Top 280 Brennan Manning Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “For the pharisee the emphasis is always on personal effort and achievement. The gospel of grace emphasizes the primacy of God’s love. The pharisee savors impeccable conduct; the child delights in the relentless tenderness of God.”

— Brennan Manning

252. “I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.”

— Brennan Manning

253. “We do not need to theorize about Jesus; we need to make him present in our time, our culture, and our circumstances. Only.”

— Brennan Manning

254. “Freedom is the cornerstone of Christianity.”

— Brennan Manning

255. “He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods – the gods of human manufacturing – despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do.”

— Brennan Manning

256. “It is interesting that whenever the evangelists Mark, Luke, or John mention the apostles, they call the author of the first Gospel either Levi or Matthew. But in his own Gospel, he always refers to himself as “Matthew the publican,” never wanting to forget who he was and always wanting to remember how low Jesus stooped to pick him up. We are publicans just like Matthew.”

— Brennan Manning

257. “His consistent banging on the drums of God’s unconditional love sounded at a time when many of us had about “had it up to here” with religion and church and, probably most importantly, ourselves. We were the tired, poor, self-hating huddled masses yearning to be free, and along came a patchwork preacher who grinned and said, “You already are. Abba loves you. Let’s go get some chocolate ice cream.”

— Brennan Manning

258. “Reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended.”

— Brennan Manning

259. “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.”

— Brennan Manning

260. “We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.”

— Brennan Manning

261. “Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice.”

— Brennan Manning

262. “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

263. “On one level, a roomful of men is always a dangerous thing. Competition is usually in the air, so the potential for violence is always nearby.”

— Brennan Manning

264. “If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives. When.”

— Brennan Manning

265. “It deserves neither God’s mercy nor men’s trust. The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of.”

— Brennan Manning

266. “It is through such failure and weeping that the Abba of Jesus conforms us to the image of His Son. Yet if our faith is not alive and dynamically operative, suffering is absurd, pointless.”

— Brennan Manning

267. “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.”

— Brennan Manning

268. “The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.”

— Brennan Manning

269. “Each moment of our existence, we are either growing into more or retreating into less.”

— Brennan Manning

270. “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

271. “Do we feel dry, weary, filled with a sense of failure? In the twinkle of an eye we can relate our mood to Jesus Who one day felt the same way and collapsed exhausted by a well in Samaria. I can invite this tired Jesus into my very discouragement: “Jesus, here I am, whipped, wiped out, in the pits, and all Yours.” – The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus.”

— Brennan Manning

272. “Abandonment is the triumph of trust in our lives.”

— Brennan Manning

273. “That is why God is a scandal to men and women – because He cannot be comprehended by a finite mind.”

— Brennan Manning

274. “Wallowing in shame, remorse, self-hatred, and guilt over real or imagined failings in our past lives betrays a distrust in the love of God. It shows that we have not accepted the acceptance of Jesus Christ and thus have rejected the total sufficiency of his redeeming work. Preoccupation with our past sins, present weaknesses, and character defects gets our emotions churning in self-destructive ways, closes us within the mighty citadel of self, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.”

— Brennan Manning

275. “In Christ Jesus freedom from fear empowers us to let go of the desire to appear good, so that we can move freely in the mystery of who we really are. Preoccupation with projecting the “nice guy” image, impressing newcomers with our experience, and relying heavily on the regard of others leads to self-consciousness, sticky pedestal behavior, and unfreedom in the iron grip of human respect.”

— Brennan Manning

276. “If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God’s kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.9.”

— Brennan Manning

277. “The poor man and woman of the gospel have made peace with their flawed existence. They are aware of their lack of wholeness, their brokenness, the simple fact that they don’t have it all together. While they do not excuse their sin, they are humbly aware that sin is precisely what has caused them to throw themselves at the mercy of the Father. They do not pretend to be anything but what they are: sinners saved by grace.”

— Brennan Manning

278. “Jesus comes in the way of weakness, giving us the chance to love him and making us feel that we have something to give him.”

— Brennan Manning

279. “But trust in the God who loves consistently and faithfully nurtures confident, free disciples. A loving God fosters a loving people. “The fact that our view of God shapes our lives to a great extent may be one of the reasons Scripture ascribes such importance to seeking to know Him.”2.”

— Brennan Manning

280. “May all that I know apart from You be nothing more than a chance traveling companion on the journey toward You.”

— Brennan Manning

281. “Jesus responded that He did not come to discuss the Law nor to challenge the Roman Empire. He had come to herald the Good News that the Really Real is love and to invite men and women to a joyous response to that love. Sober, hard-headed, realistic critics simply shook their heads. “Why doesn’t He address the critical questions?”

— Brennan Manning

282. “Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him – as nothing else can – and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.”

— Brennan Manning

283. “The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.”

— Brennan Manning

284. “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

285. “Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.”

— Brennan Manning

286. “That in the end, my sin will never outweigh God’s love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins.”

— Brennan Manning

287. “We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly.”

— Brennan Manning

288. “When we wander off the path, that trust pulls us back; and we do not flinch, hesitate, or worry about being unwelcome in the Father’s arms.”

— Brennan Manning

289. “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8.”

— Brennan Manning

290. “When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments, and the surprises of the Spirit. Evangelical faith is bartered for cozy, comfortable piety. A failure of nerve and an unwillingness to risk distorts God into a bookkeeper, and the gospel of grace is swapped for the security of religious bondage.”

— Brennan Manning

291. “I think we read memoirs hoping that someone has found an answer in his or her own life that can make sense of ours. The.”

— Brennan Manning

292. “The Christian commitment is not an abstraction. It is a concrete, visible, courageous, and formidable way of being in the world, forged by daily choices consistent with inner truth. A commitment that is not visible in humble service, suffering discipleship, and creative love is an illusion.”

— Brennan Manning

293. “Preoccupation with our past sins, present weaknesses, and character defects gets our emotions churning in self-destructive ways, closes us within the mighty citadel of self, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.”

— Brennan Manning