Book detail: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book explores the message of redemption and hope for individuals who may feel marginalized or defeated by life's challenges. It delves into the concept of divine love and forgiveness, offering comfort and inspiration to those seeking solace in the face of adversity.
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“God is enough. That is the root of peace. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God. "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting..." (Luke 15:7). In his brokenness, the repentant prodigal knew an intimacy with his father that his sinless, self-righteous brother would never know.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever. In the end, it is the only thing you can hang onto.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and 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, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“No man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Do the truth quietly without display.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace, that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God's loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have been not only forgiven, but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Thus, my friend archbishop Joe Reia says, "A sad Christian is a phony Christian, and a guilty Christian is no Christian at all.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can't save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“And Grace calls out, 'You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.' Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty... and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The confessing church of American Ragamuffins needs to join Magdalene and Peter in witnessing that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“One of the the loveliest lines I have ever read comes from Brother Roger, the Prior of the Protestant monks of Taize, France: 'Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' It is still difficult for me to read these words without tears filling my eyes. It is wonderful.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Charles de Foucauld, the found of the Little Brothers of Jesus, wrote a single sentence that's ahad a profound impact on my life. He said, "The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything." Never to be afraid of anything, even death, which, after all, is but that final breakthrough into the open, waiting, outstretched arms of Abba.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“For several centuries, the Celtic church of Ireland was spared the Greek dualism of matter and spirit. They regarded the world with the clear vision of faith. When a young Celtic monk saw his cat catch a salmon swimming in shallow water, he cried, "The power of the Lord is in the paw of the cat!”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
“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.”
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out