We're Moving

This is just a quick note to say that I have decided to move to word press to do this blog. In my opinion its a lot easier than Blogspot.

micaiahsellsout.wordpress.com

cheers

Happy Birthday to you...

Everyone loves celebrating a birthday! Cake, balloons and freinds! Everyone is also a little bit unique in how they celebrate their birthday. My litle sister Bronwyn(aka the Monster Bronster raar) for example had a 'monster' themed party a few weeks ago to celebrate her 21st.

Well tomorrow John Calvin hits the big 500. Its a pretty important birthday to celebrate and people all over the world will be celebrating it through theological conferences, growing their beards and releasing their urges to destroy stained glass windows! My family for example are celebrating it by having a special "family fun time" tomorrow night! But I thought that we could celebrate it in our own modest way by looking at some of his best short quotes! Not as good as reading the Insititutes of course, but still good. Enjoy.


"Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit."

"Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father's will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children."

"God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us -- as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray."

"All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors."

"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."

"It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"; for faith consists in the knowledge of God and Christ, not in reverence for the Church."

"Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols."

"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."

Do you have a favourite one? Any ones that I missed and should have included?

Adoption is hard enough here in NSW...

Today I had to read through the gigantic 'Adoption Act 2000: No 75'. It is boring and tedious and very thorough. I am doing it for a family who have expressed interest in adopting a young child that they are caring for. After reading the Adoption Act I do not envy the road they are about to travel, it will be long, hard, tireing and expensive. The NSW State government makes very few things easy, but adoption is one of those things that is especially hard!

But why make adoption so hard? Its a good thing isn't it... is anyone really against people adopting kids that they're caring for, it just makes sense.

Well adoption is so hard, because adoption is a very big deal, and it is a very big deal because it is a complete new identity for the child being adopted: This child is now wholly the child of their adoptive parents, the child usually takes on the adoptive parent's surname and if the adoptive parents have any other kids then they become 'whole blood siblings' to the child. The decision is a big deal because it changes who the child is.

Then, cap it off, to make it certain, the child is printed a new birth certificate. Adoption is a big deal.

The road to get there is long and tough, but the result is something truly amazing.

The Bible talks about us as being adopted by God. "In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1:4b-6)

God, in accordance to his pleasure and will desired to adopt us. Not through the NSW courts, no he adopted us by forsaking his own son to die on a cross for the sins that we commited. Through the cross has God secured our adoption into his family...

We are now wholly the children of God, we have taken on the name of God, God's son Jesus, raised from the dead is now not only our King, but our whole blood brother!

Finally, we are not simply given a new birth certificate, we are given a new birth, we have a new life, a new beginning, we start afresh. If you are in Christ, you are truly born again as a child of God.

To the praise of his glorious grace...

A new start!

OK

I haven't posted since March, and have only posted draft articles.

Not very impressive.

However I have recently been encouraged to get back into it, so I have deleted all the old shabby posts and hopefully will regularly update the blog with material that would actually be interesting!

Call it my new 'financial' year resolution!

Here we go..

I think I will start tomorrow...