Building A House On The Rock

As with all newborn babies, new Christians also need a lot of attention, care, and teaching. My family will be in Cajazeiras from April 16 to April 18, teaching a three-day intensive class to new converts and some visitors as well.

Café asked me to come edify the church. Thinking about about God's perfect plan of salvation, about new Christian's needs, especially in worrying about what happens if they sin after being baptized, I decided to teach my routine evangelistic Bible study because it deals with these things. Therefore, visitors have been encouraged to come to these three days to learn God's will. These are the eight lessons:

I.    God Created And Man Sinned;
II.    Abraham, Moses, and God's Chosen People;
III. Prophecies About The Messiah;
IV. Faith in Jesus And Repentance;
V.   Repentance And Confessing Jesus As Lord;

VI. Confessing Jesus As Lord And Baptism;
VII. Baptism, Uniting Yourself To The Body Of Christ Which Is The Church;
VIII. Grace And The Church, The Fulfillment Of The Promise To Abraham.

Please pray:

that we will have a safe 7 hour trip going and coming;

that God will open my mouth to speak the truth of His Word;

that God will open the ears and hearts of those present so that God's Word will have an everlasting effect on their lives.

Please pray also for Café and Leila - they feel the need for spiritual renewal. Café said, "I have served the church for 22 years now, we need the church to serve us." It is not out of selfishness that he says this but out of a desire to serve more with a wisdom of being still and knowing that God is God.

Please take a moment and pray for these things and may God bless you.

Comments

"What About Baptism?"

Edda and I went to a nearby city to study the Bible with a family, Genilda (who is already a Christian), Ana, Mariana, Luiza, and Jefferson. While we were reading God's Word, Ana's husband, Silva, came in and sat down, and then blurted out: "What about baptism?" It took me by surprise because he has barely studied with us, but, most certainly, is already thinking about spiritual matters. Our Bible study then took a lot of detours, answering this question or that. Silva said he still has a lot of questions, and we pray that the Lord will use us to answer them, bringing him to understand the Good News!

One More Goodbye

This year has been rough for Borges's family. They lost a pillar in their family, his wife's mother in February. Now her brother has passed, buried today. He was diagnosed with prostrate cancer 18 months ago. A policeman, used to taking care of the family, he had to settle with being taken care of by the family as his body gradually shut down when the cancer metastasized to his bones. Borges and Geilza have spent every free moment taking care of Demilson's needs, and it has been torture watching him slowly wear away. His colleagues in the Military Police carried his casket, played taps on a trumpet, presented his family with a Paraiba flag, and thanked his family for supporting him in defending society for nearly thirty years. It was a nice gesture, but the event that gives us believers hope in the face of death is Jesus winning over the grave. He is our certainty that a grave is not the end.

Men Preparing Themselves in the Word

Every Tuesday night for the last month we have been getting together to study God's Word. The subject is controversial but needed because it affects relationships and families in the church, and we as spiritual leaders will be more effective if we are united in teaching Jesus' will on marriage and divorce. Just like Jesus, we want to go back to beginning and uphold God's ideal when He created marriage: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:4-6

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