QUOTING: "The Ragamuffin Gospel"

QUOTING: "THE RAGAMUFFIN GOSPEL" by Brennan Manning:

p.21 - "The sweet sound of amazing grace...keeps us from denying that, though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed & pride still rages within us. As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry and resentful with those closest to me. When I go to church, I can leave my white hat at home & admit that I have failed. God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am... I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty, powerlessness, and neediness."

p.23 - "'If we but turn to God,' said St. Augustine, 'that itself is a gift of God.'"

p.25 - "Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."

p.27 - "Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men & women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace."

p.27 - "...the church..can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance."

p.27 - "Often hobbling through our church doors on Sunday morning comes grace on crutches ~ sinners still unable to throw away their false supports & stand upright in the freedom of the children of God. Yet, their mere presence in the church on Sunday morning is a flickering candle representing a desire to maintain contact with God. To douse the flame is to plunge them into a world of spiritual darkness."

p.38 - "The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God."

p.39 - "The fact that our view of God shapes our lives to a great extent may be one of the reasons Scripture ascribes such importance to seeking to know Him." (Peter van Breemen, "Certain As the Dawn", p.l3)

p.40 - "THINK BIG about God." **

p.40 - "...who desires all men & women to be saved..." (1 Timothy 2:4)

p.42 - "The Word we study has to be the Word we preach."

p.42 - "We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally & directly."

p.43 - "...each Christian should come straight to the Scripture alone & to the pure Word of God! You see from this babbling of mine the immeasurable difference between the Word of God & all human words, and how no man can adequately reach & explain a single Word of God with all his words. It is an eternal Word & must be understood and contemplated with a quiet mind."

p.43 - "Go to the Bible itself, dear Christians, and let my expositions and those of all scholars be no more than a tool with which to build aright, so that we can understand, taste and abide in the simple & pure Word of God..."
(Gerhard Ebeling, "Luther: An Introduction to His Thought", p.45-46)

p.44 - "...there is only one thing God asks of us ~ that we be men & women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything & for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace...when the gracious God is all we seek."

p.46 - "Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind-games or pop psychology. It is an ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace."

p.47 - "In terms of spiritual growth, the faith-conviction that God accepts me as I am is a tremendous help to become better."

p.49 - "..Jesus hung out with ragamuffins."

p.50 - "If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does." ~ Maurice Blondel

p.61 - "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today & forever." (Hebrews 13:8)

p.61 - "...experiencing God's love in Jesus Christ means experiencing that one has been unreservedly accepted, approved & infinitely loved, that one can & should accept oneself & one's neighbor."
(Walter Kasper, "Jesus the Christ", p.86)

p.63 - "When our inner child is not nurtured & nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable comments, and the surprises of the Spirit."

p.63-64 - "If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas & established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations & religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular... We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition. Of course, the open mind does not accept everything indiscriminately... but it does realize that reality, truth & Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended."

p.68 - "We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others (Christian Pharisaical behavior of *our* day). They are to be taken personally by each of us."

p.74 - "The foremost characteristic of living by grace is trust in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ."

p.74 - "The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently to mistrust ourselves."

p.75 - "We need a new kind of relationship with the Father that drives out fear, mistrust, anxiety and guilt, that permits us to be hopeful & joyous, trusting & compassionate. We have to be converted from the bad news to the good news, from expecting nothing, to expecting something."

p.76 - "The gospel of grace...calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other after hurting each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise & sexuality, and the radiance of existence."
(Eugene Kennedy, "The Choice to Be Human", p.128)

p.77 - "Grace means that God is on our side & thus we are victors, regardless of how well we have played the game."

** We take for granted God's gift of salvation & grace instead of showing immense, daily gratitude for it! **

p.84 - "There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are."

p.89 - "God intended for us to discover His loving presence in the world around us."

p.98 - "Amazement & rapture should be our reaction to the God revealed as Love."

p.99-100 - "Don't ever be so foolish as to measure My love for you in terms of your love for Me!...for I am God, not man."

p.100 - "...we cannot apply human logic & justice to the living God. Human logic is based on human experience & human nature. Yahweh does not conform to this model."

p.102 - "We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that, at this very moment, we are standing on holy ground."

p.107 - "We have made the bitterness of the cross, the revelation of God in the cross of Jesus Christ, TOLERABLE to ourselves by learning to understand it as a necessity for the process of salvation." :-(

p.113 - "For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust & reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change."

p.117 - "Christianity happens when men & women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven, but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb."

*** Faith means you want God, and you want to want nothing else. ***

p.171 - "One cannot be a disciple without being committed."

p.190 - "Abba just wants us to show up... We don't have to be perfect, or even very good, before God will accept us."

p.197 - [In the Deep South over 100 years ago...]...the phrase used to describe a breakthrough into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as, "I was seized by the power of a great affection." *** :o)