JUNE 22 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#20
“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?
How long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, You Lord are not bounded by “time” and therefore I praise You
for Your Timelessness in both hearing our prayers and answering them
in the “Way” that is best for us and at the “divine time”
that benefits us the most in our spiritual growth —
Lord I feel led to pray again the same prayer the Holy Spirit
led me to pray to You in 2004 because Your Truth NEVER CHANGES:
“Jesus, You came down from Glory and became Flesh,
giving up Heaven and the Highest Position in God’s Kingdom
to become a man living among sinners. Yet, You did not make
a great position for Yourself on earth, in fact You took on no position,
no title, no power over man but instead You used all Your Power
to Teach man about God while You took on the form of a servant.
Lord, please take away my desire to be “important”, to be “someone”
men look up to and let me instead aspire to be “important” not to myself
but important to the well-being of others —
stir my desire towards helping and serving others
and sharing Your Great Love with the world.”
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus has asked some very serious Questions and they have been asked
to get us thinking in terms of the “Spiritual” aspect of our lives
and to consider that our “physical” lives are “temporary”
but absolutely “necessary” to understanding the “purpose”
of our daily lives lived in the flesh on this earth!
With JQ#17 Jesus Taught that God is aware that we need “daily bread”
to survive in the flesh and by performing the miracle of feeding
“four thousand men, besides women and children” (Matthew 15:38)
God demonstrated that He will provide abundantly for our “physical” needs
but He does so only when we recognize the “Spiritual”
needs that our “physical” life presents. Jesus used the phrase
“wicked and adulterous generation”
to describe our “physical” lives and called us
“hypocrites”
just before asking JQ#17 — so what was He trying to Teach?
Jesus then Taught that when we understood the depravity of our “physical” lives
that we would be given a “Spiritual” sign and that sign was
“the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 16:4) —
Jesus with JQ#17 is introducing the concept of the
“Resurrection”
because
Jonah was 3 days in the belly of a great fish and
on the 3rd day Jonah was “resurrected” —
Jesus also used the title “prophet Jonah” which everyone
understood that “prophets” were delivering the “message of God”
so with using Jonah as the “sign” Jesus demonstrated
that God is the “Power” behind the “Resurrection”
and that God has a plan of “Resurrection” for our lives!!!
Jesus then moved to JQ#18 where He asked the disciples
“Who do you say I am?”
then commended Peter for Peter’s answer
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
So now the progression is Jesus taking a “physical” circumstance
then showing how applying the
“Spiritual Power of God”
to our “physical” circumstances that the results are
“miraculous”
as first 4000 were fed with “seven loaves and a few fish”
and then the “miracle” of Jonah being “physically” consumed
by a great fish but then Jonah was
“resurrected” on the third day,
once again these are “physical” impossibilities
and only through the intervention of the
“Spiritual Power of God”
can “physical impossibilities” become demonstrations of
God’s control over the “physical” by bringing His
“Spiritual Power”
to bear over our “physical” circumstances!
Then Jesus continues these Lessons of the “Spiritual”
having power over the “physical” when in JQ#19
Jesus introduces the Lesson by stating to His disciples
that He Himself would demonstrate God’s Ultimate Power
over the physical as Jesus said that He would
“go to Jerusalem…and be killed, and be raised the third day”!
Jesus uses these “physical” circumstances to ask the
“spiritual”
question to get us thinking that who we are as individuals consists of
our “physical bodies” and more importantly to God, we are also
“Spiritual” in our nature and Jesus says this
“Spiritual nature” resides in our “souls” which are “eternal” —
then Jesus introduces the “Judgement of God” when He asks
“what will man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)
So with Jesus bringing our attention to the importance of distinguishing between
the “physical” and the “spiritual” and assigning “everlasting”
importance to concentrating on using the
“Spiritual” to control the “physical”
we should then pay close attention to those aspects when
Jesus again describes our “physical” lives once again with a critical phrase
“faithless and perverse generation”
and then introduces the concept that in order to fulfill God’s Will for Him
that He must “depart” from us after His “death” as He asks
JQ#20 “how long shall I be with you?”
and also
“how long shall I bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17)
Jesus then used His Spiritual Power given to Him by God the Father as Jesus
“rebuked the demon, and it came out of him,
and the child was cured from that very hour.” (Matthew 17:18)
Again Jesus has used another “physical” circumstance to prove the
“Superiority of the Spiritual Power of God”
over every “physical” circumstance. JQ#20 is another good opportunity
to take a
“spiritual”
inventory of our “physical” lives
and consider that
our “physical” lives come with an “expiration date”
but that our “souls” are both “spiritual” and “eternal” ———
or are you not concerned what God thinks
about our human bodies destined for the grave?
