Book review: The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down
The Lord’s Prayer is just 52 words, when we do not include the 13 “concluding words” that most Christians finish with—“for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen,” and that do not appear in the original copy of Matthew.
“The Lord’s Prayer is the most powerful prayer in the Bible, taught by Jesus to those closest to him,” says the flyleaf to The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down by R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Thomas Nelson, 2018), and that the book’s cover calls “a manifesto for revolution.”
Those 52 words become 175 small pages in Mohler’s book, explaining each line of the most famous prayer in the Bible. “The Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount is part of Christ’s vision for life in the inaugurated kingdom of heaven,” Mohler explains.
How will we pray, Christ’s disciples ask? “A failure to pray is therefore not only a sign of anemic spiritual life, it is disobedience to Christ,” says Mohler. “In scripture, it is unthinkable that a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ would not pray. Being a disciple of Jesus means following after him, walking as he walked, and doing what he taught. This means praying as he prayed. An active prayer life is assumed.”
Mohler’s small book is a wonderful gift item to newly marrieds, to graduates, to newly baptized Christians, to nephews and nieces, and on just about any occasion.
I need not go through every line of The Lord’s Prayer, which is what Mohler has done so well, but I found some gems of understanding that we might not think about when repeating the prayer—in knowing it so well that we tend to skip past significant understandings. “By asking for the kingdom of God to come, Jesus subversively overthrows the kingdoms of man and the powers of Satan,” (emphasis added) he writes.
In the verse “your kingdom come,” I was delighted to see how the Great Commission is included, calling us to be faithful to it, “trusting that God by his sovereign, supernatural grace will spread his redemptive reign to every tribe, tongue, and nation.” Mohler says we are asking for eight specific things in requesting “your kingdom come”—“We are asking for something wonderful and something dangerous all at the same time.”
I like the author’s use of such words as dangerous, revolution and radical. Such words give power to the prayer that I had not thought of before. They elevate the prayer from something at a lower level to something magnificent and powerful, in ways I might not have guessed. Says Mohler: “This is indeed a radical prayer. We must not take this petition lightly. But, as we have seen, this petition also carries great hope. Our God will come to save us and bring us to know the fullness of his grace in the final revelation of his kingdom,” Mohler says. “To that end, we pray.”
He covers such topics as spiritual warfare, temptation (and its difference from testing), grace as a gift, and persecution. The Lord’s Prayer has power; we have only to use that power.
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