Jeff McSwain

February 11, 2018February 12, 2018

A Challenge to “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do)?- PART 1

In the 1990’s, bracelets started appearing on teenage wrists with an acronym, “WWJD?” (“What Would Jesus Do?”). Have you ever tried to answer this question on the way to deciding something? If so, you understand the idea behind the question is to consider how Jesus would think, speak, or act in your situation, and then do likewise. The question is very useful on one hand, as a reminder that God’s perspective should be sought in any and every situation and considered above our own. Doubtless, many people in response to “WWJD?” have been driven to the Bible to study Jesus, which is a good thing! After all, you can’t know what Jesus would do in your situation if you aren’t familiar with what He did. God has blessed the question and the questioners down through the years as they have made choices to follow Jesus.

On the other hand, I often have—and I suspect we all have, at times—a tragic temptation to rationalize what Jesus would do through indirect study without consulting Him directly.

This tendency to work things through in our minds rationally, and leave God out of it, relationally, is a pattern that goes all the way back to the fall in Eden. Beguiled by Satan, Adam and Eve believed the serpent’s assertion that they could be like God, and, instead of engaging God Himself to subdue their illicit desires for knowledge and authority, they turned away from the Living God to obey the snake and taste the forbidden fruit. They weighed the whispered words of the Slitherer, dripping with half-truth, against the word of the Lord, and decided to risk everything for the chance to be God. In aspiring to rise to equality with God, Adam and Eve actually debased themselves and brought the sentence of death to all living things. It was the most precipitous reversal of fortune ever experienced by mankind, initiating a moral free fall that claims all, and, (if we continue our descent apart from Christ, denying the parachute He packed, and ignoring the rip cord), our bodies will slam the ground, pounding on the gates of Hell with the gravitational force of sin, releasing our souls into unending terror—a solitary eternity without God.

Denying the Living God and turning to pure human reasoning was disastrous then—now, it is second nature. Even after we see the light, pull the rip cord, and receive Jesus as our Savior, our fallen thinking strives for answers and achievement through personal research and experience. “Self-help” is an apt moniker for our best efforts, and “autopilot” an excuse for less than best—just doing what feels natural and good.

King Solomon WARNED, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5. Such a simple directive, but it is hard to maintain, as Solomon knows.

By asking “WWJD?,” and even through searching the scriptures diligently, we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are engaging God because we are studying the way Jesus would handle such a situation. Taking no notice of God Himself in the room, we study and talk to ourselves, dressing rationalization in the spiritual wrapper of biblical study! We’re certainly better off searching the scriptures than not, but how we search makes all the difference. If we merely try to understand the truth we’re reading through our fallen eyes of flesh and then take action through our own strength to accomplish our own goals, then we are leaning on our own understanding. When we don’t talk to or listen to God in our moments, nor trust in His deliverance, we make several mistakes through rational human thinking. I’ll introduce three of the mistakes in rational thinking, and then follow up with three spiritual solutions.

Rational Mistake #1: Employing Human Vision

From the outset, we all suffer from a serious and constant nearsightedness—we rely only on what can be seen or perceived within our own range of vision—under the delusion that we are seeing everything that comes to bear on a problem or situation very clearly.

This is a huge mistake. We are NEVER seeing the whole picture. Walking by sight, we fail to see the trip wires and traps, the cloaks disguising darkness that fool the eye and seduce the soul. We are often unwilling to bend our personal biases, or let go of our fears, to take certain factors into account, and so skew the truth. Consequently, we often misjudge the motives, subtleties, and alternatives in our situations, and, in turn, we misrepresent ourselves to others.

Often, we think we have a problem with “x,” when instead, there’s something deeper going on with “y.” We might look up all the verses in the Bible that have to do with “x,” (which is not a bad thing), but as long as we believe we can fix the problem by figuring out what Jesus would do with “x,” then we are completely blind to the “y.”

