Excerpts from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Multnomah Publishers

1)   The second call invites us to serious reflection on the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people …

      The call asks, do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you?  I believe that this question is at the core of our ability to mature and grow spiritually.  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.

2)   When I become so spiritually advanced that Abba is old hat, then the Father has been had, Jesus has been tamed, the Spirit has been corralled, and the Pentacostal fire has been extinguished.  Evangelical faith is the antithesis of lukewarmness.  It always means a profound dissatisfaction with our present state.

3)   If our faith is going to be criticized, let it be for the right reasons.  Not because we are too emotional but because we are not emotional enough; not because our passions are so powerful but because they are so puny; not because we are too affectionate but because we lack a deep, passionate, uncompromising affection for Jesus Christ.

4)   If Jesus is to be believed, if His message is to be taken seriously, if God has indeed intervened with loving and saving mercy, then the message is supremely relevant and the issuance of invitations to the wedding banquet is supremely important.

5)   The idea that God is love is certainly not new with Jesus.  In fact, it probably wasn’t even exclusive to the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Other men at other times in other parts of the world have thought or hoped or wished that the really REAL, the living God, might actually love them.  But Jesus added a note of confidence.  He didn’t say that maybe God was love, or that it would be nice if God were love.  He said, GOD IS LOVE—period.

6)   What is the story of my priesthood?  It is the story of an unfaithful person through whom God continues to work!  That word is not only consoling, it is freeing, especially for those of us caught up in the oppression of thinking that God can only work through saints.  What a word of healing, forgiveness, and comfort it is for many of us Christians who have discovered that we are earthen vessels who fulfill Jesus’ prophecy, “I tell you solemnly, this day, this night, before the cock crows twice, you will have disowned me three times”!

7)   Most of us spend considerable time putting off the things we should be doing or we would like to do or we want to do—but are afraid to do.  We are afraid of failure.  We don’t like it, we shun it, we avoid it because of our inordinate desire to be thought well of by others.  So we come up with a thousand brilliant excuses for doing nothing.

8)   Perhaps we are all in the position of the man in Morton Kelsey’s story who came to the edge of an abyss.  As he stood there wondering what to do next, he was amazed to discover a tightrope stretched across the abyss.  And slowly, surely, across the rope came an acrobat pushing before him a wheelbarrow with another performer in it.  When they finally reached the safety of solid ground, the acrobat smiled at the man’s amazement.  “Don’t you think I can do it again?” he asked.  And the man replied, “Why yes, I certainly believe you can.”  The acrobat put his question again, and when the answer was the same, he pointed to the wheelbarrow and said, “Good!  Then get in and I will take you across.”

      What did the traveler do?  This is just the question we have to ask ourselves about Jesus Christ.  Do we state our belief in Him in no uncertain terms, even in finely articulated creeds, and then refuse to get into the wheelbarrow?  What we do about the lordship of Jesus is a better indication of our faith than what we think.