Dear Lord; Happy Friday Father!<\/p>\n
As you\u2019re aware Father, during my Scripture reading time as of late I\u2019ve been reviewing the books of the Old Testament.\u00a0 I always find wisdom and vital foundation in those pages, however once in a while I run into a passage that seizes my heart and connects me to Your Word even more deeply.<\/p>\n
Such was the case as I read from 1st<\/sup> Samuel last night.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Samuel had recently delivered Your condemnation of Saul\u2019s disobedience in the battle with the Amalekites, and was mourning the situation when You instructed him that he was now to travel to Bethlehem for the purpose of anointing a new king.\u00a0 You indicated that it was to be a son of Jesse, but gave no specifics as to which son had been chosen.<\/p>\n When Samuel reached Bethlehem and was received by Jesse and his family, he saw Eliab (Jesse\u2019s eldest son) and due to the young man\u2019s stature assumed that he was Your intended selection.\u00a0 You however, used that moment to teach Samuel (and now me) a valuable lesson\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cBut the <\/strong>Lord<\/strong> said to Samuel, \u201cDo not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The <\/strong>Lord<\/strong> does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the <\/strong>Lord<\/strong> looks at the heart.\u201d\u201d \u2013 1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n You know Father, while I already knew that to be the case, this verse still left a powerful impression on my heart.\u00a0 We spend so much of our time tending to our outward appearance and presentation, but in the end You know our hearts; what we think, our motivations, our fears, and our convictions.\u00a0 The more we focus on true transformation of our inner selves and less on impressing the world around us, the more obvious Your Presence becomes in our daily lives.<\/p>\n What a wonderful lesson to pray on going into the weekend.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Friday Father! As you\u2019re aware Father, during my Scripture reading time as of late I\u2019ve been reviewing the books of the Old Testament.\u00a0 I always find wisdom and vital foundation in those pages, however once in a while I run into a passage that seizes my heart and connects me to Your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1389,1397,359,583,1102,341,915,1395,4,173,6,211,1388,42,628,1391,964,273,1393,61,215,1259,1377,392,1206,1398,887,572,217,41,1283,281,1394,1392,1358,1390,732,476,430,485,1396,49,142,378,379],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-1-samuel","tag-amalekites","tag-bible","tag-books","tag-books-of-the-old-testament","tag-conviction","tag-dear-lord","tag-eliab","tag-family","tag-father","tag-fear","tag-fears","tag-first-book-of-samuel","tag-focus","tag-friday","tag-gods-word","tag-happy-friday","tag-hearts","tag-jesse","tag-motivation","tag-motivations","tag-mourn","tag-mourning","tag-obvious","tag-old-testament","tag-outward-appearance","tag-passage","tag-powerful","tag-pray","tag-presence","tag-presentation","tag-purpose","tag-samuel","tag-saul","tag-scripture","tag-seizes-my-heart","tag-situation","tag-teach","tag-time","tag-travel","tag-true-transformation","tag-weekend","tag-wisdom","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-hN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}