Brennan Manning

Got to Have Faith, Faith, Faith

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I think I read that faith means trusting an unknown future to a known God, although sometimes, God seems as unknowable as the future. I understand God as much as He has revealed Himself to me, but there’s so much more to know and even some that will never be known on this side of heaven.

I think faith means trusting what I know of me to what I know about God, giving what I know about my circumstances and my future into His Hands. I almost said understand instead of know, but faith goes beyond understanding. I trust when I do not understand because what I know of God proves His trustworthiness.

I keep thinking about that character in the Bible who said to Jesus, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

I get that. I relate to that 1000%.

My faith doesn’t have to be complete or perfect. I don’t have to have faith the size of a mountain to move God. All I need is faith the size of a mustard seed for God to move the mountain. Again, it’s not my big faith in God but my faith in a big God who is bigger than my fears, my doubts, and my circumstances.

I confess that sometimes I wonder IF God will show up, despite having seen Him never fail to show up at the right moment. In my best moments, my faith says, “I can’t wait to see how You pull this one off, because I know You will.”

I can’t wait for the day when my faith will be made sight. Until then, I will echo the words, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

And that will always be enough.

The Latest Peanut Update

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Today I worked from home for the first time since 2020. For the record, I’m one of those few oddball people who’d rather go into the office than work remotely. I like being around people, and the office environment helps keep my ADD brain reined in and focused.

But this time I had help from my furry little supervisor. She inspected the company laptop by rubbing her little face against it multiple times to make sure it passed muster and to leave her scent on it. Then she settled into her watchful loaf mode where she remained until she got bored and went off to take a nap.

Having her nearby was a comfort. Thankfully, she didn’t try to walk all over the keyboard or plant herself in front of the laptop. She wanted to make sure everything was A-okay for her human. When she was satisfied, she left for the day. I really wish I had her work hours.

One of these days, I’ll figure out a way to send her off on the commute to work so I can stay home and nap all day with intermittent snacking and the occasional zoomies.

Another Dose of Spurgeon

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I love getting a daily dose of Charles Spurgeon in my emails. There’s a soundness to the theology of those old-school preachers and writers that’s missing from a lot of pulpits and books today. They weren’t afraid to step on a few toes and speak the unvarnished truth. They weren’t also shy about proclaiming the goodness of God. Here’s today’s gem from Spurgeon:

“DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)

Oh Lord, in looking back we are obliged to remember with the greatest gratitude the many occasions in which you have heard our cry. We have been brought into deep distress and our heart has sunk within us, and then have we cried to you and you have never refused to hear us. You have rejected the prayers of our lusts, but the prayers of our necessities you have granted. Not one good thing has failed of all that you have promised. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever, our inmost heart is saying. Amen, blessed be his name.

Amen.

VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)

“Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting.” (James 1:5–6)

We cannot ask of a person of whose existence we have any doubt and we will not ask of a person of whose hearing we have serious suspicions of. Who would stand in the desert of Sahara and cry aloud, where there is no living ear to hear? Now, my dear hearer, you believe that there is a God. Ask, then! Do you not believe that he is here, that he will hear your cry, that he will be pleased to answer your cry to give you what you ask for? Now, if you cannot believe that there is a God, that he is here and that he will hear you, then confess your ignorance, and ask him now to give you the promised wisdom for Jesus’ sake.”

Deliverance from Fear

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“I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears”(Psalm‬ ‭34‬:‭4‬, ESV‬‬).

I heard a good word from a good friend today about this Psalm. Apparently when David penned this Psalm, He was still on the run from King Saul who sought to take his life. His life was still very much in danger. God’s promise to make him king was still in the future.

God didn’t deliver him from his circumstances but from the fear of his circumstances. In other words, God didn’t immediately pick him up from his current predicament and place him on the throne. David learned a deeper kind of trust and a deeper kind of worship in the midst of having to daily depend on God for deliverance.

The takeaway is that you or I don’t have to wait until every prayer is answered and every dilemma solved before we can worship. We can praise God in the mist of difficult circumstances that sometimes defy our understanding. We can remain under those circumstances and yet not be afraid because God is with us even then and even there.

I know that whatever comes my way isn’t bigger than the God I serve. I know that nothing in all the world can ever separate me from God’s love. I know that I am eternally secure in the arms of my Savior. Even if my circumstances don’t change, my perspective does because I see Jesus walking toward me in the middle of my storm with the power to make the waves and the wind cease or to simply comfort His child in the midst of those winds and waves.

And that’s enough.

The Lord Has Need

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“When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’’ So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them” (Luke 19:29-32, ESV).

I heard something tonight that blew my mind a little. It definitely got me thinking the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem in a different way.

Have you considered the story from the point of the colt? Have you thought that God appointed that a man should go and buy a donkey to take care of it and raise it and feed it? That donkey then proceeded to give birth to a colt, which the man also raises and feeds, all for the moment when Jesus sends His disciples to fetch the colt, saying “The Lord has need of it.”

Have you thought that maybe God placed you and me where we are in the time and place we’re in so that one day, you can be in the place to hear the words “The Lord has need of you”?

We don’t really think about all the time that passed before Jesus needed the colt. All that time that seemed wasted or useless was a time of preparation for one single event that led to the event that changed the entire world.

You may be in a season of preparation that proceeds the moment when God will say to you, “I have need of you.”

