Dirty Faith: Becoming the Hands and Feet of Jesus

by Mark Matlock, Mark Matlock, Audio Adrenaline Band

Live your faith―no matter what
”What plans do you have for the next week? Next month? Ten years from now? Trash ’em. Following Jesus means letting Him rewrite your whole agenda for your life. ”I want to be your hands / I want to be your feet / I’ll go where you send me / I’ll go where you send me”―just catchy lyrics or a mission statement? Accept the challenge to . . . go to the hard places, the poor places, the dangerous places; serve the broken-hearted, the closed-minded, the down-and-out; do what you where you are, when you’re there. Get bruised, get used, get dirty. Be like Jesus.

Genres: Christian

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2003

About the author

Mark Matlock has been working with youth pastors, students, and parents for two decades. He speaks to hundreds of thousands of students around the world each year, and presents biblical truths in ways that motivate people to change. Mark is the vice president of event content at Youth Specialties and the founder of WisdomWorks Ministries and PlanetWisdom. He’s the author of several books including The Wisdom On - series, Living a Life That Matters, Don’t Buy The Lie, Freshman, and Smart Faith. Mark lives in Texas with his wife Jade and their two children.

Reviews

[Rachel B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firstly, I should state that this book is geared toward youth, which I didn't realize. After I gathered that, I approached the book from my junior-high-self point of view.

After finishing it, I'm having trouble summing it up. It's all over the place, lacking continuity. The best I could do is say that it's not so much about serving Jesus as much as explaining very basic truths about who Jesus is and what He did while on earth. It was so overly simplistic that it almost seemed the authors were talking to un-churched youth... except they weren't. I felt that I was being talked down to, even taking into account that it was written for students.

Throughout the book, we're told that being like Jesus often means being like Him in our everyday, ordinary lives right where we are. So I found it frustrating that every "real life" example was a "Mission Year" story. Mission Year is a "movement" encouraging youth to move to the inner-city for one year to show the love of Christ to the neighborhood. If we really want to encourage our youth to "be Jesus" to those around them, let's focus first on their immediate surroundings. If we tell them "you can be Jesus to your classmates," let's give them a real-life example of another student who showed Christ's love to a classmate! People in the inner-city need Jesus, but so do those in suburban and rural areas.

Overall, there were a couple nuggets in this, but I think they would be more easily extracted from a different book.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is geared toward the youth of today. High school age or early college aged teens. It offers suggestions on doing the work of God and encourages teens not to sit back and watch life pass them by or get caught up too much in the secular world.