The Overwhelming Fury of God's Love

 

Rich Mullins sang about the love of God being a "reckless, raging fury"; an ocean of both joy and sorrow. That is so much more than an encouraging thought. It is meant to be a transforming truth.

Brennan Manning makes the point in powerful prose from his book The Furious Longing of God.

Jesus cried from His heart, nails in His hands, and poured out His blood that we might believe His love for us. Significantly, Jesus chose the giving tree, His cross, as the demonstrative sign of His absolutely furious love for men and women. In the words of one early church father: "the mightiest act of love ever to arise from a human soul."

How is it then that we've come to imagine that Christianity consists primarily in what we do for God? How has this come to be the good news of Jesus? Is the kingdom that He proclaimed to be nothing more than a community of men and women who go to church on Sunday, take an annual spiritual retreat, read their Bibles every now and then, vigorously oppose abortion, don't watch x-rated movies, never use vulgar language, smile a lot, hold doors open for people, root for the favorite team, and get along with everybody? Is that why Jesus went through the bleak and bloody horror of Calvary? Is that why He emerged in shattering glory from the tomb? Is that why He poured out His Holy Spirit on the church? To make nicer men and women with better morals?

The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creations. Not to make people with better morals, but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friends, is what it really means to be a Christian. Our religion never begins with what we do for God. It always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wondrous things that God dreamed of and achieved for us in Christ Jesus.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Truth is...It's easier to type this than to live it, but if God's love is an ocean, I long to drown in its reckless, raging fury.

Self-Awareness Made Holy: Top 25 Jesus Quotes: #14

It was C. S. Lewis who said, "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

The Apostle Paul wrote, "Through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." (Romans 12:3 NASB)

I would generally agree that thinking of oneself at all is a dangerous, slippery path.

And yet...

Brennan Manning traveled a long and twisted road to get to a place where his observations on life and love and himself mattered and were able to influence and encourage hundreds of thousands of people.

From page 19 of The Ragamuffin Gospel, this is Brennan at his best:

"My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it."

Truth is...I believe the more I can see myself in this light, the more I will be able to live a life of powerful humility...like Christ.

Faith That Makes a Difference: Top 25 Jesus Quotes: #19

It's practically become a cliche'.

Not that I've done the research, but I'm pretty sure if someone took a poll asking non-believers why they don't believe or non-church-goers why they don't "go to church," the overwhelming majority of responses would hang the blame on that sizable swarm of scapegoats called "hypocrites".

Two things about that:

     1.  If there's a hypocrite standing between you and God, guess who's closer to God?
     2.  From Rich Mullins: "I hear people say, 'Why do you want to go to church? They are all just hypocrites.' I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite because nobody goes to church because they’re perfect. If you’ve got it all together, you don’t need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning."

But having said those two things, I don't mean to let believers and church-goers off the hook. Playacting at faith (the original meaning of hypocrisy) poses a real challenge for people on the outside looking in.

Which leads us to Number 19 on our countdown of the top 25 quotes about Jesus from azquotes.com. It is attributed to the Syrian saint, Ignatius of Antioch, and gives us a clue to what causes hypocrisy:

"Do not have Jesus Christ on your lips, and the world in your heart."

Another quote from Ignatius really brings it home:

"We recognize a tree by its fruit, and we ought to be able to recognize a Christian by his action.  The fruit of faith should be evident in our lives, for being a Christian is more than making sound professions of faith.  It should reveal itself in practical and visible ways.  Indeed it is better to keep quiet about our beliefs, and live them out, than to talk eloquently about what we believe, but fail to live by it."

Truth is...In the words of Brennan Manning, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."
   

The Original Ragamuffin On God's Love & Compassion

I only experienced Brennan Manning in person once in my life, and he was not as animated and on fire as he is in the short clip I'd like to share with you today.

But whether excited and flamboyant, or quiet and introspective, he always delivered the message that God loves us...

NO

MATTER

WHAT

https://youtu.be/0dMwu1rhTCQ

Truth is...I hope you are encouraged today. I hope you are inspired to greatness today. I hope you accept the love of Christ today.

A Glimpse of "A Glimpse..."

Allow me to present an appetizer platter of worthwhile nuggets from Brennan Manning's book, A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-hatred.

