What Would Jesus Undo?Sample

What Would Jesus Undo? Indifference

Remember what would Jesus do (WWJD?) bracelets? They ask an important question, but lasting change often requires looking into the motivations that drive our actions. Five regular people from Life.Church took an honest look at their own lives with a different kind of question: What would Jesus undo? This Bible Plan is what we found. 

One day, I somehow got past wishing things would be better for kids without homes, and I finally mustered the courage to visit a local children’s home. 

This home didn’t need me to paint a fence, sort their clothes, or donate a football like I’d imagined. Someone there actually told me they were hard-pressed to find someone who would just throw a football with their boys.

Up to this point in my life, I’d successfully avoided football throwing, but there was something that pulled me out of bed early Saturday mornings to get a box of donuts and toss a football with these boys. Before long, I was paired in a mentor program with a 15-year-old named Dakota.

Dakota was a wild, red-headed, teenage boy exposed to years of abuse, multiple abandonments, and unimaginable tragedy.

It was Dakota who helped me see my own apathy and indifference. Before Dakota, I thought I cared enough—I actually thought I cared a lot. I thought I understood world problems by pausing, listening, sometimes crying over injustice, and even giving money to issues that tugged on my heart.

Then, Dakota helped me understand the book of Nehemiah in a very real way. Nehemiah not only recognized a problem and wept for it, but then chose to become part of God’s answer. 

In Nehemiah 6:3 NIV, Nehemiah was relentless. As indifferent onlookers attempted to sway Nehemiah and ask him to come down from his project, Nehemiah made his tenacity known.

… “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” 

But my story doesn’t end as a neat Bible study. Technically, I’m no longer volunteering as Dakota’s mentor. After initial denial, unforeseen opposition, months of court hearings, and a forensic evaluation—I’m Dakota’s mom. Jesus pushed me right past indifference into adoption. I never thought I’d be a single mother of a teen in my twenties, but considering what Dakota’s endured and what Jesus endured for both of us, motherhood is a gift I’ll gladly accept. 

How will you get past wishing things will be better?

—Lesley, Dakota’s mom

Pray: Jesus, because of You, I am done with indifference.

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