JFA Blog

Reflections, studies and news for your walk with God.

August 01, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

How to read the Bible?

Many people ask me every day on my Instagram profile about how I read my Bible and what are the best ways to do it. Well, I’m not a pastor, much less a theologian. But I think I can go over some things that make it a little easier for me. Understanding the translations This part sometimes goes unnoticed. Many first-time believers think that every Bible is the same. But there is a difference that can make it much easier to understand the Word. The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In the early centuries the early Christians shared the manuscripts among themselves in order to copy them so that the scriptures would spread. Years later, around 400 AD, a Christian biblist named Jerome decided to translate the Bible into Latin. You may have heard about the Latin Vulgate. One of the most important translations in the western world. It was the Bible used by the Catholic church for a few centuries. Only around 1500 AD did the Bible begin to be translated into other languages. Luther made the first German version and with the help of the invention of the press, the Bible became more accessible. Curiosity: […]

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July 25, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

God is His Word

“In the beginning, the one who is the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God ” (John 1: 1) I love the times when I begin to reflect on this verse. It is at these times that I see God as inexplicable and of incomparable size and simplicity. God himself calls himself a verb. And through that, it makes it clear that contact with Him is simple and happens naturally when we are ready to listen to Him. Things get even better when John exposes the Son as God Himself. Saying that first of all, the word of salvation already existed. It freaks me out when I think God has absolutely ready everything for us to enter the Kingdom and live in communion with Him, as He was at the beginning of all things in Eden. Nonconformity with the church I have witnessed really sad times for many churches. With society increasingly valuing a culture where the self must be fully satisfied before the next. We see man running after the earthly fullness and the satisfaction of the pleasures of the flesh. Worse still, we see the church being contaminated with this growing culture. […]

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July 18, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Do you live a shallow Christianity?

I have told you a few times about a part of the testimony of my conversion. As many of you know, I was born and raised in an evangelical church, and I got out of the way when I was about eighteen. I gave myself to God some time later. With this, I began to live Christianity in such a way that, looking back, I saw how eighteen years inside the church I was completely empty and meaningless. In fact, I’m sure that’s why I gave up living a life with God. The truth is that even years in the church, I still had no idea who my Lord was. Are we really being Christians? In this new stage of my life, trying to live with Jesus with all my heart, I began to realize that not all who call themselves Christians have lived in a way that this “title” requires living. Far from me wanting to judge or say that someone is wrong. I do not have that power and I do not want to have it. My intention is to lead you to a reflection on your own lives. About how is your practice of Christianity based on […]

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July 11, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Switching curses for blessings

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much the words we hear create things within us. I confess that I was never the person but attentive to the way of speaking during my life. When I gave myself to Christ, however, I began to police more about things that came out of my mouth. I find it most interesting to remember that God created the heavens and the earth declaring things. He did not use his powerful hands and he was not even joking to model some things. All of His power was manifested in matter through His words. “Let there be light”, “Let the earth produce herbs” among other phrases. Seeing that after creating all these things the Bible says that “God saw that it was good” is clear that through his words the Lord was creating blessings. The Greek word for “bless” is ευλογεω (eulogeu). That is a mixture between the words “speak” and “make prosperous or happy”. This shows that our speech has the power to create happiness and prosperity around us. But have we used this power only to create good things? Enough to complain! One of the evils I see most in the day-to-day among […]

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July 04, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Living as children of God

Days ago I had the privilege of being invited to preach in a church whose denomination was totally different from what I am accustomed to. On this day, I felt God leading me to say something about identity. To be clearer, I began to meditate on how much the power of God is only manifested in who is His child. You may be saying now, “we are all children of God”. And in fact, the confession of our sins as well as the surrender of our lives to Jesus gives us the right to be called children. Jo 1:12 “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name” The fact that I want to pay attention to, however, is not what we call the children of God. But to act like. Behavior change We know that our salvation comes through repentance of our sins. We also understand that repentance is the change of the world’s behavior towards an alignment of our culture with the culture of the kingdom of the heavens. Which leads us to think that. If we do not change our behavior. […]

