Love Of God

August 20, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

No more shame!

For those who do not know. Along with some texts I write for this blog, sometimes I make some more in-depth videos about the subjects posted and publish it on my Instagram profile. A few months ago, a follower shared one of these videos on his profile. With this, a girl found this blog and began to be interested in the content. At the same time, it began to feed her desire to know Jesus in a purer, non-religious way. This woman eventually discovered the church to which I belong (Butantã Family Christian Church – São Paulo) and one day decided to visit us. After the service, she came to me and we talked about Christianity and how God had changed my life through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The look of happiness in her eyes that day was extraordinary. It was noticeable that this woman had just been impacted by the gospel only in the way she talked about how she had found herself. I went home overjoyed that day. Even writing for a blog in an app with millions of users, I’m still a simple young man who barely understands what’s going on. So it’s normal that sometimes […]

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August 12, 2019·Gabriela Angerami

Why is it so hard to forgive?

A few days ago I received an email from Barna Group, which is an American faith and culture research organization. This email motivated me to write this text. In the message, they released the results of a study on forgiveness and mercy that showed the following findings: One-quarter of practicing Christians says there is a person who they cannot forgive. Almost half of practicing Christians say mercy doesn’t influence their thoughts or actions or they haven’t thought about whether it does. One in five practicing Christians reports struggling to receive forgiveness for something they have personally done. Christians grapple with whether certain people deserve compassion or forgiveness, and they are not all that different from non-Christians when it comes to embodying merciful attitudes and actions. It is even contradictory to think that christians, that is, people who were reached by grace and who understood that they were forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus, have difficulty in forgiving. But the data showed this sad reality. We also know that when someone hurts us, it really is not easy. Forgiveness is something supernatural As soon as Jesus rose from the dead and made his first visit to the disciples, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and […]

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August 07, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

God is Father

Next Sunday carries the commemorative date of Father’s Day here in Brazil (I’m a brazilian boy, if you didn’t know yet). Trying to think outside the bubble where I live and trying to take my thinking to various realities, I understand that my conception of parenting is totally different from many of you who are reading. I confess I have never had problems with my father. The quarrels were always for something wrong I did or for my father in his love correcting me. I think my only difficulty was that my father was always very reserved and not of talking so much, but that isn’t a hard problem. I have to work hard to understand that among my readers there are people who have different views on what it is to be a parent or what it means to each other. There are some who have never known their father, others who have never had a good relationship, others who miss, and still others who have never felt loved. One thing, however, is an irrefutable fact. The presence or absence of a father has a major influence on the lives of children. God gives to the father authority to […]

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June 06, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Be careful on your brother’s faith

I have seen many brothers and sisters of all denominations with attitudes that sometimes cause me strangeness. I am not one of those believers who are scandalized by anything. Being a young man, I have a very broad vision of the freedom that God gives us. However, I believe that certain things should be taken with more consideration by all. For the love of others and in respect of the faith of the people around us. “Only God can judge me” In fact, no one has the task of judging anyone, for whatever reason. But is everything really judgment? At every moment I see Christians who avoid exhorting others for fear of being seen as judges. This turns difficult the lives of leaders and the expansion of the Kingdom. Since many errors are left untreated and hidden. And ends as seen as “normal” things by many people. This is the case of Christians who do not think that Christian decency and morality are so valuable in the society we are living today. Then we see men and women who claim to be patrimony of the Lord attending parties full of songs of low slang. Speaking a lot of profanity. Getting […]

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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 10, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Avoid evil and get closer to God!

That God loves us, we already know. In each contact we have with Him, we see his goodness, his love and his justice, which are priceless and eternal. In the last blogpost I approached on how is your intimacy with God. I spoke of how we should be pure in heart to get closer and closer to Heavenly Father. And to understand his plans and feel his love without the barriers that we ourselves build. Where do these barriers come from? If purity of heart is essential for rapprochement with God, we must also talk about some key points in order to purify ourselves from all the evil that we witness daily in the world. Before we go to the practical points, it is interesting to understand the nature of the evil that we see every day. That is, where evil begins. So get ready, because we’ll have a great deal of Bible in the next few lines. Jm 3:6 “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. (7) All kinds […]

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April 09, 2019·Gabriela Angerami

Have you been choosing to love?

If we relate to people, we will eventually be upset, disapprove of something, or disagree with someone. It’s part of life! We are imperfect. What we need to understand is that instead of reacting to these situations of disagreement with our sinful instinct. That is, instead of losing reason, anger or resentment, we must choose to love. We need to respond to circumstances in a wise and balanced way, as people healed and well resolved in the Father. Love is a choice John 15:9 –As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15:16 – You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. Jesus, throughout the entire 15th chapter of the book of John, invites us to abide in his love. What does that mean? It means that his love does not change, it will always be the same. It is as if he said, “My love is here available, I have loved you. Now it is up to you to remain in this love.” In verse […]

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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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