Think Like Jesus - Part 2 of 3

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAND: You tell us that in Jesus thinking and decision making, He modeled four elements that we should emulate and the first of those was His foundation. Explain that.

BARNA: You know, it was so interesting to me, Richard. When I was doing all the research for this book, I went back and tried to figure out; well, how did Jesus deal with the problems and the issues of his day? How did He make his decisions? One of the things that became very clear was that he had a foundation that He always started with and that He built upon and that foundation, very simply, was the Word of God. Now, you would think, well, yeah, but He is God. But, never the less, what he did was, he modeled for us when you are here on earth, what is the foundation that you build on? And so, when He interacted with the disciples, when He interacted with the crowds, when He dealt with the temptations from Satan, continually, He went back to Scripture. And so, what He had done is He had memorized verses. He quoted those verses in different situations to give people an understanding and a context of how to make proper decisions. He obviously spent a lot of time getting into that information and those principles. He understood them very well, and then it became the basis, not only of His decision making, but of the advice and the teaching and the counsel and the challenges that He gave to all of the people around Him.

LAND: And then you say that the next principle that Jesus employed was focus.

BARNA: You know, focus is so critical in life and to me, one of the compelling elements of Jesus’ life, is that He was in the best sense of the word, narrow minded. He didn’t get distracted by all kinds of peripheral opportunities and issues. He stayed very much focused on one thing. What was that one thing? Well, it is critical for us to understand because it is the one thing we need to be focused on as well, and that is the will of God. In fact, you remember, He even said, “I came down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me.” He was always focused on, I could do these things, but is that really God’s will for my life? If not, it is a distraction, I ignore it, and I stay centered on the very thing that matters the most. You know, the only way that you can get to know that though, I think we also can see from examining Jesus’ life, and that is by spending time with God. This isn’t something that, you know, is ethereal, I mean, this is very real. This is very tangible but you have to invest yourself in the process of getting that focus. So it is about spending time with God in prayer, in His Word, fasting, submitting. All of these things are critical in that process.

LAND: You tell us that Jesus also had a filter through which He passed information.

BARNA: Now, when you look at the foundation and the focus that He had, already you can see that this has really put him in a particular direction in a particular way of thinking and behaving. But then, every time He had to make a decision, the thing that impressed me, was He always went back to biblical principles. He understood that God has given us His Word, not just so that He’d have a best seller on The New York Times best seller list. God gave us His Word so that we would know truth and we would be able to make decisions that would glorify and honor God. So consistently, what He did was He used biblical principles as the filter for His decision making. In other words, when it came time to do something. He didn’t just react to the situation, He didn’t, in other words in today’s vernacular, believe in moral relativism. You know, what seems right at the moment, what would work best for me, what would other people expect of me, He was very analytical and understood the only one who really understands truth and knows what is right is God. God has communicated that to us through his Word, He has given us the principles that constitute that Word, and so when I make a decision, if I am going to do it right, I’ve got to go back to those principles and make sure that the choice that I am about to make squares with those principles. That was the filter that He used.

LAND: Also, part of that filtering process is a submission process. Peter was ready to fight for the Lord, to defend Him there when the soldiers came to take Him in the Garden of Gethsemane and He says, “Peter.” I can just see the look on his face, “Peter, Peter, Peter. Don’t you know I could twelve legions of angels, but how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled.” In other words, He put Himself as the Son of God, under the authority of Scripture, and that’s a key. He put himself under the authority of Scripture, He didn’t stand in judgment of Scripture, and He didn’t take a cafeteria approach to Scripture where, you know, I am going to pick and choose the things I am going to believe in Scripture, and other parts I am just going to ignore and not believe.

BARNA: Yes, and in essence what you are talking about it that He made a decision that when we determine the context within which we will make our decisions. His primary context was a spiritual context, as opposed to what we so often do, which is either a cultural context or an emotional context. So, I think it is a great lesson for us about how do you make an appropriate decision.

LAND: Finally, you tell us that Jesus had faith. Why is that so critical?

BARNA: You know, it is amazing to me that many people overlook this very basic, but I think significant, fact. And that is that Jesus had to have the faith to continue down this incredible path that God had given to Him. You know, we talk about the focus, doing the will of God. Well, you look at the will of God for Jesus. It was not incredibly attractive when you think about the physical suffering, you think about the emotional persecution, you think about the life-style of meekness, you think about all that Jesus had to go through. What gave Him the power to persevere through that? It was His faith. His faith that God knows, that God loved Him, that God would do what was best for him, God knew what was right, and so, even though sometimes what we may be called to do by God is hard, often what we are called to do is these days, counter cultural. The reality is, faith is a critical dimension in all of this. So, some things that as scripture tells us are foolishness to the world, are a sweet aroma to God. They are the right thing to do for the right reasons, and we make a choice. It is our worldview that helps us to make that choice, but you’ve got to have this kind of Bible-based faith in order to make those choices.