What about when you DON’T know what Jesus would do?!
Here’s the thing:
Asking “What would Jesus do?” is a GREAT question to guide our lives as Christians.
Jesus even taught:
“Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.” (3 Nephi 27:27)
But… what do you do when you don’t know what Jesus would do in your exact situation?
The other day, my daughter did something that could potentially be dangerous.
I got on her level, calmly asked her to stop, and explained why she shouldn’t do that.
And then a minute later, she tried it again.
I told her to stop and she said, “No!”
I picked her up and removed her from the dangerous situation.
When I placed her down, I said a little prayer in my heart, “What would Jesus do or say in this situation?”
Like, how exactly would Jesus react to a child who kept making a poor choice even if it looked fun to them? How would He react in the moment? How would He teach?
The quick answer that came to my mind wasn’t as clear as I wanted, but it still answered my question:
“You’ll learn. Just try your best right now.”
Life doesn’t always present scenarios where we choose to be either mean or nice.
Most of the time, there are shades of niceness and meanness and every other intent in between.
So how do we do what the Savior would do?
I think the key is to have the Spirit with us.
And then we just try to move forward the best we can with the information we have.
The Spirit can’t always tell us the exact answer in the moment.
(In fact, that would make things a bit too easy!)
But He can give us the next step to help us learn how to actually become more Christlike.
And what my daughter needs as a Christlike reaction might be very different than what another child needs.
I love that the Spirit is here to help us in the nitty gritty as we work through trial and error to figure out what Jesus would really do.
Happy Studying!
-Cali Black
