JUNE 21 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)

 

JUNE 21  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, Precious Jesus, Lord I thank You for Your daily Presence in my life

 even when I am not aware that You are there, 

Lord forgive me when I get so caught up in living my day-to-day existence

 in this “physical” world that my “spiritual eyes” are blinded

 to the Truth of God that Your Holy Spirit abides with us continually. 

For just as soon as my thoughts turn to You in prayer, I have Your Promise

 that immediately and without any interference of any kind, 

You hear my prayer.

 Lord Jesus, You paid such a Great Price to Purchase our Pardon 

and we seldom stop and consider that You ARE GOD 

and can exist without us and yet You brought Your Total and Supreme Power

 to bear on the problem of our sin 

and that You have already made the Ultimate Sacrifice for us 

so that our sins against You could be forgiven ——— 

the Innocent was Sacrificed for the guilty ——— 

all for the sake of “lost souls” so that we would not be left out in the cold

 and eternal darkness of our sin. 

Lord, shine Your Light ever on my soul and guide me to the Narrow Gate

 where You stand even now waiting for this lost soul to come “Home”.     

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus not only uses  our circumstances to “Teach”, 

He uses circumstances of others and how He has already resolved

 those circumstances to “Teach” us the 

Truths of God 

which exist in every thing that enters into our consciousness. 

Jesus is always “Teaching” and is the “Master Teacher” 

but we must be careful not to focus entirely on Jesus as the Master Teacher

 because when we see Jesus as only a “Teacher” we miss the

 Truth of God 

of “why” Jesus is the “Master”,

 not only of “Teaching”, but of every aspect of “Who” Jesus is!!!  

We must never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is the Master 

because HE IS GOD 

and it is HIS DIVINITY that gives HIM UNLIMITED POWER, 

HE IS THE CREATOR, 

and HE IS “UNDERSTANDING” ITSELF. 

All things are of God and therefore all things are good!

 In God’s Graciousness He has bestowed on mankind 

the Ultimate Gift of Free Will — 

sadly, it is with the “misuse” of Free Will 

that mankind introduces “sin” into the world and into our daily lives.

 

God made man and then God endowed His Creation with Free Will — 

God then both blessed and cursed us at the same time

 as He promised that He would not interfere with our “daily choices” 

each of us make using God’s Gift of

 Free Will 

— even if we “choose” not to believe in Him, 

He will honor His Gift of Free Will 

— and it is mankind’s misuse of Free Will

 that takes the “good” that God put in every thing in His creation

 and “defiles” the natural “Good of God”, 

it is God that made all things “Good” 

but is is mankind that uses God’s Gift of Free Will 

to defile the “Good of God” 

— we see why in Genesis at the very beginning of all things 

that God looked on the emptiness 

and saw the need for “Light” 

to dispel the darkness and it was at that point 

God declared the “Light” as “Good” 

and then God separated the 

“Light” from the “darkness”.

 So if we see Jesus as only a “Teacher” then we will miss the “Lesson” because

 Jesus is “Teaching” with all His Questions 

that there is in our lives God’s Truth 

and that “God’s Truth must be lived to truly be learned” 

… every “Lesson” that impacts our “soul” 

only comes from the Creator of our soul, 

and that is God. Man has produced many teachers 

and they have taught many lessons but only 

God is the “Master Teacher” and the “Lessons” 

He Teaches are from God and are of God 

and it is because God is the Creator of 

all “understanding” 

and our “soul” 

that we can actually learn the Truth of God 

— so when we contemplate the “Questions” Jesus asks, 

we must endeavor to “learn” from the viewpoint 

that it is God prodding our understanding to impart His Wisdom to us

 that we might have 

“abundant life” that can only come from God Himself 

——— so when we consider it is God using the terms 

“faithless and perverse generation” 

and then He asks 

“how long shall I be with you?” (Matthew 17:17) 

that we should look very intently at these words as the very 

“Words of God” 

and get serious about learning the “Lesson” He desires to impart to us.

 Doesn’t it make good sense that it is God calling mankind out on being

 “faithless and perverse”

 and then turns right around and warns us that there is 

a time limit (“how long”) for Him to 

“…bear with [us]…”?

