(Portugues) Culto Mexicano – Quarta dia 28

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(Portugues) Jornada Missionária Morro do Boréu-México

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(Portugues) Em construção no mês de Abril!!!

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(Portugues) Transmissão EMU – Paulo Cappelletti – Política

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When God Says:“Excuse-me?”

I believe in miracles!
What is a miracle but a divine intervention in human history?
That’s why I believe even more. I believe that sometimes we are surprised by miracles without even realizing. Our day-to-day is full of God’s care. God is in control of our history and this is one of my greatest certainties: the universe is not like a runaway train… it walks up the rails of divine sovereignty. There is a loving God that rules and relates with the world he created. There is a Father that takes care of his children and for sure he wants their best.
It was the incarnated God himself, Jesus, who said: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:11).
The problem is in the very fact that theory is too easy to be said, preached  and taught, but too far to be experienced by us, who so like to exalt the “sovereign God”. Our words and songs about God’s wisdom and sovereignty are not consistent many times to our willingness to dominate our own lives.
We have the natural tendency to move away from God, to declare independency from his will and to walk our own paths.  It was like this in Eden and so it is until today. And the consequence, millennia later, still is the same: death!
Not only physical death, but the death of dreams, projects and wills. It’s unbelievable how we don’t enjoy God’s blessings (peace, happiness, delight, etc) for we establish our will superior than God’s. We make our plans and don’t consult God. And some, for the sake of conscience, say a prayer when they already made their decision (without prayer) what to do. We are hypocrites… in fact we already made our decision but still want a “stamp” from God for our human plans.
Some time ago I read a book that which is a Christian Best Seller, “The Power of Your Words”, one of the worst and most poisonous books I ever read that calls itself Evangelical. This book goes far from what the Bible really teaches about God’s sovereignty. At some point of the book, I remember I read something we could call “Blank Check Theology”. As if God would give a sheet of blank signed check for us to write whatever we wanted and God would have the incumbency to answer.
What the Bible teaches about God’s sovereignty and Christ’s Lordship is exactly the opposite. We are those who sign the “blank check” and deliver it in God’s hands as if we were saying: “take it Lord, that’s my life”. That’s what the psalmist says in one of the most known Psaltery’s verses: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass”. He is the one who does the work.
I firmly believe that in certain moments God intervenes and says: “Excuse me? From here on I take care of it!” And he does that for so many times for we are reluctant to surrender totally to him the control of our lives. Deep inside (though our word and songs say something else) we think we know better than God what we really need. We knock down God’s will. The result is always the same: tragedy!
“To man belongs the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply from the tongue.” (Proverbs 16:1) God’s word is clear. As it would say a Brazilian football arbitration commentator: “The rule is clear”. And it’s so clear that we can’t even understand. We like to complicate simple things. The gospel is something simple: it is Christ being the Lord in our lives. It’s God intervening in our history, making our lives a daily miracle. God wants to give the best to his kids, it suffices that we open our hearts and our will to his Lordship, to his command and to his sovereignty.
God is in control! He is totally sovereign! He, more than anybody, wants to intervene in our lives and take our heart’s throne. So let’s trust for “Since ancient times no one has heard, no one has perceived, no one has seen any God besides you, who acts in behalf of those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).
In him who was made flesh, and because of his intervention the history of humanity was divided in before and after him,
José Barbosa Júnior

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Brazil is a Country that Provokes

“I came to the midst of my life tired

I walked so much! I got tired!

Of a strange country that I never saw

I’m in this huge world an outcast.”

(Florbela Espanca)

Brazil is a country that provokes mixed feelings. There are reasons of honor in being Brazilian however the dishonor reasons prevail in the balance. There are many people who don’t conform before the chaotic Brazilian State. I know that the majority lacks the critical size to refute the contrasts of our country and in case they have it, they don’t use it.

I didn’t even come to half of my life and already I feel tired. I didn’t even walk a lot bur feel tired. What I know is as if I knew nothing. To live here is totally strange. I have opposite feelings. T he country of diversity, of exuberant nature, of human warmth and joyful spirit attracts me. However, I reject the country of impunity, of bribe, of social disparity, of scrapped education. I’m tired of knowing that nothing will change for many are those who feed this system. Convenience lone is a strong fuel for the maintenance of this status quo.

But change is possible. And it must start from education. Educated people change any deplorable state of reality. The question is that there are many informed people out there but poorly educated. People who form, obtain information, but do not transform. Diploma does not educate anyone. Brazil needs civilized people on the streets, the roads, trades, congress, hospitals, churches, schools. Never before the number of colleges was so great in this country, yet, education was never so infamous. Education that civilizes people is missing in Brazil. It doesn’t work for us to have many superior level institutions graduating thousands of people every year if the civilization level among the graduated population still is lower than the necessary to keep an ethic society, cohesive and well structured.

