Quotes from Brennan Manning

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.

The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude.

Childlike in faith means the daily acknowledgment of utter dependence and that I owe my life and being to another.

Without fear I can acknowledge that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life.

Our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success. Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey.

Anyone we come in contact with, we either offer them life, or we drain them.

The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion.

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.

The Word we study has to be the Word we pray.

The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God at the time of prayer.-

Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

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.

The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.

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.

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.

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.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.

Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God has to love you?

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.

You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.

Ruthless trust ultimately comes down to this: faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise.

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