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June 27, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

The True Happiness

Next Monday, I will complete a year in which I have firmly established myself in the ways of the Lord. Since then, I wanted to know him as intensely as possible. So I dedicated myself so much to having experiences with Him. In a year, I think I’ve grown a lot more than I imagined. I made a daily routine of devotion to Christ. This has brought me innumerable truly amazing moments that have proved to me more and more the fidelity and greatness of the God I serve. In this intensity, I endeavored to serve at all times, and in all circumstances. Slow down! Trying to offer too much, at times I began to feel spiritually exhausted. Until I heard God telling my heart that I should have moments of deceleration. Moments when I saw the Holy Spirit using two totally different people at different times to say that God was trying to fill me. But through my actions I was closing my heart and not fully feeling the love of God. From a few months to now, with God ministering daily to my heart the word “slow down”, I began to realize better that He gives us the […]

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June 19, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Do not force the gospel

If there is something I love to do, it is to be with people who are seeking the truth unceasingly. So it is common in my circle of friends to talk about church, bible and theological issues at all times. This week, conversing with a friend, I realized how often we overlooked the important point: We try to impute the gospel to the people around us at all times. This is the reason why endless debates about religion and doctrine begin. About the existence of God and his intentions towards man. I believe there is no one on earth who can claim to know all the dreams and ways of God. Let alone one who knows how He conducts His righteousness over creation. That way, I think it’s impossible to deploy something into someone’s heart by using our strength. In fact, I think that sometimes God gives us a lesson in this matter to know that we should not act on our own understanding. Even Paul (who is regarded by scientists today as having knowledge equivalent to four PhDs) emphasized that his understanding had no effect without the Spirit of God. 1Co 2:4 “And my speech and my preaching were […]

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June 13, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

How to hear the voice of God?

Many people have come to me on social networks to ask the right way to hear God speak. Some blame themselves for never having heard an audible voice. Others do not know whether God is speaking or whether what they feel is the work of their minds. I felt like writing this post to talk about how I “hear God” and encourage the brothers to strive to hear from the Lord. Lowering the volume I heard a very good phrase from Brother Douglas Gonçalves (JesusCopy) on this subject. He says that since satan can not lower the volume of God’s voice, he strives to increase the volume of things around us. So that we can not understand what God is speaking for so many things that are screaming in our ears. In fact, it is difficult to direct our minds to have contact with God in the midst of so many things. Work, study, relationships, problems, debts, processes, social networks. There are innumerable things that take our focus every day and make us spend in futilities a time when we could move away from all of this so as to silently try to hear the voice of God. If we […]

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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 30, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

True wealth

Last week, after a small meeting at my church, I gave a ride to some friends and was approached by two men. It was a robbery and they took my car and several things. This post, however, is not an outburst about crime or a whining about it. “God will give you double” When the people in my daily life began to hear the bad news, I heard some phrases frequently. Such as “God will give you double” or “God will restore you” among others in the same sense. I know that many may think that I am being radical to look at these figures of speech. But this has led me to think about how a theology directed toward full material prosperity has long been gaining ground among Christians. I confess that this annoyed me a little. After all, who said that it is within the scope of the Lord to give me back what was stolen from me? Rm 11:33 “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! (34) “Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?” (35) “Who has ever given to […]

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May 23, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Don’t be a pharisee!

