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Deliver Us From Me-Ville

You could say it was the title that drew me in. Deliver us from Me-ville. Just saying it out loud makes me chuckle. It's the kind of title that makes me want to jab you with my elbow, all the while smiling and asking you if you get it.

See, it's a play on words.

Nevermind.

David Zimmerman has written a good book here on helping us move. Move? Yeah, from our current address in Me-ville. He points out, without apology, that living self-centered is not where we want to be.

It would be easy for us to assume the destination is We-ville. After all, don't we teach community? Yes, but not for the sake of us. So, We-ville should not be our forwarding address.

David continually points us outward, to a life focused and lived for God. He uses several stories from the life of Peter to draw out the truths of how we should be focused, not on ourselves or our plans, but on God and the plans He has for us.

I readily acknowledge that I am drawn to books that discuss our need to get over ourselves. But let's not make this about me. I believe everyone has a need to get over themselves. In fact, let me make it about David for a moment, and one paragraph he wrote in particular.

The highlight for me was a single line: “Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you.” I understood immediately what the line was suggesting: If God wants to do great things with me, so be it. If God wants to ignore me so he has more time and energy to do great things with someone else, so be it. I was just fanatical enough that evening that this seemed like reasonable service, a perfectly sensible commitment to make. So I honed in on that line as I prayed silently to my God: “Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you.” I left that service happy and blessed.

I thin that's a pretty good prayer for life. You can find this book here. Enjoy!
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