Brennan Manning Quotes

And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance ~ Brennan Manning

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

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. ~ Brennan Manning

Several times in my ministry people have expressed the fear that self-acceptance will abort the ongoing conversion process and lead to a life of spiritual laziness and moral laxity. Nothing could be more untrue. The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo. On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure. ~ Brennan Manning

The kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. ~ Brennan Manning

For the Christian one dislocating, self-impoverishing hour spent with a child living in a broken-down dump is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the enfeebled good intentions, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of those Christians who are so busy cultivating their own holiness that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the slum. ~ Brennan Manning

In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit. ~ Brennan Manning

There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind. ~ Brennan Manning

Catherine de Hueck Doherty observes in The Gospel Without Compromise: The Gospel can be summed up by saying that it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinary, explosive, revolutionary revelation of Christ's love. ~ Brennan Manning

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

The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

If we continue to focus solely on the sinner/saint duality in our person and conduct, while ignoring the raging opposition between the Pharisee and the child, spiritual growth will come to an abrupt standstill. ~ Brennan Manning

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. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted ... not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation ... staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now ... feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery ... no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. ... Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world ... calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what's going to happen next ... loved and valued ... just being together as an end in itself. ~ Brennan Manning

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

I need the wisdom, reasoning, and apologetics of C. S. Lewis, though some of his theological beliefs are different from mine. I need the preaching and charisma of Charles Spurgeon, though his view of baptism is different from mine. I need the resurrection vision of N. T. Wright and the theology of Jonathan Edwards, though their views on church government are different from mine. I need the passion and prophetic courage of Martin Luther King Jr., the cultural intelligence of Soong-Chan Rah, and the Confessions of St. Augustine, though their ethnicities are different from mine. I need the justice impulse and communal passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though his nationality is different from mine. I need the spiritual thirst and love drive of Brennan Manning and the prophetic wit of G. K. Chesterton, though both are Roman Catholics and I am a Protestant. I need the hymns and personal holiness of John and Charles Wesley, though some of their doctrinal distinctives are different from mine. I need the glorious weakness of Joni Eareckson Tada, the spirituality of Marva Dawn, the trusting perseverance of Elisabeth Elliot, the long-suffering spirit of Amy Carmichael, the transparency of Rebekah Lyons, the thankfulness of Ann Voskamp, the Kingdom vision of Amy Sherman, and the integrity of Patti Sauls, though their gender is different from mine. As St. Augustine reputedly said, "In nonessentials, liberty." To this we might add, "In nonessentials, open-minded receptivity." We Christians m ~ Scott Sauls

Quit keeping score altogether and surrender yourself with all your sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ. ~ Brennan Manning

Becoming a little child meant becoming aware that all is gift, that I am helpless and powerless to add a single inch to my spiritual stature. Without the subjective awareness of utter dependence, the personal consciousness of a dynamism outside of self at work in us, I seriously question whether anyone has made real progress in the spiritual life. ~ Brennan Manning

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? ~ 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

Faith means wanting God and wanting to want nothing else. ~ Brennan Manning

Christianity is not an ethical code. It is a love affair, a Spirit-filled way of living aimed at making us professional lovers of God and people. ~ Brennan Manning

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

Choose a single, sacred word or phrase that captures something of the flavor of your intimate relationship with God. A word such as Jesus, Abba, Peace, God or a phrase such as "Abba, I belong to you." ... Without moving your lips, repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often. ~ Brennan Manning

The number of people who have fled the church because it is too patient or compassionate is negligible; the number who have fled because they find it too unforgiving is tragic. ~ Brennan Manning

He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods - the gods of human manufacturing - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. ~ Brennan Manning

The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. 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

Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful. ~ Brennan Manning

Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. IT IS AN ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace. ~ Brennan Manning

I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God. ~ Brennan Manning

We are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace. ~ Brennan Manning

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

The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received. ~ Brennan Manning

Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't. ~ Brennan Manning

Dear Abba, I'm stepping into a new day brimming with new mercies, fresh-slate-do-over grace extended freely to me by Your hands. But it is not just given to me but to all. So that my attempts to control and manipulate others, even if it's in their best interests, is not only to spit on the grace given them, but also that given to me. Father, the only thing truly "for our own good" is Your mercy. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. Have mercy on me. ~ Brennan Manning

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. ~ Brennan Manning

If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.9 ~ Brennan Manning

The loss of transcendence has left in its wake the flotsam of distrustful, cynical Christians, angry at a capricious God, and the jetsam of smug bibilolatrists who claim to know precisely what God is thinking and exactly what he plans to do. ~ Brennan Manning

While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. 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. This and so much more is sheer gift ~ Brennan Manning

The cultural propaganda embodied in two liquor advertisements, "Living well is the best revenge" and "Sip it with arrogance," have a curious, perhaps demonic appeal. Consumerism indeed has its own spirituality. ~ Brennan Manning

Drinking gave me a rush of confidence, and for a boy hounded by feelings of inadequacy, the buzz was a welcome relief. What was impossible to realize at the time was that I was shooting myself in the head in some strange time warp where the bullet takes many years to finally reach its target. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

My message, unchanged for more than fifty years, is this: God loves
you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because
nobody is as they should be. It is the message of grace ... A grace
that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages
as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five ... A grace that
hikes up the robe and runs breakneck toward the prodigal reeking
of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands,
or buts ... This grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without
asking anything of us ... Grace is sufficient even though we huff and
puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot
cover. Grace is enough ... Jesus is enough. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus. ~ Brennan Manning

For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ. ~ Brennan Manning

Those were days of learning the reality behind the phrase I've often used, "ruthless trust." It's something easy to say but much harder to live. But I have learned in my life that grace often gestates, like an unborn child. And when the expectant mother grabs the hospital-prepared suitcase and screams, "Let's go!" then you'd better go. ~ Brennan Manning

It is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy. ~ Brennan Manning

This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the Orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough.
John, the disciple Jesus loved, ended his first letter with this line: "Children, be on your guard against false gods." In other words, steer clear of any God you can comprehend. Abba will's love cannot be comprehended. I'll say it again: Abba's love cannot be comprehended. ~ Brennan Manning

You are blessed! God's desire is for you. And Jesus is the incarnation of God's furious longing. He is your supreme Lover. It's true. You are blessed. Your soul's winter is over. The snows are over and gone. Flowers are blooming inside of you. The season of joyful songs has come. To you. You are blessed! The love of God is folly. No one is excluded. All (really!) are called to the banquet table. Come, and be filled. You are blessed! Be-YOU-ti-full. Be you. Just be. Love supports you. You are blessed! You have learned the purpose of life: LOVE. You are blessed! You can pray like a child, and enjoy God. You are blessed! Heal, and be healed. Reclaim affirmations for the kingdom of God. Amen. Amen. Amen. ~ Brennan Manning

Let us suppose you give your three-year-old daughter a coloring book and a box of crayons for her birthday. The following day, with the proud smile only a little once can muster, she presents her first pictures for inspection. She has colored the sun black, the grass purple, and the sky green. In the lower right-hand corner, she has added woozy wonders of floating slabs and hovering rings; on the left, a panoply of colorful, carefree squiggles. You marvel at her bold strokes and intuit that her psyche is railing against its own cosmic punniness in the face of a big, ugly world. Later at the office, you share with your staff your daughter's first artistic effort and you make veiled references to the early work of van Gogh.

