Top 280 Brennan Manning Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.”

— Brennan Manning

103. “Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.”

— Brennan Manning

104. “The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.”

— Brennan Manning

105. “Childlike in faith means the daily acknowledgment of utter dependence and that I owe my life and being to another.”

— Brennan Manning

106. “False gods – the gods of human understanding – despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept.”

— Brennan Manning

107. “Troubadours have always been more important and influential than theologians and bishops.”

— Brennan Manning

108. “The heart enveloped in the tenderness of God passes that tenderness around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and the unworthy.”

— Brennan Manning

109. “The Word we study has to be the Word we pray.”

— Brennan Manning

110. “The daring metaphor of Jesus as bridegroom suggests that the living God seeks more than an intimate relationship with us.”

— Brennan Manning

111. “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

112. “Too many Christians are living in a house of fear and not in the house of love.”

— Brennan Manning

113. “We cannot accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less accept that God could possibly love us.”

— Brennan Manning

114. “There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind.”

— Brennan Manning

115. “Without fear I can acknowledge that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life.”

— Brennan Manning

116. “Shame – what happened when my mother, the dragon, huffed and puffed and blew my self down.”

— Brennan Manning

117. “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

118. “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.”

— Brennan Manning

119. “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

120. “When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God’s gift of grace.”

— Brennan Manning

121. “The defense mechanisms of The Imposter are: sarcasm, name-dropping, self-righteousness, the need to impress others and the need for others’ approval.”

— Brennan Manning

122. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” – Ephesians 4:31-32.”

— Brennan Manning

123. “For His love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods – of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender. So.”

— Brennan Manning

124. “Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded.”

— Brennan Manning

125. “Richard Rohr said, “If we don’t learn to transform the pain, we’ll transfer it.”

— Brennan Manning

126. “Self-deception is the enemy of wholeness because it prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are. It covers up our lack of growth in the Spirit of the truthful One and keeps us from coming to terms with our real personalities.”

— Brennan Manning

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

— Brennan Manning

128. “At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.”

— Brennan Manning

129. “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

130. “In philosophy, the opposite of truth is error; in Scripture, the opposite of truth is a lie.”

— Brennan Manning

131. “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

132. “There is no limit to the defenses we contrive against the inbreak of truth into our lives.”

— Brennan Manning

133. “In our society, where money, power, and pleasure are the name of the game, the body truth is bleeding from thousand wounds.”

— Brennan Manning

134. “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

135. “In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.”

— Brennan Manning

136. “Love proves its authenticity in fidelity, but reaches its completion in forgiveness.”

— Brennan Manning

137. “Insecurity not only paralyzes our relationship with the living God but has a devastating effect on interpersonal relationships. It is the starting point of all social estrangement. It breaks down openness, which is the bridge to the existential world of the other. It undermines real communication and causes a kind of rupture in the evolution of authentic personality.”

— Brennan Manning

138. “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

139. “It is then I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices. I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life. Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God. And learn to pray.”

— Brennan Manning

140. “Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.”

— Brennan Manning

141. “A life of praying means death to every identity that does not come from God.”

— Brennan Manning

142. “For Ragamuffins, God’s name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair – for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God.”

— Brennan Manning

143. “We are all subject to forgetfulness of God’s faithfulness in the past, laziness to act on the divine promise, and postponing until tomorrow what Jesus is asking of us today: childlike abandonment in trust.”

— Brennan Manning

144. “By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.”

— Brennan Manning

145. “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

146. “The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith.”

— Brennan Manning

147. “The antithesis of giving thanks is grumbling. The grumblers live in a state of self-induced stress.”

— Brennan Manning

148. “Larry Hein, who wrote the blessing: 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 Father, Son, and Spirit.”

— Brennan Manning

149. “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

150. “The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is His greatest single act of unwavering trust in His Abba’s love. He plunged into the darkness of death, not fully knowing what awaited Him, confident that somehow, some way, His Abba would vindicate Him.”

— Brennan Manning