APRIL 09 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#13 * Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?* “How can you, being evil, speak good things? ” (Matthew 12:34)

 APRIL 09  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#13 * Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?*  “How can you, being evil, speak good things? ” (Matthew 12:34)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer   

JESUS, Lord I pray back to You the words found in Your Holy Word that I may “be rooted and established in Your Love, and that I will be granted by the Holy Spirit the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the Love of Christ, and to know that this Love of Christ surpasses all knowledge — I pray this that I might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19). Lord I also pray again the prayer I prayed on April 9, 2004 “…I pray daily that I would recognize that the ‘Cross is the Key’ to all Eternity and I praise God for His Perfect Plan of Salvation and I add to my praise that both God and Christ have been Faithful to His Master Plan of Salvation — daily I will pray for Your Resurrection in my life, daily I pray that You will search my heart and cleanse me of my iniquities that I may serve You better”.   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus has now moved to Teaching us another Divine Truth and He is drawing our focus to our personal “relationship” with God the Father — and Jesus encourages us to give serious consideration to our day-to-day lives and determine if we are making a “contribution” to God’s kingdom or are we so selfish still that all we can do is “take, take, take” as we whimper “gimme, gimme, gimme” as Jesus asks JQ#13.3 — “Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?” (Matthew 12:24-37)??? The Master Teacher of course has a Master Plan and as we have already learned through the first twelve Questions Jesus has asked, each Question builds upon the last and together they are  forming a stair-step knowledge that we may climb higher in the understanding of God’s Infinite Wisdom. This “precept upon precept” Teaching is very effective if when we come to gain understanding of one Question that we will ask ourselves in “Faith” — “Were will He lead us next?” I will be honest that when JQ#12 was revealed as “Who decides what is legal, God or man?” I thought that I may well spend Eternity trying to give an honest answer to that Question but then God spoke and the Holy Spirit asked “How much proof do you need to answer that Question for yourself?” — so I looked and indeed there was a mountain of “evidence” that I had not even began to dig into so the Question made good sense to me and I heard that “still small voice” tell me to decide for myself in my heart of hearts if I was going to let man or God declare what is legal? As soon as I delivered my verdict and declared a resounding affirmative that “God alone decides what is legal”  that the “still small voice” said…“Then let’s move on”. Going from so serious a Question as who determines all “Legality” in the universe for all “Eternity”, I thought that JQ#13 would be a less serious Question but no, there was an even more serious Question put in front of me to answer now, and it is also in front of you if you have been sitting under the shadow of the MASTER TEACHER  as He has asked these Questions that we may gain knowledge of the Father and His Kingdom. Jesus has been “living His Life as the Perfect Example” as in each Lesson we have been learning that not only will we “hear” the Lesson but we will also see Jesus “Living the Perfect Example” of each Lesson that He Teaches! As we look upon the “Perfect Example” of the “Divine-Do-As-I-Do” Life Lived by Jesus placed in juxtaposition with the classic “Hypocritical-Do-As-I-Say” example set by the Pharisees, we begin to understand that Jesus is saying “Walk-the-Walk” and that our lives should be lived in the Light of the Understanding that His Lessons impart to us. So let’s “Move on” from “JQ#12 - Who decides what is ‘legal’, God or man?” to the equally (if not even more serious) JESUS Question JQ#13 — “Is your life a plus or minus in God’s kingdom?”  We will try to answer the Questions and study the “Perfect Example” in this next section for JQ#13 which covers Matthew 12:22-45, unless of course you do not think it is really necessary to answer these JESUS Questions or to worry about what God thinks about us, after all, can’t we get to heaven on our own path just by being good — or do we also have to stop and ask, “Who decides what is ‘good’, God or man”?