Leaning on our own understanding, walking by sight, we will consistently miss the opportunity to rely on God in our spiritual blindness, and we will judge all things through a heuristic of self-preservation and salvation, or even pseudo-spirituality, rather than through faith—by engaging God Himself—and depending on Him for insight, divine guidance, power through the Holy Spirit, and deliverance.

Let’s pretend for the moment that we can see our problems perfectly and know the layers of the onion that make up the stink in the present pickle. Even so, do we have enough knowledge of Jesus to be able to choose to act or respond as Jesus would in every situation? This brings me to another key mistake that we make in rationalizing to solve our dilemmas.

Rational Mistake #2: Employing deficient minds with limited understanding of Jesus Christ.

Do the accounts of Jesus ever surprise you? Jesus continually surprises me in scripture.

If I were reading through the gospels for the first time, I couldn’t tell you how Jesus would react in the next chapter to a given situation based on His reactions in an earlier chapter, and there isn’t a way to reduce His specific actions and reactions into a systematic matrix of behavior to refer to whenever I have a situation, no matter how many times I read the gospels. Sometimes He heals people and admonishes them to keep quiet about it, and other times He tells them to present themselves to the priests or to go and tell others what God has done for them. Sometimes He wants to be incognito, and other times He allows a reception of great fanfare. Sometimes He is quiet as a lamb before the shearers when confronted by his enemies, or gentle, even tender, and other times He speaks forcefully, even scornfully, or turns tables over in righteous indignation. Sometimes He heals with just a word or a thought, and sometimes He uses mud and spit. Sometimes He walks on water, but most often He rode in a boat.

While we may have good reason to think we understand why Jesus did what He did at certain times, there is an uncertainty when reading that defies complete understanding. There is no “Jesus Code” that we can decipher and then employ in a systematic fashion, (much as we may desire one), to make it easy to know what to do in any situation. GOD says it is impossible to pin Him down with our minds of flesh:

Isaiah 55:8,9. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.ESV.

No one has complete and perfect knowledge of scripture and the nuances of Jesus’ actions and words in a given situation and with a specific person. Since I’m not the Son of God, the idea that I can come up with the divine response in my present dilemma using only my reason and my knowledge of Jesus in scripture is presumptuous, at best. When Adam bit the forbidden fruit, he thought his eyes would be opened so that he could see clearly and judge rightly, like God, but instead he closed his eyes to God and began to see evil as a valid and attractive option. When we hide our eyes, our ears, and our hearts from God Himself in trying to figure out how to do the right thing, we take pride in our own understanding and believe that we can think and act like Jesus. To the degree that we believe this, we buy into a self-determinism and a false ownership of our results, which is a third fatal flaw.

Rational Mistake #3: Self-Determinism…Assuming the Results are Up to Us.

Oftentimes we feel like we’ve got to “crack the code” in order to get the results that we’re after: the solution to the problem, the cessation of negative consequences, getting that raise or new job, winning the respect and love we deserve. And so we try this and we try that, we kiss up, cajole and manipulate, we dramatize and threaten, we bait and bribe, we advertise our strengths, show off, blame-shift, and downplay our shortcomings.

In a broken world, seemingly driven by cause and effect, we adopt a self-salvation modus operandi summed up in the adage, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” The spiritualized version, though still unscriptural, is: “God helps those who help themselves,” or even, “Pray as though everything depended on God and act as if everything depended on you.” — St. Augustine.

Through common experience, we learn a a reliance on self to “make things happen” to ensure good results. We assume that we’ve got to pick the right principle to emphasize or prioritize if we’re to please God. I’ve got to believe and not doubt in just the right way, or obey as close to perfectly as I can… otherwise, God will not be pleased and He will not want to bless me with the successful result that I am looking for. Perhaps more often, we just act the way we want to, and ask God to bless us or save us afterward.

