JUNE 26 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 26  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, Precious Jesus, Lord where would this wretched soul be without Your Salvation? Lord Jesus if You had not changed the direction that I was going, I shudder to think where my deceitful heart would have led me, I just know that it would have been destruction and darkness and not Your Glorious Peace and Light. Lord I also thank the Holy Spirit for daily reminding me that I am always just one wrong decision away from the broad way that leads to that place of destruction where I once was headed ——— but the Holy Spirit reassures my spirit that the Father has me in the palm of His Hands and there is no power able to remove me from His Protection — no power that is except my own Free Will and my personal decision to leave the Path of Light that leads to the Narrow Gate — so Lord I thank You that each sunrise is a reminder that without You we choose the darkness but with You changing our hearts and comforting our souls, there is True Peace and we can enter into Your Rest.     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus with this JQ#20 Question is pointing His disciples to what they must do to be successful in doing kingdom work after Jesus departs and returns to the Father. Jesus is telling the disciples that the Power of God is available to us and that His Life on earth has been an example of how to live our daily lives in such a manner that God will accomplish His Work through us. Jesus was equally Teaching about the Power of God with His Death as well as with His Life because after the world took its best shot and had Jesus crucified, dead, and buried that God would demonstrate His Great Power and Glory and give Jesus Victory over death and the grave and raise His Only Begotten Son on the Third Day, just like Jesus had been Teaching and Prophesying all along! Also with JQ#20 Jesus draws our attention to the Truth of God that what He has been Teaching us about the “Spirit of God” will remain with us after the “physical” Jesus returns to His Spiritual form and that the Truth of God is ETERNAL. The Holy Spirit has led me to conclude this JQ#20 Lesson with a commentary from Oswald Chambers written for JULY 24 in his “My Utmost for His Highest Daily Devotional Journal”. Oswald uses Matthew 5:20 “…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” and then Oswald writes: “The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ came to place (within anyone who would let Him) a new Spiritual Heredity that would have a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is saying, ‘If you are My disciple, you must be right not only in your actions, but also in your motives, your aspirations, and in the deep recesses of the thoughts in your mind.’ Your motives must be so pure that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke. Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for Him to rebuke? Only the Son of God, and Jesus Christ claims that through His redemption He can place within anyone His own nature and make that person as pure and as simple as a child…no one can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations — He gives us in His teachings those truths that can only be interpreted by His nature which He places within us. The great wonder of Jesus Christ’s salvation is that He changes our heredity. He does not change human nature — He changes its source, and thereby its motives as well.”  Jesus knows we will remain a “perverse” and “faithless” generation until we learn the Lessons that He has been Teaching by His Life and is about to Teach with the ULTIMATE Lesson: His Death, Burial, and Resurrection! The only way we can see the kingdom of heaven is to accept the Gift of Righteousness offered to us by Jesus Christ who proves the Love of God by sacrificing Himself for our sins. The only way to have the Righteousness of Christ is to have Christ Himself and the change that He imparts with His Holy Spirit which will dwell in us “eternally”. Only through Jesus can we have True Eternal Security and that seems like a pretty good thing to take and present to God at the Final Judgment don’t you think?!?!? 

JUNE 25 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 25  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 as I awake to a new day there is great Peace in my soul as I turn my thoughts to sitting down with my Bible and can feel the Presence of the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, sometimes and especially today it is almost like I am sitting and listening to the Holy Spirit with His “still small (and very comforting) voice” reading me stories of You Jesus. Lord I, nor can all the voices that have ever been lifted up in praise to You, shall ever be able to praise You enough! Your Eternal Presence which You have graciously bestowed on each individual that will “receive” You is worthy of ALL Praise, and Lord I pray for the Holy Spirit to Teach me how to make my spirit and soul an honorable place for you to reside in!!!     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus uses each “Question” that He asks us to Teach a fine point about our “relationship to God” and JQ#20 has been preparing His disciples to consider the eventuality of Jesus returning to the Father, but only after Jesus Himself suffers and dies!?!? Jesus has been “Teaching” the disciples how to “live” their life in a manner in which God’s Power will be exhibited through them and now Jesus is Teaching that fine detail that there is no “Power” in the “physical” body but that “ALL Power” is in the form of the “Spirit of God” and the “physical” body is only a vessel that contains the “spiritual conduit” through which the “Power of God” will flow through our soul to others in which God chooses to do His Work. Jesus has previously Taught that the body and soul are separate and that we are not to “worry” about those that can “kill the body but cannot kill the soul” and immediately Jesus makes it clear that only God has the “power” to “destroy both body and soul in hell”  (JQ#10 — Matthew 10:28). Jesus with these two statements draws our attention to the fact that there are “forces” in the world that can “kill the body” but “cannot kill the soul” therefore the distinction is that our “physical” bodies are temporary vessels that contains our eternal “spiritual” souls and that our real concern should not be about our “physical” bodies which can be killed by worldly forces but we should be really concerned about our “spiritual relationship” to the “One” that can “destroy both body and soul in hell” and by that statement Jesus is warning us that there is a “Coming Judgment” for every individual at which time the ONE THAT CREATED our soul will make a decision if HE WILL DESTROY our  eternal soul by fire in the pits of Hades!?!?!  