Holy Spirit

May 08, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Where is your heart at?

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jer 29:13 – KJV) This verse from the book of the prophet Jeremiah is extremely quoted in the evangelical churches. I at least grew up hearing this for years. From my ignorance, perhaps I have never given so much attention to the word “all”. On the other hand, I certainly learned a lesson recently. For the first time here I will talk about myself and something that God has done in my life. It will be a testimony linked to something that the Lord has placed in my heart. I hope the Holy Spirit speaks in some way to everyone. My name is Marcelo Brandão. I have little more than two decades of life and work with communication and social media. Before I started working with the Bible Offline and writing for this blog, I had another function: I’ve always been passionate about photography and football. At some point in my life I joined these two things and started working together with a club in São Paulo. Later, I was invited by ESPN to write a blog about this team. In the […]

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May 02, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Back to the original position

Despite my young age, I have had really good times with God. I see people delivering words daily. Others being healed and I witness a lot of actions of the Holy Spirit in our society. I believe I come day after day understanding my place in all this and striving to be a “approved worker” for God. The biggest problem in the meantime is that I am a man. Sometimes I do not do what I think I should. Which is keeping me focused every day on prayer, reading and fasting. Today we will not have an in-depth study. But I would like to talk about something important that we put aside sometimes. By being fully connected with God and striving to do what He has delegated to us, we leave aside something very important: our original position. I am sure that God is greatly pleased to see people being healed and impacting lives around them. But with so much work, we sometimes forget that we have only one purpose. That is to be like Jesus Christ. Just as we have only one function as well, which is to worship God in spirit and in truth. John 4:23 “Yet a […]

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April 17, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

The most important date of the year

April arrived and next to him, the time to celebrate the Passover, or Easter for a better understanding. Most begin with their usual runs to buy the cod and the chocolate eggs that each year become more expensive. In some countries people take advantage of the wonderful truce of the routine to have a few days of rest because of the holiday. They strive to set departure and arrival times in their destinations and enjoy these days in the best way. The only problem I see in the midst of all this is that, as usual, the Lord’s affairs often fall into the background. Many churches strive to show the true meaning of this celebration. But by analyzing our society as a whole and the bible, we are far from celebrating in the right way. The first Passover Every Christian should know about this. But before I was converted, I spent eighteen years inside a church without even reading the Bible intentionally. So I think it’s important to say how this celebration originated. If you want, you can read more about it on Exodus 12. First of all, it is very important to understand that Easter (in Hebrew Pessach) means […]

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April 04, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

How is your intimacy with God?

For many years, when I used to live in a church without being fully converted, I had a very wrong view of Adam. I confess. At that time, I saw him as one totally blamed for all the sins of human race. So I refused to go any deeper into some study of this biblical character for so long. On the night of last Tuesday I was praying and I asked for a direction to God regarding this post. I felt like writing about the intimate relationship between God and the first man in the world. Along with a few other thoughts that were put into my mind, I came to some personal conclusions. Why was man created? I began by reflection on why the Lord created man. So first, even though it was impossible, I struggled to understand what God wanted to do. I even want to paraphrase an excerpt from a great preaching from brother Douglas Gonçalves. Through Paul’s final salutation in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, he defines the name of Jesus as “Grace.” The name of God as “Love.” And that of the Holy Spirit as “Fellowship”. 2 Cor 13:14 “May the grace of the […]

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March 20, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Among so many tragedies: where is God?

The breakup of the Brumadinho dam and the massacre in the Suzano school, in Brazil. The cyclone in Mozambique. The fall of Boeing in Ethiopia and the mass shootings in the USA. It seems that I am citing some tragedies that have occurred in the last decade. But unfortunately they are some of what happened in 2019. And we are not even in the fourth month of the year! I feel completely desperate when I find myself thinking about each of these situations. And I am also completely distressed when I repeatedly hear from Christians and non-Christians the same phrase. “Where is God in the midst of so many tragedies?” I confess that when the Lord put in my heart that this should be the theme of this week’s post I felt distressed. It’s a very delicate subject and I asked God to tell me about anything else, so I’m afraid. However, I was extremely annoyed by the Holy Spirit to talk about it. How does God think? In our simplicity of reasoning and endless distance between the way we think and how God thinks, we try to question Him about why so many bad things happen in the world. […]

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March 13, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

What is my mission as a Christian?

Talk about missions without imagining a Christian with a backpack and a worn out suit in an underdeveloped country is almost impossible for most people. The concept of missionary has been distorting itself over time. Christians today are even divided between those who “have called a missionary” and those who do not. But is thinking this way correct? Is it only a missionary who is sent to an underdeveloped country? After all, what is mission? In the dictionary, we have the main definition of “mission” as the “an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes”. So, basically, be a missionary is to fulfill an assignment that was given to you by someone who is at the head of the mission. Right? We must understand then that if everything is done of Him, by Him and for Him. The mission is entirely of Him! Rom 11:36 “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen”. And what is the mission? The mission is simple and was left by God Himself incarnate, Jesus Christ. And it was not a mission left only for those eleven who heard the message […]

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March 07, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Gifts and talents: what are they and what are they for?

A lot of doubts are generated on the Christian people about the gifts. And, as many are aware of this, there are still many in doubt about this issue. Of course, there are several Christian lines of thought. Therefore, I will speak throughout this text using biblical passages and avoiding to position myself in line with my opinion, which goes according to the denomination which I fit into the body of Christ. Gifts and talents First, we have to understand that there are differences between gifts and talents. A talent is a result of something that already comes in your genetics or from a training on something. A spiritual gift is the result of the power of the Holy Spirit, acting through you. For example, I will not say that playing guitar is a spiritual gift that God has given me. But God gave me a talent or a facility to learn how to play. What are gifts and talents for? Before doing anything, in any area of life, I like to seek a purpose for it. Follow me: you can buy a watch, but to what it would be useful if you just leave it stored in a drawer? […]

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