I get that in one sense God doesn’t really need you or me or anyone else. But I also know that God places you in the exact moment and location where He will be able to best mold you into the person He can use. Maybe it’s for a lifetime calling or maybe it’s a moment in time. But God will use you. All He asks of you and me is that we are available.

Stillness and Clarity

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“Just as a jar of muddy water settles and becomes clear as it is still, so do we.”

I wrote it down, so I think I got the gist of it. Basically, if you keep stirring up muddy water, it remains murky and opaque. You can’t really see through it and it remains unclear. But once you let it settle and remain still, it becomes clear.

Sometimes, we try to solve the lack of clarity in our own lives by adding more activity and involvement, hoping that more busyness will lead to insight and answers. Maybe what God is teaching you and me in that season is to be still until what is unclear settles and then circumstances become clear.

I think about those times late at night when I’m worked up over perceived relationship strife or work issues. The more I try to resolve it in my head, the more worked up I get. Usually, the only solution is to sleep on it. Typically, I will wake up the next morning with much more clarity than I had the night before.

There’s a reason God tells us to be still. When everything is stirred up, it’s hard to see God at work in the midst of confusion and chaos. Only when we let things settle and quit trying to work everything out ourselves will we finally see and hear God.

I believe that an alternate translation for be still is cease striving. Those are two sides of the same coin — if you be still, you will automatically cease striving. Of course, that means you have to create margins in your schedule and make time for stillness. If you’re a victim of the tyranny of the urgent, you will never find stillness.

“The sound of ‘gentle stillness’ after all the thunder and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God” (Jim Elliot).

My Favorite Bookstore

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I confess that I currently listen to more books than I read. Since I spend a lot of time in my car, it makes sense to listen to books through Audible. That said, I still love an honest to goodness bookstore that only sells books.

I do love me some Barnes & Noble, but I also admit they’re like the big bad bookstore in You’ve Got Mail. They not only sell books but movies, music, and lots of other stuff. They have a very retail chain feel to them.

My favorite bookstore right now is probably Landmark Booksellers. It’s close enough so I can go there regularly. They have a unique indie vibe that I really like. They also sell new and used books, which is definitely right up my alley.

On a bit of a tangent, there’s something about holding and reading a physical book, especially if it’s older. Those old books have an aroma and a texture that makes you want to soak in every word.

Parnassus is also a legit bookstore, but it’s a bit out of my way to go there, plus the parking in Green Hills is practically nonexistent. But that’s a good one for those who live more in the Nashville area.

I hope there will always be books and people who read books and places that sell books. I can’t imagine a world with only audio books and Kindles. That would be super sad.

Today, I picked up an old used C. S. Lewis book at Landmark. It wasn’t a planned purchase, but I saw this old book with the dust jacket still intact, and it called my name. What else could I have done?

A God We Can’t Exaggerate

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“Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can’t contain Him. Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?” (Francis Chan)

There’s a beautiful old book by J. B. Phillips called Your God Is Too Small. I think that’s the case for anyone who has ever lived who tried to conceive the idea of God. We always fall short. We always make God way too small.

The problem with a lot of deconstruction is that we make ourselves the standard by which God and truth are measured. We are definitely too finite and small to be any kind of measuring stick to which God must conform (thanks to Frances Chan for that one as well). It’s putting ourselves above God, essentially saying that God would never [fill in the blank] because I would never [fill in the blank].

God not only above us, He is so far beyond us that our minds could never have fathomed God at all apart from God revealing Himself to us. That blows my mind. It also humbles me whenever I get to the place where I think I have God figured out.

We can’t possibly exaggerate God. How cool is that? The biggest, grandest, wildest picture we can dream up or draw or sing about or write about falls short of who God is by far. All we can do is sit at the brink and adore the depth, to borrow from Matthew Henry.

God is never too small. Only our conception of Him is. But God made Himself incarnate and came near and became a tiny infant. That’s my favorite part.

Fall Nostalgia

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I think one of the main reasons I love fall so much is that so many of my favorite memories are tied to Autumn. I can get a whiff of an Autumnal scent in the air, and suddenly I’m 10 years old again.

This kind of weather makes me wish I could still go over to my grandmother’s house for dinner. I can smell those freshly baked rolls even now. Sometimes, I’d give just about anything to be a fly on the wall in 1982 to see my grandparents and my uncles and my cousin again.

I also have flashbacks to me wearing those plastic Halloween masks walking up and down Fox Meadows Road trick or treating for candy and the inevitable toothbrush from the one neighbor who was a dentist. Also, there was the time our next-door neighbor took us to a kind of Halloween Haunted House event at a church (the details are a bit fuzzy 40 years later).

I can also picture going to Gatlinburg back in the day before it became so touristy and commercialized. Riding in those station wagons, I probably asked “Are we there yet?” 3,998 times in the time it took to drive from Memphis to East Tennessee.

I figure Fall is a kind of slowing down of nature before the Sabbath of winter and the renewal of Spring. I could live in a world where we went perpetually from September to December back to September. I think October may be my favorite color.

Even though I can’t really go back, Fall reminds me that I’m blessed to have memories to cherish and people to miss. I had a great childhood and was loved a lot by a lot of people. My faith is a testimony to many generations of family members who prayed for me and showed me what loving Jesus looks like.

I also think Fall may be my very favorite scent.