Dear Lord; You know Father, it\u2019s fascinating to me where I find inspiration from You these days.\u00a0 Last night for example, it was in a bowling alley.<\/p>\n
As You\u2019re aware, I bowl on a league on Thursday nights.\u00a0 I\u2019m not particularly good, but I\u2019ve been improving a little at a time throughout the year and no matter what, I enjoy doing it.\u00a0 Anyways, over the last few weeks I\u2019ve been struggling to find consistency with putting the ball in the \u201csweet spot\u201d of the pocket to get the stacked strikes I need to improve my score.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a bit frustrating, but last night I realized that maybe I\u2019d been dissecting it too much, and possibly was missing the forest for the trees.\u00a0 One of my teammates who\u2019s a much better bowler than I am had said something to that effect the previous week, and for some reason I overlooked it until last night.\u00a0 He told me I was fighting the ball too much, and that if I just find the correct path and relax, the ball would do the rest.\u00a0 Now of course, the correct path is different for every ball, lane setup and bowler but the idea is that once you find and follow the proper path, down those pins go.<\/p>\n
Then it clicked\u2026 That\u2019s also how we find You.<\/p>\n
Ok, so maybe comparing a strike in bowling to living in Your Love is a bit of a stretch, but I think the analogy is valid.\u00a0 We all have different paths to a close relationship with You.\u00a0 Like adjusting for variances in lane setup and ball characteristics, we all have to find our own connection with Your Grace and follow it diligently, adjusting for changes and learning from our missteps.\u00a0 By examining our form and practicing we improve our throw, just like reading Your Word and conducting our lives by Your Will improves our ability to be Your Servants.\u00a0 And as my teammate so aptly stated, once we have the path figured out, as long as we don\u2019t fight the ball\u2019s nature, it will do the rest.<\/p>\n
I desperately want that close relationship with You Father, and I\u2019m working every day on finding and following the right path to Your Countenance.\u00a0 Please help guide us all to that Holy Strike Zone, and help us find the Light in Your Perfect Game.\u00a0 Amen.\u00a0 ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Lord; You know Father, it\u2019s fascinating to me where I find inspiration from You these days.\u00a0 Last night for example, it was in a bowling alley. As You\u2019re aware, I bowl on a league on Thursday nights.\u00a0 I\u2019m not particularly good, but I\u2019ve been improving a little at a time throughout the year and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[405,404,395,397,411,394,403,402,401,396,13,407,408,77,81,399,92,409,400,398,410,406],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-adjusting","tag-analogy","tag-bowling","tag-consistency","tag-countenance","tag-fascinating","tag-fighting","tag-frustrating","tag-improve","tag-improving","tag-inspiration","tag-learning","tag-missteps","tag-nature","tag-path","tag-pocket","tag-relationship","tag-servants","tag-strikes","tag-sweet-spot","tag-teammate","tag-variances"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-6X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","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=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}