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 “Power” is contained within our Free Will which you have so graciously bestowed on all that 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” 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!!!