Brennan Manning

Pointing Fingers and Passing Blame

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. … How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

I think we all know that when you point the finger at someone, there are typically four fingers pointing back at yourself. Then there’s the story in the gospels where the religious leaders bring a woman caught in the act of adultery. They’re all about to stone her to death and expecting Jesus to give them the go-ahead, but Jesus instead says “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

That’s a genius answer. Obviously, Jesus isn’t condoning her behavior (or the behavior of whoever was the other party in the act of adultery), but he’s saying that their sin of pride is just as evil in the sight of God as her act of adultery. They don’t get to make the call on the woman’s destiny. God does.

It’s easy to point the finger at public figures whose lives are on display. True, many of them have made dubious and questionable choices. To cast aspersions on their characters when we are just as fallen as the rest of humanity would be the height of hypocrisy.

I believe calling out sinful behavior is biblical, as long as it is done in love and humility from the perspective that I could have done the same or worse given the same circumstances.

What did Jesus do for us when we were at our worst? He demonstrated His love for us by dying for us. He paid the ultimate price so that we could be free from the sin that held us captive. He sent His Spirit so that we could have the power to live the kind of holy lives that please God.

When it comes to serving, it helps to remember the line from Philippians to regard others as better than ourselves and not to seek to vaunt ourselves at the expense of others. Love as God defines it seeks the best for the beloved as God did for us. Instead of pointing fingers, may we always point to Jesus.

Gravy

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Jesus, may we rest content in being known and loved by you today. Everything else is ‘gravy'” (Scotty Smith).

I love that. It puts it all into perspective. If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is on our side, what can man do to us? If He didn’t spare His only Son, how will He not give us everything else we need?

I think the problem is that a lot of what causes us to lose sleep at night is gravy. We get so caught up in the tyranny of the urgent that we forget to keep the main thing the main thing — God so loved the world.

God so loved me that I couldn’t possibly stay the same person I was yesterday. A love like that can’t help but be transforming as I the beloved become more like the One who loves me.

God so loved you that in that moment of realizing the measure of that love you realized that you couldn’t go back to being who you used to be, even if you wanted to.

God’s love for the world is so amazing and so divine that it demands a response. You can’t come against a love like that and remain neutral. You have to pick a side — either for or against, but not neutral.

And everything else is gravy.

Have Patience

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

For those of you of a certain age, the title of this post triggered a musical memory for you. If you need a little more assistance, think of the words: Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry . . .” No? Moving on.

I confess that some days I have very little patience. I have what in this day and age could be referred to as a microwave mentality. I want what I want, not sooner or later but now. I think I am a product of this culture of instant gratification.

But I also confess that when it comes to patience I have a very short memory. I forget how patient God has been with me all this time. After all, it’s God’s infinite kindness that leads us to repentance. I am thankful that God is much more patient with me than I am with Him (or anybody else for that matter).

But isn’t that the very definition of love? The love chapter in 1 Corinthians starts off with “Love is patient.”

It’s first on the list of what love should look like. Maybe that’s because God who is the epitome of love is infinitely patient. Maybe that’s because we as His children are notoriously impatient. Either way, that’s the first place to start when you want to know what it means to love.

You begin not with striving in your own effort to be patient. You know how that goes. Remember how you try to pray for patience and immediately run into scenarios that cause you to lose your patience?

Patience begins with seeing how patient God has been with you and me. It’s remembering all the times God had every right to wipe us off the map but chose to wipe the slate of our sins clean. It’s recalling that God should have let us have it by pouring all His wrath on us but instead poured it on His Son Jesus instead and poured grace and mercy on us instead.

Lord, help us to live out the patience you have constantly and consistently demonstrated to us over our lives. May we always remember that you were not willing that we should perish but that we should have eternal life. May we be as patient to others as You have been to us. Amen.

A Prayer for Sunday Morning Ser

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Lord, I pray for all the churches who will be holding services tomorrow. May Your true Gospel go forth from every pulpit to every heart in every pew (or seat). May You call out men and women to missions and the ministry. May You ruin Your people for the ordinary, so that they can no longer be satisfied with the status quo.

Lord, from every church may You draw people to a saving faith in Your Son Jesus as Lord and Savior. May they be saved not only from sin but to service and to worship. May they become disciples who will make disciples and may their faith increase a hundredfold as the grow in the knowledge and stature of You.