 We must consider first that it is God Himself 

asking us a serious Question 

and we should stop and give our full attention

 to being able to answer God honestly 

and look forward with “Hope” 

to learning God’s Lessons about being 

“Faithful and holy”!!!   

JUNE 20 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)

 

JUNE 20  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, Lord Jesus, Praise be to the One that was rejected 

by His own and yet willingly died the Only Death 

that was an Acceptable Sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. 

Lord I fall short of True Faith all too often as I fully accept Your Grace

 in most of my life but find that there is still in me uncleanness, 

not because I did not give my sin to You or that You were 

unable to forgive me of my sin, but I am unclean 

and fall short of True Faith because I did not leave my sin

 at the foot of Your cross where in my repentance I laid it!?!?

 Lord forgive me of the sin of “little faith”, You know my heart 

and You know my desire to serve You honorably 

and I pray that each day that I have remaining that there is no

 remembrance of my sin, not by You, but by me 

for I know You “forgive and forget” but Lord 

I fall prey to “pulling my sin out of mothballs” 

and then the Holy Spirit convicts me of my guilt of not leaving my sin

 at the foot of Your Cross, 

but it is obvious that if I can pull it out of my memory 

that either I did not let it go when I pleaded for forgiveness or 

when I laid it down I picked it up again!?!? 

Lord, You died for all sin, even the ones we “try to hide” 

in the recess of our soul, Lord, I pray that Your Light 

will expose every last sin that I have hidden away, little sins that 

even I am not aware of until they surface at unexpected times — 

Lord give me the strength to allow Your Light access 

to my hiding places so that I can be rid of this “excess baggage” 

and move forward into the True Faith

 that You died on the cross for!     

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus will not settle for anything to keep us from the 

Truth of God, 

especially our misunderstanding of one of His Lessons — 

Jesus was always stopping His disciples and making sure that they 

“understood” what He was Teaching 

and then to leave no stone unturned Jesus would tell the disciples

 exactly what the parable or the Lesson meant in terms that 

they could not possibly misinterpret what He was Teaching them.

However, all of us fail to totally “get it” the first time through His Word

 and we find ourselves falling short in one area of 

“True Faith in God” 

and we must be “called out” for it!  

Every time Jesus saw one of these instances with the disciples, 

Jesus would “tell it like it is” and then Jesus with only the Love that God bestows

 would use the reproach to “Teach” one of those “deeper still” Lessons.

 This is the case of JQ#20 where Jesus addresses a “shortcoming” of the disciples 

and then uses the opportunity to Teach another great 

Truth of God 

when He fully gets their attention. Jesus had just Taught them

 to consider their soul and the upcoming judgement 

and the importance of living their life in His Truth

 so now Jesus and His disciples are back in the “mission field” 

doing that which Jesus had Taught them to do,

 “And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, 

kneeling down to Him and saying, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son,

 for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; 

for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 

So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.”

 (Matthew 17:14-16)  

It was at this point that Jesus responded in what to my mind 

was a rebuke for His disciples 

but before I lead the reader to any wrong conclusions,

let us look at this next Jesus Question and let Him Teach: 

JQ#20  “O faithless and perverse generation, 

how long shall I be with you? 

How long shall I bear with you?” 

(Matthew 17:17) 

Let me ask you at this point to stop and consider the feelings stirred in you

 when you read Jesus saying 

“O faithless and perverse generation…”, 

did you cringe in guilt like I did and then almost tremble when I read, 

“…how long shall I be with you?” 

This is one of those Questions where our inmost feelings will surface 

and if we will but “hang in there” Jesus will guide us to a

 Truth of God 

and bestow on True Believers the Peace that passes all understanding. 

Don’t you think that this is a good time to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you

 in addressing the feelings stirred in you when Jesus 

declares this personal indictment of a 

“…faithless and perverse generation…”? 

Jesus would not have asked if He did not have something good in store 

for those that will stop and answer His Questions honestly 

so take an honest stab at answering  JQ#20, 

but I advise you to temper your guilt with 

“Trust in God” and pray for His Understanding of the

 Truth of God 

to “guide you” as Jesus  promised: 

“…I will send [the Helper/Comforter] to you. 

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, 

and of righteousness, and of judgement…

However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, 

He will guide you into all truth…” !!! 

John 16:7-14)