Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

 Is that for real? Is that a school or a jail? Do we really want our kids to grow up like that? Isso é verdade: É uma escola ou uma prisão? Nós realmente queremos que nossas crianças cresçam assim? I have no intention of making this post something political. But in light of the last happenings, I think we should at least think about what to expect of our society. They have been removing God from school little by little. Did that help the children's safety? What about their relationship with one another? where are they getting their moral standards from? They say it would make the school more inclusive. Did it really happen? I'm just saying that in the last few years, we have seen more shootings than ever... has anybody compared the number before and after the religious (Christian to be more precise) teaching was removed from the syllabus? Did it make it any better or worse? Indeed it was in a Christian school, but how many Christian schools have been targeted by shootings? Have...

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer –  Life together . “ Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone. Because they cannot stand loneliness, they are driven to seek the company of other people. There are Christians, too,  who cannot endure being alone, who have had some bad experiences with themselves, who hope they will gain some help in association with others. They are generally disappointed. Then they blame the fellowship for what is really their own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is really not seeking community at all, but only distraction that will allow him to forget his loneliness for a brief time, the very alienation that creates the deadly isolation of man. The disintegration of communication and all genuine experience, and finally resignation and spir...

  I look around today and see how much hate there is, especially toward Christians. Sometimes I wonder what is so bad about being a Christian to deserve that much hate. That much despise.  There are several types of persecution against Christians. There are religious people, atheist people, and political people.. maybe in every category of people, there are those who hate Christians.  Jesus warned the disciples about the persecution. I understand if you don’t feel like being a Christian because you want to avoid all the trouble. It is comprehensible. Jesus said, “ If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the would love you as its own, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you ”. (John 15:18-19) I don’t get it. Is it because of the truth? A true Christian doesn’t know or choose not to lie. We will tell the truth, is that it? Because we won’t lie to make anyone happy or “protect” anyone with a lie...

“Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of the Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. (Ezra 4:4)”   I have been discouraged many times. Sometimes there are people who come into our lives to stop us from doing things. Because of envy or because they just don’t believe in us, they think they are protecting us from ourselves. They think they know us better. Maybe. Sometimes, it is essential to have a little bit of fear, so we don’t believe we are invincible or that we can do whatever we want without thinking it through.   How to discern among the right amount of fear, wisdom, and boldness.  I like saying that if we don’t try we will never know what we are able to do. That doesn’t mean that I’ll do whatever I put my mind to. It is a thin line here. We cannot let just any people say what we can or cannot do, but we ca...