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| Graças e paz, irmãos!
Um novo ano se avança, e nós não poderíamos deixar de compartilhar do quanto somos gratos ao Senhor, e a você, nosso parceiro que tem orado e investido nesta obra nas nações! Para a glória de Deus, juntos estamos alcançando, e ainda resgataremos muito mais meninas vítimas do tráfico e exploração sexual! Em Moçambique, podemos destacar o sonho que está se realizando, o de construirmos uma casa para abrigar nossas meninas! Com isso, teremos a estabilidade de não mais ter o desgaste com mudanças, etc. As meninas estão crescendo em estatura e graça; estão na escola, têm aulas de dança, dentre outras. O Senhor tem feito maravilhas ali! Estamos muito felizes.
No Camboja não é diferente. A cada dia estamos sendo surpreendidos! Tivemos nosso primeiro noivado. Foi uma celebração linda! Tipicamente cambojana, algo muito diferente do que estamos acostumamos no ocidente, e Jesus foi glorificado ali! Podemos ver dia a dia a alegria e o envolvimento das meninas, e saber que vale a pena!
No Nepal também estamos crescendo, revendo valores, fazendo ajustes. Continuamos investindo na chácara, e estamos construindo tudo em cima de conseguirmos alguma sustentabilidade, temos planos e sonhos, e estamos trabalhando e investindo firme nessa direção. Tivemos os depoimentos das nossas meninas na Corte da Índia, o que foi muito marcante pra nós. Pudemos ver a coragem delas ao depor diante de traficantes, e podemos crer que a justiça virá. Em oração, sempre pedimos direção e um tema para cada novo ano, e para 2014 foi confirmado nesses dias que este será "The Year of JOY" (O ano da ALEGRIA), com o complemento: "Enjoying a Fresh anointing" (Desfrutando de uma UNÇÃO FRESCA). E assim cremos que será!
Somos gratos pelo ano que se passou, e temos muita expectativa de que em 2014 aconteça a vontade de Deus. Queremos viver um tempo de coisas novas, uma nova unção, uma unção que no "refresque" e renove, que nos envolva neste novo e nos tempos que hão de vir! Deus tem muito mais a fazer, e os desafios continuarão. Queremos te convidar a permanecer conosco! Precisamos de você! Precisamos de suas orações, sua intercessão e suas contribuições. Que Deus abençoe sua vida, e que o novo do Senhor venha sobre você e sua família! Que Jesus seja o centro, e que não nos esqueçamos das Meninas dos Olhos de Deus! |
2014 Resolution
John Piper - 2014 Resolution In 2014, I encourage you to identify and exploit your weaknesses for the glory of Christ. I would like to give you an illustration from my own life, but first let me clarify what I mean.
Since 2007, millions of people have read books and taken inventories designed to find our strengths. These are useful for positioning people in places of maximum effectiveness.
God’s Work in Our Weaknesses
But I am calling you to give attention and effort in finding your weaknesses and maximizing their God-given purpose. The Bible tells us what that purpose is in 2 Corinthians 12:8–10. Paul had been given a “thorn in the flesh” which was one instance of a “weakness.” Why?
A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, formy power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul mentions four purposes for his weaknesses.
- “To keep me from becoming conceited” (verse 7).
- “Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness” (verse 9).
- “So that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (verse 9).
- “When I am weak, then I am strong” (verse 10).
Paul’s Humility and Christ’s Power
Even though this weakness of the thorn is called “a messenger of Satan,” the purposes are clearly not Satan’s. Satan does not want Christ’s power to be made perfect! God does. So God is overruling Satan’s design with his own. In other words, wherever the Christian’s weaknesses come from, they have a God-given purpose. They are not fortuitous.
We can sum up the purpose of Paul’s weakness like this: securing Paul’s humility and showing Christ’s power. That’s why God made sure Paul had weaknesses — to keep him “from becoming conceited” and to give him a more obvious experience of the power of Christ resting on him.
One Goal for 2014
What is your goal in 2014? I hope it is to be humble and to magnify the power of Christ. If it is, then one key strategy is to identify and exploit your weaknesses.
What does this mean? Negatively, it means that we stop complaining (to God and to people) about the things we are constitutionally not good at. And, positively, it means that we look for ways to turn our weaknesses into a Christ-exalting experience.
When I say “constitutionally not good at,” I mean that we have done our best to overcome the weakness, but we can’t. God has ordained that, through genetics or life-experience, we are limited, broken, weak. Paul asked that God would take his weakness away (verse 8), but God said no. Which means that sooner or later, we should stop praying against the weakness and accept it as God’s design for our humility and the glory of Christ.
