Dear Lord; Happy Monday Father!<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve discussed with You before Father, I\u2019ve been spending time reading through the Old Testament as of late.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure exactly why I\u2019ve been drawn to these Books at this point in time, but I\u2019m picking up perspectives I\u2019ve missed in the past and a new sense of \u201corigin\u201d<\/em> that\u2019s added structure to my knowledge of You.\u00a0 It always fascinates me how as I read, certain passages \u201cspeak\u201d<\/em> to me, and I\u2019d like to go over one such section if I may.<\/p>\n The passages I\u2019m referring to occur in the Book of Numbers, and describe an interaction between Balaam and King Balak following Balaam\u2019s blessing of the Israelites for a third time, instead of cursing them as Balak had brought him to do.\u00a0 In this dialogue, Balaam is dealing with a very frazzled Balak:<\/p>\n \u201cThen Balak’s anger burned against Balaam. He struck his hands together and said to him, “I summoned you to curse my enemies, but you have blessed them these three times. \u00a0Now leave at once and go home! I said I would reward you handsomely, but the Lord has kept you from being rewarded.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Balaam answered Balak, “Did I not tell the messengers you sent me,\u00a0‘Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything of my own accord, good or bad, to go beyond the command of the Lord\u2014and I must say only what the Lord says’?\u201d \u2013 Numbers 24:10-13 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, Balaam initially set out on this job led by greed to get paid for cursing the enemies of the king, but was quickly reminded that You run the show and was instead brought into Your service.\u00a0 In the end, his eyes were opened and he not only stood firm against the king by prophesying success for the Israelites, but also through the Spirit foretold of Balak\u2019s fate as well.<\/p>\n Balaam learned his lesson; Your Voice is the one we need to heed, not those around us.\u00a0 When all is said and done, Your Will is the only Truth.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Such a simple, but essential and fundamental lesson that is Father!\u00a0 May we all go forward with the conviction You gave to Balaam on that day, and maintain Your Truth in our hearts.<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Monday Father! As I\u2019ve discussed with You before Father, I\u2019ve been spending time reading through the Old Testament as of late.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure exactly why I\u2019ve been drawn to these Books at this point in time, but I\u2019m picking up perspectives I\u2019ve missed in the past and a new sense of […]<\/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":[762,1205,359,168,256,419,1203,583,341,765,915,173,844,536,277,661,140,273,744,1027,1204,60,345,141,304,845,1202,1206,793,85,887,55,585,493,95,103,785,71,504],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-anger","tag-balaam","tag-bible","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-book-of-numbers","tag-books","tag-conviction","tag-dealing","tag-dear-lord","tag-father","tag-follow","tag-forward","tag-frazzled","tag-fundamental","tag-heart","tag-hearts","tag-interact","tag-israelites","tag-king-balak","tag-knowledge","tag-learn","tag-mind","tag-monday","tag-need","tag-numbers","tag-old-testament","tag-opened","tag-origin","tag-passage","tag-perspective","tag-read","tag-speak","tag-spirit","tag-success","tag-truth","tag-voice","tag-will"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-eP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","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=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}