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The evidence of love

June 5, 2012 in Christian Life 2

Jesus came to earth to save mankind and show us God’s love. He offered His life as a sacrifice for our sins, so we could be redeemed.

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If anyone would ever request God a proof of His love, I am sure there couldn’t be a greater proof than sending His own Son to die for us. And what about us? Can we do something to show our love for God?

In fact, we can:

“If you love me, you will obey what I command.” (John 14:15)

This is love for God: to obey his commands. (1 John 5:3)

And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 John 1:6)

Do you love God? Do you love Jesus? Then, according to Him, you will obey His commands. It’s that simple.

And this is not about proving our love so we are worthy of anything. We will never be worthy of His love. But when we show our love for Him, we are giving back something that He gave to us: true love.

There is no I in LOVE

June 1, 2012 in Christian Life 2

Have you noticed how our culture became the culture of “I”? Everything is about oneself. Everyone is trying to find pleasure, happiness, satisfaction – for themselves. People talk a lot about love, but do they have love in their lives?

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Try to ask someone how they know that they love someone else. They will tell you all about how they feel when they think about that person or when they are together. What if that feeling vanishes? Does it mean that their love is gone? If so, was that ever love, true love?

More and more we see that the focus is on ourselves. However, Jesus taught us the exact opposite: love is all about the other person. And it’s not about what we feel, but it’s about what we do.

A while back we talked about how love means action, not just a feeling or words. That’s what Jesus showed us with his own life. And there is another lesson that we must learn regarding love: it is completely selfless.

Be still… and wait

April 19, 2012 in Christian Life 2

About ten years ago, I was going through a tough time at work. I was praying to God asking Him to change something, because I was tired and bored with the job I was doing and I wanted Him to change something, anything. I needed something different. But nothing was happening, so I asked God why He didn’t answer my prayers.

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Then one day I was watching an episode of the series “Touched by an Angel” when the character Monica, who was an angel at that TV show, said this to her assignment:

“Every prayer is answered. But sometimes the answer is ‘no’. And sometimes the answer is ‘not yet’”.

Not in my wildest dreams I would have expected God to talk to me through a TV angel! But I got it. The moment she said the words I realized, without a doubt, that the answer to my prayer was ‘not yet’…

At that moment I realized that God does answer all prayers, I just didn’t “count” it unless the answer was “yes”.

And soon I realized that I have a really hard time handling the answer when it is “not yet”.

Seek first things first

March 30, 2012 in Christian Life 2

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:31-33)

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We have already talked before about our treasure, the things that are really important to us. And also about handling money. And in my previous post, I shared about the recent scandals in Brazil involving leaders that are being accused of using their churches financial resources for their own benefit.

Looking at the accusations, and the way that those leaders react, it’s the complete opposite of what Jesus has told us to do in the verses of Matthew 6:31-33. According to those verses, they’re behaving like pagans, not like God’s children.

But Jesus is emphatic in those verses: we must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That should be our goal in life.

When money is too strong a temptation

March 27, 2012 in Christian Life 2

In the past few weeks, we’ve been watching a battle between a few leaders of large protestant denominations here in Brazil. The reason for this battle? Sadly, scandals involving money.

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We have seen several scandals related to churches leaders in Brazil in the past years. A week or so ago, a TV news program reported that one of these leaders allegedly bought a gigantic farm, worth several million dollars, with money from the church. They also claimed that several temples of that denomination are behind in rent and the vast majority of the members are poor, in need of financial support.

A few days later, the leader of another denomination (who himself faced several similar accusations in the past) attacked this one, then another leader jumped into the battle too.

Worshiping God and meaning it

March 17, 2012 in Christian Life 2

A few years ago, when I was in vacation with my sister in Orlando, Florida, I remember listening to the song “Blessed Be Your Name” by Tree63 on the Christian radio quite a few times.

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I loved that song, and when it started playing, soon I was singing along (I love to sing along when I drive).

