JUNE 20 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#20 “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17)

JUNE 20  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#20  “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord Jesus, Praise be to the One that was rejected by His own and yet willingly died the Only Death that was an Acceptable Sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. Lord I fall short of True Faith all too often as I fully accept Your Grace in most of my life but find that there is still in me uncleanness, not because I did not give my sin to You or that You were unable to forgive me of my sin, but I am unclean and fall short of True Faith because I did not leave my sin at the foot of Your cross where in my repentance I laid it!?!? Lord forgive me of the sin of “little faith”, You know my heart and You know my desire to serve You honorably and I pray that each day that I have remaining that there is no remembrance of my sin, not by You, but by me for I know You “forgive and forget” but Lord I fall prey to “pulling my sin out of mothballs” and then the Holy Spirit convicts me of my guilt of not leaving my sin at the foot of Your Cross, but it is obvious that if I can pull it out of my memory that either I did not let it go when I pleaded for forgiveness or when I laid it down I picked it up again!?!? Lord, You died for all sin, even the ones we “try to hide” in the recess of our soul, Lord, I pray that Your Light will expose every last sin that I have hidden away, little sins that even I am not aware of until they surface at unexpected times — Lord give me the strength to allow Your Light access to my hiding places so that I can be rid of this “excess baggage” and move forward into the True Faith that You died on the cross for!     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus will not settle for anything to keep us from the Truth of God, especially our misunderstanding of one of His Lessons — Jesus was always stopping His disciples and making sure that they “understood” what He was Teaching and then to leave no stone unturned Jesus would tell the disciples exactly what the parable or the Lesson meant in terms that they could not possibly misinterpret what He was Teaching them. However, all of us fail to totally “get it” the first time through His Word and we find ourselves falling short in one area of “True Faith in God” and we must be “called out” for it!  Every time Jesus saw one of these instances with the disciples, Jesus would “tell it like it is” and then Jesus with only the Love that God bestows would use the reproach to “Teach” one of those “deeper still” Lessons. This is the case of JQ#20 where Jesus addresses a “shortcoming” of the disciples and then uses the opportunity to Teach another great Truth of God when He fully gets their attention. Jesus had just Taught them to consider their soul and the upcoming judgement and the importance of living their life in His Truth so now Jesus and His disciples are back in the “mission field” doing that which Jesus had Taught them to do, “And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.” (Matthew 17:14-16)  It was at this point that Jesus responded in what to my mind was a rebuke for His disciples but before I lead the reader to any wrong conclusions, let us look at this next Jesus Question and let Him Teach: JQ#20  “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17) Let me ask you at this point to stop and consider the feelings stirred in you when you read Jesus saying “O faithless and perverse generation…”, did you cringe in guilt like I did and then almost tremble when I read, “…how long shall I be with you?” This is one of those Questions where our inmost feelings will surface and if we will but “hang in there” Jesus will guide us to a Truth of God and bestow on True Believers the Peace that passes all understanding. Don’t you think that this is a good time to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in addressing the feelings stirred in you when Jesus declares this personal indictment of a “…faithless and perverse generation…”? Jesus would not have asked if He did not have something good in store for those that will stop and answer His Questions honestly so take an honest stab at answering  JQ#20, but I advise you to temper your guilt with “Trust in God” and pray for His Understanding of the Truth of God to “guide you” as Jesus  promised: “…I will send [the Helper/Comforter] to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement…However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth…” !!! John 16:7-14)