Hello Sam;
What so many blessed days we have had together! What a blessing was to have you in our home. Your presence have enriched our lives those days immensely.Thank you for coming.
Cristina and I love you, Susanah and Yohanam. Next time you will only be admitted in our house if you bring them with you. Just kidding!
I am in Brazil already. These days i have been dedicating to much reflexion, thinking and praying, though every day I think I know less how to pray.
By this time now I am already missing Cristina, Tiago, Viviane and Nathan. And I still have 23 days to go.
God has already opened some doors here to serve His people. I am asking Him to give me wisdom in how to share His Word in a measure people can comprehend. Though I know only the Holy Spirit can reveal secrets of the Kingdom to each of us.
I dream one day we will be able to come together to Brazil.
Please, let me know how are you doing, your family, father, everybody.
Thank you for being so patient with your older brother in the matters of the Kingdom. I hope that those seeds will never be lost by any means in your life. I pray it will produce much fruit.
I am completely sure that any man like you who dares to follow Jesus faithfully, to what He said, to the extremes of what that means, and follow how He did minister -served- and is totally sold out to Him shall bear so much fruit in India and in the world.
It is clear that through the methods preachers are using to reach out India and with the kind of gospel they are proclaiming to the nation, it will never be reached. You told us that many of the preachers are money-seekers, they have learnt the disgraceful prosperity gospel and are after their own interests and stomachs.
I pray God will deliver your heart from any bitterness from anyone and you may call all the disciples with whom you have relationship. I pray you reach out to the men of God and Susanah to the women of God in Madurai City.
I pray you will be able to gather them and with wisdom you teach the Kingdom of God so they Holy Spirit reveals to them that they don't need to edify any church - Only Jesus builds His Church and they should renounce everything, theirs religion, denominations practices and own ways of ministry for the Kingdom of God.
India shall be saved.The Kingdom of God shall come to the entire country and reach every household, every school, every hospital, every niche of all the icons and Jesus shall reign over that blessed land with His kings and priests.
How do I know? I know that a stone has fallen from heaven many years ago, it has pulverized the status of Nabuchednesar that represents the kingdoms of this world and have become a Mountain that ever since has been growing and growing and it is ready on India soil and it will grow until cover the whole continent.
I feel strongly to say that, please, don't be tempted to show your fruits to men. Jesus alone is the Judge of your Life and He has acquainted you when he shed His blood on the cross.
All your work is not vain. You have courageously plowed many bare grounds with much sacrifice: you have kept the Faith. You never got yourself comfortable like many preachers in the West.
Jesus has not just acquainted you, but He has purchased you. Therefore you belong only to Him.
Why would you need the approval and recognition of men for what you do for Jesus?
Our relationship and dynamics in the Body of Christ from a correct perspective is always we five or pass what we have received to others, from each of us to someone else and not from someone to us.
Each member of a human body always gives though any of them always receive. The flowing don't stop in any of the members. Though each of them receives something it is their function always to give.
Each member exists to serve another member. And there is no member that can survive by itself.
But here is what men does.
They put a fence around a group, someone will occupy the command of that group and that group will be called a church.
Those individuals, believers, born again people, will never develop a relationship to other believers in that city, because they belong already to that "church".
Actually they don't. I mean, if they are true believers they are members of each other in the city and not simply within their group. Therefore they are the Church.
But within that psychological fence - the church's name, the assumption they are the sheep of that church leader, their liturgies and methods, their own music - they are limited and do not function well because individually they are not in relationship to other believers in the city.
Actually the conversation among them runs something like this:
"- What church do you belong?"
"-My church is X".
"- And you? What church are you a member of?"
"-I am a member of Church Y and I am a sheep of Pastor J.O."
In almost every city we find these situations.
There is a "church" which has 25 thousand members. Let us assume 20 thousand of them are true believers. And most of them know and have relationship with few others.