What This Meant for Me
I’ll use myself as a simple example. I read slowly — about as fast as I speak. Many people read five or ten times faster than I do. I tried for years to overcome this weakness, with special classes and books and techniques. After about two decades of bemoaning this weakness (from age 17 to 37 or so), I saw there would be no change. This is one reason I left college teaching and the academic life. I knew I could never be what scholars ought to be: widely read.
What did it mean for me to identify and exploit this weakness? It meant first that I accept this as God’s design for my life. I will never read fast. It meant I stop complaining about it. It meant that I take my love for reading and do with it what I can for the glory of Christ. If I can only read slowly, I will do all I can to read deeply. I will exploit slowness. I will ask Jesus to show me more in reading little than many see in reading much. I will ask Jesus to magnify his power in making my slowness more fruitful than speed.
In realizing I cannot read many books, I will pour my limited scope into reading one book better than any other — the Bible. If I must read fewer of many books, then I will read more carefully the greatest book.
Exploit Your Weaknesses
Now after all these years, I say with Paul, “I boast all the more gladly in this weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (verse 9). Christ has been faithful to fulfill his purpose. He has magnified himself in this weakness.
If I had angrily resented God all these years that he did not let me be a comprehensively well-read scholar, I would not have exploited this weakness. I would have wasted it.
So this year, don’t focus too much on finding your strengths. Give attention to identify and exploit your weaknesses. God has not given them to you in vain. Identify them. Accept them. Exploit them. Magnify the power of Christ with them. Don’t waste your weaknesses.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!!!
Celebremos a vida que há com Jesus e experimentaremos a Paz duradoura que o mundo não pode nos dar.
Deus abençoe a toda a família CCO e que 2014 seja um ano repleto de alegrias e realizações que nos aperfeiçoem cada vez mais na imagem de Cristo.
No eterno amor do nosso Jesus,
Betinho & Marcia
Merry Christmas!
Nesta época de Natal muitos pensamentos passam pelas nossas mentes... Alguns festejam com alegria enquanto outros, por motivos diversos, se aquietam. Mas a ocasião verdadeiramente nos chama para refletir sobre o que fizemos no ano que se finda, nos planos para o ano que se inicia e como nos prepararmos para mudanças - Esta é a retórica que se repete ano após ano...
Vamos juntos fazer algo totalmente diferente que venha a marcar as nossas vidas para sempre - Vamos estar mais juntos neste ano de 2014, fazer mais encontros, mais reuniões nos lares, mais apresentações de teatro, estudos bíblicos relâmpagos, celebrações das Festas do Senhor e tantas outras coisas mais.
Lembre-se sempre que a alegria que vem do nosso Pai é que nos fortalece e não se compara com a alegria do mundo, que dura pouco e logo se esvanece e se dissipa com o vento.
Tenham todos uma noite de Natal abençoadíssima junto de seus amados e que possamos juntos celebrar a vida que há com Jesus Cristo, a razão do Natal!!
Celebremos com júbilos e cânticos esta ocasião de festas e brindemos a salvação a nós presenteada pelo nosso Pai e com coração eternamente grato pela eleição.
Sejam grandemente abençoados por Deus e em nome de Jesus!!
Betinho e Márcia
Parents Require Obedience of Your Children
Parents, Require Obedience of Your Children
by John Piper | October 29, 2013
I am writing this to plead with Christian parents to require obedience of their children. I am moved to write this by watching young children pay no attention to their parents’ requests, with no consequences. Parents tell a child two or three times to sit or stop and come or go, and after the third disobedience, they laughingly bribe the child. This may or may not get the behavior desired.
Last week, I saw two things that prompted this article. One was the killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, California, by police who thought he was about to shoot them with an assault rifle. It was a toy gun. What made this relevant was that the police said they told the boy two times to drop the gun. Instead he turned it on them. They fired.
I do not know the details of that situation or if Andy even heard the commands. So I can’t say for sure he was insubordinate. So my point here is not about young Lopez himself. It’s about a “what if.” What if he heard the police, and simply defied what they said? If that is true, it cost him his life. Such would be the price of disobeying proper authority.
A Tragedy in the Making
I witnessed such a scenario in the making on a plane last week. I watched a mother preparing her son to be shot.
I was sitting behind her and her son, who may have been seven years old. He was playing on his digital tablet. The flight attendant announced that all electronic devices should be turned off for take off. He didn’t turn it off. The mother didn’t require it. As the flight attendant walked by, she said he needed to turn it off and kept moving. He didn’t do it. The mother didn’t require it.
One last time, the flight attendant stood over them and said that the boy would need to give the device to his mother. He turned it off. When the flight attendant took her seat, the boy turned his device back on, and kept it on through the take off. The mother did nothing. I thought to myself, she is training him to be shot by police.
