MAY 08 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31)

 MAY 08  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?”  (Matthew 14:31)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, thank You Lord for the Grace that You extend to us at those times when we are  going through our worldly doubts and we entertain the fears the secular world tries to sell to us on a daily basis. Lord Jesus, we praise You that when we reject You for our petty reasons that You will Love us through the valley of darkness and lead us safely back to the Light of Your Perfect Love, so I pray that instead of cowering in the darkness that we will seek to find the warmth of the “Son” on and in our soul and know that even when we don’t care about God, GOD CARES ABOUT US!     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus takes us through such serious Lessons and asks us Questions because all have “Eternal Consequences”!!! Then after asking what we in our limited intellect think is the hardest Question to answer, Jesus turns right around and asks another Question that hits us right between our “spiritual” eyes and penetrates to the deepest recesses of our hearts! Then just when we think it is safe to go back into the “spiritual” waters Jesus sounds the alarm at yet another danger, yet being the “Good Lifeguard” that He IS, Jesus gives us the chance to swim on our own while at the same time He assures us that He is there to keep us from “going under”. JQ#15 is one of those Questions —Jesus has already Taught us 13 very serious Lessons and then the 14th Lesson was to make sure we “understood” what He was “Teaching” and then He hits us with JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31) What an indictment on our efforts to follow Jesus and to become His disciple to experience His “Teachings” on such a deep personal level and then He turns around and hands us our “failing” midterm grade just when we thought we had arrived at some pinnacle of understanding! Such is the case for Peter and the disciples as Peter stepped “out of the boat” on faith but then let his worldly fears overcome his faith and Peter quickly sank beneath the waves of worldly concerns — while he was actually walking on water!!! This is a tremendous Lesson for us to learn on our journey to knowing the True and Living God as He will test our faith to its limits and we find that we are still mortal and as such are “finite” and limited, but each time we test God, we find that He IS GOD and as such He is “Infinite” and His Grace and Mercy are limited by nothing! Yet each time God saves us, He encourages us to use that “drowning” experience to move closer to Him! He reminds us that we should always strive to get closer to God with the main goal to become “One with God” and never, never try to stand alone away from Him. The best way to look at the deep Truth of God in JQ#15 is to look at the context in which Jesus made the statement “O you of little faith…” to Peter. Jesus had Taught His disciples the “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” and had ended His Parables of the “Kingdom” Lessons with JQ#14 “Have you understood all these things?” (Matthew 13:51) and I am sure we would have answered the same way the disciples probably answered — “Yes Jesus, now we understand…” but do we really? Jesus started to show us that we really don’t get it yet as we start reading in Matthew 13:53 “Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these parables (JQ#14), that He departed from there.” (Matthew 13:53) This type of action on the part of Jesus so far has meant that He is moving to the next Lesson and so far each Lesson has been an extension of our “understanding” up to and including His last Lesson. We find that Jesus is ALWAYS TEACHING for His every breath was a Lesson for those that watched how Jesus lived His life day in and day out! So when we read that “He departed from [the lessons of JQ#14]…” that we can now assume that Jesus is moving on to teach us the next Lesson on our journey to know God. The context of JQ#15 is from Matthew 13:53 and runs through Matthew 14:36 and we should read this passage of scripture and look expectantly at everything Jesus does as we ask ourselves, “What is Jesus going to Teach us next?” By now if you have been learning all the previous lessons you are probably asking, “Will Jesus ever stop Teaching us?”