God's Love & Winter Pictures

I listened to a sermon yesterday that Noel Piper had posted on her blog by a pastor in Minneapolis named Rick Gamache.  It really helped my thinking on God's love for me.  I love God's grace.  I love that I am justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  But, in my thinking, I've been missing the next step in God's grace and love for me.  Pastor Gamache was preaching from Ephesians chapter 1:

"...he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." v. 4-6

The thing that's so amazing is that God didn't stop at justifying us.  He did more than declare us "not guilty", although that alone would have been glorious and undeserved.  As Pastor Gamache put it:

When we were adopted, God the judge put down his gavel. God the judge stood up and he stepped away from bench and he took off his judicial garb. He came to us and took us in his arms and he said to us, “my child, from now on call me Father, and he rejoiced over us with loud singing.”

We are not only forgiven of our sins, but we are adopted by God.  As believers in Jesus Christ, we were once enemies of God, but now he holds us in him arms and declares us to be his child.  WOW! Seriously?!?  "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God." - 1 John 3:1  I love when God gives me a fresh and new understanding of something that's been under my nose all along.  I'm praising God today for my adoption.

That's my thoughts for the day, now here's some sweet pictures of our winter in Louisville.

  

Benjamin is learning to sit up!

...more sitting up pictures

  

 Oh, Dad!

  

 Benjamin loves playing with his dad! Derek gets the biggest smiles out of him!

  

 We have had a lot of snow lately! I'm told winters are not usually this white here in Louisville. This is the view from our back porch just yesterday. Derek and I measured 5 inches of snow at one point. 

 

 That's our car covered in snow!

  

 Benjamin and I had to check out the snow flakes. I don't think he was too interested in them!

Alright, I hear him waking up from his morning nap. That's all for now!