{"id":2155,"date":"2012-08-08T14:47:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T18:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2012-08-08T14:47:51","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T18:47:51","slug":"one-brick-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=2155","title":{"rendered":"One Brick at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Today Father, I want to start off by saying \u201cthank You\u201d<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

For Your faithfulness,<\/em><\/p>\n

Your grace,<\/em><\/p>\n

And Your persistence in pursuing me when I stray from You.<\/em><\/p>\n

As You\u2019re aware Lord, my life has been a bit more complicated than usual and increasingly stressful as of late.\u00a0 And while I\u2019ve tried as diligently as I can to keep myself open to Your voice throughout these trials, I\u2019ll admit I\u2019ve failed to do so more often than not.\u00a0 I\u2019ve allowed my pain and fears to cloud my connection to You Lord, and it\u2019s left me feeling much more \u201cdisconnected\u201d<\/em> than I\u2019ve become accustomed to\u2026<\/p>\n

Until last Friday, when You broke the silence:<\/p>\n

\u201cHold on to your Joy, Phil.\u201d You said\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMy Joy??\u201d I thought, \u201c I\u2019m hurting<\/span> Father\u2026 Really??\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHold on to your Joy.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And then I realized…<\/p>\n

You\u2019re my Joy Lord\u2026 And I\u2019ve let the world get between us.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve built a wall Father, using my burdens as bricks and anxiety as the mortar that binds them together.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And yet Lord, even with this self-constructed barrier in place\u2026<\/p>\n

You came for me.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.\u00a0As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.\u201d \u2013 Ezekiel 34:11-12 (ESV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The wall is there Father, of my own making\u2026<\/p>\n

And still You seek me out.<\/em><\/p>\n

The wall is there,<\/p>\n

But with Your help Father, we\u2019ll tear it down,<\/em><\/p>\n

Together\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

One brick at a time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

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

Dear Lord; Happy Wednesday Father! Today Father, I want to start off by saying \u201cthank You\u201d\u2026 For Your faithfulness, Your grace, And Your persistence in pursuing me when I stray from You. As You\u2019re aware Lord, my life has been a bit more complicated than usual and increasingly stressful as of late.\u00a0 And while I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\nPin It<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2156,"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":[961,2635,2918,100,2543,1850,1071,966,2356,1576,2920,1332,2919,222,2921],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-anxieties","tag-book-of-ezekiel","tag-brick-wall","tag-burdens","tag-disconnected","tag-disconnected-from-god","tag-emails-to-god","tag-god","tag-gods-faithfulness","tag-gods-grace","tag-gods-persistence","tag-gods-voice","tag-hold-on-to-your-joy","tag-joy","tag-tear-down-the-wall"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Old-Brick-Wall-Rubble-1-Cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-yL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","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=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}