Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father!<\/p>\n
As you know Father, I didn\u2019t post to PhatherPhil.org last Friday.\u00a0 It was odd for me, because I\u2019ve conditioned myself and put time aside to write to You each day, but on Friday the words just didn\u2019t come.\u00a0 For whatever reason, I felt disconnected somehow and couldn\u2019t hear Your voice with the clarity I\u2019ve become used to.\u00a0 I struggled with it, and even tried to force myself to post something<\/span><\/em>, but in the end I decided against just\u2026<\/p>\n Going through the motions.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Although at the time I felt like I was reneging on some \u201cunspoken obligation\u201d<\/em>, I\u2019m happier that I chose not to post anything at all rather than something that wasn\u2019t of Your inspiration.<\/p>\n And today Lord, I came across a passage in Isaiah that brought it all into wonderful perspective for me:<\/p>\n The Lord says: Therefore once more I will astound these people Woe to those who go to great depths You turn things upside down, We\u2019ve all done it at one point or another Father; followed the worship \u201cbouncing ball\u201d<\/em>, but done so without that deep communion in our hearts that gives the spiritual expression it\u2019s purpose.\u00a0 For many years when I was young, I went to Sunday school and church simply to appease my parents.\u00a0 It was very much \u201ctextbook worship\u201d<\/em>, and throughout that period I never truly felt the deep, yearning connection to You that I\u2019m Blessed with now.<\/p>\n You know our hearts Lord, and have no interest in hypocritical worship.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Thankfully Father, the \u201cspiritual cloud\u201d<\/em> that obscured You from me on Friday passed quickly, and I even managed to gain some insight in the process.\u00a0 I find it wondrous and fascinating that even in those unusual moments when my connection to You isn\u2019t as clear, that You\u2019re still teaching me nonetheless.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Heavenly Father,<\/p>\n We thank You for Your unending faithfulness and patience with us.\u00a0 I pray that we all come to You presenting an open heart; with the lessons of Your Son firmly in our minds and enthusiastic praises of You on our lips.\u00a0 Lift our spiritual clouds Lord, and make the Holy Spirit in us shine like the beacons You intend us to be.<\/p>\n In Jesus\u2019 Name we pray,<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father! As you know Father, I didn\u2019t post to PhatherPhil.org last Friday.\u00a0 It was odd for me, because I\u2019ve conditioned myself and put time aside to write to You each day, but on Friday the words just didn\u2019t come.\u00a0 For whatever reason, I felt disconnected somehow and couldn\u2019t hear Your voice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1368,"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":[459,168,256,1454,1853,1857,219,45,1307,91,944,915,1850,1858,15,394,173,844,628,966,1332,1851,444,140,273,593,916,592,251,1849,13,269,141,274,203,84,1525,887,55,16,892,725,217,281,748,174,117,469,1855,777,631,476,544,1854,114,40,1856,339,1852,504,142,378,379,371,138,819,685],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-beacon","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-book-of-isaiah","tag-bouncing-ball","tag-christs-lessons","tag-church","tag-clarity","tag-communion","tag-connected","tag-darkness","tag-dear-lord","tag-disconnected-from-god","tag-enthusiastic-praise","tag-faith","tag-fascinating","tag-father","tag-follow","tag-friday","tag-god","tag-gods-voice","tag-going-through-the-motions","tag-happy","tag-heart","tag-hearts","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-holy-spirit","tag-honor","tag-hypocritical-worship","tag-inspiration","tag-jesus","tag-mind","tag-minds","tag-moments","tag-name","tag-niv","tag-passage","tag-perspective","tag-plan","tag-plans","tag-praises","tag-pray","tag-purpose","tag-quickly","tag-school","tag-son","tag-sons","tag-spiritual-cloud","tag-struggle","tag-sunday","tag-teach","tag-teaching","tag-textbook-worship","tag-thank-you","tag-thankful","tag-unending-faithfulness","tag-union","tag-unspoken-obligation","tag-will","tag-wisdom","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful","tag-wondrous","tag-work","tag-yearn","tag-yearning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Jesus-Covering-Face-Statue-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-m5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","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=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“These people come near to me with their mouth
\nand honor me with their lips,
\nbut their hearts are far from me.
\nTheir worship of me
\nis based on merely human rules they have been taught.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nwith wonder upon wonder;
\nthe wisdom of the wise will perish,
\nthe intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nto hide their plans from the Lord,
\nwho do their work in darkness and think,
\n“Who sees us? Who will know?”<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nas if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
\nShall what is formed say to the one who formed it,
\n“You did not make me”? \u2013 Isaiah 29:13-16 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n