Lord, as Your ministers bring Your word, may you fill them with Your Spirit. May You put Your words in their mouths so that every word that they speak that comes from You may not fall to the ground but accomplish what You set them to accomplish.

Lord, make our hearts good soil to receive Your words so that they may take root and go deep and produce a harvest of abundance. Help us not merely to be hearers but doers of Your word. Help us not only to obtain information but to be transformed and renewed by what we read so that we might be enabled to obey it and live it out.

Lord, help us never to see church as a building or a location but a gathering of Your people to sing Your praises and proclaim Your Gospel to the nations. May we continue to be the church as we exit the sanctuary doors and until we meet again the next Sunday. Amen.

A Prayer for Humility and Sincerity in our Faith

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment
“We long for a humble and sincere faith in our divine Lord. Lord, if it is necessary to break our hearts in order that we may have it, then let them be broken.If we have to unlearn a thousand things to learn the sweet secret of faith in him, let us become fools that we may be wise, only bring us surely and really to stand upon the Rock of Ages—so to stand there as never to fall, but to be kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.
As Christians, we should be humble. Lord take away our proud look; take away the spirit of ‘stand by, for I am holier than thou;‘ make us condescend to people of low morals. May we seek them out and seek their good. Give to the church of Christ an intense love for the souls of men. May it make our hearts break to think that they will perish in their sin. May we grieve every day because of the sin of this city. Set a mark upon our forehead and let us be known to you as people who sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst of the city.
Amen” (Charles Spurgeon).

Lord, make us humble in our relations to others and to You. Keep us sincere as we seek Your face and serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. May our compassion never cancel out our convictions nor our convictions cancel our compassion.

Jesus, just as You told the woman caught in the act of adultery that He didn’t condemn her, so may our hearts be far from judging with an eye to condemn. And just as You told her to go and sin no more, may we also be zealous to stir one another to holiness in all our words and deeds.

Help us to love with a holy love that seeks nothing less than the best from the beloved, just as You settle for nothing less in us than for us to be made like Christ in every aspect of our lives. Amen.

Not Ours

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

That’s a good reminder for when you feel so self-important because you were smart enough to choose Jesus. You weren’t. I definitely wasn’t. I’m not about to go all five-point Calvinist on you, but I do believe that we choose God because He chose us first. That’s biblical.

I also know that any good in me at all is Jesus. It’s not my righteousness. It’s completely His. That’s the truth that keeps me grounded when people tell me how great I am. More like how great God is. Though sometimes I forget and think it’s all about me.

The Bible says that Jesus became sin for me. Any sin that Jesus carried was mine. Yours. Anyone in the world who has ever sinned? That sin was laid on Jesus. He carried the weight of the world’s sin up to Calvary.

And if that weren’t amazing enough, He gave us His own perfect sinless righteousness. Now when God sees us, He doesn’t see every impure thought and mixed motive. He doesn’t see our selfishness and laziness. He sees the absolute perfection of Jesus who never sinned and who obeyed the Law 100%.

That’s a good reason to give thanks during this Thanksgiving season, even if there’s nothing else to be grateful for. Spoiler alert: there is.

Thank You, Lord, for taking our sin that we could never have paid for in a million lifetimes and giving us Your righteousness that we never could have earned in a million tries. Amen.

Room in the Inn

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I realized today that I have been serving in the Room in the Inn ministry at Brentwood Baptist Church for 15 years. I saw the post where a friend invited me to join him and a few others on Monday nights to help minister to the homeless men who need a place to stay on those cold winter nights.

It’s been a blessing from day one. I know that I originally went in with the mindset of being a blessing to those men but more often than not they have been the ones to bless me with their resilient faith and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds.

These days, a typical Room in the Inn Monday night looks like welcoming 24 men into our church building. We line up in the hallway and clap and cheer as they come in from the bus. They’re not just visitors. They are guests and we want them to feel like rock stars — we want them to know that they are wanted and loved.

Then we serve them a warm meal and sit with them and talk with them. Hopefully, we find out some of their stories. Many are open and willing to share their journey with us. We also have a place for them to write out their prayer requests that we will then faithfully pray over in the days and weeks to come.

The highlight of the evening for me is when we offer a Bible study. It’s completely optional. We don’t force them to come but we try to encourage them as much as possible to attend. I’ve been blessed to be able to lead some of these Bible studies along with a few others.