• [Quoting Bernard Bush] I hope it is clear that feelings of guilt, accompanied by anxiety, fear and restlessness, arise from deep within ourselves and are not an accurate gauge of the state of our souls before God. We cannot assume that he feels about us the way we feel about ourselves, unless we love ourselves intensely and freely.
• Salvation cannot be earned or merited but only humbly and gratefully received as a loving gift from the Father's hand.
• As in any lovers' quarrel, the making-up not only absolves the past but brings a new depth of trust and security to the relationship. There is more power in sharing our weaknesses than in sharing our strengths....The sinful and repentant prodigal son experienced an intimacy and joy with his Father in his brokenness that his sinless self-righteous brother would never know.
• I heard Jesus say, "For love of you I left my Father's side. I came to you who ran from me, who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched and beaten, and fixed to the wood of the cross."
• Because the mystery of iniquity lurks on the landscape and the power of sin waxes strong within us, we may come to the Lord bucking, screaming, and kicking. The self dies a slow death; the resistance to the Spirit remains real. The readiness to relinquish everything is more a painful process than a mystical zap. "We are accustomed to imagining the experience of conversion or sudden call to grace as an 'Oh, joy!' phenomenon," write Scott Peck. "In my experience,...at the moment we finally listen to the call we may say, 'O thank you, Lord', or we may say, 'O Lord, I am not worthy', or we may say, 'O $#*!, do I have to?'"
• Recognition of the problem is not the answer. Action is.
• The Word of God calls into being a faith-community characterized by unity without uniformity. Jesus is the way, but his light is refracted in myriad ways by multiple personalities.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Truth is...one final quote sums up the whole book: "The first step in liberation from self-hatred is to move from the darkness of self-delusion into the daylight of God's truth."

When E. F. Hutton Speaks...

Am I the only one here old enough to remember the E. F. Hutton commercials?

The scene would be a busy restaurant or a tennis match. Two people would be having a semi-private conversation, and one would say to the other, "Well, my broker is E. F. Hutton, and he says-" at which point, all other activity and noise would immediately stop and everyone's attention would be focused; intent on hearing the sage advice of E. F. Hutton. "When E. F. Hutton speaks, people listen."

I had an E. F. Hutton kind of moment recently while reading A Glimpse of Jesus, by Brennan Manning. When one of your favorite writers chooses to pass along a lengthy quote from "the most important book [he's] read outside the Bible"  -  a book that "has revolutionized [his] understanding of Christ and the meaning of Christian discipleship"  -  it might be a good idea to pay attention.

Hence, this excerpt from On Being a Christian, by Hans Kung.

The church of Jesus Christ is a home not only for the morally upright but for the moral failures and for those who for a variety of reasons have not been able to honor denominational teaching. The Church is a healing community proclaiming the Father's indiscriminate love and unconditional grace, offering pardon, reconciliation and salvation to the down-trodden and leaving the judgment to God.

A Church that will not accept the fact that it consists of sinful men and exists for sinful men becomes hard-hearted, self-righteous, inhuman. It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. But if a Church with a history of fidelity and infidelity, of knowledge and error, takes seriously the fact that it is only in God's Kingdom that the wheat is separated from the tares, good fish from bad, sheep from goats, a holiness will be acknowledged in it by grace which it cannot create for itself.

Such a Church is then aware that it has no need to present a spectacle of higher morality to society, as if everything in it were ordered to the best. It is aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the Church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance. If the Church self-righteously remains aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

Truth is...forgiveness and grace are a messy business, and it's good to have close companions along the way. That's what I call Church, and that's what I wish for each person reading these words.

What's a Ragamuffin?

Back in the days when I was getting paid to minister to and with young people, the small pastoral staff of which I was a part would normally get together on Sunday mornings to pray about the day to come. One particular Sunday, we had talked a bit before getting down to the business of praying, and something had struck me as being pretty hilarious. So, of course, I laughed.

It ended up flowing kind of like this: "Oh man! Ha ha ha! That's funny! Hee hee! Okay, then, let's pray. Father God, thank you so much for this beautiful morning. You've given us so many reasons to praise you and..."

Afterwards, I was asked, "How can you go so quickly from laughing so hard to praying so deeply? It seems like one or the other can't be sincere."

Press pause on the scene.

I've just started reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning; Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God. I can't even get past the preface without getting out my highlighter and going to work. The following paragraph not only answers the question posed in this blog-post's title, but the final five words touch on the answer to the question about my laughing and praying.

Who and what are the ragamuffins? The unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on his Mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary.

Truth is...my answer about how I can laugh and pray so closely together was then, and remains today: there's not as much space between hilarity and holiness as some people think.

The Taming of Jesus

Working at a Christian bookstore has been a good fit for me, what with my 14 years of experience in youth ministry, but I must admit to feeling a bit conflicted lately.

As with all brick-and-mortar booksellers, online retailers have been hurting us. There has been a need to expand the store's offerings beyond books and CDs. And so, an increasing amount of floor space is being given to gift items: mugs, jewelry, water bottles, monogrammed journals, wall hangings...