These three pragmatic approaches are very human, but spiritually misleading. Rationalizing “What Would Jesus Do?” puts us in the place of God, judging Jesus Himself in our own eyes and subjecting recorded scripture to our analysis of cause and effect. If we merely try to imitate what we think Jesus did in order to obtain similar results, then we reduce the power of God down to humanly achievable action and reaction, or, just as bad, we try to manipulate God into doing what we want by using the right words or behaviors, (which is akin to witchcraft). These errors of perception, understanding, and performance are serious impediments to the abundant life to which Jesus calls us. Thankfully, God offers the solution to all three aspects of leaning on our own understanding and walking by sight.

Do What Jesus Did… SURRENDER the Moment

Proverbs 3:5-6. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

If we really desire to do what Jesus would do, we first need to step back from analyzing individual cases and actions, and look at the big picture. Sometimes we can get lost in the details and lose something very important, and I’m suggesting here that we often do this when we pick apart the scriptures. We must ask God for inspiration in our studies, or we’ll become fixated on some minor aspects of behavior management so that the whole of our sanctification begins to be summed up as “try harder” or “do more.”

Let me give a metaphor as an example of myopic scholarship with an instance from the study of art. If you examine a small 2 inch square sample of the pointillist painting by Georges Seurat, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” you will find a collection of multiple colored dots of paint that don’t appear to have any relationship to each other that suggests any larger form. Pointillism is an impressionist style of painting that presents form and light through the juxtaposition of colored dots. We might admire the intensity and hue of the colored dots in the small sample, and even the spacing and size differences of the dots themselves, but we would be hard pressed to discern any recognizable form.

Small dots of pigment viewed up close seem randomly placed. http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/jatte.html

However, when we step back from the painting to take in the whole artwork, we can still see that small collection of dots that we were examining, but now we see that those dots were describing the profile of a woman who is standing on the shore with her beau or husband, enjoying a beautiful sunny day from the cool of the shade by the lake. We may begin to understand more of the painter’s intention and the meaning of the organized dots as we examine the relationship of the figures to each other, the formality of the fashion, the dogs at the figures’ feet, the presence of others at leisure, and so on. The painting expresses a captured moment in the lives of a certain class of people on a Sunday afternoon, from the perspective and intention of a talented artist.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1864-1866. Art Institute of Chicago. Public Domain.

When we examine the Bible, we can’t see the whole picture that the words describe, which is as infinite as eternity, but we can understand more and more as we examine the details in each verse within the context of the whole.

I want to expose something here which is evident in every dot of colored paint in the portrait of Jesus and holds up as one of the main truths of the big picture, and which has the potential to increase the brilliance and impact of the hues in our own self-portraits:

Jesus Christ lives an entire eternity of surrendered moments to the Father.

While He was here in the flesh, He surrendered to the Father in every moment, a feat never to be duplicated by any man. I will delve into the depths of His surrender in subsequent posts, but I would like to point out now that we have the same opportunity as Jesus did on earth, to surrender ourselves in our moments to God.

While we’re not able to live a lifetime completely made up of surrendered moments, we can surrender a moment… and another one… and another one. As we do, as we look for God to teach us what we need to know, give us thoughts that are higher than our own, words that are better than we can dream up, and actions that are inspired, we will be doing what Paul is talking about when he says, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21. ESV.

When we ask God to do through us what we cannot do on our own, we do the opposite of leaning on our own understanding: we fall upon the Savior Himself so that Christ stands up in us through the power of the Holy Spirit and accomplishes what He desires.

You may wonder, “how can I surrender?”

Engage God Himself and invite Him to use you as He will. This in itself is the highest form of worship, when you count God as supreme and sovereign over this moment, and yield yourself within it to His desires. I may not ever (in this body of flesh) be able to yield every fiber of my being completely to God as Jesus did—there is some resistance to God inherent in the fallen flesh itself—but God is glorified in the essential submission of my will, imperfect as it is.