For those who are looking for a low-risk high reward way to serve, Room in the Inn meets at the Wilson Hall entrance to Brentwood Baptist Church on Mondays starting at 5:30 pm. It’s completely self-funded and is one of many locations through Room in the Inn that offer a place for people to stay out of the elements and weather for the night.

I always remember the words of Jesus when He said that whatever you did to the least of these, you did it for Him. Mother Teresa called those in poverty and homelessness Jesus in His most distressing disguise. I know that to share the love of Christ is our main goal and focus from now until the end of the season at the end of March.

Do Something

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will. Record it with ink and with blood–work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

My pastor often says at the end of his sermons that we need to take what we learned and determine to put it into practice or else it will stay in the room when we leave on Sunday. The Bible tells us not to be hearers only but doers of what we hear.

The best way to hear God’s voice is to do what you already know God has told you to do. You need to take that first step before God will show you the next one. You need to show yourself faithful with the smaller things before God trusts you with bigger ones.

Once you set yourself to obey, you find that you are operating in the strength and wisdom of the Almighty God. Once you surrender and commit to follow, God enables you to obey. You may be the least qualified to do what God has called you to do, but God’s strength is perfected in your weakness and as the old saying goes, He doesn’t call the qualified but He qualifies the called as they step out in faith and not as they sit in their recliners and talk about how they might one day be obedient when it’s convenient.

Following Jesus and falling on your face isn’t failure. Stepping out of the boat like Peter and sinking when you see the size of the storm isn’t failure. Staying in the boat and never taking a step is failure because you never get to see how God might have pulled you up and pushed you forward if you never step out of the boat.

Lord, help us not to read your Word to obtain more information. Transform us and renew our minds through Your word that we might be enabled and willing to obey and do what it says. Amen.

God and the Next Breath

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Lord, I come to you with empty hands. If all I have today is You and the next breath, that will be enough.”

A friend taught me that prayer a long time ago, and I was reminded of it today seeing it in my Facebook memories. I think that prayer of gratitude and dependence is the perfect antidote to this culture of pervasive entitlement and greed.

Really, all I bring to God is a pair of empty hands. I bring nothing. Anything in me or from me that’s any good at all was first a gift from God to me. All that I have that wasn’t given to me by God is God Himself, and even that is a gift.

If all I have in the next 24 hours is God and nothing else but the next breath, that’s enough. If I have all the riches in the world and all the knowledge in the world and not God, I have nothing. I seem to recall a Bible verse about gaining the whole world and losing your soul in the process being futile.

Basically, every moment from here to eternity is a gift. I didn’t earn the next breath. I don’t deserve the next breath. God’s grace is what sustains me and keeps me going.

I think if I lived like I believed that, there’d be a lot less anxiety and a lot more adoration. There’d be a lot less worry and a lot more worship. There’d be a lot less talk about the weather and sports and politics and more of me sharing the goodness of God out of the overflow of a heart made full by gratitude.

Lord, I really do come to You with empty hands. If all I get from You today is You and the next breath, that’s enough. I’m good. In fact, I’m more than good. I’m blessed. Amen.

Freed From All Fear

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
He freed me from all my fears.
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened;
he saved me from all my troubles.
For the angel of the Lord is a guard;
he surrounds and defends all who fear him.” (Psalm 34:4-7).

I read today that God doesn’t ask us to be fearless but instead invites us to bring our fears to Him. Faith is being afraid but trusting and continuing on anyway. I think those who say they are never afraid are largely in denial or not really honest about what they’re facing. Maybe there are a few who are genuinely fearless but the vast majority live with the ever present reality of fear.

The antidote to fear isn’t denial and it isn’t some macho exercise in mountain climbing or cliff diving. It’s a continual seeking of the face of God. It’s a continual dependence on God, a moment by moment surrendering of self.

Desperation is good if it drives us to prayer. Of course, it shouldn’t take exhausting all other possibilities before we resort to prayer, but often that’s the case. Prosperity and pleasure have a way of making us forgetful of our need. Only pain can waken us to our deep need of God’s grace and mercy.

Lord, thank You for everything in our lives that drives us to You. Keep us ever mindful of You in every season so that we can keep our eyes fixed on You in every circumstance and know the joy of Your faithfulness and provision. Amen.