He Can’t Stop Loving You
I died for 7 minutes. March 25th, 2013. Gone.
And when I came back… the one thing I carried with me wasn’t a theology lesson. It wasn’t a doctrine. It was a knowing. Deep in my bones. That I was loved. Completely. Without condition. Without limit. In the middle of all my mess.
I’ve spent years trying to find the words for it. Turns out… someone already did.
Brennan Manning was an author, a former Franciscan priest, and a man who knew his own brokenness inside and out. He didn’t preach from a pedestal. He preached from the pit he’d been pulled out of. And in this short two-minute piece… he says everything I’ve been trying to say my whole life.
I’m not going to interrupt him. I’m not going to paraphrase or cherry-pick. I just need you to sit with this. Read it slow. Let it land.
Brennan Manning’s Words
The compassion of Jesus is the compassion of Almighty God. And Jesus says to your heart and mind tonight, “Don’t ever be so foolish as to measure my compassion for you in terms of your compassion for one another. Don’t ever be so silly as to compare your thin, pallid, wavering, moody, depending on smooth circumstances, human compassion with mine. For I am God as well as man.”
When you read in the gospels that Jesus was “moved with compassion”, it is saying his gut was wrenched, his heart torn open, the most vulnerable part of his being laid bare. The ground of all being shook, the source of all life trembled, the heart of all love burst open, and the unfathomable depths of relentless tenderness was laid bare.
Your Christian life and mine don’t make any sense unless in the depth of our beings we believe that Jesus not only knows what hurts us, but knowing, seeks us out. Whatever our poverty, whatever our pain. His plea to his people is “Come now, wounded, frightened, angry, lonely, empty, and I’ll meet you where you live. And I’ll love you as you are, not as you should be, ’cause you’re never gonna be as you should be.”
Do you really believe this? That with all the wrong turns you made in your past, the mistakes, the moments of selfishness, dishonesty, and degraded love… do you really believe that Jesus Christ loves you? Not the person next to you, not the church, not the world, but that he loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity. That he loves you in the morning sun and the evening rain, without caution, regret, boundary, limit. No matter what’s gone down, he can’t stop loving you.
This is the Jesus of the gospels.
What This Means to Me
I didn’t hear those words when I was 7 minutes gone. But I felt them. Every single one.
Come now. Wounded. Frightened. Angry. Lonely. Empty.
That’s not a hypothetical list. That’s Tuesday at 3 AM when the ceiling is staring back and you’re replaying every wrong turn. That’s the moment you’re convinced you’ve disqualified yourself from being loved.
And right there… in that exact moment… you’re met.
Not “won’t stop loving you.” Manning says can’t. As if the very nature of the Creator is so saturated with love for you that stopping would mean ceasing to exist.
Three months without food. Three days without water. Three minutes without hope. That’s the math of survival. But what Manning is describing isn’t survival… it’s the reason survival matters. Because there’s something on the other side of all that pain that isn’t just waiting for you. It’s running toward you.
You don’t have to be fixed. You don’t have to be ready. You don’t have to clean yourself up first.
You just have to be honest enough to say… I’m here.
Light doesn’t fight darkness. It just shows up.
Source: Brennan Manning on God’s love (2:07)