Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father!<\/p>\n
You know Father, with the multitude of Blessings You surround me with each day, I find it both fascinating and wonderful that when I allow my thoughts to drift and ponder those many gifts, my wife Shannon\u2019s face is always the brightest star in the sky.\u00a0 Of course Lord, I\u2019m by no means discounting the other miracles You\u2019ve placed into my life, but the longer that she and I are together and the more we go through, the more I realize that Your intentions for marriage are truly foundational.<\/p>\n
And although I would never presume to comprehend Your scope on the subject Father, over the time that I\u2019ve been married to Shannon I do believe I\u2019ve come to understand some of the fundamental reasons why You\u2019ve brought us together\u2026<\/p>\n
You desire that we should have intimate companionship.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Although obviously sex is a piece of this Lord, it\u2019s not entirely to what I\u2019m referring.\u00a0 We\u2019re Blessed with many relationships throughout our lives, but when we honor the divine nature of marriage by nourishing, encouraging and sharing completely with one another, it provides an amazingly deep, intimate connection that only You could have designed.<\/p>\n Marriage confronts us with the fact that we\u2019re generally self-centered beings by nature, and helps us learn to place others first.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Our flesh wants.\u00a0 It\u2019s that simple.\u00a0 From the first minute we become aware of ourselves, we\u2019re driven by our earthly shells to seek gratification in the basic and flawed attempt to find happiness.\u00a0 In many ways, it\u2019s the ultimate paradox; to find the peace and contentment that a relationship with Jesus offers, we must first learn to see past our selfish natures and give of ourselves with a joyous heart.\u00a0 In the same respect, for our marriages to live and thrive we need to learn to place our spouse, and our union, ahead of ourselves.<\/p>\n By joining us together as man and wife, You draw us closer to You through that union.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When we\u2019re brought together through the union of marriage, we\u2019re in fact taking on a third member of the family\u2026 You, Lord.\u00a0 Through Your ordainment of a couple\u2019s commitment to one another, You connect through that Blessing in an amazingly powerful way.\u00a0 While it\u2019s obviously important for each of us to seek and nourish a personal relationship with You Father, it\u2019s no less important to cultivate and maintain a deep connection with You as a married couple.\u00a0 By keeping You as an integral part of our marriages, we bring ourselves closer to one another in the process.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him\u2014a threefold cord is not quickly broken.\u201d \u2013 Ecclesiastes 4:12 (ESV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Heavenly Father,<\/p>\n Through the gift of marriage Lord, You draw us together in example of Your love for us.\u00a0 Please help strengthen our commitment to one another, and to glorifying You through our nourishing of this holy union.<\/p>\n In Jesus\u2019 Name we pray,<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![Pin It<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father! You know Father, with the multitude of Blessings You surround me with each day, I find it both fascinating and wonderful that when I allow my thoughts to drift and ponder those many gifts, my wife Shannon\u2019s face is always the brightest star in the sky.\u00a0 Of course Lord, I\u2019m […]<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804,"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":[9,350,168,256,419,1899,2092,139,915,282,487,987,1972,541,4,394,173,661,208,2099,276,2094,79,444,731,140,593,916,251,569,2093,2095,2096,269,222,267,78,133,1133,1890,377,434,1547,77,845,509,392,305,25,517,1227,2098,587,572,217,683,10,1318,693,2097,227,86,730,430,697,339,504,378,379],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-alone","tag-amazing","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-book-of-ecclesiastes","tag-brightest-star-in-the-sky","tag-contentment","tag-dear-lord","tag-divine","tag-earth","tag-ecclesiastes","tag-esv","tag-example","tag-family","tag-fascinating","tag-father","tag-fundamental","tag-gift","tag-gift-of-marriage","tag-gifts","tag-gods-intentions-for-marriage","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-head","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-honor","tag-intention","tag-intentions-for-marriage","tag-intimate-companionship","tag-intimate-connection","tag-jesus","tag-joy","tag-joyous","tag-life","tag-love","tag-man-and-wife","tag-married-couple","tag-miracle","tag-miracles","tag-multitude-of-blessings","tag-nature","tag-need","tag-nourish","tag-obvious","tag-paradox","tag-peace","tag-personal","tag-personal-relationship","tag-personal-relationship-with-god","tag-power","tag-powerful","tag-pray","tag-realize","tag-relationships","tag-respect","tag-scope","tag-self-centered","tag-shannon","tag-strength","tag-thoughts","tag-time","tag-understand","tag-union","tag-will","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Hands-and-Wedding-Rings-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-pa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","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=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phatherphil.org%2F%3Fp%3D1560&media=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phatherphil.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F04%2FHands-and-Wedding-Rings-1-Cropped.jpg&description=Inspirations+from+Phather+Phil+-+The+Brightest+Star+in+the+Sky\"){kind=link}