What Would Jesus Undo

By Michael Boggs

We've all heard the question, "what would Jesus do," but have you ever wondered what he would undo? The New Testament is filled with Jesus undoing anything that causes separation between God and the people he loves. What would Jesus undo in today's culture? The answer is a lot.Throughout the New Testament, Jesus undoes barriers of impotent religion (or religion that can't produce life in us), so that he can have a more intimate relationship with his people. Some of those barriers are still in existence today and they are keeping people away from God instead of drawing them closer to him.If Jesus were to actually walk into your church, your home, or your life, are there things he would undo? Sooner or later that's the question we all must wrestle with. If Jesus is undoing something in our life, we can be sure that it's for our good and for God's glory. Let the undoing begin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9780891127086

Michael Boggs

MICHAEL BOGGS is best known as a musician, singer, and songwriter. He's toured the world, become a sought-after songwriter, and leads worship for thousands. However, he never planned to be a musician, much less an author. Boggs has come to realize that God's plans are not always what we expect. Since 2006, Michael has been the worship leader at a fast-growing young adult gathering, Kairos, in Brentwood, Tenessee, hosting nearly 1,000 college students and young adults every week. He has also served as a regular guest worship leader at various churches, including Max Lucado's church, Oak Hills, in San Antonio, Texas. Through words that heal, convict, and speak love and bravery directly into people's hearts, God is using Boggs to minister every day, and to lead others on their own surprising journeys of faith.

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References

PREFACE

The Origin of

What Would Jesus Undo

I heard a sermon recently that blew me away.

Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but worship leaders and musicians do pay attention to sermons. Most of the time.

I was leading worship at a youth conference in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, when a well-known speaker named Shane Claiborne stepped onto the platform. I had never heard him before, so I was excited. I knew he had lived an interesting life and had made several sacrifices to walk with Jesus in a manner that wasn’t common or expected of a Christian leader like himself.

He hit the stage that night wearing really baggy pants and dark-rimmed glasses. I’m usually pretty good at getting an accurate read on someone by just spending a few minutes with them. My first impression of him was that he was gentle and compassionate. He began to speak, and immediately I was engaged by his charisma. At some point during his message, I found myself on the edge of my seat as he cited statistics on how unchurched people view Christians. He was quoting a book called Unchristian. He said that several hundred non-Christians had been asked a simple question:

What are the first few things that come to your mind as you think about the word Christian?

Their answers were alarming. The top three responses were antigay, hypocritical, and judgmental. Nothing good or positive made it into the top ten responses, and love never made the list. I literally said out loud, "Are you kidding me? Love never made the list? The Scriptures say that the world will know us by our love."

Brennan Manning is heard at the beginning of the dc Talk song What If I Stumble saying, The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

As I listened to Shane in Pigeon Forge that night, I was sad. I was troubled. I hated to think that this is how many non-Christians perceive the church. It upset me to the core of my being to realize how many people might never see God’s love in us. And I recalled my pastor’s frequent remark that it seems as though we are most known by what we’re against rather than what we’re for.

That night I had to admit that he is right. Realizing this broke my heart. I had to do something about it. But what could a red-headed musician from Berryhill, Oklahoma, do about a problem so huge, so widespread?

Strange as it may seem, I got my question answered because of grilled chicken and a baked potato. That’s what I was having for lunch at J. Alexander’s one day while I was meeting with a worship leader friend of mine whom I deeply respect. She was catching me up on the latest series at her church, which they were calling What Would Jesus Undo. As she spoke that short phrase, my eyes lit up. I stopped her and said, That’s a great title!

Several times I had asked myself the simple, popular question What Would Jesus Do? I had at least ten W WJD bracelets in junior high and high school. In assorted colors. (I was trying to be fashionable and spiritually conscious at the same time.) I had heard that question asked in a jillion sermons, but I had never thought about what Jesus would undo.

Jesus was already undoing something inside me, but I didn’t know what yet. I walked away from lunch that day thinking about the sermon I had heard from Shane. What would Jesus undo about the way we Christians treat people, or about the way we act both inside and outside the church? More importantly, what would he undo in me concerning the way I represent him to a world that desperately needs him?

As I pursued this line of thinking, I began to research what Jesus sought to undo or change in the hearts and minds of the people he walked with and preached to. I found that Jesus tried to break down a lot of walls, and he fought to destroy certain ways of thinking. Exactly what did he try to change, and how can I help put those things in bold print so people, including myself, can learn to represent Jesus and his teachings in the best possible way?

If we’re going to ask the question, What Would Jesus Undo, I believe it’s best to look into Scripture and see what he tried to undo during his ministry on earth. We need to search for any parallels between his message then and our culture now. Study and research reveals so many parallels that one book can’t possibly hold them all. Jesus would undo a lot. In the following pages we will examine some of the words of Jesus and then ask ourselves: What Would Jesus Undo?

(One helpful hint: first ask that question to yourself. I have found that it’s very easy to point to others and preach about what Jesus would undo in them. Do your best to point that finger back at yourself.)

INTRODUCTION

More Like a Lion,

Less Like a Lamb

"I’d rather spend one day as a lion,

than a thousand as a lamb."

