Living the Lord's Prayer

Jesus Christ used just 72 words to outline the key elements of communicating with God in what we know as the Lord's Prayer. Timms, a native Australian who teaches at Hope International University in California, uses many more words than that in this lucid and probing excavation of the prayer, which he calls “the greatest Christian teaching of the centuries on spiritual formation.” In word-by-word and phrase-by-phrase exposition, he digs deep into meanings and layers that easily escape a quick read. The opening “our” calls us to community, Timms says, while “Father” speaks to fear. Timms also discusses God's closeness, our call to holiness, our willfulness, the challenge of simplicity and the need for forgiveness. Readers will find remarkable lessons throughout this work, which reveals shining gemstones of truth usually left buried in the prayer. Even “Amen” is mined, with Timms calling it “the greatest word of faith that the early church could muster.” This is a well-polished study of the oft-quoted but seldom-realized formative prayer of the Christian faith. (July)