Dear Lord; Good evening Father!<\/p>\n
Decisions; life is full of them.\u00a0 Every single day we\u2019re called upon to make choices that impact our lives, and in many cases the lives of those around us.\u00a0 Some are small, simple ones such as what to have for lunch (although that never seems to be simple in my office for some reason\u2026), and others, well, are not so simple.\u00a0 Either way, our lives are shaped by the decisions we make, and the paths we follow.<\/p>\n
Case in point:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n My wife Shannon is in the throes of a fairly significant decision; one that could have both short and long-term consequences, but also the potential for significant life-changing benefits.\u00a0 Like all choices of this kind, there are a number of back-and-forth arguments on both sides of the equation, making the correct path less than obvious.\u00a0 Sitting down with her and talking about it this evening, we hashed it out from nearly every side we could come up with, and in the end were left with a couple piles of \u201cwhat if\u201d<\/em> scenarios.\u00a0 Finally, I asked her a simple question;<\/p>\n Have you prayed about it?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n She indicated she had, and that during that discussion with You Father, You told her to follow her heart.\u00a0 While I believe she would have preferred a \u201cDo this and everything will work out.\u201d<\/em> answer, You instead left her to determine what her heart truly is leading her to do, and the knowledge that You\u2019re behind her when she does.<\/p>\n \u201cIf any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.<\/strong> <\/strong> But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.\u201d \u2013 James 1:5-6 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that a great many of Your answers to our prayers are like this Lord.\u00a0 We\u2019ve become a \u201cquick fix\u201d<\/em> society and want instant solutions to our problems, but You instead use these crossroads in our lives to help us to grow and to learn.\u00a0 Just because You don\u2019t give us concrete answers to our pleas doesn\u2019t mean You don\u2019t have the solutions, simply that we need to pay closer attention to Your Truths and use those resources to do what we know to be right.<\/p>\n Heavenly Father, please guide and enlighten us to make the decisions that best serve Your Plan for us.\u00a0 Please help filter out the \u201cnoise\u201d<\/em> around us which can lead us astray, and allow us to focus on Your Voice so as to choose the best path forward.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Good evening Father! Decisions; life is full of them.\u00a0 Every single day we\u2019re called upon to make choices that impact our lives, and in many cases the lives of those around us.\u00a0 Some are small, simple ones such as what to have for lunch (although that never seems to be simple in my […]<\/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":[288,99,359,1212,82,44,1214,899,1215,915,154,508,7,173,848,667,42,844,536,966,457,686,140,593,916,1213,757,60,787,345,78,104,845,846,392,648,81,16,776,146,217,205,249,695,291,227,796,130,117,672,785,680,71,157,504,499,142,138],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-argument","tag-attention","tag-bible","tag-book-of-james","tag-choice","tag-choices","tag-concrete-answers","tag-correct","tag-correct-path","tag-dear-lord","tag-decisions","tag-discussion","tag-doubt","tag-father","tag-filter","tag-fix","tag-focus","tag-follow","tag-forward","tag-god","tag-grow","tag-guide","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-james","tag-kind","tag-knowledge","tag-leading","tag-learn","tag-life","tag-light","tag-need","tag-noise","tag-obvious","tag-office","tag-path","tag-plan","tag-plea","tag-potential","tag-pray","tag-prayer","tag-prayers","tag-problem","tag-question","tag-shannon","tag-significant","tag-society","tag-son","tag-talking","tag-truth","tag-truths","tag-voice","tag-wife","tag-will","tag-wind","tag-wisdom","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-f0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","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=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":933,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}