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May
12
I’ve been a longtime fan of Brennan Manning. From reading his books to hearing him live, he’s one of the most profound one-hit-wonders I’ve ever encountered. His message is the same in all he writes and speaks, told in many different ways. His latest book, The Furious Longing of God, is another concoction of re-told necessities. If you’ve never read Manning before, this book is any easy way to begin. The following are a few of my highlights:
“I believe that Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ.”
Theology is “faith seeking understanding” and spirituality is “the faith-experience of what we understand intellectually.”
“The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.”
“The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.”
“Love by its nature seeks union.”
Referencing Luke 11:2-4, “Jesus is saying that we may address the infinite, transcendent, almighty God with the intimacy, familiarity, and unshaken trust that a sixteen-month-old baby has sitting on his father’s lap—da, da, daddy.”
“How is it then that we’ve come to imagine that Christianity consists primarily in what we do for God?”
“Our religion never begins with what we do for God. It always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wondrous things that God dreamed of and achieved for us in Christ Jesus.”
“I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again… I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.” “What would I actually do if I had it to do all over again? Heeding John’s counsel, I would simply do the next thing in love.”
The ordinary pablum of popular religion caters to the idealistic, perfectionistic, and neurotic self who fixates on graceless getting worthy for union, while allowing the prostitutes and tax gougers to dance into the kingdom. Our strategies of self-deception persuade us that abiding restful union with Jesus is too costly, leaving no room for money, ambition, success, fame, sex, power, control, and pride of place or the fatal trap of self-rejection, thus prohibiting mediocre, disaffected dingbats and dirtballs, like myself, from intimacy with Jesus.
“The idolatry of ideas has left me puffed up, narrow-minded, and intolerant of any idea that does not coincide with mine.”
“What is the sign, par excellence, of authentic discipleship? The night before Jesus died, he left no doubt in anybody’s mind. ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you… By this all men will know’ (John 13:34-35 NASB).”
“You have the power to give someone the courage to be, simply by the touch of your affirmation.”
“By extinguishing the spirit that burns in the gospel, we scarcely feel the glow anymore.”
“To prefer contempt to honor, ridicule to praise, humiliation to glory—these are some of the classic formulas of Christian greatness.”
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand new creations. Not to make people with better morals, but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all…
Thanks, Brennan, for the reminders, the reprimands and the relentless way you pursue the heart of God.
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