Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

  A Santidade do Senhor I keep coming back to the same subject, I don't know why. Maybe you have realized already that I love the Hebrew Bible. I mean, the Old Testament. Why? It is not that I don’t love the New Testament, I do; the thing with the old is because, I think, it isn’t so easy to understand or at least, to our modern society. So, I like a good challenge, and to bring the Old Testament to life, to my life and try to live it out, not like the Jews do in Judaism, but as a Christian who love and appreciate the Word of God with the same respect and importance. Once, a pastor back in New York told me what the book of Leviticus was all about. He said, this is a beautiful book that teaches us about being holy. When I heard him saying that it amazed me because I have never heard someone saying something like that about the book that most of us “skip” because it is a boring, filled of laws and regulations that we Christian "don’t need it...

  I grew up hearing the word “consecrate”. I didn’t understand the meaning of it. Of course, I have read in the Bible, but I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the context. Maybe because the context in which this word appears the most is in the Old Testament, when the Tabernacle was completed, or when a priest was being anointed. Anoint is another word not common to us in our era. Although among religious people, you may hear it more often. Well, what I want with these words is to show that there is nothing in the Bible that isn’t worthy meditating. I confess that I didn’t feel very encouraged to read the first part of the Bible because of what I heard. Almost that “we don’t really need it. It is the Law, and we are living under the grace of Jesus”. Today, I see that I don’t agree with the first part of that sentence. We cannot get to the New Testament without knowing the Old Testament well. The New Covenant doesn’t exclude the Old Covenant. I w...

  When God met with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he didn’t introduce himself. It was the beginning. God tested Abraham, God gave visions and talked with Jacob, but He never said who He was. Only that He was the God of Abraham. When God met with Moses, Moses asked who He was, how the Israelites would know that he was telling the truth, or if they would believe in him. God then said, “Tell them I AM sent you. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. I always thought this to be a curious name. When we study in History class and learn about other countries' histories, we learn the names of their gods. None of them has a name like this. It hasn’t been long since I completely understood the meaning of His name. God is. He was not. He is in the present. Before everything, He is. Isn’t that interesting? He has no beginning or end, He just is. Forever. He just exists. He is. It is a very powerful name. Nothing else. He is. When people ask you who ...