The Ragamuffin Gospel

[Blake]

I got to pick up The Ragamuffin Gospel at Barnes & Noble this afternoon. Haven't started actually reading it yet, but highly looking forward to it as part of my devotional time. Here's a few quotes.

“The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”

“What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.”

“The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.”

I first discovered the author Brennan Manning while watching the Ragamuffin movie on Netflix. My Stepmother recommended it to me, she and my father being big Rich Mullins fans, and I finally took her up on it one night recently and watched it. Fantastic movie btw, check it out sometime. After I heard a clip of Manning preaching I instantly had to check him out. He was basically saying everything that I've come to understand after my strange and winding journey with faith and now I find myself saying rather affectionately that I, too am a ragamuffin. Just some scrub, hopelessly dependent on the mercy and grace of God.

Anyone read it, or heard about Manning, the Ragamuffin Gospel, or Rich Mullins' testimony?

 

[Willie T]

It's a beautiful book, but I'm afraid it would offend a number of people here.

This is one that seems to get a lot of people quite agitated.

 

[Je'di-Benjamin]

I got to pick up The Ragamuffin Gospel at Barnes & Noble this afternoon. Haven't started actually reading it yet, but highly looking forward to it as part of my devotional time. Here's a few quotes.

“The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”

“What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.”

“The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.”

I first discovered the author Brennan Manning while watching the Ragamuffin movie on Netflix. My Stepmother recommended it to me, she and my father being big Rich Mullins fans, and I finally took her up on it one night recently and watched it. Fantastic movie btw, check it out sometime. After I heard a clip of Manning preaching I instantly had to check him out. He was basically saying everything that I've come to understand after my strange and winding journey with faith and now I find myself saying rather affectionately that I, too am a ragamuffin. Just some scrub, hopelessly dependent on the mercy and grace of God.

Anyone read it, or heard about Manning, the Ragamuffin Gospel, or Rich Mullins' testimony?

I just found this book in a box in my house while moving, I was thinking about reading it and I take this as a sign to read it! thanks!