Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

A vida não é sempre justa mas, eu posso ainda encontrar alegria em Cristo. Have you noticed that whatever we have been through in life it shapes us? The shape depends exclusively on how we respond to it. You can choose to be grumpy, bitter although mature, or you can choose to see as an opportunity to grow even more and teach someone else about it. The way we respond to the challenges that we may encounter in life is totally up to us. I can give you my life as an example. There was this time in my life that I was very grumpy; I was suffering; Life was cruel; nothing was as I expected. But I was adding nothing to my life either. I was always losing. I lost friends, I lost an opportunity because of my pride; I lost relationships because it had to be my way. But one day, Jesus told me "my grace is enough for you". I got even angrier. I didn’t want His grace. I wanted my life back; I wanted my health back. Then he told me: “What no eye has seen,...

You know that we don’t live yesterday, neither we know what is going to happen tomorrow. All we do have is today. It seems like a secular saying, but it comes from the Bible, written a very long time ago. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” ( Proverbs 27:1 ) We don’t know, we plan something and happens on the other way around, or something unexpected comes up! We are allowed to make plans, in fact, it is written “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” ( Proverbs 16:9 ); but you may ask what does it mean? How can God establish my steps? Or how can I be sure that was His plans, not mine? Or nothing is the way it is supposed to be. I got you, my friend. For a long time, I troubled my mind trying to understand what that means. If God establishes my steps why bother to make any plan, right? I might just go with the flow.  Easy boy, not so fast in the conclusions. People also...

So, Jeremiah didn’t go to Babylon, instead, he stayed in Jerusalem for while; then some of the people who had stayed wanted to go to Egypt; Jeremiah had told them not to go there because God had said so. They went anyway and took Jeremiah with them. But, in the meantime Jeremiah got depressed. This is my impression by reading the book of Lamentations. Who wouldn’t? He worked so hard to warn people to do what God had been saying for so long, but people just didn’t listen to him. And then he saw everything happening. All the destruction of Jerusalem, people being taken captive to Babylon. It is quite depressing to watch all that. Can’t you imagine? Some bad disturbing things happen in our country and we get sad, imagine your whole country and all the people being slaughtered and taken captive to another country! Although Jeremiah knew that all those things would happen, because God had said it, still. Pretty sad, huh? I can’t imagine the size of his sadness, but...

Em todas as coisas, seja um bom exemplo de boas obras This weekend I read the letter from Paul to Titus. And I am amazed by this short letter. It contains instructions on how to behave, and why to do so in a simple and plain form. There is no space for doubts in there. First, I noticed that in this letter Paul really wanted to stress the SELF-CONTROL issue. Let’s be honest. It is an issue until in our current days. Why is it so hard to control ourselves? When we less expected we did what it wasn’t supposed to, or, in the middle of a talk, we say something that it wasn’t supposed to. We think, “that didn’t come out as I wanted”, or “I don’t know why I did that”, or “I wish I could have thought better before acting”, so many “I should have” that we lose counting. Why can’t we control ourselves? Why can't we avoid getting into unnecessary problems? In this little letter, Paul speaks about self-control six times. It is a very small letter, only 3 short ...

A geração do Eu, Eu, Eu Wow! I’m always amazed when I read this passage, especially during these days when we see so many riots around the world and so many bad behaviors that we can’t understand why people act like that. But, as many doubt the Bible, everything is written, although few can understand it. Paul wrote to Timothy a second time, and this letter seems that never gets old. Just like the Manifesto of the Communist party. So old but so current. “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who...

We don’t like taking risks, right? No, we don’t. We like to know what we are doing or going and what is going to happen. We like controlling. Although, we also like saying that we obey the voice of the LORD. We are no different from the people of Israel. After most of them were taken to exile in Babylon, some stayed in the land, and of course, they were worried about what would happen to them. They had the desire of obeying the LORD. But only the desire is not enough, we have to do it. Our words or intentions cannot save us if we are not willing, from the heart, to obey. We’re guilty of desiring to obey in many things, but not actually doing it. Why? So many reasons, one of them for sure is the urge to controlling the outcome. The people of Judah who stayed in the land asked Jeremiah to inquire about the LORD about what they should do. The LORD told them to stay on land, that He would take care of them, however, if they left the land and went to ...