FEBRUARY 10 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#03 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life… Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25)

 

FEBRUARY 10  THE JESUS QUESTIONS

   JQ#03  

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life…

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” 

(Matthew 6:25)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Jesus, Jesus, O the Privilege it is to call on Your Name! Lord each 

day I have need of Your Mercy and Grace and each day my heart

 overflows with Praise for You because You have abundantly supplied all

 that I need, in spite of my continual stumbling. 

Lord, You know my heart and I am getting more secure in Your Love

 because I know that You know the depths of my sinful nature and yet 

Your Grace abounds deeper still — not because of anything I have 

done to deserve even the smallest of Your attentions, but You continue to 

Forgive all of my transgressions that I present to You daily and You

 Lovingly Guide me to Your Peace because that is Who You chose to

 be for our sakes! 

O the Mystery of God, that the Creator of the ends of the earth, 

the Pure Innocent Redeemer who chose to die on a cross for the guilty,

 to suffer the agony we deserve and give us access to Your Heaven. 

Praise the Forgiving God!!!     

AMEN 

THE JESUS QUESTIONS   

JESUS started JQ#03 with a section on “worry” and in this section

 Jesus uses 8 Questions to get us thinking about “worry”. This section

 in Matthew 6:25-34 contains several verses that the Holy Spirit impressed 

upon me on my Spiritual Journey to Truth that I feel has led me back

 to the right path when the world had closed in on me like it so often does

 on all of us.  When you finally get back on the right path again you see 

that it was some form of “worry” that distracted you and just that quick 

when we take our eyes off the Truth and let the world and all its 

worries get our attention we find ourselves off the main road — if we are

 lucky we will be on a stretch of road that has “warning bumps” to get our

 focus back where it is supposed to be and the Spirit will redirect our

 wayward steps and correct our course back from the Broad Path 

of Destruction to the “Narrow Paths of Righteousness”! Matthew 6:33 

is one of those verses for me that has kept me focused on Jesus and

 when my eyes are firmly fixed on Him, for Jesus again and again tells 

us that worries and wrong doing have no place in our life. 

I will attempt to share how my wanderings into darkness were redirected

 to the Light and the right paths from this section where Jesus Teaches

 us about “worry” by stating very emphatically: 

“Therefore I say to you, 

do not worry about your life…” 

(Matthew 6:25a) 

It is a very bold statement but let’s consider JESUS is making it! 

The “Therefore” comes immediately after Jesus had stated in Matthew 6:24,

 “You cannot serve God and mammon” and the implication here is that

 if you chose to “serve God” then there is no need to “worry”. Jesus uses

 the next 7 verses (Matthew 6:24-32) to show that “worry” is primarily

 caused by serving “mammon” but closes with two powerful verses

 (Matthew 6:33-34) that show how to eliminate “worry” — spiritual speed

 bumps if you will — so let’s look at each of the 8 Questions in this

 section and apply them to reducing “worry” in our lives.

 JQ#3a —“Is not life more than food and 

the body more than clothing?”

 (Matthew 6:25b) 

Each Question that Jesus asks is to make us stop and think about the simple

 Questions we encounter in our daily lives and give Him back a simple answer

 that shows Him we are listening to His Teachings. For instance, when 

I read this passage with the intent of “learning from Jesus” I can more 

easily come to an answer because Jesus never asks a Question without

 a specific answer in mind that will Teach followers a specific point that

 will make our life better if we bother to listen to His Question and answer Him

 honestly, keeping in mind that if we listen to our answer back to Him 

that we will indeed learn the Lesson He is intent on Teaching and 

within every Jesus Lesson is a Truth of God!

 I am sure that if you stop and consider that 

“life IS more than food” 

and 

“the body IS more than clothing” 

then you will start to see what Jesus is trying to Teach and the answer then

 is a simple “Yes, I see now that You have corrected my course”. 

Read Matthew 6:25 again and literally pray your answer to Jesus through

 your prayer and then

 “wait on the LORD” 

for the blessings that He will pour out!

FEBRUARY 09 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#03 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life… Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25)

 

FEBRUARY 09  THE JESUS QUESTIONS

    JQ#03  

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life…

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” 

(Matthew 6:25)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord there is nothing I can do to merit Your favor but You place

 within our grasp the very “Power” that brings Eternal Life with Perfect

 Fellowship with the Father. That “Eternal Life-Giving Power” is contained

 within our Free Will which you have so graciously bestowed on all who

 call upon the Name of the Lord,  even our LORD JESUS. 

