Flowers celebrating the strong possibility of a baby girl.
Someone is impersonating Chops...Andrew Whitman, is that you??
Good friends
Mem-mem and a little canoe monkey
Mem-mem and Mommy
Mem-mem by the garden
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)
Man by nature is not interested in spiritual matters at all; they seem strangely remote to him. He is interested in the life of this world, in things that can be seen and touched and felt and handled; but when you begin to talk to him about the soul and the things of the spirit he really does not know what you are talking about. This is so because he is dead and his life is governed by the 'prince of the power of the air'. He is interested in houses and in horses, in dogs, in animals, in furniture, in pleasures of various kinds and business and great affairs; but begin to talk to him about communion with God and the life of the Spirit and he is at once in an utterly strange realm. And he will remain in that condition until the Holy Spirit begins to quicken him and to put a spiritual principle in his life. He needs a spiritual mind, a spiritual outlook and a spiritual understanding; and the Spirit gives these blessings in regeneration. These are preliminary blessings that come to us through the Spirit to prepare us to receive the fulness that is in Christ. He then proceeds to convict us of sin, to make us see something of our utter emptiness and woe. He makes us see how appalling it is that God should be of no interest to us, the things of eternity utterly remote, and these great things of the Spirit boring and unattractive to us. He makes us see the enormity of our sin.
Next, the Holy Spirit gradually leads us on to contemplate the Lord Jesus Christ and his perfect work on our behalf. He gives us the faith by grace. 'By grace are ye saved through faith'(Ephesians 2:8). The Spirit creates faith in us. 'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'(1 Corinthians 2:14). So the Spirit enables us to exercise this gift of faith and thus we come to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
...The Holy Spirit then leads and guides us and keeps us in this union, so that we are enabled progressively to receive Christ's fulness, and 'grace upon grace', 'grace after grace'.
...This is what happens to us as Christians; this is God's way of salvation.