Dear Lord; Happy Wednesday Father!<\/p>\n
We\u2019re a cautious bunch Father\u2026 Too cautious in many respects.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Over the last month or so Lord, I\u2019ve felt You urgently calling me to take some leaps; to step outside my \u201ccomfort zone\u201d<\/em> and reach out to others in a much more significant way.\u00a0 I love those \u201cnudges\u201d<\/em> Father, and I\u2019ve enjoyed increasing my outreach efforts\u2026<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not enough.\u00a0 I\u2019ve still been playing it safe.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve fallen into the trap that so many others have Lord; instead of placing my fears, insecurities and biases completely in Your hands and bringing Your message to those who may desperately need it, for the most part I\u2019ve kept my efforts within \u201ccomfortable\u201d<\/em> boundaries\u2026<\/p>\n And You desire more than that of me.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.<\/strong><\/p>\n While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.\u00a0When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”<\/strong><\/p>\n On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.\u00a0But go and learn what this means: \u2018I desire mercy, not sacrifice.\u2019 For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” \u2013 Matthew 9:9-13 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Heavenly Father,<\/p>\n Help me reach those whose spirits are sick; the lost, the broken, the lonely and the hurting.\u00a0 Draw me to where You need me most Lord, and embolden me to effectively share Your light with those in need.\u00a0 For my comfort zone isn\u2019t nearly big enough Father, I need to work in Yours.<\/p>\n In Jesus Name we pray,<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Wednesday Father! We\u2019re a cautious bunch Father\u2026 Too cautious in many respects. Over the last month or so Lord, I\u2019ve felt You urgently calling me to take some leaps; to step outside my \u201ccomfort zone\u201d and reach out to others in a much more significant way.\u00a0 I love those \u201cnudges\u201d Father, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1348,"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":[1838,27,144,1839,915,1003,635,676,173,6,211,844,966,1837,444,89,471,780,593,916,1295,906,269,222,345,104,389,133,783,664,355,845,1525,1508,217,1486,1318,591,166,113,232,796,95,512,1330,476,175,663],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-cautious-bunch","tag-comfort","tag-comfort-zone","tag-comfortable-boundaries","tag-dear-lord","tag-disciple","tag-doctor","tag-efforts","tag-father","tag-fear","tag-fears","tag-follow","tag-god","tag-gods-comfort-zone","tag-happy","tag-health","tag-healthy","tag-hearing","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-help-me","tag-hurting","tag-jesus","tag-joy","tag-learn","tag-light","tag-lost","tag-love","tag-matthew","tag-mess","tag-message","tag-need","tag-niv","tag-outreach-efforts","tag-pray","tag-reach","tag-respect","tag-righteous","tag-sacrifice","tag-safe","tag-sick","tag-significant","tag-spirit","tag-spirits","tag-spiritual-nudges","tag-teach","tag-teacher","tag-wednesday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Planet-Earth-1-Scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-lL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","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=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}