{"id":851,"date":"2011-04-18T21:04:30","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T02:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=851"},"modified":"2011-04-18T21:04:30","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T02:04:30","slug":"in-god-we-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=851","title":{"rendered":"In God We Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

First off Lord, I want to thank You for a lovely weekend.\u00a0 Jonathan was feeling a bit better, so we were able to get out to visit with some good friends Saturday night and then spent Sunday afternoon and evening with my father (the earthly one\u2026 \ud83d\ude42 ) and his wife.\u00a0 The children love visiting with their grandparents, and it was wonderful to be able to get out and spend time with them.\u00a0 All in all, a very restful and enjoyable couple of days and I thank You for that time of respite.<\/p>\n

This evening Father, I\u2019d like to discuss something that\u2019s been on my heart quite a bit as of late.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A couple months ago, I was contacted via email by a lady I hadn\u2019t met before about possibly presiding over her upcoming wedding.\u00a0 She was a friend of a very good friend of mine, so I asked some questions to make sure it was feasible for me to do so.\u00a0 The date seemed fine, but she really didn\u2019t have much of an idea of what kind of wedding ceremony she was interested in.\u00a0 I pointed her to some online resources with sample ceremonies and told her to look through them to get some ideas about what fit her and her fianc\u00e9e\u2019s wishes.\u00a0 Last week, I finally got around to reading my emails on that account and found that she\u2019d sent me what she deemed the \u201cperfect\u201d<\/em> script for her special day.<\/p>\n

There was absolutely no reference to You in any way, shape or form.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The ceremony she\u2019d chosen was a completely secular proceeding, save for an \u201coptional\u201d<\/em> prayer at the end.\u00a0 Now Father, it was a lovely, very sentimental and poetic script to be sure, but in my mind it completely misses the point; marriage is of Your Design for us:<\/p>\n

“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’.\u00a0 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,<\/strong> <\/strong>and the two will become one flesh.\u00a0 So they are no longer two, but one flesh.<\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong>Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” \u2013 Mark 10:6-9 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I sent the bride-to-be a politely worded response that although it was a lovely secular ceremony, it was my responsibility as a Christian Minister to bring Your Presence to the proceedings, and that I wasn\u2019t able to represent Your intentions for the Holy Bond of marriage properly with that script.\u00a0 I hold marriage to be one of Your most personal and intimate Gifts to us, and I feel it\u2019s very important to honor that Blessing appropriately during the formation of that union.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I haven\u2019t heard back from her as of yet.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But this got me to thinking Father\u2026 Aren\u2019t we doing the same thing in many other ways as well in society today?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve removed open prayer in schools and many other public places as to not \u201coffend\u201d anyone.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Television commercials are being banned from airing during certain popular television programs to avoid giving a \u201cplatform\u201d to any religious groups.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pledge of Allegiance has been under attack because the words \u201cunder God\u201d upset some people.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s disturbing to say the least Father, and I\u2019m seeing more and more signs of it each day.\u00a0 In an effort to not be \u201cconfrontational\u201d<\/em>, we as Christians in many cases \u201cdrop the ball\u201d<\/em> when reflecting Your Light and passing along Your Message of Love and Hope to others around us.<\/p>\n

Heavenly Father, You\u2019ve Blessed us all with remarkable gifts.\u00a0 Please help strengthen and embolden us to carry the lantern of Your Light proudly in front of us so that everyone may see Your Wonders and feel Your Presence.\u00a0 In God we Trust.<\/em><\/strong> Amen.<\/p>\n

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

Dear Lord; Happy Monday Father! First off Lord, I want to thank You for a lovely weekend.\u00a0 Jonathan was feeling a bit better, so we were able to get out to visit with some good friends Saturday night and then spent Sunday afternoon and evening with my father (the earthly one\u2026 \ud83d\ude42 ) and his […]<\/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":[505,549,359,168,256,419,372,347,340,286,132,321,772,722,1124,807,915,487,173,619,228,24,208,276,769,966,444,140,593,916,804,251,464,569,116,222,757,104,133,1170,23,238,355,141,304,230,845,670,495,517,217,205,41,700,734,291,673,585,613,881,727,629,174,130,117,373,86,631,978,114,430,339,240,346,948,481,49,157,504,212,378,379,348,723],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-afternoon","tag-avoid","tag-bible","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-bond","tag-bride","tag-ceremony","tag-child","tag-children","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-christians","tag-creation","tag-days","tag-dear-lord","tag-earth","tag-father","tag-feeling","tag-friend","tag-friends","tag-gift","tag-gifts","tag-giving","tag-god","tag-happy","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-help","tag-honor","tag-hope","tag-intention","tag-jonathan","tag-joy","tag-kind","tag-light","tag-love","tag-mark","tag-marriage","tag-mental","tag-message","tag-mind","tag-monday","tag-mother","tag-need","tag-night","tag-open","tag-personal","tag-pray","tag-prayer","tag-presence","tag-proceed","tag-public","tag-question","tag-questions","tag-read","tag-real","tag-respite","tag-rest","tag-saturday","tag-school","tag-society","tag-son","tag-special","tag-strength","tag-sunday","tag-television","tag-thank-you","tag-time","tag-union","tag-vision","tag-wedding","tag-wedding-ceremony","tag-week","tag-weekend","tag-wife","tag-will","tag-wishes","tag-wonder","tag-wonderful","tag-word","tag-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-dJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","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=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}