☕️ Happy Wednesday morning!

To help you love like Jesus, here are 3 ideas from me, 2 quotations from others, and 1 question for you to live into.

3 Ideas From Me 🤓

1)

To pray "our Father" is an invitation into reality where God is compassionate, merciful, slow to anger and filled to the brim with a love that never waxes or wanes.

2)

By calling God "our Father," Jesus encapsulates the essence of discipleship: we are God's children who share a common life with Him and each other in every culture and generation, becoming more and more like him through the grace he gifts us for the sake of others.

​Source.

3)

Trusting my heart means honoring the questions I have when something doesn’t seem to be the way it’s supposed to be.

​Source.

2 Quotations From Others 🤯

1)

Bible Project on why Jesus invites us to pray to "our Father":

"Jesus begins the Lord's Prayer with "our Father" because we belong to the worldwide family of God, and, like children, we rely on God as our source of life and daily provision. Only about a dozen passages in the Hebrew Bible compare Yahweh to a father. Yet it is the main way Jesus refers to and relates to God, which demonstrates his unique identity as "the beloved Son" (Matthew 4:16-17). In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus invites his followers to participate in his identity as Son and an intimate relationship with God as our Father."

2)

Cuban-American theologian Justo Gonzalez on our role as priests when we pray "our Father":

"When we say “Our Father,” this we is not simply each of us separately. When, either privately or in the midst of the community of faith, I say “Our Father,” I am not praying only for myself but also for the entire church that throughout the earth also calls the same God Father. Also, since the church is a priestly people whose mission is to pray for all of God’s creation, the we in whose name we pray includes even those who do not pray because they do not believe. We intercede for them before God, asking for them all that we ask for ourselves."

1 Question For You 🤔

Jesus teaches us to pray to "our Father in the skies"

Think about this text and your everyday life in the world around you. What word or phrase stands out to you? Bring this to God and ask him how He hopes you'll respond to what you see.

If you'd like to share what God is stirring up in your head, heart or life, I'd love to hear about it! Shoot me a text (706.424.1130) or an email (matt@transformdiscipleship.org).

This week, there are three ways that you can join us as we help each other become like Jesus:

• Listen to this week's Bible Project PODCAST and PLAYLIST​
• ​Read the Transformational Discipleship MEMO. It's a Tuesday email that goes deeper into themes we cover in this newsletter.
• ​Read Transformational Leadership. It's a Saturday email that helps church leaders turn obstacles into opportunities.

📬 Thanks for reading! Please invite your friends to join our journey.

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Until next week,

Matt Adair - Creator of Transformational Discipleship​

E - matt@transformdiscipleship.org

C - 706.424.1130