This is part 1 of i'm not sure how many posts....these are the things i underlined in the preface and the first 1/2 of chapter 1 (only through page 11)....this book is so full of good stuff.
...little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerless before God, and who cast themselves on His Mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and the powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. (description of ragamuffins)
if the Lord Jesus Christ has washed me in His own blood and forgiven all my sins, i cannot and must not refuse to forgive myself.
after stumbling and falling, the ragamuffin does not sink into despondency and endless self-recrimination, she quickly repents, offers the broken moment to the Lord, and renews her trust in the Messiah of sinners. she knows that Jesus is comfortable with broken people who remember how to love.
ragamuffins refuse to surrender control of their lives to rules and regulations.
...the sign you can trust will be the slow, steady, and miraculous transformation from self-rejection to self-acceptance rooted in the acceptance of Jesus Christ.
...trust what you have received.
the splendor of the human heart which trusts that it is loved gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, the sight of ten thousand butterflies in flight or the scent of a million orchids in bloom.
trust is our gift back to God, and He finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for the love of it.
unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.
...childlike surrender in trust is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
craving clarity we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God.
Abba, I surrender my will and my life to you without any reservation and with boundless confidence, for you are my loving Father.
self-rejection in any form is a manifest sign of a lack of trust in the total sufficiency of Jesus' saving work. Has he set me free from fear of the Father and dislike of myself, or has he not?
unbounded trust in the merciful love of the redeeming God deals a mortal blow to skepticism, cynicism, self-condemnation, and despair. It is our decisive YES to Christ's command "Trust in God and trust in me."
God, by definition, is thinking of me.
the God who had called him [abraham] to hope against hope was eminently reliable and the thing expected of abraham was unconditional trust.
