Random...

My parents minister gave the Hubby a book a while back. We we both finished the books we were working on, so we swapped books. I read this last night and thought it wonderful and worthy of sharing with others.

"If a random sample of one thousand American Christians were taken today, the majority would define faith as belief in the existence of God. In earlier times it id not take faith to believe that God existed-almost everybody took that fr granted. Rather, faith had to do with one's relationship to God-whether one trusted in God. The difference between faith as 'belief in something that may or my not exist' and faith as 'trusting in God' is enormous. The first is a matter of the head, the second a matter of the heart. The first can leave us unchanged, the second intrinsically brings change."

"Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women,and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace. As Hans Kung says, 'It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak,its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance. If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.'"

"There is a myth flourishing in the church today that has caused incalculable harm-once converted, fully converted. In other words, once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord ad Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness. Tell that to poor Peter who, after three times professing his love for Jesus on the beach and after receiving the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost, was still jealous of Pauls' apostolic success."

These are three separate paragraphs in "The Ragamuffin Gospel" So far it is an excellent read. I will keep you updated on this book.

I finished "The Shack". I thought is was an excellent work of FICTION.
Some of the authors thoughts are thought provoking, thereby making it a good book in my opinion.


****Hope everyone is planning to come to the house Monday.****