Book Review: Daring to Hope

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Kisses from Katie was written 6 years ago about the incredible ministry of Katie Davis, a young woman from Nashville, TN that had her heart totally captured by the opportunities to live out the gospel in Uganda.  It was such a blessing to read Katie’s story and to keep up with her blog and ministry via Amazima Ministries.  In the 6 years since she wrote her first book, quite a bit has been happening in and through Katie Davis…now Katie Davis Majors.  I was so blessed to receive an advance review copy of Daring to Hope and quickly devoured it yesterday afternoon.  I felt as I was catching up with a long lost friend!  What a treasure to read of the way that the Lord is using Katie and her precious family for His glory and the good of those in come in contact with them in Uganda.

After I finished reading this book, I sat down to talk with my 8 year old daughter about Katie and her story.  My daughter and I had the privilege of travelling to Haiti together this past spring and are planning to return next spring to serve again with the precious families we met on our first trip.  My daughter reminds me a lot of what I imagine Katie was like growing up and it excites me to think about how the Lord will use my girl for His glory!

Reading this book was a great reminder for me of what a joy it is to serve my family and those that the Lord has entrusted to my care.  I’m grateful for people like Katie that are pouring themselves out for the sake of the gospel in a way that is both engaging and inspirational.  I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…

  • I want to offer all who pass through this place the living bread, the only food that truly fills. p. 4
  • My most daring prayer is that you would find Him here, in the pages of our story and more so, in the pages of your own.  He has been my companion in the most devastating trials and in the greatest joys.  His deepest desire is to be yours, too. p. 8
  • Wanting a deeper understanding of how it might look to be a prisoner of hope, I turned back to Zechariah chapter 1 and started reading. p. 45
  • “Compassion…is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pretty for those who fail to make it in the upward pull.  On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.” Henri JM Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, and Douglas A. Morrison, Compassion, illustrated and revised edition (New York: Image, 2006), 25. p. 55
  • “I have community with others and will continue to have it only through Jesus Christ.  The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more everything else between us will recede, and the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work because the one and only thing that is alive between us.  We ave one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another…completely and for all eternity.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together p. 57
  • Life was certainly intended to be lived as ongoing ministry, not separate from ministry. p. 59
  • The scars whisper of His glory. The scars mean that we are growing, and the biggest scars prove His faithfulness all the more. p. 94
  • He breathed life into us so that we could breathe it into others.  He was good to us so that we could testify of His goodness.  Our dry bones lived and called out to others that they, too, could have full and abundant life in Him. p. 107
  • Psalm 63:1-4 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. (ESV) p. 128
  • “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle p. 141
  • I had prayed Isaiah 61 over my children since they came home, “to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” p. 149
  • I realize I never would have sought God’s face and known Him in the way I do today if I hadn’t walked my own desert road, starving for more of Him.  I see and testify to His grace and goodness in the suffering of my own life.  Do I believe Him for that same grace and goodness in the stories of those I love?  This isn’t how I would write it.  But I have known and seen again and again that God writes the better story. p. 187
  • Mount Moriah: “The Lord will provide.” p. 193
  • I desire to enter fully into the joy He places before us and I desire to enter fully into the suffering He places before us because both can be His gifts to us.  Both can be made beautiful.  This is our daily bread.  I look back at our lives and I know this now with certainty: I wouldn’t trade one second of the life we’ve been given.  All the joy and all the pain right up next to each other has made a life of seeking God and knowing Him and then knowing Him more.  He has shown Himself to us here. p. 195
  • We don’t always remember to turn our gaze in the right direction and so we miss it, but all of our mountains, all of our trials, can point us toward His kindness and provision.  In His great mercy these trials are shaping us into who He designed us to be.  Our God wields a chisel, yes, but He chisels not as one who would destroy, but as an artist, carefully, gently, kindly, shaping us into who we were meant to be, tenderly drawing us to Himself and all for His glory. p. 199
  • We hold on to our hope.  There is always a ram in the thicket.  Because there is always the Lamb on the throne. p. 201

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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