MAY 04 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#14 “ Jesus said to them, ‘Have you understood all these things?’” (Matthew 13:51)

 MAY 04  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#14 “ Jesus said to them, ‘Have you understood all these things?’”  (Matthew 13:51)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer   

JESUS, Jesus, Jesus ——— All Praise, All Glory, and All Honor to the Only Begotten and to the Father and the Holy Spirit for the Divine Plan of Salvation! Our limited intellect cannot fully “understand” the “motivation” of God when He addressed the problem of “darkness” as God spoke His first Words “Let there be Light!” (Genesis 1:3)  The Truth of God is that the only “motivation” of the Blessed Trinity was Godly Love and the Divine Desire of God for the “Good” of His Creation. It certainly is a mystery yet to be revealed why the All Powerful God of All things would want a Personal and Intimate Relationship with man —?—?— our best clue to solving this mystery is the fact that God created man in His Own Image — O Blessed Thought, that God Loves Me and went to such Great Lengths to PROVE HIS LOVE that the Father would Sacrifice the Son so that the Holy Spirit could mend the “broken fellowship” and we could through the “Spirit” know the Father!  Therefore let us worship in “Spirit and in Truth”!!          AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus asked “Have you understood…?” and makes it clear that He is not asking “random Questions” just to be talking but that we should stop and consider why Jesus would stop at this point in His teaching and ask if we “understand”? When we consider the dynamics of answering questions and the motivation of asking them, we can glimpse a deep “Truth of God” —!—!— simply that God “Loves us” enough to go the extra mile in His Teaching to make sure that we truly “understand” the Truth of God. The necessity of “understanding” is really simple logic, if we are given directions on a map but do not “understand” those directions, we will get “lost” and most likely miss the destination, even though we were given detailed instructions, if we don’t listen and truly “understand”, then the directions are basically useless. So in our example, let’s say that it is God giving directions to the mansion that He promised to prepare for us and as He is giving directions to our Heavenly Home but just at the time that He is telling us where we need to “turn” to avoid disaster, we are distracted by the “cares of this world” and we miss the detail of “God’s” directions of where and when to turn! Then while on our journey we arrive at that certain point in our journey and we take the “obvious” worldly path as we see in Genesis 13:5-18 the story describing Abraham giving Lot the choice of directions to chose. Lot made the “obvious” choice and ended up in Sodom while Abraham depended on God’s guidance — God blessed Abraham because Abraham followed God’s directions instead of choosing the “obvious” according to the standards of the world. Following God’s directions, Abraham ended up in the Promised Land.  So it is easy to see that choosing the “obvious way of the world” instead of the “way” God instructed us we will find ourselves “lost” and on the “wrong path” because we did not “understand” the directions of God! We need to consider in JQ#14 that Jesus is asking us if we “understand” because He does not want us to get “lost” and it is because He is drawing us a “map” and giving us detailed instructions to keep us going the “right way” because He desires greatly for us to arrive safely in the “Promised Land” so that we can enter into fellowship with Him!  We fail to fully “understand” that God is not in Sodom - God is in the Promised Land! Therefore when we truly “understand” that God cares for us and desires good for us, and that He wants to give us a “hope and a future” (See Jeremiah 29:11) then we will listen carefully and study the map because God cares enough to make sure not only that we have a map, and good instructions, but that we truly “understand” the directions being given. Put simply, God is going to great lengths to “Teach the Truth of God” so we therefore should exert equal effort to “learn” for the “kingdom’s sake” — we should use all of our God-given faculties to “understand” all the Lessons and directions (statutes), because a map (Bible) is useless if we don’t use it. That we take the “right turn” is important enough to God that He spoke through the prophet Isaiah that “they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.” (Matthew 13:15b) Now that Jesus has made it clear that it is our “understanding” that will lead us to “belief” in the Truth of God, we can better “understand” why we should listen to His detailed instructions or are you confident enough in “knowing” how to take care of yourself that you can find your own way to a place you have never been without a guide or a map? <<Good luck on “going it alone”!?!?>>