During that vacation, we went a few times to a church near the hotel we stayed in. In one of the services, the worship team sang this song too. I loved it, because it was the first time I was singing it in a church. It felt more special than ever.

When the pastor was about to start the sermon, he first talked about this song. And he asked us if we had ever noticed that this song was actually based on the book of Job.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t until then that I realized it. When he said that, I started playing the lyrics on my head, and yes, he was right, the verses matched Job’s story indeed!

Who do you serve?

March 15, 2012 in Christian Life 5

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)

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Money is one of the most powerful tools in this world. It can be a tool for blessing, but most often it is a tool to enslave people into serving it, pursuing it, dreaming of it, and so turning away from God.

We all need money, that’s a fact. But the key issue is how we relate to it.

That brings to my mind a quote from Leigh Anne Tuohy from the book “The blind side”, by Michael Lewis (she was played by Sandra Bullock in the movie that was based on this book):

“God gives people money to see how you’re going to handle it”.

That quote showed up in the book after Mr. Lewis described a lot of things that the Tuohys have done to help their community, mainly poor african american students. They had already helped a lot of people before they had contact with Michael Oher, which is the starting point of the plot of the movie. If you only watched the movie, you don’t know about that.

A question of doubt

March 13, 2012 in Christian Life 3

Picture: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (Public Domain)

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Vana (who designed the logo for this blog) posted a wonderful article about obedience to God. I strongly suggest that you read it, it is very good.

He talks about Noah’s faith, how he believed in the unbelievable and built the ark. How he must have faced people mocking him about it. Then, he entered the ark and waited for rain. He waited for seven days, and Jason writes about how hard that wait would’ve been for him, and I felt the same way. In those seven days, I would’ve thought hundreds of times that maybe I didn’t get the message right.

I wouldn’t have doubted God’s power or His ability to do what He said He would, but I would certainly have questioned myself if I got it right, if I was really doing what God wanted.

I believe we all face doubts like these in our walk with God. And one of the things that I like about the Bible is its honesty in portraying our heroes of faith in their highs and also in their lows. It shows us that our heroes faced doubt, fear, failure, and we can relate to them in those moments and believe that we can also rise to the occasion.

The secret of being a good friend

March 9, 2012 in Christian Life 2

The book of Job is a wonderful resource in the Bible and it teaches us so many things. First and foremost, about suffering. And among many other lessons, it also teaches us about friendship. It shows us how a good friend should NOT behave.

You probably know the story. God allows the devil to take everything that Job has and even inflict him with diseases. He loses everything, and he doesn’t understand what is happening to him, and all throughout the story he tries to figure out why he is going through all that suffering.

During his ordeal, Job wasn’t alone, he had friends with him. You might think that it must have been a good thing, right? Wrong. I think that Job would have preferred to suffer alone if he had a choice. Why?

His friends were convinced that good people didn’t suffer. So if all those tragedies happened to Job, he must’ve sinned. He couldn’t be innocent. However, he was. But that idea never crossed their minds, although Job said it many times.

A tough challenge

March 2, 2012 in Christian Life 4

Throughout my career, I faced many challenges. Thanks to God (I mean it!), I succeeded more than I failed. A lot more, actually. Even when I failed, there was a lesson to learn, something good to get from the experience.

I still remember one of the toughest challenges I faced, probably the toughest one. It was certainly the one I most prayed about.

My manager explained to me that my colleague, who worked at this customer’s project for months, had a personal commitment on the weekend they were scheduled to go live with their new site. So she needed me to cover for him during that weekend.

So far, no big deal, I was used to that kind of assignment. Then she explained they had several critical problems, mostly severe performance issues, and they weren’t able to solve all of them yet.

Back then, I was the rookie in the team and I didn’t have much experience with the products my team supported. And I had zero experience handling performance problems. Not only that, I didn’t know the customer’s environment or what they worked on during the project.