Truth

I recently joined a book study. We just began reading Abba's Child by Brennan Manning. I have been looking forward to reading one of Brennan's books after hearing him speak my freshman year at the University. Brennan Manning is a man who speaks truth, God's truth. Abba's Child is about ridding the masks we wear, the facades we display and revealing our true selves.

I have read chapters one and two thus far and this is some of what I have learned from chapter one, which I think I already knew but fail(ed) to recognize.

We project onto God our own attitudes and feelings of ourselves. Thus, if we feel hateful towards ourselves, we assume that God feels hateful toward us. We cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves- unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.
We do not hate God, we hate ourselves.

God loves us; not inspite of our sins and faults but with them. Though God does not condone or sanction evil, He does not withhold His love because there is evil in us.

We cannot accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less accept that God could possibly love us.

It is relatively easy to feel loved by God and have self-acceptance when our life is together. But what happens when life falls through the cracks? When we sin and fail, and our dreams shatter? What happens when we come face-to-face with the human condition?

Are we together then? Do we have a strong sense of self-worth, and feel like the beloved child? Or God love us only in "goodness" and not in our poverty and brokenness as well?
(Brennan Manning, 1994)

"This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted." -Nicholas Harnan