The Fallacy in Your Mind

The following comes from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.  I read this book 8 years ago and thought it was fresh and different than most of the things I had read or come across, and now am re-reading it and am blown away and extremely encouraged by Manning’s clarity on the gospel of grace.  I highly recommend this book as well as another book of his entitled The Furious Longing of God (and everything else that he’s written too

…..

The portrait of Peter, the rock who proved to be a sand pile, speaks to every ragamuffin across the generations.  Lloyd Ogilvie notes: “Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate.  That’s why he took his denial of the Lord so hard.  His strength, loyalty, and faithfulness were his self-generated assets of discipleship.  The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.

“Many of us face the same problem.  We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance.  Our whole understanding of him is based in a quid pro quo of bartered love.  He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent.  But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that he will love us, rather than living because he has already loved us.”