Books › The Ragamuffin Gospel
The Ragamuffin Gospel
Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
First published 2003 · 297 pages
A fiercely compassionate, deeply personal meditation that offers a warm embrace to the spiritually exhausted.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting across from a wise, weathered mentor who already knows your deepest failures and loves you anyway. The pace is steady and meditative, inviting you to slow down and shed the heavy armor of religious performance. Manning's prose is raw, poetic, and deeply vulnerable, colored by his own struggles with alcoholism and inadequacy. The atmosphere is profoundly restorative, acting as a safe harbor for the bedraggled and burnt-out. It does not offer a ten-step program for spiritual improvement; instead, it washes over the reader with the scandalous, liberating reality of unconditional grace. This is a soul-baring, tear-inducing experience that will deeply resonate with recovering perfectionists, exhausted believers, and anyone desperate to know they are loved exactly as they are.
- Mood
- restorative
- comforting
- soul-baring
- hopeful
- Tone
- compassionate
- vulnerable
- earnest
- pastoral
- raw
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- unconditional grace · spiritual burnout · overcoming shame · human brokenness · the scandal of love
- The writing
- Conversational and deeply personal, weaving raw anecdotes with poetic, pastoral reflections.
- The arc
- Moves from the crushing weight of spiritual perfectionism to the liberating, tearful relief of accepting unmerited grace.
- Who it's for
- Spiritually exhausted believers and recovering perfectionists who are desperate to be loved without conditions.
Content notes
- alcoholism
- spiritual burnout
- shame and self-loathing
About the book
Many believers feel stunted in their Christian growth. We beat ourselves up over our failures and, in the process, pull away from God because we subconsciously believe He tallies our defects and hangs His head in disappointment. In this newly repackaged edition—now with "A Guide for Reflection and Prayer" and the author’s own epilogue, “The Scandal of Grace, Ten Years Later”—Brennan Manning reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth. The Father beckons us to Himself with a “furious love” that burns brightly and constantly. Only when we truly embrace God’s grace can we bask in the joy of a gospel that enfolds the most needy of His flock—the “ragamuffins.”
Are you bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt-out?
Most of us believe in God's grace—in theory. But somehow we can't seem to apply it in our daily lives. We continue to see Him as a small-minded bookkeeper, tallying our failures and successes on a score sheet. Yet God gives us His grace, willingly, no matter what we've done. We come to him a regamuffins—dirty, bedraggled, and beat-up. And when we sit at His feet, He smiles upon us, the chosen objecs of His "furious love."
Brennan Manning's now-classic meditation on grace and what it takes to access it—simple honesty—has changed thousands of lives. It will change yours, too.
Description from Open Library.
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