The Lessons Jesus Teaches us is that His Purpose for taking on a “body of flesh” is to Teach us how to “preserve” our eternal soul through a “spiritual relationship” with “our Father in Heaven” and that “relationship” is “Spiritual” in nature. In JQ#20 Jesus is telling us again not to worry about the “physical” body which the world has power to “kill” for that is nothing compared to the “Power of God” to preserve our “Eternal Soul” as Jesus reminds us at the start of JQ#20 that His “physical” body is going to be “killed” but that the “Power of God” will preserve His Eternal Soul by raising Jesus from the dead on the third day thereby demonstrating that God alone has the “Power” over our souls which are “eternal” so we should not worry about our bodies but be totally concerned about our souls —— — remember when Jesus Taught not to be concerned about “physical” things that He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) which now makes sense that we do not find God by looking for “physical” things but we must “seek” God with our “Spiritual” nature which God has imparted to our “souls”.  Now in JQ#20 Jesus tells us the “key” to a “spiritual relationship with God” is through our “Faith” or “Belief in God” as Jesus answers His disciples when they asked Him why they had failed to cast out the demon in the boy as Jesus ends the JQ#20 Lesson by stating to His disciples why they failed when He answered them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”  (Matthew 17:20) Then Jesus concludes JQ#20 just as He introduced JQ#20 with a reminder of His upcoming death and “resurrection”, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up.” (Matthew 17:21) Jesus is Teaching that God will demonstrate His Glory and Power over death and the grave by “Resurrecting Jesus” but we are so brainwashed by the world that we fail to see the “Spiritual Glory of God” and focus only on the “physical” death and we feel just like what Matthew recorded in this statement about the reaction of the disciples when Jesus told them He would be “killed by men” ———“And [His disciples] were exceedingly sorrowful.” (Matthew 17:21) Jesus in the same sentence stated that “men” would “kill Him” and that “God” would “raise Him the third day” so we must answer the personal question that surfaces here ——— why do we worry more about what “men” can do to the body than what “God” can do to the “soul” ????? — —— you don’t think it could be Satan trying to scare us with his threats of “death” just like He has been doing every day since God told him “because you [Satan] have [deceived Adam and Eve], you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:14) ———well I know that if I had been cursed to crawl on my belly and eat dust that I would attack everyone that walked upright on two feet, wouldn’t you?

JUNE 24 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 24  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, You are Worthy to be called Lord, You are Worthy for Your victory over death, You are Worthy for all You did for man, our salvation, and the atonement of our sins. You are Worthy for the Perfect Example You lived and for Your great and marvelous Teachings. You are Worthy for Your Sacrifice, You are Worthy because Your Motive was the simple and complete Obedience to the Father’s Will! You are Worthy because You did everything for a sinful and unworthy world and You did it all in the Father’s Name and for the Kingdom’s sake. Praise be to the Son of the God Most High and to the Holy Spirit, that Teaches us these great things and leads us in the paths of righteousness to have Fellowship with the Father.     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus is Teaching His disciples and those that are seeing the works of God performed by Jesus a very important distinction between those miracles being “performed by” someone and those same miracles being “accomplished through” someone, the distinction being the “source” of the “working power” able to actually accomplish the “miracle”. This is the distinction Jesus is Teaching when the man brings the demon possessed boy to Jesus because His disciples “could not cure him” and what seems like a harsh criticism coming from Jesus is actually a wake up call to everyone! This wake up call is bringing to our attention that the “person/flesh” of Jesus is not the “source” or “power” to accomplish the miracles everyone has seen Jesus doing. The “True Power” or “Ultimate Source of Power” that is able to “accomplish” these miracles is not from a “physical” person and Jesus is pointing that out when He asks “How long shall I be with you…” that Jesus is indicating that the “physical” Jesus will not always be with us!!! The importance of understanding the distinction Jesus is making here cannot be overstated — If we believe that only the “physical” Jesus has “power” then what are we to do if His “physical” presence is not with us? If we learn the Truth of God that Jesus is Teaching with JQ#20 we will understand the distinction that the “physical” Jesus was not the “Source” of the “Power” to perform miracles but that it was the “Spirit of God” working through the “physical” Jesus that accomplished the Great Works of God!!! When we understand that Jesus came to be an “example” of how to live our lives so that the “Power of God” will work “through” us then we will understand why Jesus rebuked the father of the demon possessed boy and the disciples that failed to cast out the demon from the boy when Jesus declared “O faithless and perverse generation…” (Matthew 17:17). Jesus with this declaration is exposing “why” the disciples were unsuccessful in accomplishing the “Work of God” which in this case was casting out a demon — the disciples were unsuccessful for they