{"id":1130,"date":"2015-02-26T03:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/an-unknowing-gift-giver\/"},"modified":"2015-02-26T03:00:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T08:00:04","slug":"an-unknowing-gift-giver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/an-unknowing-gift-giver\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unknowing Gift-Giver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Melodious Monk<\/p>\n<p>One of the ways I have often known God to talk to me is through other people, and at often unexpected moments. Last Tuesday, in the middle of a physical therapy appointment for my back, the therapist said rather plainly, \u201cif your back starts to hurt doing an exercise, the answer here is not to push through the pain.\u201d This was sort of a side-bar comment in between sets of exercises as she gave me the next set of instructions.\u00a0 Inside of me, everything froze for a split second, and these words were emblazoned in my ears and minds-eye like a bright neon light.<\/p>\n<p>Laying there on my back on top of the physio-ball, I immediately felt like these words were coming from God.\u00a0As God often seems to be, His help was simple, clear\u2026and unexpected!\u00a0 \u201cThe answer here is not to push through the pain.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Right away I knew this was God\u2019s answer to a prayer I\u2019d been specifically asking for guidance and clarity of direction on since early Monday morning. (The prayer request had nothing to do with my back)<\/p>\n<p>Initially I was so excited I wanted to ask the therapist to: 1) please repeat what she had just said, 2) if there was any more to the message from God? 3) could she possibly answer a few more questions I have for the Almighty?!\u00a0 I\u2019m sure she had no idea that she might have been speaking on behalf of God. Nevertheless, I still believe she was. I think God used those words to care for me, and to assure me once again that he is listening, and responding to our prayers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4375883\" src=\"http:\/\/of.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gullsMany2-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"The Community of Jesus\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/qP1mdYYLWX0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Melodious Monk One of the ways I have often known God to talk to me is through other people, and at often unexpected moments. Last Tuesday, in the middle of a physical therapy appointment for my back, the therapist &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/an-unknowing-gift-giver\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}