Brennan Manning Quotes & Sayings

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

The more guilt and shame that we have buried within ourselves, the more compelled we feel to seek relief through sin. — Brennan Manning

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

Like faith and hope, trust cannot be self-generated. I cannot simply will myself to trust. What outrageous irony: the one thing that I am responsible for throughout my life I cannot generate. The one thing I need to do I cannot do. But such is the meaning of radical dependence. It consists in theological virtues, in divinely ordained gifts. Why reproach myself for my lack of trust? Why waste time beating myself up for something I cannot affect? What does lie within my power is paying attention to the faithfulness of Jesus. That's what I am asked to do: pay attention to Jesus throughout my journey, remembering his kindnesses (Ps. 103:2). — Brennan Manning

If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives. When — Brennan Manning

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

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

The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all. — Brennan Manning

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Rohr said, If we don't learn to transform the pain, we'll transfer it. — Brennan Manning

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

Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear. We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature. There begins a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into gloom, pessimism, and a subtle despair - subtle because it goes unrecognized, unnoticed, and therefore unchallenged. It takes the form of boredom, drudgery. — Brennan Manning

given to me. Father, the only — 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

I you think you've done it, then you're wrong. Because you're not finished until you have achieved everything that you never thought you could. — Brennan Manning

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

The Trappist monk Thomas Keating once said, The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It's all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you've inflicted on others. — 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

The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith. — Brennan Manning

The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions. — Brennan Manning

Nowhere in the New Testament is the privileged position of turkeys, nobodies, and marginal people on the fringes of society disclosed more dramatically than in Jesus' ministry of meal sharing. In modern times it is scarcely possible to appreciate the scandal Jesus caused by His table fellowship with sinners. — Brennan Manning

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

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

When we accept ourselves for what we are, we decrease our hunger for power or the acceptance of others because our self-intimacy reinforces our inner sense of security. We are no longer preoccupied with being powerful or popular. We no longer fear criticism because we accept the reality of our human limitations. Once integrated, we are less often plagued with the desire to please others because simply being true to ourselves brings lasting peace. We are grateful for life and we deeply appreciate and love ourselves. — Brennan Manning

Without the sharing of personal experience, prophetic preaching is impossible. — Brennan Manning

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

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

Stop comparing or boast at your victories. He was referring to enormous vitality and strength of God of Jesus seeking union with us. The living acts of a Christian become somehow the acts of Christ. — Brennan Manning

There is need for careful discernment here. The evidence of earnestness, sincerity, and effort is considerable. The Christian's lifestyle is pious, proper, and correct. What's missing? He or she has not surrendered to the Christ of grace. The danger with our good works, spiritual investments, and all the rest of it is that we can construct a picture of ourselves in which we situate our self-worth. Complacency then replaces sheer delight in God's unconditional love. Our doing becomes the very undoing of the ragamuffin gospel. — Brennan Manning

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

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

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

The earth's weight has been estimated at six sextillion tons (that's a six with twenty-one zeros). Yet it is perfectly balanced and turns easily on its axis. It rotates daily at the rate of more than a thousand miles per hour, or 25,000 miles each day. This adds up to nine million miles a year. Considering the tremendous weight of six sextillion tons rolling at this fantastic speed around an invisible axis, held in place by unseen bands of gravitation, the words of Job 26:7 take on unparalleled significance: He poised the earth on nothingness. — Brennan Manning

There is the "you" that people see and then there is the "rest of you". Take some time and craft a picture of the "rest of you." This could be a drawing, in words, even a song. Just remember that the chances are good it will be full of paradox and contradictions. — Brennan Manning

There is an intimate bond between the sufferings of Christ and the conflict and suffering in each Christian life. The daily dying of the Christian is a prolongation of Christ's own death. Paul writes in Romans 6:3, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" Baptism is not merely a momentary dying; it inaugurates a lifelong state of death to the world, to the flesh and to sin. Our daily death to selfishness, dishonesty and degraded love is our personal participation in the fellowship of His sufferings. — Brennan Manning

Too many Christians are living in a house of fear and not in the house of love. — 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

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

Words such as union, fusion, and symbiosis hint at the ineffable oneness with Jesus that the apostle Paul experienced: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). No human word is even remotely adequate to convey the mysterious and furious longing of Jesus for you and me to live in His smile and hang on His words. But union comes close, very close; it is a word pregnant with a reality that surpasses understanding, the only reality worth yearning for with love and patience, the only reality before which we should stay very quiet. CEASE STRIVING AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD. (PS. 46:10 NASB) — Brennan Manning

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

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

Jesus says, "A tidal wave is approaching and you are lollygagging on the patio having a party." Or as Joachim Jeremias puts it, "You are feasting and dancing - on the volcano which may erupt at any moment."3 — Brennan Manning

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

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

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

When we get waylaid from our walk with God by busyness, depression, family problems, or worse, God does not abandon us. — Brennan Manning

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

God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us. — Brennan Manning

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

My identity as Abba's child is not an abstraction or a tap dance into religiosity. It is the core truth of my existence. Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness profoundly affects my perception of reality, the way I respond to people and their life situations. How I treat my brothers and sisters from day to day, whether they be Caucasian, African, Asian, or Hispanic; how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street; how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike; how I deal with ordinary people in their ordinary unbelief on an ordinary day will speak the truth of who I am more poignantly than the pro-life sticker on the bumper of my car. We are not for life simply because we are warding off death. We are sons and daughters of the Most High and maturing in tenderness to the extent that we are for others - all others - to the extent that no human flesh is strange to us, to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no others. — Brennan Manning

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

Troubadours have always been more important and influential than theologians and bishops — Brennan Manning

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

Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him. — Brennan Manning

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. — 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 God of the legalistic Christian, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail - as inevitably they must - they usually expect punishment. So they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God. — Brennan Manning

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

Love proves its authenticity in fidelity, but reaches its completion in forgiveness. — 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

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

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

No one, it seems to me, who has fully grasped the Crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering, or seemingly formidable. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE — 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

Faith means wanting God and wanting to want nothing else. — 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

There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you. — Brennan Manning

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

The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender. — Brennan Manning

The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist. — Brennan Manning

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological. — 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

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. — Brennan Manning

Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the shutdown of communication with the outside world, but rather a process of coming to stillness. — Brennan Manning

Each time we deal a mortal blow to the ego, the pasch of Jesus is traced in our flesh. Each time we choose to walk the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, to embrace and not reject, to be compassionate and not competitive, to kiss and not bite, to forgive and not massage the latest bruise to our wounded ego, we are breaking through from death to life. — Brennan Manning

If we really knew the God of Jesus, we would stop trying to control and manipulate others "for their own good," knowing full well that this is not how God works among His people. - The Signature of Jesus — 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

When a man or woman is truly honest (not just working at it) it is virtually impossible to insult them personally. There is nothing there to insult. Those who were truly ready for the kingdom were just such people. Their inner poverty of spirit and rigorous honesty had set them free. They were people who had nothing to be proud of. — Brennan Manning

The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad.2 — Brennan Manning

When one of England's finest writers, G. K. Chesterton, spoke of "the furious love of God," he was referencing the enormous vitality and strength of the God of Jesus seeking union with us. — Brennan Manning

Hope your wildest hopes, dream your maddest dreams, imagine your most fantastic fantasies. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the love of my Heavenly Father only begins. — Brennan Manning

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

In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible — Brennan Manning

I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware. — Brennan Manning

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

Jesus hung out with ragamuffins, — Brennan Manning

God is loving us - you and me - this moment, just as we are and not as we should be. — Brennan Manning

The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi. — Brennan Manning