In Part B, I will outline three practical ways to surrender that are counterpoint to the three rational WWJD mistakes previously outlined. Jump to: A Challenge to “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do)? – PART B

February 7, 2018March 2, 2018

Secret Treasure

Standing nervously in a long line at the convention center, she lugged an heirloom with a secret even her family didn’t know. A crowd of hopefuls had assembled this Saturday morning, all clutching or hauling antiques, collected from sitting rooms and dust-covered mantels, or scrounged and rummaged from attics and closets, or bargained for in garage sales. They didn’t jump out of bed early, and change outfits three times, to come and sell their stuff at the flea market. No, they triple-prepped because they thought that maybe, just maybe, they owned something of unusual interest or value that would get them onto the set of a TV episode of “Antiques Roadshow: Discovering America’s Hidden Treasures.”

Today, she was “together.” Freshly styled, cascading ombre hair framed her pretty face and tumbled onto her purple shirt, and an eye-catching silver choker glinted at her neckline. Her extra effort turned out to be an investment in her future. The framed “print” she carried was arresting in its own way, so that she was eventually ushered to the main presenter’s table, as cameras recorded her interview with the art appraiser. Now the center of attention in a high stakes “show and tell,” her eyes sparkled in the telling, and her item stole the show.

Under glass, in an old frame, the artwork had hung over her grandmother’s bed, and she inherited it when her grandmother passed away. It was appraised twice as a printed reproduction of little consequence—in 1998, for $200, and then again, in 2004, for $250. When she opened the frame recently to remove a dead mosquito trapped between the glass and the image, she saw something that scared her with a thought that this print might be “real.”

The picture itself is beautiful. Henry Francois Farny had painted a traveling group of Native Americans in 1892, some on foot, some on horseback, peacefully emerging from an alpine grove at the bend in a high mountain pass. The hue of the evergreen forest shifts into the distant blue of the cloudless sky, and cuts a jagged edge at the treeline of a massive Rocky Mountain summit that dominates the setting. The artist masterly captured the tiny details in the journeying figures, and their clothing and supplies, and skillfully wrapped them in the grandness of nature under an infinite sky.

The appraiser explained how Farny lived and traveled with the Sioux tribe, and chose to portray peaceful scenes of their way of life, rather than sensationalize their existence with violence and conflict. Theodore Roosevelt once told the artist, “Farny, the nation owes you a great debt. It does not realize it now, but it will some day. You are preserving for future generations phases of American history that are rapidly passing away.” Clark, S. J. (1912). Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume 2. The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company. p. 449. Retrieved 2016-03-29.

On Antiques Roadshow, the appraiser usually builds the suspense by pointing out clues of authenticity on the way to revealing the estimated value, but Meredith Hilferty avoided the question of originality. She ended her description of the artist and subject matter abruptly, and, without any warning, she revealed an appraised value a thousand times higher than any previous appraisal had dared—$200,000-$300,000!

The young woman suddenly slumped forward, catching her head in her hand, and fought tears for the next couple of minutes as she struggled to control her emotions on camera. With this revelation, her life was changed. In a single moment, everything was different—the moment she realized she had inherited a national treasure.

Her eyes were opened to see a true national treasure.

We enjoy watching Antiques Roadshow because we are all born with a desire to possess treasure, and spend our lives looking for and storing up treasures for ourselves, and for our children. This show reveals that there may be treasures right under our noses, so that we start to think twice about hauling our junk off to the dump. What if that old ceramic vase that grandma gave us is worth a fortune? What if I could find a real treasure at the antiques store that everyone else overlooked?

What if an appraiser looked into your life, and found something you had completely overlooked—something of untold value—that would change your outlook, your opportunities, and your life?

For some of you, this may be the moment you discover, or rediscover, a treasure beyond measure. It hung on your grandma’s wall, or collected dust on the mantel, in the background of your life. Months, even years, may have passed since you truly admired it… Even your family has said, “That old thing? You can have it… now, what about that rocking chair in the front room?”