Rescue from Foolish Parenting
The defiance and laziness of unbelieving parents I can understand. I have biblical categories of the behavior of the spiritually blind. But the neglect of Christian parents perplexes me. What is behind the failure to require and receive obedience? I’m not sure. But it may be that these nine observations will help rescue some parents from the folly of laissez-faire parenting.
1. Requiring obedience of children is implicit in the biblical requirement that children obey their parents.
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). It makes no sense that God would require children to obey parents and yet not require parents to require obedience from the children. It is part of our job — to teach children the glory of a happy, submissive spirit to authorities that God has put in place. Parents represent God to small children, and it is deadly to train children to ignore the commands of God.
2. Obedience is a new-covenant, gospel category.
Obedience is not merely a “legal” category. It is a gospel category. Paul said that his gospel aim was “to bring about the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). He said, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles toobedience — by word and deed” (Romans 15:18).
Paul’s aim was “to take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). He required it of the churches: “If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him” (2 Thessalonians 3:14).
Parents who do not teach their children to obey God’s appointed authorities prepare them for a life out of step with God’s word — a life out of step with the very gospel they desire to emphasize.
(If anyone doubts how crucial this doctrine is, please consider reading Wayne Grudem’s chapter, “Pleasing God by Our Obedience: A Neglected New Testament Teaching” in For the Fame of God’s Name, edited by Justin Taylor and Sam Storms.)
3. Requiring obedience of children is possible.
To watch parents act as if they are helpless in the presence of disobedient children is pitiful. God requires that children obey because it is possible for parents to require obedience. Little children, under a year old, can be shown effectively what they may not touch, bite, pull, poke, spit out, or shriek about. You are bigger than they are. Use your size to save them for joy, not sentence them to selfishness.
4. Requiring obedience should be practiced at home on inconsequential things so that it is possible in public on consequential things.
One explanation why children are out of control in public is that they have not been taught to obey at home. One reason for this is that many things at home don’t seem worth the battle. It’s easier to do it ourselves than to take the time and effort to deal with a child’s unwillingness to do it. But this simply trains children that obedience anywhere is optional. Consistency in requiring obedience at home will help your children be enjoyable in public.
5. It takes effort to require obedience, and it is worth it.
If you tell a child to stay in bed and he gets up anyway, it is simply easier to say, go back to bed, than to get up and deal with the disobedience. Parents are tired. I sympathize. For more than 40 years, I’ve had children under eighteen. Requiring obedience takes energy, both physically and emotionally. It is easier simply to let the children have their way.
The result? Uncontrollable children when it matters. They have learned how to work the angles. Mommy is powerless, and daddy is a patsy. They can read when you are about to explode. So they defy your words just short of that. This bears sour fruit for everyone. But the work it takes to be immediately consistent with every disobedience bears sweet fruit for parents, children, and others.
6. You can break the multi-generational dysfunction.
One reason parents don’t require discipline is they have never seen it done. They come from homes that had two modes: passivity and anger. They know they don’t want to parent in anger. The only alternative they know is passivity. There is good news: this can change. Parents can learn from the Bible and from wise people what is possible, what is commanded, what is wise, and how to do it in a spirit that is patient, firm, loving, and grounded in the gospel.
7. Gracious parenting leads children from external compliance to joyful willingness.
Children need to obey before they can process obedience through faith. When faith comes, the obedience which they have learned from fear and reward and respect will become the natural expression of faith. Not to require obedience before faith is folly. It’s not loving in the long run. It cuts deep furrows of disobedient habits that faith must then not infuse, but overcome.
8. Children whose parents require obedience are happier.
Laissez-faire parenting does not produce gracious, humble children. It produces brats. They are neither fun to be around, nor happy themselves. They are demanding and insolent. Their “freedom” is not a blessing to them or others. They are free the way a boat without a rudder is free. They are the victims of their whims. Sooner or later, these whims will be crossed. That spells misery. Or, even a deadly encounter with the police.
9. Requiring obedience is not the same as requiring perfection.
Since parents represent God to children — especially before they can know God through faith in the gospel — we show them both justice and mercy. Not every disobedience is punished. Some are noted, reproved, and passed over. There is no precise manual for this mixture. Children should learn from our parenting that the God of the gospel is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:7, 29) and that he is patient and slow to anger (1 Timothy 1:16). In both cases — discipline and patience — the aim is quick, happy, thorough obedience. That’s what knowing God in Christ produces.
Parents, you can do this. It is a hard season. I’ve spent more than sixty percent of my life in it. But there is divine grace for this, and you will be richly rewarded.
John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.