Top 280 Brennan Manning Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Over a hundred years ago in the Deep South, a phrase commonplace in our Christian culture today, born again, was seldom used. Rather, the words used to describe the breakthrough into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ were: “I was seized by the power of a great affection.”

— Brennan Manning

152. “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

153. “The second journey begins when we know we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program.”

— Brennan Manning

154. “The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.”

— Brennan Manning

155. “It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.”

— Brennan Manning

156. “The signature of Jesus, the Cross, is the ultimate expression of God’s love for the world. The church is the church of the crucified, risen Christ only when it is stamped with his signature; only when it faces outward and moves with him along the way of the Cross. Turned inward upon itself in bickering and theological hairsplitting, the church loses its identity and its mission.”

— Brennan Manning

157. “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

158. “A poem by Leonard Cohen says it well: Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

— Brennan Manning

159. “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

160. “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God’s “crooked but straight path”. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

— Brennan Manning

161. “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

162. “And that’s the way the Father of Jesus is: He loves those most who need Him most, who rely on Him, depend upon Him and trust Him in everything. Little He cares whether you’ve been as pure as St. John or as sinful as the prostitute in Simon the Pharisee’s house. All that matters is trust. It seems to me that learning how to trust God defines the meaning of Christian living. God doesn’t wait until we have our moral life in order before He starts loving us.”

— Brennan Manning

163. “To live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is to humbly acknowledge the limitations of the rational, scientific, finite mind and to freely embrace mystery.”

— Brennan Manning

164. “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

165. “We are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace.”

— Brennan Manning

166. “Christianity is not an ethical code. It is a love affair, a Spirit-filled way of living aimed at making us professional lovers of God and people.”

— Brennan Manning

167. “Every change in the quality of a person’s life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality.”

— Brennan Manning

168. “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.” I believe that’s true. My cross suddenly.”

— Brennan Manning

169. “God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us.”

— Brennan Manning

170. “Don’t try to understand it. You won’t succeed. Don’t try to see it. You can’t. Try to live it, and you will be living out of the center.”

— Brennan Manning

171. “It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.6.”

— Brennan Manning

172. “Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God has to love you?” If you could answer with gut-level honesty, “Oh, yes, my Abba is very fond of me,” you would experience a serene compassion for yourself that approximates the meaning of tenderness.”

— Brennan Manning

173. “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.”

— Brennan Manning

174. “The devil never rejoices more,” said Francis of Assisi, “than when he robs a servant of God of his peace of heart.” Peace and joy go a-begging when the heart of a Christian pants for one sign after another of God’s merciful love.”

— Brennan Manning

175. “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

176. “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

177. “Dear Abba, I’m stepping into a new day brimming with new mercies, fresh-slate-do-over grace extended freely to me by Your hands. But it is not just given to me but to all. So that my attempts to control and manipulate others, even if it’s in their best interests, is not only to spit on the grace given them, but also that given to me. Father, the only thing truly “for our own good” is Your mercy. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. Have mercy on me.”

— Brennan Manning

178. “The success or failure of a given day is measured by the quality of our interest and compassion toward those around us. We define ourselves by our response to human need. The question is not how we feel about our neighbor but what we have done for him or her. We reveal our heart in the way we listen to a child, speak to the person who delivers mail, bear an injury, and share our resources with the indigent.”

— Brennan Manning

179. “Everybody has a vocation to some form of life work. But behind that and deeper than that, everybody has a vocation to be a person, to be fully and deeply a human being, to be Christlike. And the second thing is more important than the first. It is more important to be a great person than a great teacher, butcher or candlestick maker. And if the only chance of succeeding in the second is to fail in the first, the failure, from God’s point of view, is fruitful.”

— Brennan Manning

180. “I can state unequivocally that childlike surrender in trust is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. And I would add that the supreme need in most of our lives is often the most overlooked – namely, the need for an uncompromising trust in the love of God. Furthermore, I would say that, while there are times when it is good to go to God as might a ragged beggar to the King of kings, it is vastly superior to approach God as a little child would approach his or her papa.”

— Brennan Manning

181. “The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.”

— Brennan Manning

182. “Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works – but our lives refute our faith.”

— Brennan Manning

183. “All that we have and are is one of the unique and never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time.”

— Brennan Manning

184. “Before I am asked to show compassion toward my brothers and sisters in their suffering, He asks me to accept His compassion in my own life, to be transformed by it, to become caring and compassionate toward myself in my own suffering and sinfulness, in my own hurt, failure and need. The degree of our compassion for others depends upon our capacity for self-acceptance.”

— Brennan Manning

185. “As Emile Leger said when he left his mansion in Montreal to go live in a leper colony in Africa, “The time for talking is over.”

— Brennan Manning

186. “Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have been not only forgiven, but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Thus, my friend archbishop Joe Reia says, “A sad Christian is a phony Christian, and a guilty Christian is no Christian at all.”

— Brennan Manning

187. “I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn’t only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.”

— Brennan Manning

188. “The wild, unrestricted love of God is not simply an inspiring idea. When it imposes itself on mind and heart with the stark reality of ontological truth, it determines why and at what time you get up in the morning, how you pass your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, and who you hang with; it affects what breaks your heart, what amazes you, and what makes your heart happy.”

— Brennan Manning

189. “The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.”

— Brennan Manning

190. “We need a new kind of relationship with the Father that drives out fear and mistrust and anxiety and guilt, that permits us to be hopeful and joyous, trusting and compassionate.”

— Brennan Manning

191. “Dear Abba, I’m starting out free today, free from the advertised lies that promise me everything from four-doors of turbo-charged happiness to some contraption that will shake, rattle, and roll my abs back into a pack I never had even in my twenties. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad: all of our desires to make ourselves worthy of this world but unfit for the world to come. I want to be a follower of the sacred dream, and one day arrive fully free, free at last.”

— Brennan Manning

192. “But in the one blinding moment of salvific truth, it was real knowledge calling for personal engagement of my mind and heart. Christianity was no longer simply a moral code but a love affair, the thrill, the excitement, the incredible, passionate joy of being loved and falling in love with Jesus Christ.”

— Brennan Manning

193. “I hear with growing clarity, it’s that God is calling each and every Christian to personally participate in the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.”

— Brennan Manning

194. “Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.”

— Brennan Manning

195. “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.”

— Brennan Manning

196. “Wrong thinking about God and people often begins with a debased image of ourselves.”

— Brennan Manning

197. “Biblically, tenderness is what follows when someone reveals to you your own inner beauty, when you discover your belovedness, when you experience that you are deeply and sincerely liked by someone.”

— Brennan Manning

198. “Blessed are not the enlightened whose every question has been answered and who are delighted with their own sublime insight, the mature and ripe ones whose one remaining action is to fall from the tree. Blessed, rather, are the chased, the harassed who must daily stand before my enigmas and cannot solve them.”

— Brennan Manning

199. “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.”

— Brennan Manning

200. “The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.”

— Brennan Manning