Here is my reveal… I’m going to assume the role of appraiser and point out a treasure that is yours already, and remind you of its value and its power to enrich your moments. It’s not a thing that can be touched or traded, or stolen, or destroyed.

In the Bible, God told Abram, “I am your shield, your very great reward.” Genesis 15:1.*

Have you forgotten God, in the moment-to-moment? It’s easy to do, because He’s not a visible companion. I think we’ve all been there, probably more often than we’re willing to admit.

We spend far too much time pursuing other treasure, hoping and yearning for more, looking past the Savior and Sustainer of the entire universe, Jesus Christ. Many of us are willing to trust Him with our eternal future, but somehow, in the present moment, we neglect to reach out to Him. We forget where true meaning and real value lives, and forge ahead to create our own kingdoms—under the nose of God—but without seeking His face.**

Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10.*

Jesus came so that we may have a moment-by-moment fellowship with the Father, even as He does. He came so that we can surrender in our moments to the Father, even as He does. He came so that we can understand and receive the treasure that He is, and invite Him, as the treasured One, to live through us in our moments.

This is what Paul means, when he writes, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:27.*

Maybe you are not treasuring God right now. Maybe you’re angry because of something you’ve lost, or because some kind of pain or bad news weighs you down. Maybe you feel God has let you down, or forgotten you, when you were in great need. May God remind you, right now, that your deepest need is to fellowship with Him. He hasn’t forgotten you. He is knocking on your door even now. Will you get up out of your easy chair and open the door to Him? Perhaps pain is the doorway to a deeper fellowship with Him?

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20.

Practice a yielded heart, and an invitational spirit, toward the LORD, so that your life can take on a depth and meaning in His presence, and, in His power, you will realize the opportunity in your moments, far beyond what your own wisdom and strength could grasp.

If you have never understood your need for a Savior, go straight to THIS post: (Coming Soon).

If you want to know the principles of The Surrendered Moment, and the power of God to transform your life through it, go to THIS post: A Challenge to “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do)?-PART 1

*All scripture quoted is NIV 1984.

**NOTE: When I write about “our” tendencies and shortcomings, and sin, I am condemning myself only, and counting myself as the worst offender. I see God most clearly when I understand the depth and desperation of my need for Him. The best moments in life are the ones where we are most aware of God’s love, presence, and power, in full recognition of our own weaknesses and limitations.

The basic message in this blog is special, and resonates with the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. The messenger, however, is a broken vessel. Those who know me could tell of my faults and blind spots—I struggle against sin. I have no high horse to ride.

But broken vessels can hold living water. Imperfect people can speak truth; sinful people can accomplish good. If my cracked pitcher, with holes in the bottom, can hold holy water, there is hope for everyone! When water is poured from any broken pitcher, we shouldn’t marvel at the vessel itself, or the sheen of its glazed veneer—we should instead stand in awe at the miraculous power that, despite the laws of physics, holds the water in the pitcher, or causes it to pour out when water is needed. We should be drawn to worship and praise the goodness, the magnificence, the power, and the friendship of our God, and be thankful that He prefers to fill and use people that know they are broken—who are thirsty for Him—and desire to be filled according to His will and good purpose.

I can’t claim that my desire for Him is consistently deep, nor is my resolve to stay close to Him always strong. My faith waxes and wanes, and sin tempts me and still overwhelms me. God is gracious. He isn’t looking for perfection, or wisdom, or strength, or power, or nobility—He has all that. He is looking for a humbled people, who will yield themselves to be filled.

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. ESV.

This blog is a boast about God—that He is THE WONDERFUL—and His desire to fill His people, broken as we are, to pour out the good news about Him with demonstrations of His goodness, power, and friendship. Jesus is called “Emmanuel, “God with Us,” and He, in submission to the Father, has sent the Holy Spirit to demonstrate God In Us.

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