I am a BookSneeze blogger and I received the book below for purposes of evaluation. Thoughts are my own.
About the NIV Ragamuffin Bible:
Do you believe that God not only loves you, but that he also likes you?
It’s just one of the soul-searching questions posed by bestselling author Brennan Manning who confesses he has been ‘John the beloved, Peter the coward, and Thomas the doubter all before the waitress brought the check.’
The NIV Ragamuffin Bible offers a collection of Manning’s raw, painfully honest, yet grace-filled devotions, meditations, and reflections of his journey limping back to—like the prodigal son—his overjoyed father. When you journey through this Bible, you will likewise find yourself returning to your Heavenly Father, basking in the knowledge that God not only loves you, he delights in you.
First off, let me just say that I like the NIV translation of the Bible mainly because it’s the version used by most of the churches I’ve attended in my life. So with the NIV, I know that the words on it are the words used by most pastors and other people who will be quoting from the Bible. I do have other translations at home though so I can cross-check whenever I need to.
What I love about the NIV Ragamuffin Bible is that it has 104 devotions, 250 reflections and 150 quotes that all help the reader understand what it means to be a child of God and have a deeper connection to God and His Word. As the tagline says, it’s a bible for the “bedraggled, beat-up and brokenhearted” and as such it seeks to give encouragement to its readers for when they feel down.
I think overall it does a pretty good job in giving encouragement with the devotionals and quotes. However, I feel like the sometimes the quotes beside the verses don’t really pertain to the topic or the theme on the passages. When I read the Bible, I read the verses then the devotional or the quotes beside it expecting something that would reinforce or add to what I just read. So perhaps it’s a better devotional than a study bible.
All in all, I’d say it’s still pretty okay but it’s not exactly the best devotional/study bible out there.