Brennan Manning Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

That which is denied cannot be healed.

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.

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.

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

How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!

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.

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

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

When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.

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

We even refuse to be our true self with God- and then wonder why we lack intimacy with him.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

We are made for Christ, and nothing less will ever satisfy us.

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.

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

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!

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

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

We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others.

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.

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

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

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.

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.

The only kind of love that helps anyone grow is unconditional love.

Letting ourselves be loved by God is more important than loving God.

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.

I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.

Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.

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.

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