourselves.

We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in his hands.

The awesome love of our invisible God has become both visible and audible in Jesus Christ, the glory of the only Son filled with enduring love.

Christianity is not simply a message but an experience of faith that becomes a message, explicitly offering hope, freedom from bondage, and a new realm of possibility.

We can only sense ourselves and our world valued and cherished by God when we feel valued and cherished by others '.

When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.

Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't.

The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.

Secondly, if we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image. In

The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). Hope knows that if great trials are avoided, great deeds remain undone, and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted. Pessimism and defeatism are never the fruit of the life-giving Spirit but rather reveal our unawareness of present risenness.

Men and women whose outlook on life is conditioned by the Dow are shrewder on the street than are the disciples on their spiritual journey.

Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else.

Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, reduce the love story of God for his people to the observance of burdensome duties and oppressive laws.

Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.

For the disciple of Jesus, being like a child means accepting oneself as being of little account, unimportant.

Someone is reckoned as upright not by practicing the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16)?

he progressed not by always making right decisions but by responding appropriately to wrong ones.

Even if we come back because we couldn't make it on our own, God will welcome us. He will seek no explanations about our sudden appearance. He is glad we are there