Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenges.  This week’s topic is part of our series called EPIC where we’ve been exploring how Jesus is found throughout the Old Testament part of the Bible. We’re reading some epic old stories from the Old Testament, some of which you might have heard before, some of which might be new to you. But our hope is that in each of them we’ll see how they’re part of one big epic story: the story of the Bible, the story of the world, God’s story.

Our daily challenges are meant to help you explore what it means to follow Jesus, even if you don’t have a lot of time. That’s why we have a rhythm that keeps us in sync, even if we’re not a community that meets together in person regularly. This means every Monday we introduce the week’s idea. Every Tuesday we study it in the Bible. Every Wednesday we see how that challenges and transforms our thinking on the topic. Thursdays we try to apply and live it out. Friday is a day for prayer and reflection before we take a rest on Saturday, and Sundays we meet together with other Christians in community.

Names are very important, in fact they are one of the most important sounds we can hear – our ears are tuned to recognize our name wherever we are.  Knowing and calling someone by their name is important.  It’s embarrassing to claim to know someone, then realize you don’t know their last name.

And yet, there are times where we don’t use names at all, or maybe we only use last names, in order to show respect.  This used to be a much bigger part of our culture, but less so today.  For example, I consider my doctor to be like a friend – our visits are not all business, but include some friendly conversation she doesn’t share with every patient.  Yet, even when she calls us and uses her first name, we still call her Doctor.

Familiar names indicate a kind of intimacy that isn’t appropriate in every situation.  We don’t address the Queen, or the President of the USA, or even professionals like Doctors or Judges with their first names, unless we know them really, really well.  So, imagine how much more careful we should be with God’s name!

Question: When someone gets your name wrong, how do you react?  Have you gotten someone else’s name wrong ? How did they react?

• You can [permalink append=”#comments”]Discuss the Challenge[/permalink] online, or by starting a local discussion group!
• Are you meeting just once a week with your discussion group?  You can find all of this week’s discussion material in our Weekly Study Guide