MARCH 23 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7)

MARCH 23  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7)

LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord, my Redeemer, all praise to You for it is amazing to see how You have worked in my life through these prayers that I have been writing daily in a journal since 2004 for I can see Your Hand, Your Grace, and Your Mercy working in my life and the life of the family. Each year You are reminding me through those journal prayers how You have taught me day by day and I can more clearly see the Lessons You intended --- but it has taken all these years to develop my “Spiritual Discipline” to the point that my “Faith is becoming sight” and my “Spiritual Discipline is becoming discernment”. Jesus, on this day in 2004 the Holy Spirit was guiding my prayers and led me to write this question: “Lord, are you trying to teach me that it is my choices that determine who I am and who I will be and that how I choose to live and act should not be influenced by how others live and act, but that I should use my Free Will to choose how to live based on how You want my life to be lived and not how the world tells me I should live?” Lord Jesus, today I praise You that I am now understanding that if I indeed choose to live my life as Your disciple that whatever happens in “the world” will have no bearing or impact on who I am nor on my final destination, for who I am is determined by choosing You and Your Divine Leadership and not “the world”. Lord, I pray that You will continue to teach me “Spiritual self-discipline” for Lord it is my humble desire to “learn from the Master”!    AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

JESUS has focused our attention on our “spiritual value” by asking the simple sparrows and coin Question and He follows that Question with another Question but without studying the context of these Questions we will fail to see the Divine Truth that will emerge with an honest answer! Before moving to the next JESUS Question  JQ#11, the Holy Spirit is leading me to share a selection from my Oswald Chambers Daily Journal “My Utmost for His Highest” that I read every morning to start my devotionals and Bible Study. To be honest with you, I did not write for many years because my reasoning was that there are already so many good writers like Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozer, and C.S. Lewis (just to name a few), plus hundreds of great daily devotionals like Charles Stanley, Daily Bread, Guiding Light, and Adrian Rogers that I felt that there was no need to add any of my written words to the myriad of Jesus writings existing in the world already! But now I know that Jesus is Worthy of All Praise and that His Glory cannot be written even if every believer wrote every thought and documented every answered prayer that has been prayed to Jesus! In other words there are not enough words to give Jesus the Praise, Glory, and Honor He deserves! I have now been writing for several years and I know that my writing is insignificant but “who I am writing about is significant” and today I am led to share in my writing some grand thoughts written by Oswald Chambers titled “The LIGHT That Never Fails”  APRIL 22: “We must build our faith not on fading lights but on the Light that never fails. When ‘important’ individuals go away we are sad, until we see that they are meant to go, so that only one thing is left for us to do — to look into the face of God for ourselves. Allow nothing to keep you from looking with strong determination into the face of God regarding yourself and your doctrine…A Christian servant is one who perpetually looks into the face of God …the ministry of Christ is characterized by [His] abiding glory…the secrets of [the life of a disciple of Christ] is that [the disciple] stays in tune with God all the time.”   After I read this passage in 2004 I realized that in my prayer (which I wrote before reading the commentary) that same day that I had written “teach me the proper self discipline to love others like Christ at all times, regardless of how I am treated by others” and this passage to me was the Holy Spirit answering me and saying “the secret to being like Christ is to focus on Him all the time and you will learn Spiritual Self Discipline which is what allowed Jesus to suffer the cross for sinners!” This lesson of “Spiritual Self Discipline” is important to discerning “God’s Holy Will” and the “Truth of God” as we continue studying the Word in order to learn the Lessons the Master is Teaching.