What Would Jesus Do? - One Simple Question

Wouldn't it be great if everyone asked this question before anything and everything we did? Think of what the world would be like if everyone asked this question and followed Jesus' example in EVERYTHING we did.

Imagine what it would be like if everyone got out of bed in the morning and said, ‘What would Jesus do today?’

It’s one straight forward question.
But is there a straight forward answer?
What does the question mean?
Why should we ask it?
Do we know what the correct answer is every time?

Even as a group of Christians attending the same church....if we carried out a survey based on a number of situations as to what we thought Jesus would do, we would probably come up with different answers -

We may be at different stages in our Christian lives;
We may have a different understanding of what the Bible tells us;
We may not listen to God – or we may misunderstand him.

A young mother was cooking pancakes for her two children. The boys became impatient and began to argue over who should have the first pancake. The mum turned to them and said. ‘Now come on. Stop arguing. What would Jesus do?’

The boys thought for a moment and then said, ‘We don’t know. What would Jesus do?’

Mum simply replied, ‘He would say let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’

The older child paused before turning to his brother and said, ‘It’s your turn to be Jesus.’

Maybe the older boy never quite got the point of what his mum meant when she said ‘What Would Jesus Do?’

Maybe that shows how difficult it can be to get the right answer every time.

Like to time that I made the wrong choice – yes it’s confession time. I was in year 6 at junior school and had become the playground door monitor with my friend. This basically meant we were the bouncers. We basically had to stop anyone from going into the school during break times.

Now we took our roles very seriously. No one was going to get past us. That was until one child came up and demanded to be let in. We tried to stop him - we were not going to let him through.

He then tried to barge his way through. But I got hold of him and held him from behind. My mate pulled his fist back and threw a punch. He was just about to hit him right between the eyes when he ducked. And yes, you guessed it, it was me that got it right between the eyes.

It was the wrong choice;
I didn’t ask what Jesus would have done;
Maybe there would have been a different outcome if I had;
Maybe I paid the price.

Yes, it might be obvious what the wrong thing to do is. I think most of us would accept that we should not nick sweets from the pick and mix counter. Or that we should not bully people.

But that does not always make it easy to make the right choice. Sometimes we will get it wrong.

What if we make a rationale decision and get it wrong. Sometimes we make mistakes. We see this in our children as they grow up. I can remember when my children came round the aisle in the supermarket eating sweets from the pick and mix aisle. We challenged them saying they should not have taken them.

They simply said that they saw these sweets unwrapped on display and thought they were allowed to eat them. And I guess that was no different to when mum and dad have a taste of all the cheese unwrapped, on display for tasting purposes – to them it was no different.

So I guess it was a rationale decision – all part of the learning curve. We simply had to explain to them that it wasn’t the same as at the cheese counter.

We as adults will also make the wrong decisions.

But if we seek to do as God wants us to, if we ask what Jesus would do, I am sure God will treat this as a learning curve too. He knows we will get it wrong sometimes.

He did send his Son Jesus. A shining example of how to live as Christians. He wants us to follow that example in all that we do.

So maybe the question is no longer ‘What would Jesus do?’

Maybe the question is ‘What Should We do?’

There is no point in asking the question ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ if we are not prepared to do ‘What Jesus Would Do?’

‘Whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus’

Created about 2 years ago