This was a powerful book. This is my
first time reading Brennan Manning. His writing was deep and honest,
and at times I had to stop and reflect on how what I read made me
rethink what I thought about many things. This book challenged my
faith in God and is changing me from a self-admitted 'control freak'
(I have always said that I can deal with just about anything as long
as I know what it is, does this make me a control freak?) into a
happy little 'ragamuffin' who is beginning to understand what it
means to trust God and let go. Though I am coming know what it
means, hopefully I will remember what it means, and when I learn
this, I will truly learn how to trust ruthlessly.
The basic premise of biblical trust is
the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to
experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired
only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials.
Is my Christian life combining faith and hope and growing into trust?
There can be no faith without doubt, no
hope without anxiety, and no trust without worry. Ruthless trust
gives definition to our lives, reveals what is life-giving within us,
shapes the decisions we make and the words we speak, prods our
consciousness, nurtures our spirit, impacts our interaction with
others, and sustains our will to meaning in life.
A good quote from the book that is
actually from Henri Nouwen: "To be grateful for the good things
that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our
lives- the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the
moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards
as well as the rejections- that requires hard spiritual work. Still,
we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has
brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our
lives between events and people we would like to remember and those
we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as
a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at
everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we
will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God."
This book was exactly what I needed to read right now. I am facing
difficult decisions, and above all I want to go where God leads me,
but it's scary and takes risk. Ruthless Trust reminded me not only
how much risk is involved in trust, but was also very encouraging at
the same time. Following God is not easy by any means. It requires a
lot of sacrifice, but it is the adventure of a lifetime and, though
I'm scared, I'm excited to see where life and God takes me.
I want to pray “Father, into your
hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire
day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of
me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst
of my life. Into your heart I entrust my feeble, distracted,
insecure, uncertain. Father, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our
Lord. Amen.”
