MAY 12 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31)

 MAY 12  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#15 “O you of little faith, why do you doubt?”  (Matthew 14:31)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, it is overwhelming to think that each day You are right there waiting for my prayers! There is no time during the day that You are so busy that we must wait to get a moment alone with You, and never have I called on Your Name that You didn’t stop and give me Your full attention. Lord Jesus, help me to understand that You are God Almighty, All Powerful, and can do anything and everything You desire, yet with all Your Power You still spend Your Precious time to be with me personally! Lord, may I never take for granted this extreme privilege of praying to the Creator and KNOWING THAT YOU HEAR ME! Lord Jesus, forgive me of my shortcomings and cleanse me eternally of my iniquities that I may be One with the Holy Trinity!     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus always used the events of His daily Life to Teach us Lessons to apply to our day-to-day lives. The events surrounding this particular Lesson addressed by JQ#15 are in themselves some great insights into the Character of God as we have seen many miracles from Jesus performed by the Power of God directed towards “healing” and each miracle Jesus has performed by the Power of God’s Holy Spirit reveals the Plan of Salvation that has been working in the world even before the sun and moon were made and hung in place on Day 4 of The Creation. This event recorded in Matthew 14:22-33 occurred just after Jesus had fed “the multitudes” and is one of those “Divine” events that Jesus uses to Teach us about ourselves and this Lesson reveals a deep “spiritual” Truth of our very own souls! If we will only recognize that Jesus is God and that only through exercising the Power of God can the Miracles of God be accomplished in our lives and the Lessons of Truth can be learned ——— and only through us letting Jesus lead us can we hope to be all that God has planned for us! God only wants good things for us and He desires that we have a “hope and a future” but our “hope” and our “future” must be centered around God and the “kingdom of heaven” and we, like Jesus, should be living our daily lives centered in the Will of the Father and doing “kingdom work”. Please note that the timing of this Divine Event happened just after Jesus was (1) rejected by His “own”, (2) learned of the beheading of His “forerunner” John the Baptist, and (3) Jesus, while seeking solitude, had shown “compassion” to the multitudes by the miracle feeding of “…about five thousand men, besides women and children…” with “…only five loves and two fish…”. We read, “Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side…” (Matthew 14:22) It is important that we notice that the miracle feeding of the “five thousand” was a “team effort” on the part of Jesus, His disciples, and our Father in heaven as we note three verses where Jesus is “delegating” kingdom work to the disciples: (1) “But Jesus said to [His disciples], ‘[The multitudes] do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’” (Matthew 14:16) then (2) “[Jesus] said (to His disciples after they had found the five loaves and two fishes), ‘Bring them here to Me’” (Matthew 14:18) and (3) then after Jesus commanded His disciples to tell the multitudes to “sit down on the grass” that Jesus “took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes.” (Matthew 14:19) It is to be noted that the efforts of the disciples following the command of Jesus in this miracle resulted in Matthew writing, “So [the multitudes] all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained.” (Matthew 14:20) Once we note that Jesus is involving His disciples in ministering to the multitudes, we can better understand why “immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him…” ! By His actions, Jesus is setting the precedent of “setting His disciples aside” for the “kingdom work” of ministering to the “multitudes”. Let’s keep in mind that Jesus is ALWAYS Teaching and this boat trip where Jesus commanded His disciples to “go before Him to the other side” will not be any different. The last time His disciples made a trip by boat, Jesus had been asleep in the back of the boat and when a great storm had come upon His disciples and during that voyage they thought they were going to perish so they awoke Jesus and Jesus asked: JQ#7 “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:26). In this passage in JQ#15 we read that “…the boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary…” (Matthew 14:24) — so now His disciples after having seen Jesus perform several miracles, and after having participated personally in “kingdom work” of the miracle feeding of five thousand — the disciples of Jesus find themselves once again in a boat in the middle of a storm! But this time Jesus is not with them (or is He?)! Jesus is continually moving us forward but He also stops and Jesus has us take personal inventory of our “spiritual progress” as a Spiritual Lesson in “building our faith”. Do you ever find yourself thinking you have made progress on your journey but just that quickly you find yourself in another storm and “[crying] out for fear…” Matthew 14:26) ? The “storm” is the perfect time for you to stop and ask yourself, “Have I built my faith on the Solid Rock of the Kingdom of Heaven and Faith in God or am I going to sink in the sifting sands of the world?”