Before the whole multitude there is a "pastor" or "apostle" who is the head leader of that "church". 200 other "pastors" work with him and under his authority. Their community is extremely rich. The main leader has body guards to protect him, thousands of other pastors comes from around the world to visit his "church" to receive from him "his special" anointing.
Though the leader may be a man of God, I mean, a true believer, is there anything wrong with this?
In his city there are other men of God and in "their churches" they have, some 50 people, others 200, and few others 1000. Some of these men struggle with some difficulties. They are poor even if they are full of the Holy Spirt.
They all have a building (church) to accommodate their "church people". And they practically meet only once or twice a week in their "temples" to "worship."
The richer pastor lives in a mansion, he has employees to take care of the house and everything and he lacks nothing.
There are other pastors who struggles to pay the rent of their houses, even to purchase food. Many times they don't pay what they need, but what they can afford.
The richer church has millions of dollars in the bank. The poorer churches has only few dollars and their priority is always to pay the "temple" rent.
I understand that are nuances and many variations that can be applied in this picture and narrative.
They are all men and women of God. They are all believers. They are the Family of God. They are the Church in the city.
When that particular group meets, 20 thousand of them, it is a church, but not the Church. When another group meets , 200 of them, they are a church, but not the Church.
Practically even when they meet in a association of pastors or Christian leaders the richer pastors are treated with great honor, if there is aspecial meeting, usually some of them will be the ones who will preached the one who will preach.
Men look into humans credentials. God looks a the heart.
They come together, they "love" each other and after the meeting each of them goes back to their routine and own struggles.
But 1John 3:16 may give us some light to understand these structures, their leaders and their relationship with each other that composes the only Church on that city.
What is it wrong with this?
When you look at this picture there is no way you can fit this church into the NewTestament.
Many call all of this prosperity and blessings. What God calls it?
Many call what we have become the evolution of the church during the centuries from its embryo of the 1st. Century.
They theologically argue that Jesus built the church but the New Testament does not reveal how it will be led. Any kind of Government is accepted.
The church has not passed through a evolution. The church became apostate.
Some colleagues always challenge me to prove to them my "ligaments and joints" to a group of people they call church.
They cannot perceive if I am with them I am individually member of them. Though I don't meet with their whole group I belong to them, because as they are members of others so I am, therefore here, everywhere in the city you find true ligaments and joints according to Ephesus 5.
It is me who serve each of my brothers and I don't need to be "a member" of their group to be a "member of the Body." Our relationship with each other is always individually and not as group.
They shepherd the flock of God and not only those who meet with them.We all must develop relationships with each other and speak to one another until the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers work together to train the saints until we are nature in Christ.
The point is I only have fellowship with Jesus if I have fellowship with others.
My hand doesn't not relate directly with my leg though it may come to serve the leg sometimes. But the legs serve both hands and the whole body always. The feet represent the leadership and is the leadership of God in a city that fulfill with the whole Body the purpose of God's Church in the city.
Who wants to loose any position, close a temple, resign his pastoral job and join with others so all may have at least what is enough in away that nobody lacks anything and others have too much?
I am not saying that there will not be rich people among us, but true daily bread all believers should have.
There are wealthy people that are on God's hands to sustain many of the needy among us.
Some give a pastor an expensive car as a gift, beyond what they have. They boast in their blessings of God whole among them there are those who are starving.
Has these actions any similarity in the New Testament?
Though my hand receives directly orders from the Head it is only able to receive orders because it is connected with the arm.
Every time men create borders around them and call it "flock" they wound the Body of Christ.
Every time someone call church his group within one city and many others do the same, they work against Christ who has just one flock and He is the only Shepherd.
I cannot call any man my pastor because every pastor Jesus gave to the Church to shepherd His sheep. We are all sheep of His pastures.
Others want to know how many people I have as disciples, how many people I brought to Christ. They understand that I should have a flock. They loose the opportunity to see me as a gift from the Lord to His body in a city and not exclusively to a specific group.