wrongly thought that they were able to do the “Work of God”  instead of making the distinction that “only God can do the Work of God” but that God has chosen to do His Work “through” certain individuals. Jesus has been performing the “Work of God” to be an example of how to live our daily lives so that God will perform His Work “through us” — we must make the Divine Distinction that we cannot do the “Work of God” but if we “live as Jesus lived” then God will do His Work “through” us!!! Jesus is making that point when He points to “why” they were unsuccessful — it was because their faith and our faith is too weak and that “weakness” is from living a “perverse physical” life which always results in us being “Spiritually faithless”. So Jesus is Teaching with JQ#20 that we should “live” our lives by His Perfect Example and acknowledge that God is the Source of all Power. God has given us Jesus as an Example of “how” to live on earth and become a “conduit” for the Power of God to help a sick and dying world. Jesus became flesh to show us how to live in the flesh, and Jesus has clearly demonstrated that it is the “Spirit of God” in us that is the “Source” of the True Power of God and we must be motivated to help others in God’s Name and for His Kingdom’s sake or else we will fail in our attempts to do His Work if we are motivated by personal glory for ourselves — everything must be done for one simple reason — FOR THE GLORY OF GOD MOST HIGH !!! After all, it’s His World and we are His Creation so doesn’t it make sense we should do things HIS WAY???  

JUNE 23 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 23  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, You Lord are to be praised and You are Worthy of the praise that is now coming from the lips of men and You are Worthy of the Glory and Honor that every tongue will profess - Glory and Honor that belongs to the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for the Father has declared that every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, and I praise You Jesus for completing God’s Plan of Salvation by becoming flesh, dwelling among us, living a sinless life for our sakes, and then becoming the very Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the earth, the Only Holy and Acceptable Sacrifice to pay in full the penalty of death and blood for the sin of all mankind. Lord Jesus, my prayer is for this sinner to decrease and let the Savior increase in every aspect of my daily life as I move towards my eternal destination  in and with the Power of the Holy Spirit.     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus started JQ#19 announcing to His disciples that He would “suffer and die” in Jerusalem and that the ones responsible would be “the elders and chief priests and scribes” (Matthew 16:21) which were the teachers and leaders of Israel. Jesus never leaves a problem without introducing the solution and as soon as Jesus said that He would “be killed” by men that He immediately resolved the issue by stating that He would be “raised from the dead” on the “third day” but the disciples had not yet believed in the True Power of God  because when the disciples witnessed Jesus doing all the miracles they had seen previously, that they saw Jesus as a man and failed to see Jesus as God! Jesus addressed their wrong thinking by telling them their mistake came because they were “not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” and then added that if we are to “follow [Jesus]” that we must take up our “cross” just as He was going to take up His Cross in Jerusalem. Then after Jesus Teaches the eternal significance of our “souls”, Jesus turns to the next Lesson with JQ#20 as He had to “rebuke” a demon that possessed a boy and the disciples were unable to cast the demon from him. Because the disciples could not cast out the demon, the father of the boy took him to Jesus and said that the disciples “could not cure him”. (Matthew 17:16) Jesus immediately rebuked the demon from the boy but only after Jesus used the circumstance to point out the reason for the disciples failure as Jesus declared “O faithless and perverse generation” (Matthew 17:17) which was directed not only at the disciples but to the father of the demon possessed boy as well. Failure to cast out the demon was identified as “faithless” and since Jesus added the term “perverse” to accompany “faithless” it would be reasonable to assume that Jesus is Teaching that our faith is futile if we build it on the wrong foundation — and since Jesus has been Teaching that our faith is misdirected because we trust “the things of men” more than we trust “the things of God”, that if our “faith” is in the power of men and not in the Power of God Himself that we will fail in our attempts to use our “faith” to help others. Jesus is using the Question “How long” (JQ#20  Matthew 17:17) to illustrate that He will not always be here on earth for us to bring our demon possessed children to and that the Truth of God is that we must develop our “faith” in God’s Ultimate Power in order that we shall be able to perform those things Jesus did, this working of the Power of God through us only comes when we realize that it is not the things of men that give us that Divine Power. Only the things of God working through men will bring the Power of God to bear on our worldly problems. Like the disciples, we see Jesus as a man doing miracles and fail to see that Jesus is the Son of God who came to reveal the Power of God and witness to the Glory of God and yet once Jesus had completed His earthly mission He would return to the Father.  The Legacy of Jesus is that He came to earth and to men to demonstrate how to connect to God and His Ultimate Power!  Our ability to be like God is through our “Faith in God”. Jesus was sent by God to “suffer” and to “die” but because Jesus had “FAITH IN GOD” and Jesus knew that God has Divine Power over Death and the Grave that God would demonstrate His Power to give life by raising Jesus the “third day” — we must see the death of Jesus not as a man being killed by men but as the Perfect Divine Sacrifice as God uses what man intends as evil to complete His Plan of Salvation and then we will no longer be a “faithless and perverse generation” — sounds  like “tough love” does it not? 

