Quote of the Week

My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him." --Derek Loux

I have been a little neglegent with my quotes of the week.  Of course, the kid quotes have kind of taken over, but I want to make sure I continue with the QOTW because they are such a huge encouragement to me, and hopefully to you!  I saw this quote on an adoption blog I follow and thought it was pretty great.  When I think about all that it has cost us to adopt the girls (In the grand scheme it has not been very much) I always kind of shrug it off, all the time and effort and money seem like nothing... completely worthless... when I think about what we have now.  Of course we would give that, to get them.  Of course we would, and we would do it again, a thousand times.  They are worth everything that they cost and so much more.  However, when I think about what God gave, to get me, my mindset changes.  He gave SO much more.   Why would he want me anyway?  I will never know.  I do know though, that the LORD doesn't feel the way I assume he does.  He feels the way I do about my girls, only a thousand times more intense and more pure.  He wanted his children so much that he willingly gave Himself, all of Himself, for us.  What a mystery!  My adoption in Christ is the most miraculous thing I can imagine.  The girls have a family, I have an Eternal family that spans the globe, (and the ages!) the girls have a home, I have an eternal heaven to enjoy, the girls have food to eat, I have the bread of life to sustain and strengthen me.  My prayer is that my girls (and my other 3) are adopted by Christ.   Spiritual adoption makes this earthly adoption seem pretty pathetic in comparisson.  Sure, it is something that I believe in with my whole heart.  Sure, it has given countless orphans a second chance at a "better" life, (or for some, maybe life at all).  However, in the span of eternity, it really isn't going to matter so much, and the best thing I can hope for is that our adoption of the girls points people to a Spiritual adoption.  In the end, who you earthly parents were is not going to matter, but if you are able to call God your Father, that is the only thing that will matter!

Quote of the Week

"Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell." — C.T. Studd

Quote of the Week

Their god is something which they created themselves, a being who is always prepared to oblige and excuse them. They do not worship him with awe and respect, indeed they do not worship him at all. They reveal that their so-called god is no god at all in their talk. For they are forever saying that "they simply cannot believe that God will punish the unrepentant sinner to all eternity, and this and that." They cannot believe that God will do so, therefore, they draw the conclusion that God does not and will not. In other words, God does what they believe he ought to do or not do. What a false and blasphemous conception of God! How utterly untrue and unworthy! Such is the new paganism of today.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Week

This is a convicting one!

Perhaps the saddest observation of all is that the spending habits of people in the church differ little from those of the world. The lifestyles of most professing Christians are not substantially different from anyone else’s. Too many in the church have adopted the world’s indulgent attitude toward money. Almost every form of materialistic extravagance and excess has found its way into the fellowship of believers. It is as if the church has forgotten Jesus’ mandate to invest in eternity.

John MacArthur

Quote of the Week

The family of God is ethnically and culturally diverse. As Christians we not only permit such diversity, but we cherish it. This is because God Himself cherishes ethnic diversity. He is not color-blind; He is colorful. At His throne God welcomes worshipers “from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev. 7:9). His plan of redemption is for the peoples of the world in all their rich variety.

Philip Graham Ryken

Quote of the week

It is impossible to get from preoccupation with behavior to the gospel. The gospel is not a message about doing things. It is a message about being a new creature. It speaks to people as broken, fallen sinners who are in need of a new heart. God has given His Son to make us new creatures. God does open-heart surgery, not a face-lift. He produces change from inside out. He rejects the man who fasts twice a week and accepts the sinner who cries for mercy.
--Tedd Tripp

Quote of the Week

A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.

George Whitefield

Quote of the Week

What fools are they who, for a drop of pleasure, drink a sea of wrath.

Thomas Watson

Quote of the Week

What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!

Augustine