MAY 08 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#15
“O you of little faith, why do you doubt?”
(Matthew 14:31)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, thank You Lord for the Grace that You extend to us at those times
when we are going through our worldly doubts and we entertain the
fears the secular world tries to sell to us on a daily basis.
Lord Jesus, we praise You that when we reject You for our petty reasons
that You will Love us through the valley of darkness and lead us safely
back to the Light of Your Perfect Love, so I pray that instead of
cowering in the darkness that we will seek to find the warmth
of the “Son” on and in our soul
and know that even when we don’t care about God,
GOD CARES ABOUT US!
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus takes us through such serious Lessons and asks us Questions
because all have “Eternal Consequences”!!! Then after asking what we
in our limited intellect think is the hardest Question to answer, Jesus turns
right around and asks another Question that hits us right between our “spiritual”
eyes and penetrates to the deepest recesses of our hearts!
Then just when we think it is safe to go back into the “spiritual” waters Jesus
sounds the alarm at yet another danger, yet being the “Good Lifeguard” that
He IS, Jesus gives us the chance to swim on our own while at the same
time He assures us that He is there to keep us from “going under”.
JQ#15 is one of those Questions —Jesus has already Taught us 13 very
serious Lessons and then the 14th Lesson was to make sure we
“understood” what He was “Teaching”
and then He hits us with
JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?”
(Matthew 14:31)
What an indictment on our efforts to follow Jesus and to become His disciple
to experience His “Teachings” on such a deep personal level and then
He turns around and hands us our “failing” midterm grade just when we
thought we had arrived at some pinnacle of
understanding!
Such is the case for Peter and the disciples as Peter stepped
“out of the boat”
on faith but then let his worldly fears overcome his faith
and Peter quickly sank beneath the waves of worldly concerns —
while he was actually walking on water!!!
This is a tremendous Lesson for us to learn on our journey to knowing
the True and Living God as He will test our faith to its limits and we find
that we are still mortal and as such are “finite” and limited, but each time
we test God, we find that He IS GOD and as such He is “Infinite” and
His Grace and Mercy are limited by nothing! Yet each time God saves us,
He encourages us to use that “drowning” experience to move closer to Him!
He reminds us that we should always strive to get closer to God
with the main goal to become
“One with God”
and never, never try to stand alone away from Him.
The best way to look at the deep Truth of God in JQ#15 is to look
at the context in which Jesus made the statement
“O you of little faith…”
to Peter.
Jesus had Taught His disciples the
“mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”
and had ended His Parables of the “Kingdom” Lessons with
JQ#14 “Have you understood all these things?” (Matthew 13:51)
and I am sure we would have answered
the same way the disciples probably answered —
“Yes Jesus, now we understand…”
but do we really?
Jesus started to show us that we really don’t get it yet
as we start reading in Matthew 13:53
“Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these
parables (JQ#14), that He departed from there.”
(Matthew 13:53)
This type of action on the part of Jesus so far has meant that He is moving
to the next Lesson and thus far each Lesson has been an extension of our
“understanding”
up to and including His last Lesson.
We find that
Jesus is ALWAYS TEACHING
for His every breath was a Lesson for those that watched how Jesus lived
His life day in and day out! So when we read that
“He departed from [the lessons of JQ#14]…”
that we can now assume that Jesus is moving on to teach us the next Lesson
on our journey to know God.
The context of JQ#15 is from Matthew 13:53 and runs through Matthew 14:36
and we should read this passage of scripture and look expectantly at
everything Jesus does as we ask ourselves,
“What is Jesus going to Teach us next?”
By now if you have been learning all the previous lessons you are probably asking,
“Will Jesus ever stop Teaching us?”
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May 08, 2017 Monday
Additional Commentary: “What’s In a Name?”
“Jehovah-Jireh” is one of the many different names of God found in
the Old Testament. In the KJV’s translation YHWH-Yireh means:
“The LORD Will Provide” (Genesis 22:14).
It is the name for God used when God provided
the ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac.
What’s in a name? Well that depends on “WHO” has the name ———
for instance: Everything we need is contained in
the Name of the One that is called “Jehovah-Jireh,
The LORD Will Provide”!
There is nothing anyone can ever need
that Jehovah-Jireh will not provide from His Sovereign Omnipotence ———
and Jehovah-Jireh has made this Eternal Promise,
“And whatever you ask in My Name,
that I will do, that the Father may be glorified.
If you ask anything in My Name, I will do it.”
(John 14:13-14)
