Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games, or pop psychology. It is an act of faith in the God of grace.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo. On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
While the term poor in the gospel includes the economically deprived and embraces all the oppressed who are dependent upon the mercy of others, it extends to all who rely entirely upon the mercy of God and accept the gospel of grace—the poor in spirit
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus for the unattractive, this strange desire for the undesirable, this strange love for the unlovely.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Children do not focus on the tigers of the past or the future but only on the strawberry that comes in the here and now.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The danger with our good works, spiritual investments, and all the rest of it is that we can construct a picture of ourselves in which we situate our self-worth. Complacency then replaces sheer delight in God’s unconditional love.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
But the open mind realizes that reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Although truth is not always humility, humility is always truth—the blunt acknowledgment that I owe my life, being, and salvation to Another.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The trouble with our ideals is that if we live up to all of them, we become impossible to live with.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The blood of the Lamb points to the truth of grace: what we cannot do for ourselves, God has done for us.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The foremost characteristic of living by grace is trust in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently, to mistrust ourselves.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
But sometimes I get so involved with myself that I start making demands for things I think I deserve, or I take for granted every gift that comes my way.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
When we have self-acceptance without self-concern we simply express reality.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
I can be addicted to vodka or to being nice, to marijuana or being loved, to cocaine or being right, to gambling or relationships, to golf or gossiping. Perhaps my addiction is food, performance, money, popularity, power, revenge, reading, television, tobacco, weight, or winning. When we give anything more priority than we give to God, we commit idolatry. Thus we all commit idolatry countless times every day.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
We cannot use failure as an excuse to quit trying.7
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
I am wonderfully content with a God who doesn’t deal with me as my sins deserve. On the last day when Jesus calls me by name, “Come, Brennan, blessed of my Father,” it will not be because Abba is just, but because His name is mercy.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Let go of the good old days that never were—a regimented church you never attended, traditional virtues you never practiced, legalistic obedience you never honored, and a sterile orthodoxy you never accepted. The old era is done. The decisive inbreak of God has happened.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The third, who prudently wraps his money and buries it, typifies the Christian who deposits his faith in an hermetic container and seals the lid shut. He or she limps through life on childhood memories of Sunday school and resolutely refuses the challenge of growth and spiritual maturity. Unwilling to take risks, this person loses the talent entrusted to him or her. “The master wanted his servants to take risks. He wanted them to gamble with his money.”
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Our indecision creates more problems than it solves. Indecision means we stop growing for an indeterminate length of time; we get stuck. With the paralysis of analysis, the human spirit begins to shrivel.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Grace tells us that we are accepted just as we are. We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in his hands. Such is his promise to us in Jesus Christ, a promise we can trust.7
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Yes, we feel guilt over sins, but healthy guilt is one which acknowledges the wrong done and feels remorse, but then is free to embrace the forgiveness that has been offered. Healthy guilt focuses on the realization that all has been forgiven, the wrong has been redeemed.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober, and respectable, nor in churchgoing, Bible-toting, and Psalm-singing, but in our deep and delicate respect for one another.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
At some unremembered moment I have lost the connection between internal purity of heart and external works of piety. In the most humiliating sense of the word, I have become a legalist. I have fallen victim to what T. S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The spirit of Caiaphas lives on in every century of religious bureaucrats who confidently condemn good people who have broken bad religious laws. Always for a good reason of course: for the good of the temple, for the good of the church.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith. How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
To the extent that I reject my ragamuffin identity, I turn away from God, the community, and myself. I become a man obsessed by illusion, a man of false power and fearful weakness, unable to think, act, or love.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Death is simply a transition into the one experience worthy of the name life.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
We have undoubtedly heard that freedom is not a license for lust. Maybe that’s all we’ve heard—what it isn’t. Such an approach, whatever its limited truth, is defensive and afraid. Those using it wish above all to warn us of the dangers of thinking about freedom, of yearning for freedom. Such an approach generally ends up by showing us, or at least attempting to show us, that freedom actually consists in following the law or in submitting to authority or in walking a well-trod path. Again, there may be some truth in these conclusions, but there is lacking a sense of the dark side of law, and of authority, and of the well-trod path. Each may be and has been turned into an instrument of tyranny and human suffering.4
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Freedom in Christ produces a healthy independence from peer pressure, people-pleasing, and the bondage of human respect. The tyranny of public opinion can manipulate our lives.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The account of the widow’s mite suggests that all the best gifts come from the loving hearts of men and women who aren’t trying to impress anybody, even themselves, and who have won freedom precisely because they have stopped trying to trap life into paying them back for the good they do.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Living by grace inspires a growing consciousness that I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothing more. It is His approval that counts.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
A little child cannot do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Compassion for others is not a simple virtue because it avoids snap judgments of right or wrong, good or bad, hero or villain: It seeks truth in all its complexity. Genuine compassion means that in empathizing with the failed plans and uncertain loves of the other person, we send out the vibration, “Yes, ragamuffin, I understand. I’ve been there, too.”
