DOING WHAT JESUS DID by Fern Horst

• Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Matthew 20:25-28

• What Would Jesus Do? We have many reasons to be reminded of this question these days as we see the initials WWJD on everything from bracelets to T-shirts to Bible covers to refrigerator magnets. Someone once said that the reminder should be "DWJD" (Do What Jesus Did) instead.

• I tend to agree. By using the question "What would Jesus do?" to determine our actions, we may be in danger of acting out what we think Jesus would do rather than what He actually did. Our human perspective of Jesus and what He would do in our day is often sadly flawed by the influence of many of the world's values which He would never own.

• One of those values that seems to have crept into my own thinking, and that of many Christians, is the idea that when I choose a church, a spouse, a career, or even a friend, that I should make sure that my "needs" are going to be met. If after making my decision I think they aren't, then I have the right to move on and find something different. Seems reasonable enough, doesn't it?

• But wait a minute. If I'm going to be committed to DWJD (doing what Jesus did), I won't make my decisions by that criteria. I'll take a look back at the accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible and take special note that "the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."

• This changes a significant criteria by which I make the major and the not so major decisions in my life. If I am going to do what Jesus did, I will also be a servant and a minister to others as He was. When I choose a church, it should be a place where I can serve. My choice of a career or a job should be one that allows me to serve others. And my decision whether to marry or who I marry should be qualified by the criteria of whether I can serve better with this person or alone.

• Before we think that Jesus ignored His own needs, though, we'd better take a second look at the Gospels. He definitely took steps to get His needs for refreshment and refueling met, but not through relationships with people. The Gospels say that, particularly after times of ministering to the multitudes, "he went up into a mountain apart to pray" (Matthew 14:23). If we are going to DWJD, we'll be sure to take the same steps in the midst of our lives of serving and ministering to others.