Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Monday Father!<\/p>\n
Well Father, once again You\u2019ve Blessed my family and I by gracing us with another wonderful weekend together, surrounded by ample signs of Your love for us.\u00a0 Aidan\u2019s birthday party Friday night brought a flurry of activity to the house, and the sleepover portion of the festivities kept that youthful liveliness going late into the evening.\u00a0 (If we could harness the energy of nine-year-old boys Father, I truly believe the world\u2019s energy issues would be at an end.\u00a0 ;-))\u00a0 Shannon spent Saturday afternoon playing her viola in the Dover Symphony\u2019s Children\u2019s Concert, while the boys and I got some errands and household duties accomplished.\u00a0 Sunday started as usual with morning services at Ewell\u2019s St. Paul, with the remainder of the day consumed by housework, preparations for Thanksgiving and quiet time spent enjoying each other\u2019s company.\u00a0 All in all Lord, it was a Blessed time spent with those I love, and I thank You for that period of respite from the workweek.<\/p>\n
As part of preparing our home for the upcoming Thanksgiving gathering, and to lay the groundwork for next weekend\u2019s Christmas decorating marathon, Jonathan and I spent a good bit of Sunday afternoon cleaning and rearranging the garage, and bringing in the furniture from our back deck.\u00a0 In the midst of doing so, I realized that it had been more than six months since I\u2019d started the 1986 Jaguar I\u2019d restored some years back, and well over a year since it had left the confines of our garage.\u00a0 The battery was completely dead, so I connected up the charger, and let it run until the indicator light clued me in that it was done.\u00a0 I settled into the driver\u2019s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and\u2026<\/p>\n
It bluntly refused to start.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n At first, I was a little taken aback.\u00a0 Since I\u2019d finished restoring it, this car has always fired right up with no hesitation whatsoever.\u00a0 Then I realized\u2026 it\u2019s had the same gasoline in its tanks for well over 16 months; engines don\u2019t like stale gas.\u00a0 When the brakes went out a year and a half ago I parked it, and waited for the time and money to repair it.\u00a0 Unfortunately, our finances have been stretched since that time, and I unintentionally allowed it to fall into neglect.\u00a0 I failed to perform the proper maintenance a stored vehicle requires, and as a result it will now require some repairs before it runs again.<\/p>\n Thinking about the situation as I drove in to the office today, I realized there was a lesson to be learned here\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cRejoice always,\u00a0pray without ceasing,\u00a0give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.\u00a0Do not quench the Spirit.\u00a0Do not despise prophecies,\u00a0but test everything; hold fast what is good.\u00a0Abstain from every form of evil.\u201d \u2013 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 (ESV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like my immobile auto, our faith needs to have regular service performed on it as well.\u00a0 In this passage from First Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul describes some directives which could be looked at as \u201cSpiritual Maintenance\u201d<\/em> of a sort.\u00a0 Our journey of faith is a lifelong, winding road, requiring a spirit that\u2019s fueled regularly (time in the Word), diligently maintained (thanks and prayer) and kept out of damaging conditions (abstaining from evil).\u00a0 When we neglect our spirit\u2019s proper upkeep, that road becomes uncertain, and our pace towards You is diminished.<\/p>\n Our spirits don\u2019t run well on \u201cstale gas\u201d either. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Heavenly Father,<\/p>\n We thank You Lord, for the great care and faithfulness You show to us each day.\u00a0 Instill in our hearts the commitment and passion to keep our spirits \u201cmaintained\u201d<\/em> and agile, that we may journey along the path You\u2019ve set for us unimpeded.<\/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 Meditations Monday Father! Well Father, once again You\u2019ve Blessed my family and I by gracing us with another wonderful weekend together, surrounded by ample signs of Your love for us.\u00a0 Aidan\u2019s birthday party Friday night brought a flurry of activity to the house, and the sleepover portion of the festivities kept that […]<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1643,"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":[181,1123,465,207,1829,168,256,182,107,2165,286,132,321,266,1194,829,1000,488,91,503,915,494,1846,702,1972,741,366,15,4,173,2160,1777,628,769,966,444,140,273,593,916,976,520,1166,1055,569,269,116,109,222,345,104,880,133,206,1325,431,506,84,670,648,887,81,217,2161,2162,205,69,1080,683,881,727,629,227,732,187,117,95,512,2159,2164,2163,817,631,114,226,225,221,481,49,1818,378,379,1672,348,138],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-aidan","tag-apostle-paul","tag-birth","tag-birthday","tag-birthday-party","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-boys","tag-care","tag-care-and-faithfulness","tag-child","tag-children","tag-christ","tag-christmas","tag-clean","tag-company","tag-concert","tag-conditions","tag-connected","tag-consume","tag-dear-lord","tag-diligently","tag-dover-symphony","tag-drive","tag-esv","tag-evil","tag-failed","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-father","tag-first-thessalonians","tag-flurry-of-activity","tag-friday","tag-giving","tag-god","tag-happy","tag-heart","tag-hearts","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-house","tag-household","tag-household-duties","tag-housework","tag-intention","tag-jesus","tag-jonathan","tag-journey","tag-joy","tag-learn","tag-light","tag-long","tag-love","tag-meditation","tag-meditations-monday","tag-money","tag-morning","tag-name","tag-night","tag-office","tag-passage","tag-path","tag-pray","tag-pray-continually","tag-pray-without-ceasing","tag-prayer","tag-quiet","tag-quiet-time","tag-realize","tag-respite","tag-rest","tag-saturday","tag-shannon","tag-situation","tag-sleep","tag-son","tag-spirit","tag-spirits","tag-spiritual-maintenance","tag-stale-gas","tag-stale-gasoline","tag-start","tag-sunday","tag-thank-you","tag-thanks","tag-thanksgiving","tag-thessalonians","tag-week","tag-weekend","tag-winding-road","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful","tag-wonderful-weekend","tag-word","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Tools-in-a-Toolbox-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-qu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","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=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1645,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/1645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1642"}],"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%3D1642&media=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phatherphil.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F11%2FTools-in-a-Toolbox-1-Cropped.jpg&description=Inspirations+from+Phather+Phil+-+Meditations+Monday%3A+Spiritual+Maintenance\"){kind=link}