JUNE 22 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 22  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, You Lord are not bounded by “time” and therefore I praise You for Your Timelessness in both hearing our prayers and answering them in the “Way” that is best for us and at the “divine time” that benefits us the most in our spiritual growth — Lord I feel led to pray again the same prayer the Holy Spirit led me to pray to You in 2004 because Your Truth NEVER CHANGES: “Jesus, You came down from Glory and became Flesh, giving up Heaven and the Highest Position in God’s Kingdom to become a man living among sinners. Yet, You did not make a great position for Yourself on earth, in fact You took on no position, no title, no power over man but instead You used all Your Power to Teach man about God while You took on the form of a servant. Lord, please take away my desire to be “important”, to be “someone”  men look up to and let me instead aspire to be “important” not to myself but important to the well-being of others — stir my desire towards helping and serving others and sharing Your Great Love with the world.”     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus has asked some very serious Questions and they have been asked to get us thinking in terms of the “Spiritual” aspect of our lives and to consider that our “physical” lives are “temporary” but absolutely “necessary” to understanding the “purpose” of our daily lives lived in the flesh on this earth!  With JQ#17 Jesus Taught that God is aware that we need “daily bread” to survive in the flesh and by performing the miracle of feeding “four thousand men, besides women and children” (Matthew 15:38) God demonstrated that He will provide abundantly for our “physical” needs but He does so only when we recognize the “Spiritual” needs that our “physical” life presents. Jesus used the phrase “wicked and adulterous generation” to describe our “physical” lives and called us “hypocrites” just before asking JQ#17  — so what was He trying to Teach? Jesus then Taught that when we understood the depravity of our “physical” lives that we would be given a “Spiritual” sign and that sign was “the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 16:4) — Jesus with JQ#17 is introducing the concept of the “Resurrection” because Jonah was 3 days in the belly of a great fish and on the 3rd day Jonah was “resurrected” — Jesus also used the title “prophet Jonah” which everyone understood that “prophets” were delivering the “message of God” so with using Jonah as the “sign” Jesus demonstrated that God is the “Power” behind the “Resurrection” and that God has a plan of “Resurrection” for our lives!!! Jesus then moved to JQ#18 where He asked the disciples “Who do you say I am?” then commended Peter for Peter’s answer “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). So now the progression is Jesus taking a “physical” circumstance then showing how applying the “Spiritual Power of God” to our “physical” circumstances that the results are “miraculous” as first 4000 were fed with “seven loaves and a few fish” and then the “miracle” of Jonah being “physically” consumed by a great fish but then was “resurrected” on the third day, once again these are “physical” impossibilities and only through the intervention of the “Spiritual Power of God” can “physical impossibilities” become demonstrations of God’s control over the “physical” by bringing His “Spiritual Power” to bear over our “physical” circumstances! Then Jesus continues these Lessons of the “Spiritual” having power over the “physical” when in JQ#19 Jesus introduces the Lesson by stating to His disciples that He Himself would demonstrate God’s Ultimate Power over the physical as Jesus said that He would “go to Jerusalem…and be killed, and be raised the third day”! Jesus uses these “physical” circumstances to ask the “spiritual” question to get us thinking that who we are as individuals consists of our “physical bodies” and more importantly to God, we are also “Spiritual” in our nature and Jesus says this “Spiritual nature” resides in our “souls” which are “eternal” — then Jesus introduces the “Judgement of God” when He asks “what will man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) So with Jesus bringing our attention to the importance of distinguishing between the “physical” and the “spiritual” and assigning “everlasting” importance to concentrating on using the “Spiritual” to control the “physical” we should then pay close attention to those aspects when Jesus again describes our “physical” lives once again with a critical phrase “faithless and perverse generation” and then introduces the concept that in order to fulfill God’s Will for Him that He must “depart” from us after His “death” as He asks JQ#20 “how long shall I be with you?” and also “how long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17) Jesus then used His Spiritual Power given to Him by God the Father as Jesus “rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.” (Matthew 17:18) Again Jesus has used another “physical” circumstance to prove the “Superiority of the Spiritual Power of God” over every “physical” circumstance. JQ#20 is another good opportunity to take a “spiritual” inventory of our “physical” lives and consider that our “physical” lives come with an “expiration date” but that our “souls” are both “spiritual” and “eternal” ——— or are you not concerned what God thinks about our human bodies destined for the grave?

