Best Brennan Manning Quotes (The Ragamuffin Gospel Author):
1- “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
2- “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
3- “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.” ~ Brennan Manning
4- “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.” ~ Brennan Manning
5- “Our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success. Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey.” ~ Brennan Manning
6- “God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.” ~ Brennan Manning
7- “In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.” ~ Brennan Manning
8- “You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.” ~ Brennan Manning
9- “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
10- “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
11- “God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don’t need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.” ~ Brennan Manning
12- “To be alive is to
be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.” ~ Brennan Manning
13- “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
14- “In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.” ~ Brennan Manning
15- “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. God’s love for you and his choice of you constitute your worth. Accept that, and let it become the most important thing in your life.” ~ Brennan Manning
16- “Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.” ~ Brennan Manning
17- “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.” ~ Brennan Manning
18- “The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.” ~ Brennan Manning
19- “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
20- “I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself… God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants.” ~ Brennan Manning
21- “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
22- “God is enough. That is the root of peace. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.” ~ Brennan Manning
23- “The confessing church of American Ragamuffins needs to join Magdalene and Peter in witnessing that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands.” ~ Brennan Manning
24- “My trust in God flows out of the experience of his loving me, day in and day out, whether the day is stormy or fair, whether I’m sick or in good health, whether I’m in a state of grace or disgrace. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am.” ~ Brennan Manning
25- “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” ~ Brennan Manning
26- “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.” ~ Brennan Manning
27- “What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions.” ~ Brennan Manning
28- “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
29- “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
30- “I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.” ~ Brennan Manning
31- “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
32- “The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.’ ‘What are you complaining about?’ said God. ‘They won’t let Me in either.” ~ Brennan Manning
33- “Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.” ~ Brennan Manning
34- “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
35- “The only kind of love that helps anyone grow is unconditional love.” ~ Brennan Manning
36- “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
37- “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
38- “The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.” ~ Brennan Manning
39- “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
40- “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
41- “To lend each other a hand when we’re falling, perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.” ~ Brennan Manning
42- “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
43- “The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.” ~ Brennan Manning
44- “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
45- “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.” ~ Brennan Manning
46- “I have been seized by the power of a great affection.” ~ Brennan Manning
47- “That which is denied cannot be healed.” ~ Brennan Manning
48- “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
49- “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
50- “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
