God the Creator

I was reading a little in Calvin's Institutes and this quote stuck out to me, in reference to God as the Creator and how this relates to salvation for followers in Christ,

In conclusion, whenever we call God the Creator of heaven and earth, let us remember that he can give us whatever he chooses and that we are his children, whom he has undertaken to care for and bring to himself.  We can expect good things from him alone and have full assurance that he will never let us be without everything necessary for salvation, so that we have to turn elsewhere.  We can turn to him in prayer with all our longings and see his hand in every blessing.  As we praise him, drawn by his great goodness and generosity, we must apply ourselves wholeheartedly to love and to serve him.

It impacted me because it goes along with Ephesians chapter 1.  In verse 3 Paul speaks of how blessed God is and how He has "blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."  And the remainder of the chapter lists those blessings: 

• our choosing in Christ before the world was created, 
  
• our justification before the judgment seat, 
  
• our predestination and adoption into the family of God out of His love, 
  
• His grace that He freely bestowed on us in Christ, 
  
• redemption through Christ, 
  
• the forgiveness of our trespasses, 
  
• how we've had God's grace lavished on us, 
  
• the knowledge of the will of God, 
  
• in Christ we have an inheritance b/c of our predestination, 
  
• our existence is for the praise of God's glory, 
  
• how our salvation has been sealed in Christ with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee,
  
• we are God's own possession,
  
• we have hope in our calling,
  
• we have glorious riches of God's inheritance, as saints,
  
• the surpassing greatness of God's power is at work in us who believe,
  
• because Christ is raised from the dead, we partake in the resurrection also.
  
• In Christ we are not subject to earthly rule, authority, power or dominion in the spiritual realm.
  
• We are the Body who has Christ as our Head, we are the fullness of Him
  
• and He fills all in all.
  

These blessings are incredible!  We don't have to turn anywhere else, including ourselves, for anything necessary for salvation - including the ability to believe, which we never possessed until God changed our hearts so that we could believe.  What an encouragement!  How grateful we should be for all these things that we don't deserve.  God was not obligated to give us any of these things; He could have left me hardened in my sin, but He chose to save me.  What a great Creator, originator, Savior and regenerator!

(John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion. Edited by Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. Baker Book House: Fifteenth printing, 2004. Book 1, Chapter 14, Paragraph 22, pp. 59-60.) ISBN 0-8010-2524-9