Quote

Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life--be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others...I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba's child [a child of God] becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused

Brennan Manning

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Brennan Manning
Age: 75 †
Born: 1937
Born: April 27
Died: 2013
Died: April 12
Author
Catholic Priest
Theologian
New York City
New York
Richard Francis Xavier Manning
Life
Others
Whenever
Abba
True
Anger
Alienated
Change
Response
Pressing
Anything
Allow
Dictate
Self
Identity
Ambiguous
Need
Compassion
Tenderness
Moralizing
Children
Becomes
Righteous
Defensiveness
Needs
Child
Confused
Tentative

More quotes by Brennan Manning

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We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.
Brennan Manning
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The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.
Brennan Manning
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* Recognize that God is with you. * Acknowledge God knows what He's doing. * Search for God's will: the path He desires you to take in life. * Consider what God did for you when He sent Jesus to die on the cross (forgiveness and righteousness)
Brennan Manning
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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
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You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.
Brennan Manning
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A ragamuffin knows he's only a beggar at the door of God's mercy.
Brennan Manning
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Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.
Brennan Manning
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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
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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
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The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.
Brennan Manning
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The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.
Brennan Manning
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Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
Brennan Manning
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The love of Christ embraces all without exception. Fire of love, crazy over what You have made. Oh, divine Madman. (Prayer of Catherine Siena) Simply do the next thing in love. I have no sense of myself apart from you. Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem. (In loving me, you made me lovable.)
Brennan Manning
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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
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Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.
Brennan Manning
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In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
Brennan Manning
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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
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Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
Brennan Manning
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There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind.
Brennan Manning
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Hope your wildest hopes, dream your maddest dreams, imagine your most fantastic fantasies. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the love of my Heavenly Father only begins.
Brennan Manning