Ragamuffin Gospel Quotes:

The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Nothing To Lose, Ragamuffin Gospel

God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.107, Multnomah

topic: Bears, Ragamuffin Gospel

The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Jesus, Lying, Heart, Ragamuffin Gospel

Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.

- Rich Mullins

source: Lufkin, Texas Concert Transcript, www.kidbrothers.net. July 19, 1997.

topic: Beautiful, Jesus, Children, Minority Groups, Jesus Love

God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.16, Multnomah

topic: Spiritual, Needs, Cosmetics, Ragamuffin Gospel, Neediness

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Hate, Believe, Angel, Feeling Guilty, Ragamuffin Gospel

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Christian, Jesus, Doors, Jesus Freak, Acknowledge Him

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.19, Multnomah

topic: Jesus, Done, Awareness, Ragamuffin Gospel

A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Saint, Goodness, Goodness Of God, Ragamuffin Gospel

The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God at the time of prayer.-

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2011). “The Signature of Jesus”, p.198, Multnomah

topic: Prayer, Thinking, Firsts, Contemplative Prayer, Ragamuffin Gospel

It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Fall, Cheese, Crackers, Falling Off, Ragamuffin Gospel

The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Running, Men, Discovery, Voyages Of Discovery, Ragamuffin Gospel

At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Spiritual, Jesus, Believe, Ragamuffin Gospel

I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself... God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2011). “The Signature of Jesus”, p.174, Multnomah

topic: Christian, Book, Thinking, Pointers, Ragamuffin Gospel

How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Brother, Confusion, Car, Winos, Ragamuffin Gospel

Reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended

- Brennan Manning

topic: Jesus, Reality, Jesus Christ, Ragamuffin Gospel

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.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Religious, Jesus, Book, Knowing Jesus, Brochures

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.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Self Esteem, Positive Thinking, Acceptance, Mind Games, Ragamuffin Gospel

The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning, John Blase (2013). “Dear Abba: Morning and Evening Prayer”, p.66, RosettaBooks

topic: Jesus, Son, Blood, Ragamuffin Gospel

Do the truth quietly without display.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Ragamuffin Gospel

I have been seized by the power of a great affection.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Jesus, Affection, Ragamuffin Gospel

When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Men, Impossible, Honest, Ragamuffin Gospel

How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!

- Brennan Manning

topic: Heart, Splendor, Glorious, Chapel, Westminster

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Solitude, Identity, Speech, Ragamuffin Gospel

The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Religious, Confused, Lying, Juncture, Fixers

Though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.22, Multnomah

topic: Distance, Church, Sin, Ragamuffin Gospel

Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, WE HAVE BEEN RESTORED to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of Grace

- Brennan Manning

topic: Son, Grace, Merit, Reformation, Ragamuffin Gospel

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.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Names, Mouths, His Love, God's Love, Goodness Of God

The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh; that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion; but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Jesus, Compassion, Forgiving, Ragamuffin Gospel, Sins Of The Flesh

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Hero, Two, Class, Local Church, Ragamuffin Gospel

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Grace, Guilt, Trying, Pettiness, Brownies

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.' 'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Church, Complaining, Stories, Ragamuffin Gospel

All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.17, Multnomah

topic: Gracious, Adulation, Charismatic, Ragamuffin Gospel, Bounty

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.17, Multnomah

topic: Mean, Dark, Light, God's Grace, Life Story

False gods - the gods of human understanding - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Jesus, Father, Understanding, False Gods, Ragamuffin Gospel

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Hurt, Believe, Soul, Ragamuffin Gospel

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Heart, Flesh, Stones, Ragamuffin Gospel, Heart Of Stone

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.

- Brennan Manning

source: Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.42, NavPress

topic: Love, Self, Identity, Christ Love, Define Yourself

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Temptation, Age, Looks, Ragamuffin Gospel

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.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Beautiful, Faces, Honest, Ragamuffin Gospel

If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says but watch what he does.

- Maurice Blondel

topic: Men, Want, Doe, Ragamuffin Gospel

In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Love, Soldier, Spiritual Life, Wounded Soldier, Ragamuffin Gospel

The Word we study has to be the Word we pray.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Study, Praying, Ragamuffin Gospel

When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Real, Past, Grace, Ragamuffin Gospel, Sins Of The Past

When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit.

- Brennan Manning

topic: Children, Commitment, Ideas, Inner Child, Ragamuffin Gospel