Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Monday Father!<\/p>\n
Well Father, it certainly was a busy weekend, but all-in-all a wonderful couple days\u2019 time spent enjoying time with family and good friends.\u00a0 With Jonathan still at Kamp<\/a> and Aidan spending the night with friends, Shannon and I got to go out Friday evening for a fun \u201cdate night\u201d<\/em> (I so love \u201cdating\u201d<\/em> my wife Lord\u2026).\u00a0 Saturday morning we picked up Aidan, and spent the remainder of the morning attending the closing ceremonies at Kay\u2019s Kamp<\/a>.\u00a0 We got some quiet time to rest Saturday afternoon, and then headed out to have dinner with a group of our friends.\u00a0 It rained much of the evening, but we had an absolutely wonderful time nonetheless.\u00a0 Sunday morning we braved the downpour to attend morning services at Ewell\u2019s St. Paul United Methodist Church<\/a>, and enjoyed jubilant music, a wonderful Message from Pastor Kris and the fellowship of our church family.\u00a0 We managed to catch up on a little housework while relaxing the remainder of the day, and concluded the weekend with a tasty dinner out together at a new Mexican restaurant in Smyrna.\u00a0 As I said before Lord, it was a hectic few days, but one that was truly filled with Your Blessings\u2026 Thank You!<\/p>\n Today\u2019s Meditations Monday<\/span><\/em> Scripture comes from Paul\u2019s Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 2.\u00a0 This morning while driving into the office, I heard an extremely inspiring story on 88.7 The Bridge<\/a> which truly touched my heart.\u00a0 They played an interview with a young lady<\/a> who is currently facing her own mortality due to an uncontrolled cancer that has now spread to her brain.\u00a0 Instead of dwelling in her suffering, she\u2019s instead focusing on Your Blessings in her life, and lifted praises to You as she was baptized yesterday.\u00a0 It was a humbling message of Faith<\/span><\/em> Father, and it led me to the verse choice I\u2019m praying on this morning:<\/p>\n \u201cFor it is by grace you have been saved, through faith\u2014and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God\u2014\u00a0not by works, so that no one can boast.\u00a0 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.\u201d \u2013 Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So often when we get into situations that cause us pain, or discomfort, or even just inconvenience we develop \u201cspiritual short-sightedness\u201d,<\/em> and mire ourselves down in our burdens rather than allowing those trials to strengthen our Faith, and to draw us closer to You.\u00a0 I pray that we can all learn from her courageous example Father, and seek You even in our darkest hour.<\/p>\n Heavenly Father, I lift my voice in praise for the Blessings You bring to our lives each day.\u00a0 I pray that Your comforting embrace continues to be felt by Kim and her family during this difficult season, and that they can draw strength from the knowledge that You\u2019re always with them.<\/p>\n In Jesus\u2019 Name we pray,<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Monday Father! Well Father, it certainly was a busy weekend, but all-in-all a wonderful couple days\u2019 time spent enjoying time with family and good friends.\u00a0 With Jonathan still at Kamp and Aidan spending the night with friends, Shannon and I got to go out Friday evening for a fun \u201cdate night\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1084,"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":[1730,505,181,1731,168,419,100,1723,526,321,772,1727,27,1112,1353,581,43,1735,625,1724,915,546,636,1399,1725,173,220,42,628,228,24,208,966,1729,1736,1463,1495,726,59,444,731,140,593,916,806,1055,271,269,116,222,374,1732,60,345,133,206,1325,355,1733,1728,506,257,1525,123,1696,19,1726,601,725,217,69,1080,46,1169,721,1358,265,227,732,836,117,95,1734,584,86,20,631,114,250,789,71,378,379,138],"class_list":["post-1265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-88-7-the-bridge","tag-afternoon","tag-aidan","tag-baptism","tag-bless","tag-blessing","tag-burdens","tag-busy-weekend","tag-cancer","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-church-family","tag-comfort","tag-comforting-embrace","tag-contemporary-christian-radio","tag-control","tag-courage","tag-courageous-example","tag-date-night","tag-dating-my-wife","tag-dear-lord","tag-difficult","tag-discomfort","tag-epistle-to-the-ephesians","tag-ewells-st-paul-united-methodist-church","tag-father","tag-fellowship","tag-focus","tag-friday","tag-friend","tag-friends","tag-gift","tag-god","tag-gods-blessings","tag-gods-embrace","tag-gods-hand","tag-good-friends","tag-good-works","tag-grace","tag-happy","tag-head","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-hectic","tag-housework","tag-inspiring","tag-jesus","tag-jonathan","tag-joy","tag-kays-kamp","tag-kim-miller","tag-knowledge","tag-learn","tag-love","tag-meditation","tag-meditations-monday","tag-message","tag-message-of-faith","tag-mexican-restaurant","tag-morning","tag-music","tag-niv","tag-oncology","tag-oncology-camp","tag-pain","tag-pastor-kris","tag-praise","tag-praises","tag-pray","tag-quiet","tag-quiet-time","tag-rain","tag-saturday-morning","tag-saved","tag-scripture","tag-season","tag-shannon","tag-situation","tag-situations","tag-son","tag-spirit","tag-spiritual-short-sightedness","tag-story","tag-strength","tag-suffering","tag-sunday","tag-thank-you","tag-touch","tag-trials","tag-voice","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Candle-in-the-Dark-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-kp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265","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=1265"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}