In Truth, I’m a Coward
What to do when you don’t long for God
In 2005 one of the deadliest storms in US history rummaged through the city of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,300 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of families – to this day the city has never quite fully recovered.
But amid this devastation, one man remained to help rebuild his beloved community and city. His name is Brennan Manning. Manning, a former Franciscan priest, recovering alcoholic and best-selling author, sat out the storm to help in any way possible.
He helped reconnect a lost boy with his family and drove an elderly lady to safety, but mostly he prayed. As he told journalist Agnieska Tennant, “I spend an hour of prayer in the morning and an hour in the evening. The word I keep hearing inside is, “Peace is my gift to you.” And so the peace is inside while my external self-deals with disorientation, confusion, anxiety about the city.”
When asked why he stayed to help he responded with:
I have no wife, no children, no relatives here, and thought that maybe I could help the small number of people who remained….
I don’t mean it to sound heroic. Because I’m not, I’m basically a coward. But I thought maybe I could help somebody who stayed through the hurricane1.
What wonderful deeds this man performed.
The only issue is Manning didn’t do these selfless acts. The day after this interview Manning called the journalist and said:
The essential truth: I lied.
Manning did stay behind during Katrina but made up the stories of helping a little old lady and a scared little boy. In truth, “there was no one left around” for him to help.
So why did this man who helped thousands come to experience the radical grace, love and tenderness of Jesus lie?
As friend and writer Phillip Yancey puts it: A facility with words may make writers sound confident and wise but most often we write about what we long for2.
In other words, writers and guides like Manning often write to soothe their souls. Manning poured thousands of hours into convincing people that their fundamental identity is as beloved. Manning was a man who helped others make much of grace, yet he often wrestled with his own belovedness.
Which is something many of us can relate to.
Surrendering to the Furious Longing
In a conversation with a mentor on Monday I discussed some things I’ve been wrestling through, and he asked me if I genuinely long for holiness.
I paused and said parts of me do but other parts are lazy, selfish, and hell-bent on me me me.
I asked if I was beyond grace. He smiled and said never.
If I’m honest I’ve been stagnant and stubborn. And I’ve hidden these parts from God, which isn’t new I’m just repeating my great great great grandfather Adam who heard God in the cool of the day and hid.
Like Manning, I am helpless on my own. In truth, I’m sort of a coward too afraid to approach the merciful hands of the great Physician.
What are we to do when we feel fragmented, disillusioned, and dulled? When we feel overwhelmed by our deceitfulness, doublemindedness, and doubts. In short, when we simply run out of excuses and finally say “I have not wanted to want God.”
Like the father in Mark 9, we screech and yell with all of our guts:
“I BELIEVE HELP MY UNBELEIF!”
Or as A.W. Tozer invites us to pray,
O God,
I want to want You…but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys3.
It feels counterintuitive but that is the devil’s great scheme to keep us away from the tender and furious care of God. In reality, we are messy and wretched, selfish and mean and we are caring, prayerful, and funny – in other words, we are amalgamations.
Many of us “have a longing for God and an aversion to God.” If like me you feel like an utter coward, phony, and at wits end good. We need not do anything but pray for in prayer we receive a beautiful exchange. We live in a world that clamours for us to do more, read more, know more, but the gospel says it is finished, simply receive the unforced, never-ending rhythms of grace.
In prayer, we move beyond theoretical abstractions about God, beyond our sinfulness, and into radical amazement that liberates and heals. In prayer, we’re exposed and known, as one pastor writes:
“Jesus offers something scandalously freeing—you can be fully known and still deeply loved. You no longer need to edit yourself for mass approval when you’re already approved by the One who matters most4.”
We were designed for wondrous and intimate union and communion with a beautiful and loving and healing God – the choice is ours, to settle in our spiritual anaemia and pursue Jesus in fits and spurts, to wander then return to God like a whimpering puppy or make my home “in the truth of my belovedness, caught up in reckless raging fury that is the love of God. And learn to pray5.”
Agnieska Tennant, A “Corward” Who Stayed to Help, in Christianity Today, October 6, 2005, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2005/10/coward-who-stayed-to-help/
Phillip Yancey, “Farewell, Brennan,” in Philip Yancey Blog, April 2013, https://philipyancey.com/farewell-brennan/.
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, (Chicago: Moody Publishers 2006), 26;37.
Jon Tyson, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you,” March 10, 2025. His weekly email is 1,00000% worth subscribing to, it’s one of five that I actually read.
Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God, (Colorado Springs: David Cook Publishing, 2009).