Ragamuffin Gospel

I wanted to share just a little bit of what I've been reading from Brennan Manning's book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. I've picked this book up for the second time and I'm finding new, important details that are speaking to me today.

"The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theolgians, 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 other 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."

Am I seeking to learn from God by simply being still and resting in Him or am I looking to my education to bring me closer to God? I can honestly say, that at times, I tend to lean toward the latter. That's scarry! Why is this the case? Why does our society lean so much on "book knowledge" instead of simply trusting in God and letting our experiences with His grace lead us? Is there something wrong with me if I would rather lean on experiences than book knowledge? I think some would either call me an idiot or some would call me a genius. I simply want to be the best minister and leader that I can be. Please don't misunderstand me. I truly value my education here at Truett and if I didn't find it important, I wouldn't be here. But my concern is that I put too much value on my education at school and not my life experiences with God. The tension is finding the balance between the two.

But wait...listen to this.

Here Manning is using the example of the children coming to Jesus and how we are to approach the throne like the little children (Matthew 18:2-4). "The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies: the gift of the Kingdom."

This is a hard lesson for Christians to learn. Even recently in my life, as I'm learning how to approach God again, I'm reminded that it's not about how I can dress up my sin and imperfection to fool God, but it's about coming to Him simply as I am, like a child to her father. I'm not nieve enough to think that I can hide my sin from God, but, as a habit, I tend to think that I have to dress up to come to God. How freeing and inviting is it to realize that God loves us for who we are. Jesus calls us to forget what lies behind. "Whatever we have done in the past, be it good or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today."