The result is that deeply-loved passages of Scripture have become slogans and catchphrases, instead of life-changing, soul-stirring truth. The cross has gone from being an "emblem of suffering and shame" to a color-coordinated piece of decor.

It all reminds me of this passage from Brennan Manning's The Signature of Jesus:

Organized religion has domesticated the crucified Lord of glory, turned him into a tame symbol. Viewed as a church relic, the cross does not disturb our comfortable religiosity. But when the crucified, risen Christ, instead of remaining an icon, comes to life and delivers us over to the fire he came to light, he creates more havoc than all the heretics, secular humanists, and self-serving preachers put together.

Truth is...Jesus never got along very well with The Establishment or did as was expected. As C. S. Lewis wrote about Aslan, the Christ-figure in The Chronicles of Narnia, "Safe?...Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me...

It is oh so very easy to find fault with the person we see in the mirror. We know the dark secrets about ourselves that we keep hidden from the rest of the world, and we are fairly certain that if the world really did know all about us, they wouldn't like us much at all.

Shine the light of this passage from Brennan Manning's Abba's Child into your dark corners and see what happens:

God loves who we really are - whether we like it or not. God calls us, as He did Adam, to come out of hiding. No amount of spiritual makeup can render us more presentable to Him....His love, which called us into existence, calls us to come out of self-hatred and to step into His truth. "Come to me now," Jesus says. "Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place."

Truth is...I suspect you need to hear these words because I know for certain that I need to hear them. And I know this, because I absolutely relate to more of Manning's words - found in the foreword of the same book:

There have been times...when the felt presence of God was more real to me than the chair I am sitting on; when the Word ricocheted like broken-backed lightning in every corner of my soul; when a storm of desire carried me to places I had never visited. And there have been other times...when I identified with the words of Mae West: "I used to be Snow White - but I drifted"; when the Word was as stale as old ice cream and as bland as tame sausage; when the fire in my belly flickered and died; when I mistook dried-up enthusiasm for gray-haired wisdom; when I dismissed youthful idealism as mere naivete; when I preferred cheap slivers of glass to the pearl of great price.

From Brennan Manning's "Lion and Lamb"

While searching my bookshelves for works to place on the Dewey's Gently Read Books Facebook page, I became reacquainted with a book by one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, LION AND LAMB: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus.

I have no intention of selling the book at this time, but I am more than happy to share some of the passages I had highlighted during my initial read...

Religion is not a matter of learning how to think about God, but of actually encountering Him. (p.13)

[God] loves the loveless, the unloving, the unlovable. He does not detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with His favor. In fact, He does not respond at all. The Father of Jesus is a source. He acts; He does not react. He initiates love. He is love without motive. (p.20, quoting James Burtschaell)

Christianity was no longer simply a moral code but a love affair; the thrill, the excitement, the incredible, passionate joy of being loved and falling in love with Jesus Christ. (p.34)

If God tears up your beautiful game plan and leads you into a valley instead of onto a mountaintop, it is because He wants you to discover His plan, which is more beautiful than anything you or I could have dreamed up. The response of trust is "Thank You, Jesus," even if it is said through clenched teeth. (p.58)

If you love yourself intensely and freely, then your feelings about yourself correspond perfectly to the sentiments of Jesus. (p.132)

Truth is...that last quote may be both the hardest and the most important one to experience. 

[SLAP!] Thanks, I Needed That

I recently began reading a book by Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus. I have really benefited from everything I've ever read by Manning (especially The Ragamuffin Gospel, from which I will surely be quoting in this space sometime in the future) and what I've read so far in this book has certainly not disappointed.

Especially moving is this note that was found in the office of a young pastor in Zimbabwe, Africa...following his death...a death caused because the young man believed in Jesus.

I'm part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit's power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made - I'm a disciple of his. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean in his presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power.

My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way rough, my companions are few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the enemy, pander at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till he comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till he stops me. And, when he comes for his own, he will have no problem recognizing me...my banner will be clear!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

There have been times - not nearly recently enough - when I felt like this. And those are the times when I've been the most filled with joy. Perhaps that's why I've also highlighted another paragraph: Philosopher William James said, "In some people religion exists as a dull habit, in others as an acute fever." Jesus did not endure the shame of the cross to pass on a dull habit. (If you don't have the fever, dear reader, a passion for God and his Christ, drop this book, fall on your knees, and beg for it. Turn to the God you half-believe in and cry out for his baptism of fire.)

Truth is...I need a slap in the face like this every so often. Maybe I'm not the only one.