Feb 3 2008 "The Lord's Prayer, a call to discipleship part II:

It is not right to settle for the notion that a person’s life is divided into the time they spend on their work and the time they spend in serving God. They must be able to serve God in their work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation…Every maker and worker is called to serve God in their profession or trade- not outside it. (Dorothy Sayers)

Tony Campolo tells a story from his life sometimes to illustrate a little of what the church is called to. He was in another time zone at a conference and couldn’t sleep after midnight, so he got up and wandered down to a doughnut shop where, it turned out, local hookers also came at the end of a night of turning tricks. There, he overheard a conversation between two of them. One, named Agnes, said, “You know what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be thirty-nine.” Her friend snapped back, “So whaddaya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake and sing happy birthday to you?” The first woman replied, “Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I’m just sayin’ it’s my birthday. I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should I have my own birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?”

When they left, Tony got an idea. He asked the shop owner if Agnes came in every night, and when the shop owner said yes, Tony invited him into a surprise birthday party conspiracy. The shop owner’s wife even got involved. Together they arranged for a cake, candles, and party decorations for Agnes, who was, to Tony, a complete stranger. The next night when she came in, they shouted, “Surprise!”- and Agnew couldn’t believe her eyes. The doughnut shop customers sang, and she began to cry so hard she could barely blow out the candles. When the time came to cut the cake, she asked if they’d mind if she didn’t cut it, if she could bring it home- just to keep it for a while and savor the moment. So she left, carrying her cake like a treasure.

Tony led the guests in a prayer for Agnes, and afterwards the shop owner told Tony he didn’t realize Tony was a preacher. He asked what kind of church Tony came from, and Tony said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” The shop owner couldn’t believe him, “No, you don’t. There ain’t no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. Yep, I’d join a church like that.”

Summarize last week, build bridge into this week

9 "This, then, is how you should pray: 

" 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread. (Ubuntu)

12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Once again, forgive US OUR debts

Every day, Christ’s followers must be aware of and deeply lament our guilt. And when I say deeply lament, I’m not saying, “Lord, thank you for today. Please forgive my sins. Amen.”, I’m talking about a deep, central, desperate desire to put the darkness of our former thoughts and actions and speech behind us, but in practice our lives are often covered with all kinds of unbelief, lack of prayer, lack of self-discipline, self-indulgence, envy, hatred, and pride.

Basically, the stack of things that confront us as Christians can seem like a mountain we’ll never get over, and so we could be tempted to think that we won’t ever make it up and over that mountain and as a result, we should just settle for the idea that we won’t and that the most we can hope for is to pray for forgiveness. I mentioned that that is a temptation because that sort of mindset is not Godly, but lazy and slothful.

On top of that, I think I can honestly say that I know more about my rebelliousness today than I did five years ago, when I didn’t have the slightest hint of an idea how deeply destructive my mind, my thoughts, and my actions were to the world around me.

And now I see, in some way, the mountain of who I am that stands apart from the purposes of God in a much clearer way now than five years ago, and in some ways every day that mountain can seem more massive. Part of the reason it seems more massive is because I was lying to myself before in always looking at others and establishing how “good” I was relative to them; using Osama bin Laden or Charles Manson or even Ted Haggard as examples. When I got honest, I got blown away. My mountain was MASSIVE. So what do I do about that? What do you do about that? What do we do about that?

We throw ourselves down at the feet of God, sobbing and angry and sad and broken by the depth of our desire to work against his purposes, begging for forgiveness. And it is only when we begin to care about the life God dreams for us to live that we find how deeply rebellious we are. (It is ALLLLLLLLL of this deep reality that is wrapped up in ONE phrase, “Forgive us our debts”) No wonder that we must pray often for God’s forgiveness.

But if you and I are to get up on our feet and face the mountain of our rebellion and destructiveness, we have to have a motivation that is higher than, more lofty than our sins.

Philippians 3:7-11
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

The incredible thing about this longing to know Christ is the reality that the more we know about Him, the more we realize how deep and how wide and how incredible He is. We realize how hard it is to follow him, but how gracious Jesus is to forgive us when, as we do the very best we can, we fail along the way, wounding ourselves and others. So we are called to be discontented with where we’re at, disgusted with where we’re at, longing to know Christ more, to seek God’s purposes more, to be filled with the zeal to know God.
So if we think about mountains differently, the Christian who is filled with holy discontentment and holy zeal for more of Christ is like a mountain climber who struggles and strains to reach the top of a mountain peak only to be able to see from that vantage point new and more glorious mountain peaks yet to climb.

