JULY 02 THE JESUS QUESTIONS
JQ#21 “What do you think about fish,
taxes, lost sheep, forgiveness, and your fellow servants?”
(Matthew 17:25, 18:12,33)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, forgive me for all the time that I have spent worrying
about the things of the world that have no impact on my spiritual well being.
Lord You have demonstrated to me time and time again
the Faithfulness of the Father to Provide everything we need
to live a Holy life and yet we succumb to the flesh
and seek to live a “worldly” life
and when we look to things of this world to give us happiness
we are always disappointed.
Lord Jesus You have never disappointed us
and the Father has never failed us
in any way so why
Lord do we insist on holding on so tight to that which disappoints us?
Lord I pray for discernment to know when I am letting myself drift back
into the concerns of the world which is always in a direction away from You,
for when we finally realize we are adrift in the sea of worries
that we are in a boat without a paddle
and that Lord is a sinking feeling!
So Lord, open my spiritual eyes so that I can see my way back
to the course you have set for me and I will rely not on my ability
to row my own boat but on Your Promise
to never leave us nor forsake us!!!
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus never lets an opportunity to Teach “satellite” Lessons go to waste
as He seizes every opportunity to reveal several
Truths of God
to us just by asking a Question that makes us stop and “think”
about the world around us, and when we have to use our
God-given intellect to understand our own individual lives
we learn that God has equipped us with two invaluable tools
with which we can use to work our way through all our daily problems;
God’s Tool #1 is our “Free Will”
which is the characteristic we possess that is most similar to the
“image” of God
in that with our
Free Will Gift from God
we can see that our future can be influenced by the
“Choices” we make using that Free Will
which is ours and ours alone.
By giving us Free Will and making us live with the
“Consequences” of our “Choices”
God has given us the “Power”
to influence both our future and our past
and we cannot defer that Power to another entity,
we must exercise our Free Will and demonstrate our
God-given responsibility of self-sufficiency by using only our God-given abilities.
God’s Tool #2 is our “God-given Intellect”
which we must use in conjunction with
God’s Tool #1 our Free Will to make Godly-decisions
that will affect our “Spiritual Well Being”
thereby influencing our eternal destiny.
If we abuse our Free Will by not using our God-given Intellect
then we are in reality going against God’s Will for our lives
and going against God is NEVER a good thing
for the path away from God leads to the destruction of our soul,
and that can never be considered a good thing.
We see Jesus telling Peter to stop and use his God-given intellect
to “observe” the “physical” world and make “Spiritual” sense
out of our day-to-day lives when Jesus asked back-to-back Questions
“What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth
take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?”
[JQ#21a & b] (Matthew 17:25)
Peter now has to use his God-given intellect at the insistence of God Himself
because Peter is standing before God in the form of the “Son”
knowing that the Question Jesus is asking Peter is because
of a question Peter was going to ask Jesus.
By Jesus “anticipating” what Peter was going to ask and “preventing”
Peter from asking it, Peter now knows that
Jesus is God because only God knows
what we need before we even ask!
Peter also knows that by Jesus asking the Question about where
“…do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes…”
that Jesus knows everything about him
and now Jesus is instructing Peter to stop and
“think”
— Peter will find out that he already knows the “answer”
to the Jesus Question but like us, we know the Truth of God
but need instructions on how to properly apply that God-given knowledge
to living our daily lives.
Peter gave a one word answer to the tax collectors when he said
“Yes” to their question about paying the temple tax
and now Peter gives a two word answer to Jesus
when Jesus asks Peter about
“the kings of the earth” collecting taxes
as Peter responds to Jesus
“From Strangers” (Matthew 17:26).
Jesus demonstrated to Peter that Peter has all the answers
(consider that Peter got both answers correct
and only had to use three words to answer two questions)
if he stops and uses his God-given intellect to “think”
— but what we all must learn from Jesus is how to incorporate the
Truth of God
with our daily lives.
Jesus demonstrated that He is God by then performing
the miracle of the fish and the coin through the daily life of Peter
when Jesus sent Peter fishing.
It was only when Peter obeyed God that the miracle occurred
because Peter had to first cast his net in “Faith”
in order to pull up fish in his net —
this was an activity Peter performed thousand of times before
but this time Peter was following God’s instructions
and the results was the resolution of Peter’s problem with taxes!
Only God can take our daily lives and solve our problems
by our listening to Him and simply keep doing our day-to-day tasks because
God chooses to work His Miracles through us
while we go about living daily for Him
— can’t you see the Glory of God in your daily life
or do you need to stop and
“Think” about it from God’s Perspective?
