Devotional for friends // Devocional para as amigas

Jesus is the center of Christmas (Jesus Christ, Christ-mas)   How are you going to celebrate this year? Yes, this 2022 year. How are you going to do it?  On the beach watching the fireworks? Having dinner with your family?  It doesn’t really matter where or how… I don’t care. But I want to make a suggestion.  At least, before you go, think about 10 to 20 things that happened this year, good and bad things. Things that you first thought were bad then later you realized it wasn’t that bad after all. I bet there were many things that you thought didn’t matter that much but were important in the end. Think about people that you met, new people, old friends. People who had died and you got the chance to say goodbye. Maybe you are still in mourning. Think about the good things you have done for yourself, to others, especially for others. I bet you can do better next year.    Thank God for your life, and the lives of your relatives and friends. Thank God for the f...

  “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD. (Psalm 112:7)   Bad news. We are always afraid of them.  Who is this person that the psalmist is talking about? Who does not fear bad news? And why do we fear them? The psalmist is talking about the man who fears the LORD (v.1), and great blessings follow this man. The important part of this psalm is not to lose the thread of the thought. Even those people who do everything right once in a while get some bad news.   When a person fears the right one, the other things don’t need to be feared. But we fear them anyway.  We say we fear the LORD, but do we really know what we really fear? Are we really faithful to God? I know the answer to that one: No. We are not really faithful to God. All sinned and fall short to the glory of God (Romans 3:23). So, we fall short. Every day. That may be true, however, it doesn’t give us an excuse to not care about it. We must try harder every day. And every d...

  Every year we go to the doctor to do a check-up. Something probably will come up in needs to fix. We, humans, are known to not take good care of our bodies. Of course, there are people who are really worried about their well-being and health and such and such.  Can we say the same about our spiritual life? How regularly are we doing check-ups to see if we are good before God? Certainly with 100% sure that we are not doing good, especially if we take a long time to do it. The good news is that it doesn’t cost us any money to have the check-up done. We can and should do it on a daily basis. The Bible says that the devil is like a hungry lion who is roaring looking for some prey to get. ( Be alert and of sober mind .  Your enemy the devil prowls around  like a roaring lion  looking for someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8)   Spiritual check-ups also don’t require a doctor or a pastor to verify if we are good. We are the ones responsible for doing that. We are not ...

So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17) Portanto, se alguém está em Cristo, é nova criação. As coisas antigas já passaram; eis que surgiram coisas novas! (2 Corinthians 5:17)   Do you see this picture above? Ok, I cleaned it. Do you know what it is? I suppose you do, but to be clear, this is some sort of grill that came with my “fancy” electric ninja foodie pan, I love it and I use it a lot, but it got dirty with grease. There have been some days since I had said that I would clean it, but I was relying on my memory to buy the thing that cleans aluminum stuff. Guess what? Of course, I never remembered it. So, I decided to get creative and clean it. I got a piece of aluminum foil, made it a little ball, and rubbed it onto the grill with a drop of dish soap. It worked! I was proud of myself.   As I was cleaning, God was bringing to my memory that some days ago I was asking him to teach m...

  Be intentional.   You know when I look at my past and I remember that there were uncountable times when people had said something and few moments later they’d say “I was just joking”, “It was a joke Hadassa, why are you always so serious?” But I wasn’t always serious, I can say jokes too, but my jokes don’t sound like something that would hurt somebody or even something I wouldn’t say directly so choose to say “jokingly” to minimize the effect of the rudeness behind. You know what I mean, right?   If you want to say something good, just say it. If you want to criticize something or someone, choose the right words (a hard task I’d say) and the right moment, but likewise say it. Especially if it is something that will help the person or the thing grow, move forward, and get better. If it is something that will edify the person or the thing.  Don’t hold back something that not only through your eyes but through common sense will bring something good out of it. Bu...