Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds

Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds
by Tom Davis

Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tom Davis
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-01
ISBN: 0781445353
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: David C. Cook

Book Reviews of Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds

Book Review: faith that bleeds - coolest phrase i've heard in a while
Summary: 5 Stars

tom davis (children's hope chest) has a new book just released call red letters: living a faith that bleeds and i am adding it to my "must read" list of books for anyone interested in missions. to those of you who are in the vein of persistently asking me what you can do to engage with missions, i'll give you another thing right here and now: read this book.

tom is a new friend of mine - and through reading his blog and now this book and a few emails and phone calls, i have quickly found that his heart screams the same beat as mine. missions... children... orphans... long-term commitment to making a real difference... and most importantly - the only real answer for poverty and AIDS and all that ails this sick world is JESUS.

in red letters tom does a fantastic job of blending raw harsh reality with challenge with practical what-you-can-do-about-it resources. at the risk of making it sound like i thought less of the rest of the book, i will say that the resource list in the back of the book was one of my favorite parts. don't let that fool you though - the list is terribly valuable - particularly once you've read the book and you are chomping at the bit to know where to engage to do something about all the injustice you've just learned about.

tom's message is clear. i believe this book is a crucial piece of modern-day missiology that absolutely should be read by anyone involved in missions.

i'll give one quick example of something that really stuck with me from the book: he tells a story of meeting a child begging for money and in the course of the internal struggle whether to give the child money that likely would be spent on stuff other than what he would like the child to do with it, he had the presence of mind to ask the child what his name was. here's what stuck with me so firmly: he said that the instant he learned the child's name, his whole perspective on the scenario changed. all of a sudden, this was not just some kid begging for money. he was no longer one of thousands of other children in the area needing help. he had become a real person with a real story and a real life. all because of knowing his name.

in the work that we do in missions, both with children's cup (http://www.childrenscup.org) and with healing place church (http://www.healingplacechurch.org), i am determined to not pass over the value of learning the names of the kids we help. i know i can't remember them all. but to ask them anyway and to learn what i can and to have that inside me so that when i see pictures that ben (http://benrodgers.blogspot.com) sends me from various carepoints in africa or that robyn breaux sends from the orphanage in honduras or when i see pictures of some of the kids in the orphanage in cambodia we are involved with, i'll know names.

and knowing names will make it that much easier to remember they have stories. and that makes them real. that reminds me that God not only knows their name, but everything about them. in fact, he knows them as well as he knows me.

one more thing that really got me in the gut that tom wrote: he said that although it is true that when we are on the mission field we are representing Jesus to the kids, it is also true that (based on the parable of the sheep and the goats) that the children and other people we work with on the mission field are Jesus to us. when i look into the face of pepe (the kid in the picture with me at the top of my blog), i'm looking into the eyes of Jesus.

you want a good reason to get involved in reaching out to the poor? how about knowing that when you touch the poor and hurting, when you sit down to a bowl of beans and rice with a hungry kid, when you hug a snotty-faced little orphan, you are touching, eating with and hugging Jesus himself.

yeah. that's what i wanna do. you're never closer to Jesus than when you're serving, loving and engaging the poor and hurting.

in my book, that's faith that bleeds.

Summary of Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds

"I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."
Matthew 25:42-43 ESV

In many Bibles, Christ?s words are set apart with a red font. It should be obvious, but this distinction helps remind us that when God becomes Man and that Man speaks?it?s probably something we cannot afford to miss.

So why doesn?t the church take these ? red letters? to heart? Why aren?t we doing more to be Christ?s hands and feet to the poor, the disenfranchised, the weary, the ill, the fatherless, the prisoners? It?s all there?in red letters. Why has the Church shirked its responsibilities, leaving the work to be done by governments, rock stars, and celebrities?

The Gospel wasn?t only meant to be read?it was meant to be lived. From the HIV crisis in Africa to a single abused and lonely child in Russia, the Church must seize the opportunity to serve with a radical, reckless abandon. Author Tom Davis offers both challenge and encouragement to get involved in an increasingly interconnected, desperate modern world.

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