JUNE 21 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 21  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, Precious Jesus, Lord I thank You for Your daily Presence in my life even when I am not aware that You are there, Lord forgive me when I get so caught up in living my day-to-day existence in this “physical” world that my “spiritual eyes” are blinded to the Truth of God that Your Holy Spirit abides with us continually. For just as soon as my thoughts turn to You in prayer, I have Your Promise that immediately and without any interference of any kind, You hear my prayer. Lord Jesus, You paid such a Great Price to Purchase our Pardon and we seldom stop and consider that You ARE GOD and can exist without us and yet You brought Your Total and Supreme Power to bear on the problem of our sin and that You have already made the Ultimate Sacrifice for us so that our sins against You could be forgiven ——— the Innocent was Sacrificed for the guilty ——— all for the sake of “lost souls” so that we would not be left out in the cold and eternal darkness of our sin. Lord, shine Your Light ever on my soul and guide me to the Narrow Gate where You stand even now waiting for this lost soul to come “Home”.     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus not only uses  our circumstances to “Teach”, He uses circumstances of others and how He has already resolved those circumstances to “Teach” us the Truths of God which exist in every thing that enters into our consciousness. Jesus is always “Teaching” and is the “Master Teacher” but we must be careful not to focus entirely on Jesus as the Master Teacher because when we see Jesus as only a “Teacher” we miss the Truth of God of “why” Jesus is the “Master”, not only of “Teaching”, but of every aspect of “Who” Jesus is!!!  We must never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is the Master because HE IS GOD and it is HIS DIVINITY that gives HIM UNLIMITED POWER, HE IS THE CREATOR, and HE IS “UNDERSTANDING” ITSELF. All things are of God and therefore all things are good! In God’s Graciousness He has bestowed on mankind the Ultimate Gift of Free Will — sadly, it is with the “misuse” of Free Will that mankind introduces “sin” into the world and into our daily lives. God made man and then God endowed His Creation with Free Will — God then both blessed and cursed us at the same time as He promised that He would not interfere with our “daily choices” each of us make using God’s Gift of Free Will — even if we “choose” not to believe in Him, He will honor His Gift of Free Will — and it is mankind’s misuse of Free Will that takes the “good” that God put in every thing in His creation and “defiles” the natural good of God, it is God that made all things “Good” but is is mankind that uses God’s Gift of Free Will to defile the “Good of God” — we see why in Genesis at the very beginning of all things that God looked on the emptiness and saw the need for “Light” to dispel the darkness and it was at that point God declared the “Light” as “Good” and then God separated the “Light” from the “darkness”. So if we see Jesus as only a “Teacher” then we will miss the “Lesson” because Jesus is “Teaching” with all His Questions that there is in our lives God’s Truth and that “God’s Truth must be lived to truly be learned” … every “Lesson” that impacts our “soul” only comes from the Creator of our soul, and that is God. Man has produced many teachers and they have taught many lessons but only God is the “Master Teacher” and the “Lessons” He Teaches are from God and are of God and it is because God is the Creator of all “understanding” and our “soul” that we can actually learn the Truth of God — so when we contemplate the “Questions” Jesus asks, we must endeavor to “learn” from the viewpoint that it is God prodding our understanding to impart His Wisdom to us that we might have “abundant life” that can only come from God Himself ——— so when we consider it is God using the terms “faithless and perverse generation” and then He asks “how long shall I be with you?” (Matthew 17:17) that we should look very intently at these words as the very “Words of God” and get serious about learning the “Lesson” He desires to impart to us. Doesn’t it make good sense that it is God calling mankind out on being “faithless and perverse” and then turns right around and warns us that there is a time limit (“how long”) for Him to “…bear with [us]…”? We  must consider first that it is God Himself asking us a serious Question and we should stop and give our full attention to being able to answer God honestly and look forward with “Hope” to learning God’s Lessons about being “Faithful and holy”!!!  

 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

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

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)