If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works,…
What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? A pastor friend of mine here in Brazil once told me of a man he visited several years back. As my friend encouraged him to take his spiritual growth seriously, the man looked at…
So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white, and my upper teeth ground against my lower teeth in…
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.Did Imagine with me a hypothetical…
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. The story is told of a small town mayor here in Northeast Brazil who wanted to build a…
Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? As I have contemplated this text over the past couple weeks, two incidents from our life here in Brazil – both involving my oldest son Michael – were brought to my…
Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Living in a foreign country means that life is pretty much a never-ending series of adventures. Some…
For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor…
My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. Some of the most interesting places to visit in the four-hundred-year-old city of São Luís – where God has given us the privilege of ministering – are the old churches built by the Portuguese during colonial times….
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Certain things go together to such a degree that when they are separated, the individual parts lose all their significance. Examples: macaroni and cheese, Simon and Garfunkle, Laurel…