Even those who understand a lot of the Kingdom and have got a lot of revelation of the Church are still in bondage with their own structures they created to "protect" the flock or are under allegiance if a denominational it that denomination is of Christ.
How a de-nomination can be of God? Did you not read Paul arguing that Christ is not divided? Do you know what the word denomination means?
We protect the flock of God with His Word, together, apostles, prophets,, evangelists, pastors and teachers aligning saints, preparing them to do the work of ministry (services).
Where are they?
You serve your city. You are a gift of God to the Body of Christ on your city and in every city you go. You are sent as an apostle to your own people and to the nations around.
Don't get trapped to men's religious schemes.
Be free or free yourself of any old wine skin and look at the new thing God is doing on Earth.
Related to the Kingsom
You know that the seeds that the sower sow are the seeds of the Kingdom.
Any word for most elaborated and logical it may be is not from Heaven if it doesn't bring the sovereignty of Jesus in it.
In another way, Jesus words are the Word of the the Kingdom. The Word to be a word from God will always makes us humble and pleasantly submitted to Him.
I pray you find treasures from the Kingdom of God and read Acts and the Bible epistles as a non negotiable pattern stablished by our Father. Don't change. Heal the sick as he healed them. Cast demons as he casted them, Clean the lepers as Jesus has cleaned them and proclaim and teach the kingdom as Jesus did.
There is no reason to reinvent the wheels in these matters.
I pray you are able to compare the current church, activities, teachings, style, way of being and everything to the Scriptures.
I pray you will resign and get rid of all attainments and strangers to the Gospel of Christ..
It is very easy. We look to Jesus, who He is and what He did as we find in the Gospels. Who He is now, today, to see if He changed. How He revealed Himself and still reveals.
What does not match with Him we must renounce and resign even those things that had been "very sacred" in our lives for many years. Don't get confused or discouraged. You have a lot to get rid of. We all had.
Most of the things we have believed and taught we didn't receive from the Holy Spirit directly. It is not wrong to be taught by men and women of God. But it is our obligation to check and scrutinize everything, I mean, everything, through the Word of God - Jesus and the Graphia of God - the Scriptures.
It is never late to put what we believe through the scrutiny of God's Word in our intimate relationship with Him.
We have learned many things intellectually in a time when our relationship with Jesus was barely a monologue.
We always have spoken, but very rare we heard His voice because we were busy "studying His Teachings" in a academic environment that the Holy Spirit never stablished.
Men had created structures that had imprisoned the Word, conditioned the minds of God's children to a learning structure based in academicism measured by grades.
Knowledge is not evil. Knowledge without the Holy Sprit is a poison for the soul as it makes men boast in themselves and not in Christ alone.
Seminars, Bible schools, Theological Schools, from the bottom to the top of the academic scale are men made institutions that could never be a substitution for making disciples as Jesus did.
They should be treated as Greek Thinking Academics - this is what they are - models to enlarge the capacity of someone's knowledge, but they had become a cold teacher-student relationship that kills the spontaneous interaction between a God sent disciple to make other disciples.
We have produced missionaries, pastors, academic teachers, men and women well prepared to run churches and religious institutions as less disciples, because a disciple is not made in any school class but through the Jesus way who chose twelve (12) to be with Him, to learn with Him, to experience Him, to walk with Him, to eat and celebrate life with Him, to serve everyone with Him, to be rejected with Him, to be persecuted with Him, to feel the warmth of His heart, to soap with the beauty of His Holiness and to receive the Power from Above, and never the approval of men.
Usually who are approved by men had been rejected by God as always to be totally accepted by Him means you shall be completely rejected by men.
"For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes."
Jesus is Savior and King. Savior is about priesthood. He entered in the heavenly sanctuary. And King is about Kingship. Through the Cross He made us priests and kings
But we don't preach about Jesus as Savior, because it is not enough to save people.
We preach Jesus, the Lord and King, because you cannot be saved unless He becomes your King.
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