connections

I saw this story on the news the other day...

(http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20100806/religion-stress-study-100808/ - "Thinking about God can make you less upset about making mistakes, but only if you're a believer")

The way the study was conducted boggles my mind, as to whether their "evidence" was measured correctly or not. However, as I was reading, these verses jumped at me to "prove" the theory...

Romans 8:6

The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace

vs 9: You however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10: But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.

(emphasis mine)

Also, going through my mind the last while has been the God-child relationship, and how neatly it shows the relationship between us as parents to our child. My love for Caden runs sooo deep, I've said before, I can't imagine how much more God could love us as his children. How??

vs 13: For is you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship (or adoption). And by him we cry, "Abba, Father".

17 Now if we are children then we are heirs-heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ

I'm grateful for my parents, and my earthly Dad, I know he loves me and he's definitely delighted in giving us (his kids) good things. It's hard for me to comprehend how God (my perfect Father/Dad), loves me more and is exceedingly JOYOUS at giving me great things and He gives me greater things, like a great husband, (who is more than I could have asked for or found myself), and a child, that He entrusted to us to raise. Me?

Maybe I'm the only one who finds these things hard to comprehend. I think God's really tried to illustrate this to me through giving me Quinn and Caden. And now through these vs...he said in the Bible, we are his kids and heirs of Him.

Obviously we will be seperated from our earthly Dad's at some point, or some people already have lost their Father's, or maybe it just wasn't a good relationship, some earthly Dad's can be far, far removed from perfect. Others are pretty close.

Regardless, we're adopted into the perfect one.

vs 35 Who shall seperate us from the love of Christ (the perfect Dad) ??

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