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!!!
