Picture: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (Public Domain)

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Vana (who designed the logo for this blog) posted a wonderful article about obedience to God. I strongly suggest that you read it, it is very good.

He talks about Noah’s faith, how he believed in the unbelievable and built the ark. How he must have faced people mocking him about it. Then, he entered the ark and waited for rain. He waited for seven days, and Jason writes about how hard that wait would’ve been for him, and I felt the same way. In those seven days, I would’ve thought hundreds of times that maybe I didn’t get the message right.

I wouldn’t have doubted God’s power or His ability to do what He said He would, but I would certainly have questioned myself if I got it right, if I was really doing what God wanted.

I believe we all face doubts like these in our walk with God. And one of the things that I like about the Bible is its honesty in portraying our heroes of faith in their highs and also in their lows. It shows us that our heroes faced doubt, fear, failure, and we can relate to them in those moments and believe that we can also rise to the occasion.

The book of Job is a wonderful resource in the Bible and it teaches us so many things. First and foremost, about suffering. And among many other lessons, it also teaches us about friendship. It shows us how a good friend should NOT behave.

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You probably know the story. God allows the devil to take everything that Job has and even inflict him with diseases. He loses everything, and he doesn’t understand what is happening to him, and all throughout the story he tries to figure out why he is going through all that suffering.

During his ordeal, Job wasn’t alone, he had friends with him. You might think that it must have been a good thing, right? Wrong. I think that Job would have preferred to suffer alone if he had a choice. Why?

His friends were convinced that good people didn’t suffer. So if all those tragedies happened to Job, he must’ve sinned. He couldn’t be innocent. However, he was. But that idea never crossed their minds, although Job said it many times.

I have heard many people say that Jesus was a high spirit, or a good role model, a good teacher, a prophet, etc, but they don’t acknowledge Him as God. However, Jesus Himself affirmed that He was God.

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Jesus’ words and actions shows us that:

• He called Himself the son of God, making Himself equal to God (check this post).
• He forgave sins, which only God can do (see Mark 2:5-12).
• He has characteristics that are only attributed to God. He has absolute power (see Matthew 28:18, John 13:3), omniscience (see John 16:30), omnipresence (see Matthew 18:20) and eternity (see Colossians 1:17).
• He accepted worship, which is allowed only to God (see Matthew 14:33, Philippians 2:10-11, Hebrews 1:6).

The authors of the New Testament had no doubt in their minds about the divinity of Jesus: see John 1:1, Romans 9:5, Philippians 2:6, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, 1 John 5:20.

Throughout my career, I faced many challenges. Thanks to God (I mean it!), I succeeded more than I failed. A lot more, actually. Even when I failed, there was a lesson to learn, something good to get from the experience.

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I still remember one of the toughest challenges I faced, probably the toughest one. It was certainly the one I most prayed about.

My manager explained to me that my colleague, who worked at this customer’s project for months, had a personal commitment on the weekend they were scheduled to go live with their new site. So she needed me to cover for him during that weekend.

So far, no big deal, I was used to that kind of assignment. Then she explained they had several critical problems, mostly severe performance issues, and they weren’t able to solve all of them yet.

Back then, I was the rookie in the team and I didn’t have much experience with the products my team supported. And I had zero experience handling performance problems. Not only that, I didn’t know the customer’s environment or what they worked on during the project.

Last week I read a post about seeking God in prayer in the blog Flowing Faith. Mari-Anna, the writer at that blog, shared an idea that she got from Mark Batterson’s blog about a prayer devotional for the period of Lent, until Easter: to pray on one’s knees everyday at 7:14AM (or whatever time one chooses).

Photo credit: C Jill Reed (Creative Commons)

I liked the idea so much that I decided to join in. I decided not to schedule a specific time or else I know that some days I would do it out of obligation, not out of love. I would do it in the morning, as soon as I wake up, before my devotional time (when I usually pray sitting down, before reading the Bible).

In my morning and night prayers I usually follow this sequence:

1. Praises
2. Thanks
3. Requests for other people
4. Requests for myself

When I got down on my knees on the first morning, on Ash Wednesday, I thought of a spin in that idea.

So I decided to change it a little: in the morning prayer, I wouldn’t ask for anything, just praise and thank the Lord. I would only do steps 1 and 2. I would pray for other people during other times of the day, in specific prayers. And I would try to avoid making requests for myself at all during this period.

It wouldn’t be about me, but only about Him.

Our culture is used to thinking in love as a feeling. When you think of your love towards someone you probably think of how you feel about them, right?

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However, if you look for verses that talk about love in the Bible, you will see that most authors associate love with actions that showcase that love. In other words, what is the point of a feeling if there is no external evidence of it?

One of the most known verses of the Bible is a perfect illustration that love brings an action:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)

God loved us = He gave his only Son to die for us. By the action, you can see how amazing that love is.

Check the recommendation that the apostle Paul also gives us about love:

You probably have already met people (maybe even yourself) who were in some point in their lives disappointed with God. This disappointment may cause them to feel unable to fully trust in God and sometimes even cause them to turn away from Him. But why does this disappointment occur?

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First let’s check what the word “disappoint” mean:

to disappoint: to fail to meet the expectation or hope of  (according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary)

The keyword here is expectation. The person expects something from God, and when it doesn’t happen as they expect, they get disappointed with God.

A person can get a wrong expectation from God in several ways. Most commonly, it is due to the lack of knowledge of the Word of God from the Bible, which also includes incorrect interpretations.

Recently we talked about Peter’s dramatic change, from a coward simple man into a bold preacher of the Gospel. Another person who went through a change like that was the apostle John. The Gospel written by John is my favorite book of the Bible, and he is the apostle that I like the most. Why? Mostly because he was known for his love.

Picture credit: St John the evangelist, by Guido Reni (Creative Commons)

Nowadays, people call John the “apostle of love”, but it wasn’t always like that. In fact, when John and his brother James first joined Jesus’ disciples, they were called “sons of thunder” (see Mark 3:17), which shows that they were mostly known by their temper.

We know that Peter’s faithfulness to Jesus failed when he denied Him three times. But John also failed a test before that:

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village. (Luke 9:51-56)

Yep, John and James wanted to destroy the whole city. Not exactly what Jesus meant by loving your enemies, right? They definitely had faith, but they lacked love.

John was probably like many of us. He was probably a “good person”. But Jesus wanted more. He wanted him to live the love of God!

“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:33-35)

I’ve been praying about the theme for this blog. Something that I could focus on when writing the posts. And God has shown me in several ways that I should talk about love.

As I have already shared with you in one of the first posts I wrote, God has been working in my life in that area.

When I changed the visual of this blog, I thought it would be a good moment to give it a theme, a main subject.

Yesterday, the sermon at church was about the importance of community. He focused on the community of believers in the Church, and he mentioned a few examples from the Bible.

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In one of the illustrations, the preacher used an interesting episode from the Bible, from Exodus 17:8-13:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Moses delegated to Joshua the leadership of the army, and he gave him this assignment: gather soldiers and fight the enemy. People would probably think that Joshua and the army were the ones who would determine the outcome of the battle, victory or defeat. They were the ones who were actually doing the fighting, right?