ChosenRebel's Blog

Thursday is for Discipleship

I am reading what I hope turns out to be a wonderful book right now. I can’t give a full-throated endorsement yet–I’ve only read the intro and first chapter–but I can say it has been really helpful and thought provoking so far. [Update: I can now. This is a wonderful book and I give my complete endorsement on the difference it might make in your life. Buy it. Read it. Read it again. And next year, read it again.] It is causing me to think hard about what it means to live in community and how the gospel calls us to a communal rather than individual life.

The book is Living the Lord’s Prayer by David Timms. It is available in hardback, paperback and on Kindle. The first chapter is devoted entirely to a reflection on why the Lord’s Prayer uses the pronoun “OUR” rather than “MY”.  Here’s the last paragraph of the first chapter.

The little prayer-word our calls us back to others. It forces me to consider us. Me and God creates a cocoon that isolates me from others and, ironically, from Him. Us and the Father reinforces the indispensability of the community. 

We need this perspective in the American church. I need it. My wife needs it. My children need it. Millennials, and Gen X, and Gen Y, and Boomers, and Boomer parents need this. “WE” need this because we are driven by the individual passions of this age. And my fear, is that we don’t even have antenna for understanding what we are missing and failing to comprehend about what it means to be “in Christ.”

An application:
Join me in reading and praying the Lord’s prayer over and over this week. Let’s see what God wants to teaches us as we give attention, meditative attention to the words our Savior used when he wanted the disciples to learn the kind of things they (and we) ought to be praying for as we pursue Him, together.