Help me Lord to always be mindful that each and every choice that I make 

in my daily life has an effect on my Eternity. Lord, too often do I overlook

 the “divine responsibility” and the magnitude of the importance that exercising

 my Free Will automatically carries with it! Lord, influence me today to 

make those good choices for all my tomorrows.     

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

JESUS concludes JQ#02 with

 “No one can serve two masters…

you cannot serve God and mammon”

 (Matthew 6:24) 

and then He introduces JQ#03 with this statement:

  “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, 

what you will eat or what you will drink; 

nor about your body, what you will put on.”

 (Matthew 6:25A) 

Once Jesus has firmly established our line of thinking to consider our

 day-to-day, everyday experiences He then asks His Question 

to make us laser focus on the 

Truth of God  to follow:  

JQ#03  

“Is not life more than food 

and the body more than clothing?” 

(Matthew 6:25b)  

Jesus uses “Questions” as a Teaching tool by asking Questions that He fully

 knows the answer to — He asks the Question, not that He needs us

 to impart knowledge to Him, He asks the “Question” to impart His Knowledge

 which is Perfect to us, thereby Jesus uses “Questions” to get us actively

 involved in the thought process and Teaches us to take 

just another step to being “perfect”. 

In this Matthew 6:25-34 section Jesus asks 8 separate questions but all

 of them deal with “worry”. Since Jesus uses Questions as Teaching tools,

 if He asks effectively the same Question 8 separate times in quick

 succession it logically follows that He must be Teaching on an important

 subject. From JQ#02 this thought emerged “why tax collectors?” and 

that question was answered with the obvious everyday observable fact

 that “taxes and tax collectors” are a “universal” reference that everyone 

can relate to, and in JQ#03 Jesus addresses a topic that is also “universal”

 and affects everyone I know — “Worry”.   

Again, as is the Teaching style of Jesus, He introduces the topic with

 an absolute “Truth” and then gets us to “think” about the “Truth” He has

 just spoken. This JQ#03 section starts out with

 one such “Truth” when Jesus says:

 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, 

what you will eat or what you will drink;

 not about your body, what you will put on…” 

(Matthew 6:25a)

 and then to emphasize His point, Jesus asks a simple series of Questions

 that reinforce the Lesson He is Teaching. 

This teaching method can be compared to a college professor first stating the

 object of the lesson and then turning immediately around and gives a 

test question like “What did I just say?” So Jesus states the “Truth” that 

we should “not worry about our life” and lists some everyday choices 

we make such as what to eat and drink and what to wear. He immediately

 makes us stop and consider a Question with an obvious answer just

 to make His point. Jesus says “not to worry” and then He asks the 

deep Question that will lead us to a “Divine Truth”! 

He ends His opening statement with His main Question in this section:

 JQ#03 

“Is not life more than food 

and the body more than clothing?” 

(Matthew 6:25b) 

His Question at the end of verse Matthew 6:25 is the main Question in this

 section of Matthew 6:25-34 therefore it needs to be “chewed on” for 

a little while — therefore, since the “Question” is a basic question about 

yourself and your everyday life, shouldn’t we stop and consider that Jesus

 thought it important enough to Teach an “everyday Truth” that we in 

our “everyday lives” must deal with “day-in-and-day-out”?!?!  

If we meditate on “Why” would Jesus bother to “Teach” us

 about simple “everyday” things we will come to understand 

that our “everyday, day-in-day-out” lives are important to Him

 because it is important to “our Father in heaven”!!! 

 When Jesus starts with what is actually a command:

 “do not worry about your life”,

 we should assume that 

Jesus is Supremely Confident that our Father in heaven 

is going to take care of our needs,

 therefore the Divine Truth is that 

“God will supply all our needs” 

and that our “worrying” never helps anything so we should ask 

the simple-obvious-logical-everyday question: 

 “What do we think we can accomplish with our worry 

that God hasn’t already taken care of in His Master Plan

 for our day-to-day lives?” 

We get into Spiritual “trouble” when we make our “worry”

 a greater power than our “Faith in God” — 

Trust God that when He commands you, 

“Not to worry” 

that He HAS YOUR 6!!!