LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional
April 16 / Day 48
365 Prayers to JESUS
Jesus, LORD GOD — 38 years ago Deb and I were married under “Holy Matrimony” as we had decided to live with You guiding our marriage. Lord, you know my prayer was simply to be a “good husband and a good father” and You have answered that prayer by giving me a great wife and a great family to take care of! Lord help me to always see the “opportunities” You present as the answers to my prayers and I thank You and Praise You for knowing me better than I know myself. Lord, now 38 years later as You have blessed our marriage beyond anything we could have imagined, I pray that our marriage and family will become a Lighthouse and a Great Witness to marriages and families that need Your Touch in their lives. Happy Anniversary My Precious!
The Jesus Questions
JQ#10 — JQ#10 uses two sparrows and a copper coin but it is all about “value”! Value is a relative term, for instance, if a man has a million dollars but is lost in the desert and is dying of thirst, how many millions of dollars would the thirsty man give for a single class of water. We are all familiar with the term “inflation” and the affect “inflation” has on our “household income” — “inflation” is nothing more than money losing its “value”! God is addressing “spiritual value” in JQ#10 — the Way He conveys His message about how we think about our “spiritual value” is truly “Divine”! The immediate context to the question of “value” found in JQ#10 “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? (Matthew 10:29) focuses our attention to the important lesson of how we assign “value” to our lives. Jesus in Matthew 10:28 directs our thinking so that we will understand that “value” is relative and that there is both “physical value” and “spiritual value” to our lives when He declares to His Disciples (which Jesus is sending out into the world with His Message): “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28) Jesus is very specific and very serious because He uses terms like “fear”, “kill the body”, “kill the soul”, “fear Him”, and “able to destroy both body and soul in hell”. Jesus has just introduced the most serious terms that anyone, anywhere, anytime will ever have to address. Let’s look at these terms that Jesus uses to introduce the specific topic of “spiritual value” and keep in mind that Jesus is in the middle of teaching His disciples how to go out into the world to witness about the “kingdom of God”. Therefore there has to be a “Divine” reason that Jesus gets so serious and so specific so we should “listen and learn” with equal seriousness. The first term that gets our attention is “fear” and again if we look at how Jesus uses the word “fear” it is to tell us first “do not fear” and then turns around in the same sentence and says “but rather fear”?? Jesus is revealing one of those “deep” mysteries of God! The secret God reveals here is that the “truth of God” is that “fear” is a good thing if it is directed towards the purpose God intended when He spoke the “Truth” into the world. God’s “Truth” never changes so we must dig deep enough into these statements Jesus makes to discover the “Truth” about “proper fear” and see the “good” that only God can bring forth from every element of His Creation. In this case Jesus places “do not fear” with “those who kill the body” and immediately Jesus points to the “truth” that there is something more “deadly” than killing the “body” and that is that we should be concerned more about our “soul” than our “body”. Jesus is telling us that death of the “body” is of no “consequence” to our eternity but that our “soul” is “priceless” and that all our energy should be expended towards consideration of our eternity and that brothers and sisters is where the “rubber hits the road”. Have you checked your “spiritual condition” lately?
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