Brennan Manning, who spent a lifetime trying to rouse self-loathing, weary Christians, writes in a Glimpse of Jesus:
“Jesus perceived that the only way to help people experience life as gracious gift, the only way to help them to prize themselves as grace and treasure, was to treat them as treasure and be gracious to them.
I can be anointed, prayed over, sermonized to, dialogued with, and exposed to God’s unconditional love in books, tracts, and tapes, but this marvelous revelation will fall on ears that do not hear and eyes that do not see, unless some other human being refresh the weariness of my defeated days.
Barring prevenient grace, we humans simply will not accept our life and being as God’s gracious gift unless someone values us.”
Jesus loves and treasures you. And as his disciples, we love and treasure others.
It’s as simple as that, and yet so difficult because we often find it easier to love and treasure others than believe God does the same to us.
Yet he would never die for anything other than something he loved.
As Tim Keller famously wrote: “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
Don’t get hung up on the first part. Jesus took care of that, and he’ll take care of you because of the second part.
