I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God. ~Brennan Manning
“The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception.”
Manning’s insights on God’s love and grace are filled with piercing truth and brutal honesty stopping you in your tracks.
I learned from Manning how to love Jesus, to love others and to love and accept myself, warts and all. He also taught me self abandon. It took truckloads of God’s grace to abandon my stinking selfish arrogance. I knew it needed to be replaced with humble heart – Self-abandon. In Hebrew the word humility is a picture of a Harnessed Strength. We can all be wild and raging like wild horses, breaking and hurting people while hurting ourselves in the process. But when God harnesses you with strength and meekness, you can climb up the rocky hill pulling a cartload of supplies unafraid of slipping back down the hill knowing that He’s got the reins.
A war horse has exceptional power, yet rather than being raging and reckless or completely cowardly, the war horse learned courage through realizing their potential and strength learned from meekness under authority. So how might meekness relate to our health?
“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Jesus taught. Therefore, your mental, emotional, and spiritual health begins with meekness to confess you need help.
Humility is not being a passive punching bag for the bullies. It’s letting God be GOD and you his created being.
The more I come to know myself the more I understand the how’s and why’s of rejections. It took some time to discern that my Maker was doing something in my life. He’s always taking me away from the world to take the world out of me.
Love is healing.
It is in my solitude that gave me time to delve deeper into the Scriptures. The Good News became real, more than narratives, poems, and literature.
Brennan Manning in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, he writes, “It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heaven suitcase from one hand to the other. It is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don’t have it altogether and are too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. It is for inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker. It is for poor, weak, sinful men and women . . . It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God. It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.”