Notes from Brennan Manning's
The Furious Longing of God
[part two]
The Love of God: More than a Nice Idea
"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." [75]
"The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment. Small wonder that the late spiritual giant Basil Hume of London, England, claimed that Christians find it easier to believe that God exists than that God loves them... Antony Campbell remarks: Originally, I believed the acceptance of a loving God involved a sufficient but relative minor shift of attitude. After all, it was on so many people's lips. The more I worked with it, the more I realize that the acceptance in faith of God's unconditional love was not only hugely significant, it required a major change of attitude... the major shift may be the images we have of God and ourselves. How radically is our image of God reshaped if we take seriously the belief in God as deeply, passionately, and unconditionally loving us? How radically must we rework our own self-image if we accept ourselves as loveable--as deeply, passionately, and unconditionally loved by God?" [75-76]
"[If] we continue to picture God as a small-minded book-keeper, a niggling customs officer rifling through our moral suitcase, as a policeman with a club who is going to bat us over the head every time we stumble and fall, or as a whimsical, capricious, and cantankerous thief who delights in raining on our parade and stealing our joy, we flatly deny what John writes in his first letter (4:16) - 'God is love.' In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity. [If] we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image." [76-77]
"Healing becomes the opportunity to pass off to another human being what I have received from the Lord Jesus; namely His unconditional acceptance of me as I am, not as I should be. He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace, whether I live up to the lofty expectations of His gospel or I don't. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am." [82]
"To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation." [82-83; cf. Phil. 4.8]
"Jesus said you are to love one another as I have loved you, a love that will possibly lead to the bloody, anguished gift of yourself; a love that forgives seventy times seven, that keeps no score of wrongdoing. Jesus said this, this love, is the one criterion, the sole norm, the standard of discipleship in the New Israel of God. He said you're going to be identified as His disciples, not because of your church-going, Bible-toting, or song-singing. No, you'll be identified as His by one sign only: the deep and delicate respect for one another, the cordial love impregnated with reverence for the sacred dimension of the human personality because of the mysterious substitution of Christ for the Christian." [86]
"The apostle Paul may have understood the mind of Jesus better than anyone who ever lived. He sums up his whole understanding of the message of Jesus in Galatians 5:6 when he writes, 'the only thing that matters is the faith that expresses itself in love.' According to Paul's criterion for greatness in the New Israel of God, the person who is the most Christlike, closest to the heart of Abba, is not the one who spends the most time in prayer. It's not the one who has the most PhDs. It's not the one who has the most responsibility entrusted to his care. It's not the pastor of the biggest megachurch. No, it's the one who loves the most. That's not my opinion. Those are the words in Galatians 5 that will judge us." [87-88]
"What would Jesus do to the Zacchaeus in your life and mine? He'd pause, look at them, and love them with such disarming simplicity, such unaccustomed tenderness, and such infectious joy that He'd wring from their calloused hearts real bursts of joy, gratitude, and wonder. Jesus expected the most of every man and woman; and behind their grumpiest poses, their most puzzling defense mechanisms, their coarseness, their arrogance, their dignified airs, their silence, and their sneers and curses, Jesus sees a little child who wasn't loved enough - a least of these who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them." [88]
"Jesus said the world is going to recognize you as His by only one sign: the way you are with one another on the street every day. You are going to leave people feeling a little better or a little worse. You're going to affirm them or deprive them, but there'll be no mutual exchange. If we as a Christian community took seriously that the sign of our love for Jesus is our love for one another, I am convinced it would change the world. We're denying to the world the one witness Jesus asked for: 'Love one another as I've loved you.' (John 15:12)." [88-89]
"Jesus the Christ [begins] to stride before [our] eyes, saying, 'The past is over and done. We all stumble on the way to maturity. We all look for love in the wrong arms, happiness in the wrong places. But out of it, you've become real. You've got a heart of immense compassion for the brokenness of others. You are utterly incapable of hypocrisy, and I am deeply in love with you." [100-101]
"What did the Lord say the night before He died? If any one of you loves Me, you'll be true to My word and My Abba will love you, will come to you, and make a home within you. Jesus spoke of the life of Grace, amazing Grace, not as some theological abstraction or concept; for Jesus, Grace was relationship, the presence of Abba Himself in our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit." [102-103]
"The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?" [104]
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