I opened the cover to this book, filled with a lot of skepticism. I was pretty certain that I was about to endure 200+ pages of hollow, feel good, Christian cheerleading. The title put me off more than anything else. 'Ragamuffin' is a word I associated with old ladies who had weathered the Great Depression -- the same old ladies (sweet though they were) who, with their toughness, scared me when I was a little kid in the 1960s. 'You look like a complete ragamuffin,' they would say as we stumbled in from a day playing in the woods. What?? I had NO idea what Raggedy-Ann dolls and muffins had to do with how I looked!

Even as a grown adult, I have kept a dislike for the term that Manning likes to use to describe so many of us. But, as I turned the pages of the book on a train ride from New York to Boston this winter, I found that sometimes the message is greater than the aesthetics of language.

This book is a wonderful reminder of God's Grace. Much more than cheerleading, this book highlights a mistake we often make in our understanding of God...and corrects it. Sometimes it is so easy to feel that we are not good enough, or that we must somehow 'earn' our place in the heart of God. But Brennan Manning reminds us that this is not the way of God. The One Who Loves Us accepts and Loves us just the way we are...as ragamuffins. (If you don't know what that means -- read the book. You?ll be glad you did.)

I would recommend reading this book over and over, and over. Leave it alone for a while, and then if you're truly bored with life, read it again! Brennan Manning captures the real message about the wonderful grace and unconditional love of God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Open your heart to what Brennan presents to us and look at what Jesus gives us in a whole new light. But, of course, don't substitute what is contained in this book for what is so well-established in the Bible, God's Holy Word. The truth does set us free!

Excepting the bible itself, this is the most highly regarded and oft recommended book I have ever had the priveledge of reading. I have given away three copies, and will continue to do so whenever possible. I was brought up in the church, my father was a minister and a very loving person, and I became a follower of Christ at the age of 18, yet I never had the slightest understanding of the much-touted "grace of God" until I read this book. I felt like Paul on the road to Damascus - blinded by the light. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be loved by God; to be UNABLE to make God hate me or give up on me (he won't...ever)! I cannot truly describe the feeling - it felt like Oxygen to a drowning man. I was finally free to love and forgive. To understand love is to understand grace - and vice versa. If you have ever felt your life to be a "grave disappointment to God", please, please, PLEASE do yourself the kindness of buying this book. Let yourself know the real God who wants to make you his child.

I was raised a Catholic and am now a United Methodist. Never have I been told the material that resides in this book. I picked it up because I wanted to understand the reference Rich Mullins used in naming his Ragamuffin Band. It did far more for me that I can explain. I have spent my life listening to how God would "strike me down" with every sin and that my fate would be hell if I could not keep myself sinless. This impossible task drove me away from the church and nearly kept me away. Manning's message of grace was a shot in the arm to my faith. Never have I felt closer to God than after reading this book. I no longer doubt my destination.

I grew up in an abusive, legalistic church, who stressed a life of utmost holiness as most pleasing to God, therefore my ultimate goal in my walk with Christ is to overcome sin. Unfortunately the more I try, the more I see my failures and my peace and joy in God fluctuates with my personal performance.

The Ragamuffin Gospel seeks to destroy the worldview of God that Christendom has created: You are saved by immense and passionate grace and mercy, but once you accept it, God has a checklist of sanctification and service that you must repay. Why would a God of unsearchable riches suddenly do a 180 and expect us to deliver a checklist of personal effort? Our "spiritual leaders" reinforce these lists often comprised of: Do your daily devotions, or God won't speak to you / Pray longer and harder or God won't know your heart / Do more service for church, you're not doing enough for God, you're spending too much time on yourself / If you don't have it all together, God can't use you, etc. etc.

Brennan Manning vehemently believes that God absolutely hates sin (as the other reviewers here focus on as their primary view of God), BUT, God's grace and mercy abounds all the more. IT IS THIS UNFATHOMABLE AWE OF EXPERIENCING AND KNOWING JESUS' LOVE THAT INSPIRES AND STRENGTHENS US TO FLEE FROM SIN, NOT OUR OWN RESOLVE.