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Usually we see other people not as they are, but as we are.8
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Behind people’s grumpiest poses and most puzzling defense mechanisms, behind their arrogance and airs, behind their silence, sneers, and causes, Jesus saw little children who hadn’t been loved enough and who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them. His extraordinary sensitivity caused Jesus to speak of the faithful as children, no matter how tall, rich, clever, and successful they might be.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
“Reason demands moderation in love as in all things,” writes John McKenzie, “but faith destroys moderation here. Faith tolerates a moderate love of one’s fellow man no more than it tolerates a moderate love between God and man.”
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
It is a wisdom that realizes: I cannot expect anyone to understand me fully.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
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 Pentecostal fire has been extinguished.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
However serious we believe Good Friday is, we are confident that Easter Sunday lies ahead of us. And what if we do die? Jesus died, too, and if Jesus died we believe that now He lives and that we shall live, too.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
God wants us back even more than we could possibly want to be back. We don’t have to go into great detail about our sorrow. All we have to do, the parable says, is appear on the scene, and before we get a chance to run away again, the Father grabs us and pulls us into the banquet so we can’t get away.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
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.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
In the final analysis, the real challenge of Christian growth is the challenge of personal responsibility.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Idyllic descriptions of victory in Jesus are more often colored by cultural and personal expectations than by Christ and the ragamuffin gospel.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: He believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
Christian agnostics don’t deny a personal God; they display their unbelief by ignoring the sacred.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
We don’t have to sift our hearts and analyze our intentions before returning home. Abba just wants us to show up. We don’t have to tarry at the tavern until purity of heart arrives. We don’t have to be shredded with sorrow or crushed with contrition. We don’t have to be perfect or even very good before God will accept us. We don’t have to wallow in guilt, shame, remorse, and self-condemnation. Even if we still nurse a secret nostalgia for the far country, Abba falls on our neck and kisses us.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
if we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice, and thought, and have to choose to be human at all, why then perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The ragamuffin gospel says we can’t lose, because we have nothing to lose. Faithfulness to Jesus implies that with all our sins, scars, and insecurities, we stand with Him; that we are formed and informed by His Word;
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
One morning at prayer, I heard this word: Little brother, I witnessed a Peter who claimed that he did not know Me, a James who wanted power in return for service to the kingdom, a Philip who failed to see the Father in Me, and scores of disciples who were convinced I was finished on Calvary. The New Testament has many examples of men and women who started out well and then faltered along the way. Yet on Easter night I appeared to Peter. James is not remembered for his ambition but for the sacrifice of his life for Me. Philip did see the Father in Me when I pointed the way, and the disciples who despaired had enough courage to recognize Me when we broke bread at the end of the road to Emmaus. My point, little brother, is this: I expect more failure from you than you expect from yourself.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The bleak landscape of the global village has introduced discouragement, disillusionment, and what Parker Palmer calls “functional atheism”—the belief that nothing is happening unless we are making it happen. Though our Christian language pays lip service to God, our way of functioning assumes that God is dead or in a coma. Being seized by the power of a great affection does not seem to relate to the real world in which we live. Does it not require a fair measure of lunacy to listen to the loony tunes of the ragamuffin gospel?
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
They do not live in a dreamy, spaced-out state, pontificating about the victorious Christian life. They form the mendicant church, not the church triumphal. Acknowledging the reality of their own impoverished lives, they know they cannot survive without the divine dole for their daily bread. Their security rests in having no security.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
The nominal just don’t get it. They hear the Word of God, but it does not speak to them interiorly. The unseen world does not exist. The love story of the Bible is nice for children in Sunday school but not for rational adults. Faith is a relic of the Middle Ages. You can’t pay the rent, cook soup, or purchase a computer with religion. What matters is muscle, intelligence, connections, and stronger battalions. The rest is opium for the people. The nominal do not know the secret. The treasure is hidden from their eyes. The values and lifestyle of the ragamuffin rabble are simply incomprehensible.
