God's Grace

When all of my concert peeps were sleeping their little lives away I was privileged to wake up at 6:15 and be at church for 9 and half hours for Royal Family Kids Camp training. That was not a complaint! :) Dr. Phil gave us a great devotional about God's Grace. He shared with us 13 different areas where God gives us Grace...

Electing Grace - God chose to save us because he loves us. He simply elected us to save. We don't need his acceptance.
Preached Grace - By the preaching of the Gospel we can understand his ways.
Regenerating Grace - Grace through which God changes our hearts and desires to be more like him. This is where we have to let our deepest desires come out.
Converting Grace - Gift from God to truly seek after him and repent and be made new. Allows our hearts to be clean.
Justifying Grace - To stand in front of a holy and perfect God. His love for us has nothing to do with what we do.
Adopting Grace - He didn't pick out the good kids to save. He fully adopted every single person into his arms to be our spiritual father. He is going to look after us, clothe us, feed us and give us his name forever. He changes our motive for living.
Ministry Grace - We get to work with our father. He is letting us help him to bring people to salvation. He gives us a new perspective on the gifts we've been given. We each get to help him in a different way that play out wherever we are in his plan for our lives. I really liked this application... It's easy for me to get caught up in thinking that people are better than me because they are good at this and that but truth is.. God made me good at certain things and he wants me to use those gifts to be a light for him. Only I can use the special things He's given me. How cool is that?
Sanctifying Grace - He gives us a power to live for. Our role is not to judge the world but as we grow in our faith we will become more and more like him.
Empowering Grace - He gives us the power to do what he appoints us to do through him and gives us the passion to work hard for him. God will give us just what we need which allows us to be more fruitful. We will have no fear, no stress when we see what we have to accomplish for God's glory.
Provisional Grace - God's grace gives us all great things. Look around, mountains, stars, friends, birds, flowers.. he shows us beauty every day. He provides just what we need and frees us from all jealousy in our lives.
Miraculous Grace - He pours out his grace when he enables miracles on his children. He simply drives us to pray for the sinners so we can see transformation.
Preserving Grace - He gives us the strength to continually make it through our days.
Glorifying Grace - He awaits all of those who believe in him. When we are with him in heaven for the first time we will see the lame walking and the abused children standing before Jesus. That is such a beautiful picture to me. Going through this training has really opened my eyes to children who deal with abuse every day. I am so excited to work with these children and help make a week of their lives one they won't forget.

Camp verse: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9

I decided to visit L-dawg at work today. I always love seeing her expression when she turns around and sees me standing there! Haha, I also love that every time we see each other it deserves a hug. At training today we all got a bracelet to give to someone who we know will pray for us in being spiritually prepared for camp. We were told not to give it to our best friend just because they are our best friend. The cool thing about that is that I did give it to my best friend because I honestly know that she'll pray for me. Not many people can say that and I am so blessed to say that I can.

Birthday party - scavenger hunt followed! What a fun night... I really enjoyed hanging out with a group of people who I normally wouldn't. Many, many laughs and memories won't be forgotten. An intense game of Apples to Apples went down and although I lost poorly I came out with being fresh, sultry and wild according to my green cards! I think it describes me pretty darn accurately! ;)