In case the reads gets interested, look for data on violence, corruption, health and education. According to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), Brazil has a big number of illiterate, in the order of 14, 1 millions (people with 15 years old or more), what corresponds to a rate of 10% of the population. We have enough reasons to worry. We cannot believe the welfare programs. We cannot believe the deceiving publicity. We cannot believe the utopian Program to Accelerate the Growth when the majority of the job they promised is stoppage.

I make an appeal to the youth: let’s not accommodate, on the contrary, let’s feel bothered. Let’s not be busy with the pleasures of this life but let’s be responsible for life as well. We need the balance between pleasure and responsibility. Let’s associate ourselves to those groups that fight this country’s evils. In our society, in our neighborhood, in our church, anywhere, there is always a way to denounce, a way to be and make different. Let us remember: only the thinking beings are provoked.

Ivan Cordeiro is 26 and is an administrator and theologian who live in Vitória da Conquista-BA. He is responsible for the websites www.bomlider.com.br and www.ivancordeiro.blogspot.com.

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Who is not found by grace… end up hunting God!

…and there came the man, at the dusk, at the cool of the day, rummaging through bushes and branches from bigger trees, when all of the sudden, the prey was made by unsuccessful: “I got you, God! What a shame! Are you running away from me?”

We all know that it was not like this, but this is the scene that comes to my mind when I hear the term “God’s hunter”. A cornered, God with nowhere to run but to the arms of the one who will welcome him. Reversed roles? Of course! Distorted word? Undoubtedly!

Man, who were always seeking God, always “hunting” God… and all his attempts to pursue the divine element inexorably ended up in religion. This is religion: man seeking God, seeking his desperately on his own efforts and sacrifices, in the attempt to shut this same God to his system of rites, doctrines and human conventions.

Religion is, therefore, inherent to the human being. The existential void, the black hole in the soul that looks for something to fill it, are all calls for religiosity. It does not come as if it was salvation to man. Man doesn’t surrender himself in his sought for God, making him the prey, the goal to be reached, hit and then imprisoned, under your whims and pleasures.

Instructions given to God, decrees on which God is nothing more than a servant, prayers that command God’s arm, magical words that “release” God’s power, it’s ok for witches, masters,  bishops or apostles. Witchcraft will always be witchcraft, doesn’t matter from where it comes, especially from the representatives of religion.

Evangelical witchcraft isn’t different. It comes from the presumption of some that with magical words (gospel abracadabras) to manipulate God’s arm. God, then, according to his “theology”, faces himself obliged to do whatever his “prophets” command.

God is imprisoned!

God is cloistered!

God was hunted!

God is dead!

I seems like Nietzsche was right. God is dead! We killed him!

But there is something new, always new. It’s called gospel. And gospel is something totally different from religion. Religion enslaves, the gospel is the good news of freedom… it’s the good news!!! Always new… always renewed!

Gospel happens backwards, in the opposite of religion. In the cool of the afternoon, in the absence of color for the continuing of the day it’s God who takes initiative: “Adam…where are you?”  This is gospel, this is grace!

Man sinned… Adam sinned… I sinned in Adam. But God… and this “but” make all difference. This “but” is the difference between religion and the graces’ gospel. We were dead in our offenses and sins, but God… and this changes history.

The initiative for hunting is his! And this is not a hunt to exterminate the hunted object. We are a target of God’s love. This hunt is what brings us life! We are hunted for live and not for death. Salvation was, is and will always be God’s initiative. Cross resonates since eternity… over the manger in Bethlehem was already looming the shade of a cross, the cross prepared since eternity and over it the lamb sacrificed for us since the world’s foundation.

This is grace! I don’t deserve it… I don’t look for it, I don’t hunt God. He loves me… looks for me… finds me… opens his arms for me… and I just rest in him… and the work he keeps on doing until his own day.

I was seduced… I let myself be seduced!

I was bound in his grace!

I was cloistered in his freedom, there is no way not to be free!

I was hunted in the cool of the day… I don’t know what night is without him.

I’m dead!

He is alive in me!

God is alive!

The Bible is always right! My redeemer lives… and in the end he will stand upon the earth.

Why do I need religion if I have the gospel of grace?

With loving care,

In him, grace was made a person.

José Barbosa Júnior.

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Missionary Journey Mexico-Rio de Janeiro

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