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Brennan Manning
And so, for me, being quiet and slow is being myself, and that is my gift.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
He taught me that taking one’s time, especially in relationships, allows the other person to know he or she is worth the time.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
If we can learn to wait through the “natural silences” of life, he liked to say, we will be surprised by what awaits us on the other side.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
His daily routine was impeccably observed: he awoke at 5 a.m. for prayer, reflection, and Bible reading; took a 7:30 a.m. swim at the local pool (where he weighed in at exactly 143 pounds daily); followed his usual workday routine; and kept to a 9:30 p.m. bedtime.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
Each morning he prayed for his family and friends by name, still offering his gratitude for those on his list who had passed away.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“Now, you know prayer is asking for something, and sometimes you get a yes answer and sometimes you get a no answer,” he carefully explained.“And just like anything else you might get angry when you get a no answer. But God respects your feelings, and God can take your anger as well as your happiness. So whatever you have to offer God through prayer—it seems to me—is a great gift. Because the thing God wants most of all is a relationship with you, yeah, even as a child—especially as a child. Look how Jesus loved the children who came around Him,” he told her.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
Prayer is not only a daily discipline that deepens our relationship with God; it also provides a way for us to be together in our aloneness.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
But as he began to ponder the gulf between their reactions, he realized that the essential difference lay within: she had come in need and he had come in judgment. And because of her need, and the sincerity of the old preacher, the Holy Spirit was able to translate the words—poorly constructed as they were—into exactly what she needed to hear.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
What is offered in faith by one person can be translated by the Holy Spirit into what the other person needs to hear and see. The space between them is holy ground, and the Holy Spirit uses that space in ways that not only translate, but transcend.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
Fred’s intention was never to impose his beliefs on his viewers. Instead, he wanted to create an atmosphere, one that would allow viewers to feel safe and accepted.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
I don’t think of myself as somebody who’s famous. I’m just a neighbor who comes and visits children; [I] happen to be on television. But I’ve always been myself. I never took a course in acting. I just figured that the best gift you could offer anybody is your honest self, and that’s what I’ve done for lots of years. And thanks for accepting me exactly as I am.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“Self-esteem doesn’t come from a child hearing something that’s not true about him or her. If an adult does not believe that the child has done a good job with something, well, it’s not the least bit helpful to say so.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“Of course if we do believe that a child has done a wonderful thing, then the best thing we can do is to tell him or her, ‘Hey, that was really special. You know you did that so much better than you did the last time, and I’m really proud of you.’
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“But I would hope that you wouldn’t say ‘I’m proud of you’ if your child has done something that might be hurtful to him or her or to somebody else, because that just doesn’t help. I guess we’re coming right back to the very first thing we talked about, and that’s truthfulness—you know, being ourselves and allowing somebody to share in that.”
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“When they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”7 Many people feel they must surrender their personalities in order to become more Christlike. But Lewis further pointed out that “the deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which [Christ] has furnished him.”
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
Encouraging others to be themselves, their honest selves, was the hallmark of Fred’s ministry here on earth. It was the best gift he could offer.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
How we see ourselves affects how we see others.
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
Jesus transformed the question “Who is my neighbor?” into the directive “Be the good neighbor.”
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
His definition of neighbor was simple: the person you happen to be with at the moment—whether
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“If someone knows who he is, really knows,” the cherubim explains, “then he doesn’t need to hate.”
The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor
Amy Hollingsworth
“Why . . . not . . . you?”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
I’m not even sure I believe in God anymore.” Truman smiled as he put a hand on David’s shoulder. “That’s all right, son,” he said. “He believes in you.”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
“What did you tell him to do?” David asked. “I didn’t tell him to do anything,” Truman replied. “That’s not my part in all this. I offer perspective. The ultimate outcome of anyone’s life is a matter of personal choice.”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
Your future is what you decide it will be.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
“David, we are all in situations of our own choosing. Our thinking creates a pathway to success or failure. By disclaiming responsibility for our present, we crush the prospect of an incredible future that might have been ours.”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
You are where you are because of your thinking. Your thinking dictates your decisions. Decisions are choices.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
“The words It’s not my fault! should never again come from your mouth. The words It’s not my fault! have been symbolically written on the gravestones of unsuccessful people ever since Eve took her first bite of the apple. Until a person takes responsibility for where he is, there is no basis for moving on. The bad news is that the past was in your hands, but the good news is that the future, my friend, is also in your hands.”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
The buck stops here.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
I understand that the beginning of wisdom is to accept the responsibility for my own problems and that by accepting responsibility for my past, I free myself to move into a bigger, brighter future of my own choosing.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
I am where I am today—mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially—because of decisions I have made.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
My thoughts will be constructive, never destructive. My mind will live in the solutions of the future. It will not dwell in the problems of the past. I will seek the association of those who are working and striving to bring about positive changes in the world. I will never seek comfort by associating with those who have decided to be comfortable.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
When faced with the opportunity to make a decision, I will make one. I understand that God did not put in me the ability to always make right decisions. He did, however, put in me the ability to make a decision and then make it right.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
In the future when I am tempted to ask the question “Why me?” I will immediately counter with the answer: “Why not me?” Challenges are gifts, opportunities to learn. Problems are the common thread running through the lives of great men and women.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
Adversity is preparation for greatness.
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews
Jehovah moves mountains to create the opportunity of His choosing. It is up to you to be ready to move yourself.”
The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Andy Andrews