Resurrecting the WWJD...

WWJD--What Would Jesus Do? Who would have thought that a bracelet idea birthed by a youth leader in Holland, Michigan, would explode into a multi-million-dollar marketing bonanza that touched the Christian youth of the 90s? She got totally screwed in the deal, by the way. Thank you, Zondervan.

It was a fad, sort of like pet rocks, but there is no denying that it focused youth on Jesus, and that in itself is all good. Fast forward to 2013, and I’m doing home church with a few good friends, and the whole WWJD thing comes up. Most of the group had kids go through the craze, and we were lightly kind of spoofing how the acronym showed up everywhere. In the midst of the back and forth, one of the guys gets up and says, “No biggie, I know the answer to that.”

To what? You don’t mean that there is AN answer, do you?

Yes.

And he wasn’t jerking my chain. He was dead serious, although he did have a smile on his face. I had, and still have, a lot of respect for this guy, so I knew that this was not some wild and crazy thing that he just pulled out of the air. I had no idea what a threshold moment this would become for me. Alright, I’ll play along, “So what is THE answer, Mr. Smarty Pants?”

“He would listen to the voice of The Father.”

You could hear a pin drop. Deer in the headlights. I was at a loss for words. (big deal, if you know me). But...but...what about the situation? Don’t we need to discern how we should act given the context? What about all those books, bible studies, and seminars where we learned to be like Jesus? Are you trying to tell me that it all boils down to how well we are animated and directed by God’s Spirit? [Gal 5:16 MSG if you need some validation...]

Yes.

I knew immediately that this was a magical moment for me, but like the good left-brain Christian I was, it sounded...well...mystical. It was too right-brained, too uncontrollable, too subject to the slippery slope. What it was was too late. The genie was out of the bottle. As my friend John likes to say, “Argh, now I KNOW!!”

In an instant, my friend had taken me off the checklist of Christian theology to freedom in the Spirit spirituality.

I...would...never...be...the...same...gain. Amen to that.

I have told this story dozens of times over the years, and it never grows old. The reason for that is that I constantly encounter people who are sincerely majoring in their Christian theology in the minor pursuit of doing instead of the greater pursuit of cultivating their being. It's not a new concept, being and doing, but often we get wrapped around the axle over which comes first and expound on scores of other heady ways to slice it and dice it.

Enough already.

If we develop the oneness with the Father that Jesus constantly encouraged, then “what do I do next?” is a non-issue. We will KNOW. No more trying to figure out what to say or how to act; God’s got it, and I need to listen. This was Jesus’ mode of operandi. The reason we miss this is that, for centuries, we have overemphasized His deity at the expense of His humanity. Sure, I think that Jesus had intuitive foreknowledge of events, but I don’t believe that God gave him the thirty-three-year day-by-day playbook to go by. What kind of example would that be for us? In his humanity, he needed to learn to depend on God just like we need to. And he did it better than anyone. A perfect balance. You never read about Jesus needing to stop dead in his tracks, put a fist on his chin, and consider what to do next. He just knew because the Spirit was directing his every move.

You want a life like that?

Yeah, me too.

The beauty of following Jesus is that we can operate in the same way with the same result. We do, however, have to work at it. More than zero, as my buds and I say all the time. No God pixie dust. We need to stop sitting around and waiting for God’s non-normative miracle intervention and pursue the truth revealed by the Spirit as if our lives depended on it.

Because they do.