{"id":634,"date":"2011-07-28T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T10:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/07\/a-reader-writes-13\/"},"modified":"2014-12-31T13:35:27","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T20:35:27","slug":"a-reader-writes-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/07\/a-reader-writes-13.html","title":{"rendered":"A reader writes:"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><blockquote><p>Wonder if I can trouble you for some prayers? Not anything I can really discuss with anyone, just now \u2014 a big, rather terrifying decision to make, and I feel like my head is not really clear, my heart is confused and my soul is not quite up to snuff.  <\/p>\n<p>I have an idea that could potentially do a lot of good for a lot of people, but the personal cost to me, to my sense of safety, privacy, would be absolutely enormous, and the comfort zone would be demolished. Moreover there is a huge temptation to ego in all of this \u2014 and that distorts things, makes me worry about my motives \u2014 is this what God wants, or just my ego? If God does not want me to do it, then I don\u2019t want to. And if he does\u2026then I need lots of courage.<\/p>\n<p>I would so appreciate your prayers on behalf of my discernment. Thanks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Father, grant clarity of mind and heart, peace, and courage to your servant to discern and do your will. If you want your servant to do the thing being contemplated then make that clear and enable your servant to do it.  Mother Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for your child.  We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wonder if I can trouble you for some prayers? Not anything I can really discuss with anyone, just now \u2014 a big, rather terrifying decision to make, and I feel like my head is not really clear, my heart is confused and my soul is not quite up to snuff. I have an idea that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A reader writes:<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Wonder if I can trouble you for some prayers? 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