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The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives QUOTES

The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives QUOTES

1 " Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

2 " We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God's "crooked but straight path". It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

3 " Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

4 " None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we're told not to judge.

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

5 " The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

6 " What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation,
God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

7 " One of life’s greatest paradoxes is that it’s in the crucible of pain and suffering that we become tender. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

8 " Love proves its authenticity in fidelity, but reaches its completion in forgiveness. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

9 " Biblically, tenderness is what follows when someone reveals to you your own inner beauty, when you discover your belovedness, when you experience that you are deeply and sincerely liked by someone. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

10 " God’s grace always precedes his call. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

11 " Without the sharing of personal experience, prophetic preaching is impossible. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

12 " The heart enveloped in the tenderness of God passes that tenderness around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and the unworthy. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

13 " To live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is to humbly acknowledge the limitations of the rational, scientific, finite mind and to freely embrace mystery. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

14 " Every change in the quality of a person’s life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

15 " Many Christians today have discerned the speck in the eye of another, and they think they need look no further. Everyone has a pet peeve, a favorite target, a personalized ‘what’s wrong with the world’ speech. The villain may be televangelists, racism, the welfare system, the immigration system, the worldliness of the church—whatever. No one of us is immune from spreading evil, including those who pontificate about what the real problem is. “Brother Paul, American Christians revel in this kind of declamation. The tragedy is that the scorching words of Jesus in Matthew 23, ‘Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites,’ are now directed at other churches, authority figures such as the pope, the presiding bishop, politicians of the opposing party, the ACLU, and so forth. You and I know that we miss Jesus’ message entirely when we use his fierce words against anyone other than ourselves. Those words must be understood as directed to the self; otherwise, they’re perverted. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

16 " When I accept in the depth of my being that the ultimate accomplishment of my life is 'me' - the person I've become and who other persons are because of me - then living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is not a technique, not a craft, not the Carnegian ploy of how to win friends and influence people, but a way of life, a distinctive and engaged presence to God, other ragamuffins, and myself."
...
"Matthew 9:36 - 'When Jesus saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them. [This] speaks of the essential tenderness of Jesus, his way of looking at the world, and his deepest feelings about us sin-scarred ragamuffins."

re: Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in "Apocalypse Now" "Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

17 " The tenderness of Jesus frees us from embarrassment about ourselves. He lets us know that we can risk being known, that our emotions, sexuality, and fantasies are purified and made whole by His healing touch, and that we don't have to fear our fears about ourselves. The wisdom gleaned from tenderness is that, as ragamuffins entrusted by God, we can trust ourselves, and, thereby learn to trust others. When the healing tenderness lays hold of our hearts, the false self, ever vigilant in protecting itself against pain and seeking only approval and admiration, dissolves in the tender presence of mystery. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

18 " ...the institutional church, which exists to serve the people of God, is never to be confused with the church as mystery - the Christ-centered, biblically faithful, tender, and compassionate cloud of witnesses who walk the talk. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

19 " In a moment of naked honesty, ask yourself, 'Do I wholeheartedly trust that God likes me'... in this moment, right now, right here, with all my faults and weaknesses?' If you answer without hesitation, 'Oh yes, God does like me; in fact, He's very fond of me.' you're living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness."

re: A.W. Tozer's statement "What comes into our minds when we think about God, is the most important thing about us. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

20 " Words without poetry lack passion; words without passion lack persuasion; words without persuasion lack power. "

― Brennan Manning , The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives