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Famous Brennan Manning Quotes

“Christians are a people of hope to the extent that others can find in us a source of strength and joy. If not, our profession of faith 'by the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man' is as academic, tentative, and hopeless as the alcoholic who promises, 'I'll quit tomorrow.”

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Book:Reflections for Ragamuffins: Daily Devotions from the Writings of Brennan Manning
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“The Christian response to evil—to aggression—is resistance, of course, but nonviolent resistance, the resistance of love, prayer, and accepted suffering. When Christians do anything else, they have parted company with Jesus. Nonviolence is the expression of a faith that the greatest power in human history is the forward movement of love. Nonviolence is as realistic as Jesus himself, and it is one with the cross of Christ's victory over evil. The question of whether or not nonviolent resistance 'works' should be referred not so much to the gain of an immediate victory as to the transformation of history from within by the converging forces of love.”

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Book:Reflections for Ragamuffins: Daily Devotions from the Writings of Brennan Manning
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“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.”

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Book:The ragamuffin Gospel
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“Imagine that Jesus is calling you today. He extends a second invitation to accept His Father's love. And maybe you answer, "Oh, I know that. It's old hat." And God answers, 'No, that's what you don't know. You don't know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God, not man. You tell others about Me - your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart. Did you know that every time you tell Me you love Me, I say thank you?”

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Book:The ragamuffin Gospel
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“How readily we push Jesus Christ off his judgment seat and take our place there to pronounce on others (though we've neither the knowledge nor the authority to judge anyone.) None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know, we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another.”

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Book:Reflections for Ragamuffins: Daily Devotions from the Writings of Brennan Manning
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“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.”

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Book:The ragamuffin Gospel
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“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.”

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Book:The ragamuffin Gospel
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“Often people request prayers for deliverance, inner healing, or physical healing. But more frequently they simply want a man or woman to whom they can turn--not because of what this person is able to do but because of what he or she is: a person who makes them feel wanted, a friend to love them, one who generates an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they are able to love in return.”

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Book:Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba's Embrace
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“The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God’s love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others.”

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Author:Brennan Manning
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“One spiritual writer has observed that human beings are born with two diseases: life, from which we die; and hope, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is built into the structure of our personalities, into the depths of our unconscious; it plagues us to the very moment of our death. The critical question is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the imprint of reality.”

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Book:The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
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“[The] insistence on the absolutely indiscriminate nature of compassion within the Kingdom is the dominant perspective of almost all of Jesus' teaching. What is indiscriminate compassion? 'Take a look at a rose. Is is possible for the rose to say, "I'll offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people"? Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light? It could do that only be ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature -- even to the one who seeks to cut it down. This is the first quality of compassion -- its indiscriminate character.' (Anthony DeMello, The Way to Love)... What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions.”

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Book:Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
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“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.”

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Book:The ragamuffin Gospel
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“If what God says is the truest thing about us, then it makes sense to follow him and accept our As-Is condition as the starting point. Thomas Merton said, 'The reason we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with God is that we so seldom acknowledge our utter nothingness before him.' If we confess the truth about ourselves, there's every reason to fear God will say, 'Yeah, that's right; and anotherthing...' and we're fairly sure there will be another thing. We are like people afraid to tell the doctor where we really hurt because we fear we may be sicker than we think. We are sicker than we think. We're dying and, crazily, running from the healer because we're ashamed, because we hate ourselves for all we are and all we're not.”

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Author:Brennan Manning
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“Justification by grace through faith' is the theologian's learned phrase for what Chesterton once called 'the furious love of G-d.' He is not moody or capricious; He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only G-d man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods- the gods of human manufacturing- despise sinners, but the Father of (Yeshua) loves all, no matter what they do.”

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Author:Brennan Manning
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“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.”

YearsHouseTermClassWeekMiddleCarConversationEatingClothesSizePossessionNeighborMaturityMiddle ClassShoppingVacationConsumptionConsumerismConsumingOverconsumptionSuccess Is MeasuredLove Wisdom
Book:The Signature of Jesus
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“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.”

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Book:The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
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“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.”

KnowsShouldWholeMomentsStoriesPastPrayerSinLove YouRight NowShameDareWhole LifeOur PastShallowClosetsDiscipleshipYour PastDishonestyLife StorySkeletonsInconsistentPrayer Life
Author:Brennan Manning
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“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.”

KnowsSelfFatherHeavenBrotherGuiltConvictionOccasionsIntimacyLiberationEncountersSinnerRejoiceRighteousRepentMercifulBrokennessLukeSelf RighteousRedeemingProdigalsSinfulness
Book:The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
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“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.”

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Book:The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
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“Won't the awareness God loves us no matter what lead to spiritual laziness and moral laxity? Theoretically, this seems a reasonable fear, but in reality the opposite is true. . . . The more rooted we are in the love of God, the more generously we will live our faith.”

MatterRealitySeemsSpiritualMoralAwarenessOppositesNo Matter WhatGod LoveReasonableLazinessRootedGod Loves Us
Book:The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
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“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.”

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Author:Brennan Manning
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“In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.”

PeopleMenEnoughAsksLosesPrayerOne ThingMen And WomenRootsEssenceSeekingBe A ManGracious
Book:The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
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“Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves as Christians whether the Church of the Lord Jesus in the United States has anything to say to our nation and its ideologies of materialism, possessiveness, and the worship of financial security. Are we courageous enough to be a sign of contradiction to consumerism through our living faith in Jesus Christ? Are we committed enough to his gospel to become a countercurrent to the drift?”

StatesEnoughChristianAsksJesusNationsChristChurchUnitedLordUnited StatesSecurityWorshipJesus ChristFinancialCommittedIdeologyContradictionMaterialismCourageousConsumerismOverconsumptionPossessivenessFaith In JesusFinancial Security
Book:The Signature of Jesus
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