Where did Paul's holy discontent come from? It came from the way he looked at himself and the way he looked at Christ. It came from the God-given humility which helped Paul to understand, along with us, the deep debt we owe God as persons who are a part of a race, an inheritance of those in God’s world who have chosen our own way, our own path, lived in opposition to the purposes and dreams of God

But as incredible as this reality is, this life commitment is, the funny thing about God is that He doesn’t let us get off with being satisfied just with this incredible commitment.

Jesus says “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,”

This includes a whole load of possibilities if we consider it (debtors to us might be those who have wounded us on a face-to-face relational level (persons who have wounded us by something they have said or something they have done), but also those are literally our debtors (they owe us cash money) or, in the most foundational sense, are in a position where they owe us for their very lives.

This plays out in personal relationships, but it also plays out in global relationships. If we allow ourselves to think globally (as we should), we will find fairly quickly that a majority of the world’s wealth is concentrated in what we know as North America and Europe. After a bit more searching, we will find that the most highly advanced areas of industry and technology are these same areas of the world. And it is these places in the world that import mass amounts of raw products to make products that are then exported to be sold around the world.

If we continue to look globally, we’ll find fairly quickly that there are sections of the world that are very poor in relation to the very wealthy sections of the world. And it’s no coincidence that these areas for hundreds of years, some of them up until a decade or so ago, were “owned” by the most wealthy nations of the world as “colonies,” where these “colonies” produced raw products to be sent back to the motherland, where the motherland made different, more complex products, which were then exported back to these other lands for a larger price. These colonies were intentionally kept from developing industrially so that the mother country could have reliable raw products.

In the last few years, many of these colonies became independent, some in bloody revolutions much like the United States in the late 18th century. And these societies now want to be a part of the global economy, so they’ve had to start where they were already at. Now, if you’re exporting raw products to more industrially advanced countries, who then export their products back to you for a larger price, you’ve got a problem on your hands. Why do you think that is? (trade deficit) These societies recognize that this situation can’t keep on the way it is because they have people with mouths to feed, and so they desperately want to industrially advance, and in order to do so, they need to borrow money; LOTS of MONEY. This is where some groups of the wealthiest nations called the World Bank and IMF step in to lend money to these countries. Since then, through the mix of governmental corruption, economic struggle, and these countries trying to do in fifty years what the United States and Europe did in 200 years, we have the situation today that for every $1 the West gives in aid to developing countries, $9 comes back in debt service. So it’s no surprise that through all of these realities, the consequence is extreme poverty.

While most wealthy countries would have no problem with this situation because they’re raking in plenty of cash off the backs of the poor, we as Christians cannot look on this situation and say everything is fine. So what can be done about this situation?

Mershu Debebe. he is a single, 26 year old, male from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He loves country music, especially Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton and he loves to play the keyboard. He is living today because some missionaries decided 25 years ago to make a difference in a broken world. they ran an orphanage for children in addis. this orphanage was different from normal orphanages in a sense that…Mershu’s parents remained his parents. his parents didn’t have any income to raise another child. the orphanage took in Mershu, educated him,fed him,gave him a place to sleep,taught him how to do wood work,and taught him about the love of Christ. when he was 12, and could work for his own money, he went back to live with his mother.

A missionary organization Innovative Missions has started a micro-business loan program there in Ethiopia. They took $5000.00 dollars & split that 5 ways amongst people who had drive & ambition when it came to getting a business started. Mershu was one of those candidates. He was given $500.00 at first to start his wood-working business. This allowed him to rent a building, saw, and other equipment. since he has been running his own business he has paid back the first $500.00, and now employs 3 people. He specializes in anything that uses wood: doors, cabinets, tables, chairs. i asked him what the most difficult thing he made was, and he said “chairs, because of the detail required to make them…but those are also the most that i am proud of.”

Mershu also taught wood-working at his church to students that wanted to learn the trade. When the church closed the program he took his students & made them employees of his business. He did this to continue their training, and also to pour into their lives in a spiritual sense. Mershu was once the recipient of grace from someone who had a vision to make a difference in this broken world. He now has that vision of making a difference, and he is doing it on a daily basis.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen

14 For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

If we ever needed another reminder in a prayer that is completely communal that Christians are not redeemed to hang out by themselves, it’s here in verses 14 and 15. Jesus is clear that forgiveness is not simply individual; if it’s only what God can do for me, it’s not real forgiveness. Real forgiveness is about understanding that my existence is intertwined (inextricably!) with others.

Remember Ubuntu; a word with incredibly RICH meaning that impacts the way we think about a LOT of things; everything ranging from possession of material things to personal relationships to global relationships.