—RICK PITINO

You might be asking yourself why on earth a worship leader/singer-songwriter would decide to write a book on such a controversial topic as What Would Jesus Undo. Wouldn’t it make more sense to reserve a topic like this for a pastor or teacher who has years of experience and education? Who am I to write this book?

Believe me, all these questions have been rattling around in my brain for the past year as I have tried to put flesh on the bones of this idea. As a songwriter, I usually spend a lot of time developing ways to say something that allows for listener interpretation. I generally try my best to be artistic in the way I express my thoughts and ideas. In this case, however, I think I’d rather just be blunt. The answer to the WWJU question is actually pretty simple.

I believe God loves us with an intense, furious, and irreversible love that is not only meant to captivate our hearts but is also intended to flow through us to anyone and everyone with whom we come in contact. But it seems to me that while a lot of us claim to be followers of Jesus, too many of us never actually do the things he did or undo the things he tried to undo. We don’t talk the way he talked or love the way he loved. Sometimes we are so eager to please ourselves (I include myself in this) that loving somebody who might be unlovable often seems too difficult and, honestly, just too much of an inconvenience.

We’re far too busy to live as Jesus lived. He would interrupt his entire schedule just to eat lunch with outcasts like Zacchaeus. He would extend an invitation of friendship to people like Matthew, who was considered by most to be thief and a traitor. He would offer no condemnation to people who were actually caught in the act of sin—people like the woman who was almost stoned for committing adultery. He gave her help instead of hatred, blessing rather than blame.

When I look at the church in North America as a whole, I don’t always see this kind of Jesus in us, and I don’t always see him in me.

The first step toward fixing any problem is admitting you have one. So here I am admitting to you that I have a problem. I have lived a mostly Christian life. By mostly Christian, I mean that I’ve kept most of the rules. I have a great attendance record at church, and I pay my tithes every month. I’ve been a worship leader, teacher, communion server, and prayer counselor. I’ve often studied into the wee hours of the morning in preparation for a devotional, a sermon, or a song. But even on my best days, some things about my life simply don’t look like Jesus.

I know there is grace for mistakes—so much grace, in fact, that we could never out-sin the great depth of mercy God has for us. My faults are as numerous as the sand on Daytona Beach, but still God has more grace than I have sin. One of my favorite books, Henry van Dyke’s Valley of Vision, echoes these sentiments: O, if He would punish me for my sins, it would not wound my heart so deep to offend Him. But though I sin continually, He continually repeats His kindness to me (126).

God constantly shows me grace, but this doesn’t give me a license to sin. It’s not an excuse to do whatever I want. It’s not a reason to live a mostly Christian life. Is that what I want to tell God when I get to heaven? That I was mostly Christian?

I was caught off guard last year at a three-day prayer retreat with our staff at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. We have one of these every year, but this was the first one I had been able to attend. I was told we would be doing a lot of praying and Scripture reading. Go figure. My friends who don’t go to church think that’s all I do anyway, because I work for God. One friend even joked, Does God ever make you work overtime? I responded by saying, Yes, but the retirement benefits are out of this world. He didn’t laugh. Not even a little smile.

Anyway, we arrived at the prayer retreat and quickly discovered this was going to be a different kind of experience for most of us. It involved our telling other staff members face-to-face what godly characteristics we saw in them. Tears flowed in some of those moments. We read and prayed Scripture over our co-workers and friends.

We also listened more than we actually talked during our prayer time. I can assure you that, for me, listening during prayer doesn’t happen all that often, even though I want it to. I’ve got a long list of things that need to be said during prayer, and usually I don’t have time, or I don’t make time, to hear what God might say back to me about it. During one of those listening times, however, I felt like God began to speak to me.

God has spoken to my heart enough for me to know when it’s him. So I got very quiet and just listened. As clear as a bell in a village church steeple, God said these words: Michael, I want you to be more like a lion and less like a lamb.

Now, to give you some background, the Lord has used the image of a lion in my life several times to help encourage, embolden, and empower me. Oftentimes, God has used the traits of a lion to help me see what he sees in me. Most days, I assure you, I don’t see a lion when I look in the mirror. I see a young man hanging on for dear life, trying to make sense of a senseless world. Nonetheless, during that moment of prayer, God repeated to me: Michael, I want you to be more like a lion and less like a lamb.

My first thought was, What do you mean, Lord? Lions are brave and fearless. They are known for their tenacity and ferociousness. Lambs have a reputation for being meek, passive, dumb, and most of the time scared of their own shadow. I had a feeling that God was doing something in my life that was going to change how I had lived up to that point. I just didn’t know how he was going to change me from a lamb to a lion. Those are quite opposite animals.

To be completely honest, I may not have seen myself as a lion, but I didn’t see myself as a lamb either. I didn’t like to think of myself as a lamb. In my opinion, lambs seem weak. I played football and baseball in school and received scholarships to play those sports in college. I liked lifting weights, action movies, going camping, fishing, and watching UFC. Those were all pretty manly things. Lionlike things even—or so I thought.

But God wasn’t concerned with what I did for fun. He was concerned with what I did for him. He was about to saturate my heart with Scriptures I had read a thousand times before but had never really understood. He was about to show me times when Jesus behaved like a lion and was completely determined to do what God asked