A MUST read for anyone who has been raised in the modern institutional church.

Manning is able to communicate in simple yet powerful ways the extreme and excessive love God has for everyone. He gently illustrates God's forgiving love for broken and wounded people by encouraging them to accept God's forgiving promise and to step into His loving embrace. This book is an excellent way to begin/continue your journey as God's child. Manning conveys the power of God's grace by pointing out that God accepts you with all your lumps, bumps, and bruises - not because you are good or strong, but because you believe He can love you in spite of your failures and brokenness. Each page dynamically illuminates the Father's passionate love for His creation while assuring them that His Holy Spirit can empower them to live under the influence and freedom of the Jesus' love. As a pastor I have never read, or experienced a better, practical explanation of the radical power of God's love - except from God's Word itself!

This book is an exceptional read for anyone who wants to draw nearer to God. Although I have read some criticisms of The Ragamuffin Gospel that seem to insist Manning is not hard enough on sinners, perhaps Jesus was not hard enough on sinners, either.
I take back that perhaps.. I know Jesus was not hard enough on sinners. I think the message Manning is trying to get across is that we are all sinners. None of us, in all our self-righteous fury, can say that we walk even a day without sin. Yet God sent His son to die for us- not just die, but suffer agonizingly, brutally beaten, shamed, tortured, and mocked- for us.
As Manning poetically points out, Jesus was aware of our sinful natures, aware of our present sins and even our future sins, when he undertook this labor of love for us.

Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
On hearing this, Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. but go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'* For I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners."**
*Hosea 6:6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
*Micah 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
**Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.
**1 Timothy 1:15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I am the worst.

I am a person who struggles daily that shame and guilt over my sins, negativity and unacceptance of self-righteous, holier-than-thou Christians, make stumbling on my walk with God easier. The Ragamuffin Gospel has drawn me nearer to God and to the realization that Jesus does offer forgiveness for even me.

I've met Brennan several times and read his books. He's rough around the edges, but isn't that the point? We're all rough around the edges - ragamuffins, every one. And yet God loves us anyway.

Some people sin in public, some in private. If you don't believe in the concept of sin, you probably won't like this book. If you don't believe in God, you probably won't like this book. If you believe that you have to 'behave' in order for God to love you - well, I think that's why Brennan wrote this book.

It seems to me that Brennan isn't saying we shouldn't behave. Of course we should behave. But we don't have to behave in order for God to love us. If you have children, you know exactly what he means.

Ragamuffin Gospel moved me deeply, though it's hard to articulate why. Pinning down the grace of God does not come easy to me. I cannot frame it, explain it, or quote it, but I can recognize it. Brennan Manning's version of it turned on a few lights for me. I can understand the frustration with other comments on the book's lack of, um, didactic style; when I give this book to someone and they ask what it's about, I cannot pin it down to a teaching on grace or a spiritual memoir. My pigeon-hole mentality can't stand that. But I do know it touched me personally: it made me drop some prejudices. It made me cut some slack to a neighbor. It humbled me. If it lacked a wham, wham, wham, three-points-and-a-poem style, it still delivered. If I read a book that actually humbles me, and helps me make an effort to treat a neighbor with more respect, it gets five stars from me.

I had read "Abba's Child" and thought I understood grace pretty well, but this book was a surprise. I found myself in tears and reaching out for the love of God. The magic, of course, is not in Brennan Manning's writing but in the Scriptures themselves, that leave no doubt that the foundation of our kingdom is love (Is. 16:5). Brennan is a storyteller who will give you parable after parable of the Gospel, a message we are always hungry to hear told over again. He is gentle, funny, and sometimes blunt as he echoes Jesus' cry: the last shall be first, legalists and spoilsports won't win the day, heaven will be full of "ragamuffins" saved by grace. The book has study questions, designed for group study but they make excellent devotions to accompany your reading. Let God give his love to you!