{"id":2118,"date":"2012-07-24T17:37:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T21:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2012-07-24T17:37:54","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T21:37:54","slug":"out-of-the-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=2118","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father!<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a failure Father.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve failed my family\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve failed my friends\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve failed You\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m so sorry Lord\u2026 Please forgive me.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Those words hung painfully in the quiet presence of the sanctuary at Ewell\u2019s-St. Paul last Tuesday evening as I knelt at the altar, while the joyful sounds of children enjoying Vacation Bible School in the rooms below brought contrast to the silence.\u00a0 Tears flowed freely down my cheeks as I looked up at Hofmann\u2019s painting of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, realizing in anguish how distant I felt from You right at that moment.<\/p>\n

The world had come crashing in around me; laying waste to the essence of my being with such force that I scarcely knew what direction to turn.\u00a0 I felt beaten, and worthless, and in the midst of that weakness the enemy found me\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve let everybody down\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve squandered the opportunities God gave you\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re a failure.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And yes Father, at that moment I believed it; every whisper, every word.<\/p>\n

I was ashamed Lord…<\/em><\/p>\n

Ashamed of my impotence to resolve the current crises, but even more so that I believed myself unworthy and was unable to lay them at Your feet.\u00a0 I\u2019d separated myself from Your presence, and in that valley realized the true depth of my limitations.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d lost Your voice Father, and felt isolated and alone in my pain; defined not by my heavenly inheritance, but instead by my fragile humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n

And yet, as I have so many times before Lord, on that altar covered in tear-stained apologies I began the journey out of that valley, and back to You.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

No booming voice came from the sky to direct me\u2026<\/p>\n

My struggles and pain weren\u2019t instantly silenced by Your divine hand\u2026<\/p>\n

And my heart still ached from the perception of my failings.<\/p>\n

But kneeling in the quiet,<\/p>\n

As the fading light of dusk gave life to shadow,<\/p>\n

I knew that You were with me\u2026<\/p>\n

And that You still love me.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

So with that truth as my guide Lord, I reach for You; climbing out of the valley one step at a time until Your heavenly light banishes these lies from my heart, and I\u2019m reminded that I\u2019m not defined by my worldly perceptions of failure, but instead through the love of my Heavenly Father.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Jesus\u2019 name I pray,<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

~Phather Phil<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Lord; Happy Tuesday Father! \u201cI\u2019m a failure Father. I\u2019ve failed my family\u2026 I\u2019ve failed my friends\u2026 And I\u2019ve failed You\u2026 I\u2019m so sorry Lord\u2026 Please forgive me.\u201d Those words hung painfully in the quiet presence of the sanctuary at Ewell\u2019s-St. Paul last Tuesday evening as I knelt at the altar, while the joyful sounds […]<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2119,"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":[365,551,2882,1071,2883,1291,2875,2885,2880,966,1507,1332,916,2884,2878,269,2879,2887,2874,2888,2876,2886,2877,2881],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-ashamed","tag-beaten","tag-crashing-in-around-me","tag-emails-to-god","tag-essence-of-my-being","tag-ewells-st-paul-umc","tag-failure","tag-fragile-humanity","tag-garden-of-gethsemane","tag-god","tag-gods-presence","tag-gods-voice","tag-heavenly-father","tag-heavenly-inheritance","tag-hofmann","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-in-the-garden","tag-journey-to-god","tag-out-of-the-valley","tag-perceptions-of-failure","tag-sanctuary","tag-tear-stained-apologies","tag-vacation-bible-school","tag-worthless"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/christ-in-garden-of-gethsemane-heinrich-hofmann-1-cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-ya","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118","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=2118"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}