The Daily Word

As we are halfway through our look at the Beatitudes, and rather than just continue to build a list of do’s and don’t’s, I thought it might be useful to look at our perfect example, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Some years back, within evangelical Christian Circles, an acronym became widespread which was WWJD, which actually stood for a question, “What Would Jesus do?” The question is still valid today and perhaps more so, given world and social conditions and speed of change of attitudes today, and what we, who class ourselves as Jesus’ followers, should do when faced with a multitude of different situations which would never be specifically covered in the Bible.

If we were to rely on our human nature to react to situations, sometimes even personal situations, we are ignoring the question above, which should always be uppermost in our mind and which the Beatitudes try to summarise to improve the quality of our service to our Saviour.

Jesus was faced with situations and choices on earth that we will never have to face and given His deity of character, His sensitivity would be far greater than ours and yet in the Garden of Gethsemane we have the key that Jesus used when faced with an utterly horrific future, in the prayer He made to His Heavenly Father, “Nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done”!

When He was falsely accused before Pilate, He could have made a robust defence and rebutted the accusations, BUT, He chose not to answer a word! He knew the accusations were false, but He didn’t even have a retaliatory thought against His accusers. Sadly, I don’t think that we might ever be able to emulate Jesus control of our thought processes, but to answer not a word IS within our capacity, IF we pray what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. God’s will should always be preeminent in out lives.

There are many other examples when Jesus walked away from confrontation, where He chose a difficult route rather than the easy choice, and above all He spent time in prayer to His Father. Let us try to implement in our lives the acronym above, WWJD!

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church