A little child can not do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer. "A father is delighted when hi little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. AS he hold shi little one close to him, he cared little whether the child is looking around, her attention flittering from one thing to another or just settling down to sleep. Essentially the child is choosing to be with the father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms. Our prayer is much like that. We settle down in our Father's arms, in his loving hands. Our minds, our thougths, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for thi time to remian intimately wi ~ Brennan Manning

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

When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit. ~ Brennan Manning

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

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

'But how?' we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace. ~ Brennan Manning

The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment. Small wonder that the late spiritual giant Basil Hume of London, England, claimed that Christians find it easier to believe that God exists than that God loves them. ~ Brennan Manning

In the parable of the talents, the three servants are called to render an account of how they have used the gifts entrusted to them. The first two used their talents boldly and resourcefully. The third, who prudently wraps his money and buries it, typifies the Christian who deposits his faith in an hermetic container and seals the lid shut. He or she limps through life on childhood memories of Sunday school and resolutely refuses the challenge of growth and spiritual maturity. Unwilling to take risks, this person loses the talent entrusted to him or her. "The master wanted his servants to take risks. He wanted them to gamble with his money."5 ~ Brennan Manning

God's love is based on nothing, and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based on anything we do, and that 'anything' were to collapse, then God's love would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can possibly happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the full. ~ Brennan Manning

When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation.
Jesus said you are to love one another as I have loved you, a love that will possibly lead to the bloody, anguish gift of yourself, a love that forgives seven times seven, that keeps no record of wrong. This is the criterion, sole norm, the standard of discipleship in the New Israel of God. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

Faith means believing that I am Yours and You are mine, that I am who You say I am: Your beloved, fearfully and wonderfully accepted. ~ Brennan Manning

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

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more ~ Brennan Manning

Wrong thinking about God and people often begins with a debased image of ourselves. ~ Brennan Manning

When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet. ~ Brennan Manning

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 ~ Brennan Manning

The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. ~ Brennan Manning

Thomas Merton to write: The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television. His head is filled with inane slogans, songs, noises, explosions, statistics, brand names, menaces, ribaldries, and cliches. Then, when the child gets to school, he learns to verbalize, rationalize, to pace, to make faces like an advertisement, to need a car and in short, to go through life with an empty head conforming to others, like himself, in togetherness.3 ~ Brennan Manning

Words, like anything else used too often, soon depreciate in value, lose their edge, and cease to bite into our lives. When phrases, such as unconditional love, trip too easily off the tongue, the speaker's ego may experience a temporary rush of exhilaration using an in salvation slogan, but his heart remains unchanged. ~ Brennan Manning

If asked whether I am finally letting God love me, just as I am, I would answer, 'No, but I'm trying. ~ Brennan Manning

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

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

given to me. Father, the only ~ Brennan Manning

To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners. 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, The Ragamuffin Gospel ~ Kara Tippetts

Jesus says. "Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place."
Brennan Manning. Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging ~ Brennan Manning

Do the truth quietly without display. ~ Brennan Manning

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

Coming to interior stillness requires waiting. ~ Brennan Manning

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

The wild, unrestricted love of God is not simply an inspiring idea. When it imposes itself on mind and heart with the stark reality of ontological truth, it determines why and at what time you get up in the morning, how you pass your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, and who you hang with; it affects what breaks your heart, what amazes you, and what makes your heart happy. ~ Brennan Manning

His cry on the cross was our cry of desperate alienation from God taken up into his and transformed through the resurrection. As we allow ourselves to experience our own pain, we can know that what we feel is Christ suffering in us and redeeming us. Rather than condemning ourselves for our weakness and making self-conscious efforts to try harder, we can allow the Crucified to love us in our brokenness. There is no way of healing from the wounds each of us carries except through the love of Jesus that forgives seventy times seven and keeps no score of our wrongdoing. ~ Brennan Manning

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

As Emile Leger said when he left his mansion in Montreal to go live in a leper colony in Africa, The time for talking is over. ~ Brennan Manning

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 ~ Brennan Manning

I believe that Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ. ~ Brennan Manning

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

The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace. ~ 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

But if I've learned anything about the world of grace, it's that failure is always a chance for a do-over. ~ Brennan Manning

One thing we do know: We don't comprehend the love of Jesus Christ. ~ Brennan Manning

Jesus hung out with ragamuffins, ~ Brennan Manning

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. ~ Brennan Manning

According to Viktor Frankl, a person finds identity only to the extent that "he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself."4 The meaning of our lives emerges in the surrender of ourselves to an adventure of becoming who we are not yet. ~ Brennan Manning