JULY 02 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#21 “What do you think about fish, taxes, lost sheep, forgiveness, and your fellow servants?” (Matthew 17:25, 18:12,33)

 JULY 02  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#21  “What do you think about fish, taxes, lost sheep, forgiveness, and your fellow servants?” (Matthew 17:25, 18:12,33)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer   

JESUS, forgive me for all the time that I have spent worrying about the things of the world that have no impact on my spiritual well being. Lord You have demonstrated to me time and time again the Faithfulness of the Father to Provide everything we need to live a Holy life and yet we succumb to the flesh and seek to live a “worldly” life and when we look to things of this world to give us happiness we are always disappointed. Lord Jesus You have never disappointed us and the Father has never failed us in any way so why Lord do we insist on holding on so tight to that which disappoints us? Lord I pray for discernment to know when I am letting myself drift back into the concerns of the world which is always in a direction away from You, for when we finally realize we are adrift in the sea of worries that we are in a boat without a paddle and that Lord is a sinking feeling! So Lord, open my spiritual eyes so that I can see my way back to the course you have set for me and I will rely not on my ability to row my own boat but on Your Promise to never leave us nor forsake us!!!    AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus never lets an opportunity to Teach “satellite” Lessons go to waste as He seizes every opportunity to reveal several Truths of God to us just by asking a Question that makes us stop and “think” about the world around us, and when we have to use our God-given intellect to understand our own individual lives we learn that God has equipped us with two invaluable tools with which we can use to work our way through all our daily problems; God’s Tool #1 is our “Free Will” which is the characteristic we possess that is most similar to the “image” of God in that with our Free Will Gift from God we can see that our future can be influenced by the “Choices” we make using that Free Will which is ours and ours alone. By giving us Free Will and making us live with the “Consequences” of our “Choices”  God has given us the “Power” to influence both our future and our past and we cannot defer that Power to another entity, we must exercise our Free Will and demonstrate our God-given responsibility of self-sufficiency by using only our God-given abilities. God’s Tool #2 is our “God-given Intellect” which we must use in conjunction with God’s Tool #1 our Free Will to make Godly-decisions that will affect our “Spiritual Well Being” thereby influencing our eternal destiny. If we abuse our Free Will by not using our God-given Intellect then we are in reality going against God’s Will for our lives and going against God is NEVER a good thing for the path away from God leads to the destruction of our soul, and that can never be considered a good thing. We see Jesus telling Peter to stop and use his God-given intellect to “observe” the “physical” world and make “Spiritual” sense out of our day-to-day lives when Jesus asked back-to-back Questions “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?” [JQ#21a & b] (Matthew 17:25) Peter now has to use his God-given intellect at the insistence of God Himself because Peter is standing before God in the form of the “Son” knowing that the Question Jesus is asking Peter is because of a question Peter was going to ask Jesus. By Jesus “anticipating” what Peter was going to ask and “preventing” Peter from asking it, Peter now knows that Jesus is God because only God knows what we need before we even ask! Peter also knows that by Jesus asking the Question about where “…do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes…” that Jesus knows everything about him and now Jesus is instructing Peter to stop and “think” — Peter will find out that he already knows the “answer” to the Jesus Question but like us, we know the Truth of God but need instructions on how to properly apply that God-given knowledge to living our daily lives. Peter gave a one word answer to the tax collectors when he said “Yes” to their question about paying the temple tax and now Peter gives a two word answer to Jesus when Jesus asks Peter about “the kings of the earth” collecting taxes as Peter responds to Jesus “From Strangers” (Matthew 17:26). Jesus demonstrated to Peter that Peter has all the answers (consider that Peter got both answers correct and only had to use three words to answer two questions) if he stops and uses his God-given intellect to “think” — but what we all must learn from Jesus is how to incorporate the Truth of God with our daily lives. Jesus demonstrated that He is God by then performing the miracle of the fish and the coin through the daily life of Peter when Jesus sent Peter fishing. It was only when Peter obeyed God that the miracle occurred because Peter had to first cast his net in “Faith” in order to pull up fish in his net — this was an activity Peter performed thousand of times before but this time Peter was following God’s instructions and the results was the resolution of Peter’s problem with taxes! Only God can take our daily lives and solve our problems by our listening to Him and simply keep doing our day-to-day tasks because God chooses to work His Miracles through us while we go about living daily for Him — can’t you see the Glory of God in your daily life or do you need to stop and “Think” about it from God’s Perspective?