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I shall not want

August 16, 2012 in Christian Life 2

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1 – KJV)

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This is the first sentence of the most known Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 23. That is such a powerful affirmation! However, the second part of the sentence is sometimes misunderstood.

Most often, people think that it says that the Lord will give them everything they want. They assume that if the psalmist says that they don’t want anything else, that is because they have everything they do want.

Notice that the subject of the second part of the sentence is “I”. “I” is the person doing the action, and the action is “not want”.

The unlikely adversaries of God

August 9, 2012 in Christian Life 2

When we talk about the adversaries of God, everyone thinks about Satan and his demons. But the painful reality is that, sometimes, the ones that claim to follow God put themselves in a position that creates opposition to His plans.

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One of the most painful experiences I had in the church was facing opposition inside the church against something that I was positive that God had instructed me to do.

The Bible gives us several examples of people who had good intentions, they never meant to oppose God’s will, but in fact they did.

The rise of the underdog

August 2, 2012 in Christian Life 2

I love sports, and I enjoy the Olympic Games very much. I like to watch all sports matches whenever I can, even if I don’t have a favorite to root for.

One thing that has always fascinated me is my behavior towards a match where two athletes or two teams that I don’t root for compete. As soon as I know that one of them is the favorite, I start rooting for the other one. Actually, I think most people do the same thing.

In fact, one of the most special moments of sports is, in my opinion, when the underdog beat the favorite one.

But we don’t like it to be unfair. We want the underdog to rise to the occasion and beat the favorite, and do it fairly so.

Praying and listening

July 19, 2012 in Christian Life 2

“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” (Matthew 21:22)

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There are many verses that talk about prayer in the Bible. And some of them, when taken out of context, may give us the idea that God is like a genie: He is there listening to our requests in order to grant them. And it obviously isn’t true.

Praying is not telling God what you want Him to do. It is listening to God to know what He wants you to do. (Click to tweet this quote)

The Easton’s Bible Dictionary has a beautiful definition for the word “prayer” (you can check the entire article here):

Prayer is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him.

Prayer is a conversation, a direct talk between you and God. You talk and you listen, God talks and God listens. He does his part, every single time. Now we need to do ours. We need to talk to Him instead of sending a list of demands, and most of all we need to listen.

The difference between liking and loving

July 5, 2012 in Christian Life 2

When we talk about liking and loving, most people think that the difference between them is the intensity of the feeling, but it actually isn’t. They are quite different in fact, but still most people get them mixed all the time.

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I’m not talking only about romantic relationships, this applies to all relationships in our life.

When you like someone, it is all about how that person makes you feel. You are proud of them, you like being near them, talking to them, spending time with them, etc, because they make you feel good.

However, if something happens and that person disappoints you, the feeling you have for them starts vanishing. Why? Because this feeling is based upon what you get from that person, it is conditional.

Liking is about you.

On the other hand, when you love someone, it makes you put that person’s interests before yours. No matter what the person does, even if they disappoint you, you still love them. True ove is unconditional.

The foolishness of the wise man

June 29, 2012 in Christian Life 2

Solomon is known in the Bible as a very wise man. He received wisdom and everything else he needed from God, wrote many proverbs, and in his time he became widely known by his wisdom. However, he didn’t please neither God (1 Kings 11:9) nor the people (1 Kings 12:4).

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He had everything any king would ever want: wisdom, peace throughout the land, riches, the respect of his people and of other nations, and most of all, the favor of God. What did he do with all that?

he married many (I mean, many!) women from other nations (1 Kings 11:1-3), in spite of the warning that God had already given through the Law (Deuteronomy 17:16-17);
he allowed his wives to bring idolatry to Israel (1 Kings 11:4);
even tough God appeared to him twice (1 Kings 3:5 and 1 Kings 9:1-2), he built altars and followed other gods, in total disobedience to God (1 Kings 11:5-8);
he put a heavy burden on the people in order to keep his expensive way of life, so much that they eventually rebelled against his son (1 Kings 12);
at the end of his life, he tried to kill the man to whom God had promised part of the kingdom (1 Kings 11:40), putting himself against the will of God.

Solomon was so wise. Why did he behave like a fool? Why didn’t he use his wisdom to help him be a good king and a man of God, like his father David was?

The treasure of the Word of God

June 26, 2012 in Christian Life 10

Last week, I attended a forum organized by the Brazilian Bible Society (Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil – SBB). The theme of the forum was “Bible and Missions”.

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Although it was their eighth forum, it was the first one I attended. And it had an impact on me.

They talked a lot about the relation between the Bible and missions, and how it is important to have at least portions of the Word of God translated into the local language when the missionaries go to the field.

Several people talked about their own experiences as translators, working for years in a translation, sometimes of only one portion of the Bible.

They also shared about the difficulty of translating words and expressions that don’t exist in the language they’re working with. They have to come up with a translation that is understandable by the local readers and that remains faithful to the message of the originals.

And they also shared about the joy of the people who, after many years deprived of a Bible in their own language, were able to finally get it, sometimes only the New Testament. But for them, it was reason enough to be joyful.

How do you know that God has heard your prayer?

June 22, 2012 in Christian Life 0

Sometimes we wonder. We pray, we beg, we pour our hearts to God, but nothing happens. We face sleepless nights, but it seems that God is oblivious to our suffering. So how do we know that He has even heard our prayers?

The answer to that question is actually simple. He always hears our prayers, all of them. Every single time.

And you know what? He always answers our prayers, all of them. Yes, He does.

The moment the prayer is taking shape in our minds, He is already responding: “yes”, “no” or “not yet”. Then why does it feel that sometimes God doesn’t listen or doesn’t respond at all?

Actually, there are two issues that impact our perception of God’s response:

The true and perfect justice

June 12, 2012 in Christian Life 4

Justice for us has always been a relative matter. When we claim it, it’s usually because we think that the facts are in our favor. And in that case, if we don’t get it, then it is unfair.

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I love sports. My favorite ones are coletive sports, like soccer, volleyball and baseball. And I’ve seen many times the referree making a wrong call in favor of my team’s opponent. Then I get mad, complain that it is not fair, and depending on the importance of the game and how my team was affected, I talk about it with my friends for days.

But sometimes, the referree makes a wrong call in favor of my team. Although I still think it is not fair, I don’t complain about it, at all.

It is not about justice, it is about winning.

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show that shows legal trials? Many of them show how lawyers manipulate the facts in order to get a veridict in their favor. And although I have no contact with the legal system nor here in Brazil neither anywhere else, I can see how those fiction shows are not far from what happens in real life.

It is not about justice, it is about winning.

When God decides to say no

June 8, 2012 in Christian Life 10

For a few weeks, a fellow christian from a congregation near mine had been in the ICU. Her situation grew more and more severe after she was admitted at the hospital. Several churches, including mine, had been praying for her, asking God to intervene and restore her health.

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On Monday, we were all shocked by the news that she had passed away. In spite of all the requests from the people of several churches, God chose to say “no”.

Something like this might make people question God’s decision. How could a loving God allow people to go through a tough time like this, if He can prevent it?

We will never be able to understand God and why He makes His decisions. But as a loving God, He revealed a lot about Himself to us in order that we have a tiny glimpse of Him through the books of the Bible. We are still not able to fully understand Him (and we never will), but we have enough information to know that, no matter what happens, he is indeed a loving God and He always makes the best decisions.

There is one book in the Bible that deals specifically with our difficulty in understanding suffering: Job.