Certainly, one of the things I love the most. And what less should. It is debating biblical questions in discussions that will lead nowhere and no growth of my faith. After the last debate, however, at the moment I was asking God’s forgiveness for not knowing how to keep silent. I felt He speak in my heart the passage of 1 Sm. 17: 7. Where it is said that the Lord does not see as men see. But it does look at the heart. The word used in the Hebrew manuscript for the term “heart” is “lebab”. That carries different meanings. Among them, the soul, knowledge, reason, moral character, desires, intentions, etc. Which means that when God says to see the heart of man, it means that He is seeing an infinity of things so that there is a holy approval. We know we are considered approved before the Father by the blood of Jesus Christ. But this does not detract from our obligation to be in constant internal renewal. Aligned to the standards of holiness of the Kingdom so that we can present ourselves as approved workers (2 Tm. 2:15). Rom 12: 2 “Do not conform to the pattern […]

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May 16, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Prayer and decision

Hello dear readers! Last week I told you one of my stories with God and how I came to stop here in this blog. Then I received in my Instagram several messages about the post “Where is your heart at?”, through which I saw, through comments and testimonies, many people being impacted by the Holy Spirit. Among the messages, I was asked for many prayers. What struck me was the number of requests among them, so that I would call for a restoration in the relationship of these people with God. I was annoyed at how many people who for some details still hesitate to put their faith and their heart totally in God. The Importance of Prayer Throughout the Bible we see examples of people crying out and being heard. Prayer is extremely important and plays some essential roles in our life with God. We should always be aware that a relationship is built with quality time and good conversations. Therefore, praying to God brings you closer to understanding who He is and how He thinks. This makes us understand his ways and purposes and feeds our spirit. The neglect to hold conversations continually with God, as in a relationship […]

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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 24, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Be vulnerable

Hello dear friends. Here I am here for another week. This time, writing from a coffee shop in São Paulo next to a brother of the faith. I was telling you about how God was telling me a lot about vulnerability this week. And through a preaching by Myles Munroe that this brother showed me, I began to reflect on one important point and that complemented all the things the Lord was telling me. Preaching talked about how each person is unique and irreplaceable. And how valuable we are only when we are rare. Diamonds are expensive because they are rare, costume jewelry is cheap because they are common. However, sometimes we put it in our heads that we need to be like other people (such as great leaders or the coolest and most handsome guy in our community) to reach out. We lose our rarity by trying to be like them. In fact, if we have a model of man to follow, it must be Jesus Christ. He is original, unique and irreplaceable, as we should be. You may not be understanding the link between vulnerability and rarity. But I hope the Holy Spirit speaks to you, even though […]

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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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March 27, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Christ vs. Antichrist: you look like who?

Hello my brother and sister in Christ Jesus! Has anyone ever said that you are radiant today? I hope you have woken up with a beautiful smile on your face and may your day be a blessing! You will understand if you are wondering now about the peculiar way that I found to start this text. Las week I felt God talking to me about some details that sometimes go unnoticed in our day to day life. Details that make a total difference. I was reading the book “Multiply” by the preacher Francis Chan and I came to a chapter where the author talks about love for others. I took time out of my days to observe people and how they act. Their haste for the thousands of everyday tasks and the scarce time to feel happy. Seeing all this, I kept smiling for a whole day, and I wished to wish a good day to some strangers. On some occasions I offered some praise to people on the street, in the church and some other places. I was astonished. Most people received a simple good morning with strangeness, as if they thought I was crazy. Maybe in their heads […]

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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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February 28, 2019·Marcelo Brandão

Fasting: am I doing it right?

Our walk with Jesus Christ teaches us new things every day. Day after day we are learning new ways to live in communion with the Lord ways of exercising our faith. There are three things that are essential in a Christian’s everyday life. Bible reading, prayer and fasting. Of course, no one has any doubts about how to read the Word of God and how to pray daily. But something that has always been difficult for me to understand as a Christian was how to fast correctly. In the beginning, I used to do fasts of food for purposes. Fasts of some kinds of songs and even of social networks. But did I do it right? WHY WE MUST FAST? First we must understand the reason why we fast. There’s a lot of people that do it for material things or blessings for the earthly life. And ok, I can’t say that this is going wrong. After all, we live by faith and not by the ways stated in the law. As the Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:16, “know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, […]

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