Is by the author/theologian/thinker Brennan Manning. It's called "The Signature Of Jesus". I've read and re-read it at least ten times, and my copy now has underlinings, scribbles and notes in the margin. Far from being a dusty and dry theologian, wrapped in his secure Ivory Tower, Brennan is a catholic ex-fransciscan monk, who came face to face with Jesus who transformed his life and way of thinking, and who now writes what he discovered. Part of his year he leads retreats, bringing Christians to a place where they can realise the amazing intensity of God's love for them. Here are some of my favourite quotes that have comforted/challenged/broken me over the past year:
(I hope I don't get done for plagiarism!)
"...In contemporary Christianity there is an essential difference between belief and faith. Our religious beliefs are the visible expression of our faith, our personal commitment to the person of Jesus. However, if the Christian beliefs inherited from our family and passed on to us by our church tradition are not grounded in a shattering, life-changing experience of Jesus as the Christ, then the chasm between our credal statements and our faith-experience widens and our witness is worthless. The gospel will persuade no-one unless it has so convicted us that we are transformed by it..."
This quote really impacted me, and cuts me to the heart everytime I read it. I struggle to live it:
"...Again and again Jesus stated that fear is the enemy of life. 'Don't be afraid, just believe' (Luke 8:50) 'Don not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom' (Luke 12:32) 'Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid' (Matthew 14:27) Fear breeds a deadening caution, a holding back, a stagnant waiting until people no longer can recall what they are waiting for or saving themselves for. When we fear failure more than we love life, when we are dominated by thoughts of what we might have been rather than by thoughts of what we might become, when we are haunted by the disparity between our ideal self and our real self, when we are tormented by guilt, shame, remorse, and self-condemnation, we deny our faith in the God of Love..."
That hit me like a freight train when I read it, because all of my life I've lived in fear of failure, of vhange, of risk, of opening up, and I still do. Jesus calls me to a new way of life, where I live for Him and let him worry about the details and the consequences. That's where faith (for this read "trust" to avoid confusion) comes in. Brennan writes of faith:
"...We are not travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited. We are faith explorers of a country without borders, one we discover little by little not to be a place but a person.Our faith includes our beiefs, but it also transcends them, for the reality of Jesus Christ never can be confined within doctrinal formulations..."
Do I know Jesus as a reality in my life? yes. Do I know that He loves me? yes. Have I realised that love so that is transforms my life, affecting every part of it? No. Here's two things that Brennan wrote on God's Love that made me think:
"...However my past twenty-five years of pastoral experience indicate that the stunning disclosure that God is love has had neglible impact on the majority of Christians and minimal transforming power. The problem seems to be that either we don't know it, or know it but cannot accept it; or we accept it, but are not in touch with it; or we are in touch with it, but do not surrender to it..."
"...The prophets of Israel had revealed the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob in a more intimate and passionate manner. But only Jesus revealed that God is a Father of incomparable tenderness, that if we take all the goodness, wisdom, and compassion of the best mothers and fathers who have ever lived, they would only be a faint shadow of the love and mercy in the heart of the redeeming God..."
I know those two statements are true in my own life. I know that God loves me, but it's only at certain times in my life that I've glimpsed just how MUCH that is. In those times, I've literally been broken by a love for me so powerful that it takes my breath away. That God, the God of the universe, would love me I find staggering after twenty years of being a Christian. It literally reduces me to tears, because no-one in my life has ever loved me like He does. How He can do it, knowing what I'm like, I've no idea, and I'm rendered speechless at the image of a God that is so passionately in love with me, that he will do anything, even go to Hell, and die for me rather than live without me in relationship.
That's a kind of love you can't put into words, more than a lover caring for you, more than a parent looking after you, more than a friend giving their life for you. It's more than all these things, it's undefinable, a quality of love the bible describes as "Agape". It's a love that originates from God, and has no comparison.
And this love, this passion, is directed at me.
Me.
Wow.
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