NOTICE: this is a version of the original post named Amanhã Deus vai mudar sua vida por completo! This translation is a colaborative effort and you can improve it at Duolingo site. If you want to work to make corrections in this article (I would appreciate it), I ask you to go there rigth now: Original Archive to Colaborative Translation.

Tomorrow, God will change your life completely!

The next day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and he found Philip, and said to him, Follow me. John 1:43

Today I was opening the Word of the Lord to meditate, and behold this verse jumped out at me, apparently for no reason, on the computer screen. I wanted to open the book of Proverbs, but that verse kept hammering in my mind, and I was not able to stop reading. Until, finally, I understood what God was wanting me to say.

For many days, I have prayed and asked that the Lord restore my inspiration, for I was fairly discouraged to write. Today He answered my prayer. Whether I will be able to put on paper on screen what He gave me, it’s another story. But, please, stick with me.

The following day

You know, our lives are full of highs and lows, full of unexpected and unpredictable changes. And so is life: when we are accustomed to one thing, something happens to change everything. You have already heard that saying: “When I thought that I knew all of the answers, the life comes and change the questions.” It is that way If you are a normal person (whatever it means to be a “normal” person), there are two things that leave you apprehensive about your future. These are:

1. yesterday, which is past;

2. today, what you’re living.

Still, I want to give you good news, good tidings, your life is going to change It isn’t important what happened to you in the past, it isn’t important what you did or how much you suffered and were disappointed. It doesn’t matter what scars you carry with you or the unhealed injuries Despite everything that has happened to you or that you have faced in your life, I want to tell you that tomorrow will be different Tomorrow is a new day, and tomorrow God has a miracle to do in your life.

The second thing that leaves people laden with anxiety about their future is what is happening today or what they are going through right now There are situations that leave you depressed, stressed or discouraged with fear of tomorrow. At times, there is sickness or it is unemployment or a broken heart or a broken dream. At times, it is a project that was well planned and executed for nothing and was a mistake and you don’t know why…But I want to tell you something: it doesn’t matter what you are going through today because tomorrow God will change your life! Halleluia!

Know that Jesus has marked the day in which your life is going to be transformed, changed radically. Your yesterday can bring you bitter memories. Your today can bring you pain and anguish. But tomorrow, God’s new, God’s act, God’s change will reach you and transform your life Believe.

Jesus wanted

When things start to go wrong, we should still nourish the hope that something will change, that things will start to fit together and everything will be different But, time will pass and things don’t change. What’s more, change, yes: but for the worst So, our hope begins to waste away, to wither… until it dies. In this exact moment in which the hope dies, despair is born.

And a desperate life is a life willing to do almost anything to escape from the anguishing situation in which you find yourself. These moments are critical, because a person controlled by desperation can make a decision without return or do something foolish, of which he will be sorry for the rest of his life. Be patient, don’t loose hope to the point of doing something with no return Why stop now, if tomorrow God will do a miracle for you?

But, it is necessary to be sincere: when the anguish beats, the despair comes soon followed. In these moments, we begin to discredit that something good can happen and God intervenes in our favor. When I went through a series of grief in the final two years of the 90s until the turn of the century (and the millennium), I thought that the world was going to end.

he withdrew? Year 2000, the world was going to end as such… laughter. Well, if you haven’t noticed, maybe you have passed unnoticed, who knows… but, the world has not ended in 2000. Oh, yes, I am informing you that it is not going to end in 2012 either. But, if ending, no one will be left to read the same, then being worth the same way (coughing sounds)

Carry on: change is waiting for you right there!

Returning: in that era, there was a day in which I thought that I had arrived at the end of the age. On that day, before I went to the church, I was in the bathroom, taking a bath and beaten by a violent discouragement, with highly pessimistic thoughts. While the water ran down my body, the tears went down my face, and I began to think:

“My life is all messed up, and nothing is certain for me…I think that Jesus does not want me to get victory, I think that He does not want me to change my story.”

In that moment, the tears stayed hotter than the warm water from the shower. How sad a moment that was in my life. Only I remember, I have flashes of what I felt, and my eyes burn remembering the shed tears…that was the day, those days that have happened few times in life, days that you never long for, nor want to repeat.

But, at night I went to the church service. It was a prayer vigil. I remember how it was today: they gave an opportunity to a brother from a church from another neighborhood. (Soledade II) I knew that brother did not have eloquence to preach. To tell the truth, it was a typical swordfighting preacher (of swords): Long and boring messages, if that is what you are understanding of me (laughter) But…there was a moment in which he began to speak something that moved me, although I was in the last pew of the church, where he could not have seen me clearly, or even recognize me. So he said and repeated several times:

“Jesus wants to give you victory, YES. He wants. He WANTS! And He will give you victory!”.

I thought that I had already cried everything out at my house, under the shower, but I hadn’t. They flowed, no one knows where they came from, those stubborn and daring tears, that rolled down my face, burning the skin on which they flowed. It seemed that it was my soul leaking from the eyes. Even until today, I don’t know if crying hurts more, on that day, those tears hurt, a lot. I am not sure, but I think that the pew stayed marked with my tears…something like when it drips from one side and goes out the other, you know? #exaggerated

Do you want to know? Today i was living the Tomorrow that God promised me on that day. My today is the tomorrow of my past Yesterday I received a promise, and today is the tomorrow that God spoke. He said that He wanted to give me victory. Today I know, truthfully, what he really wanted.

Galilee

Galilee was a despised region by some and, by others, despicable. The Pharisees considered Galilee a place where the dregs of humanity lived and the rabble of that era, people of whom they did not care about or even mention in their conversations. It was a region without value and without importance. Then, suddenly…Jesus decided to go through Galilee. Furthermore, Jesus spent his childhood there. What a thing: the King of Kings, the owner of the gold and of the silver, living among the despised, the forgotten, and the poor.

But, now, Jesus was no longer in Galilee He was in Judea. Pray, Judea was the political and economic center of that era. And what does Jesus do? “Tired of staying in Judea, tired of staying among the doctors and the wise. Now I want to go to another place, because I want to bless someone that is forgotten and despised. I want to go to Galilee Can you already imagine someone wanting to leave the center of attention to go to an unimportant place, a place of less value?

Well it is, was, it was like what Jesus did: He wanted to go to his encounter only to bless you. To bless you who lives among the nobodies and among those who neither know what is important

Yes, it is the same: it does not matter where you are, and it can be that you are in the bottom of the well or, who knows, in the gutter and next to the drain Pay attention! No one cares where you are, in the trash dirtied and unclean you have slipped: Jesus is going to where you are. He goes to where you are only to bless you. Lift your head, because He is arriving in your life!

The Bible says, “to those living in the region of the shadow of death, a light has shined” Is it dark and you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel? Don’t worry, the light of the world will shine on you!

He found

If there is one thing that Jesus knows how to do it is to find a thing when He is looking. When He recommended that His disciples knock on a door until it opens, and ask until it is given to them, for them to seek and to find, He added: and those that seek (look for), will find.

When the Bible says that Jesus found Phillip, it is saying that that encounter was not casual, it was not an accidental bump. No sir, not the same. Jesus was searching for Phillip. Pray, why do I affirm this? Because Jesus found, it is because He was seeking. And, my friend, when the Bible says that God seeks something, it exists, He finds.

Jesus said that the Father searches for true worshippers. He is searching. If He wants to find you, it will be that He will say, “Found!” or will say, “no, not that, that is no good…go find another” Are you the type of worshipper that the Father and Jesus seek, or are you a false worshipper? Because He only wants it if it is true. For Him, only the authentic will do, genuine. No pirated copies will do. He hates the fake, counterfeited things and fraudulent people.

Are you a true or a false worshipper? Jesus is seeking. Be someone authentic, and Jesus will find you, because He is going to seek you until finding.

Philip

The name Phillip was not exactly the most common name in that era. Simon and Judas, for example, were more popular (names). But, Phillip was also a common name. Who knows, Phillip would have received that name by virtue of having been born in the country, in a rural area. That is, Phillip was not an important person, cultured, anyway Phillip did not have a diploma on the wall nor a ring on the finger. Phillip did not have a pedigree He was a nobody, nephew of the alley, and the brother of a non factor.

When I think about Phillip, I see many similarities between myself and him: I was born in the interior of the Northeastern backwoods, well in the middle of the caatinga seridoense. To be more exact, I was born and raised in a place called Galilee foot of the Sierra, which has this name because it is on the foot of a jagged mountain. If Phillip was from nowhere, I was from a place yet a little more than him. That place that I lived is also where the Clean Flock used to stay, that has to be the place that David lived.

You know, David, the one who killed the giant? Well, it is, if you did not know, know it, David was from the Flock, of which I belong. Do you doubt? I prove it:

well, now, you will say of my servant David: This is what the Lord of hosts says: I took you from flock, from behind the sheep, so that you would be sovereign over my people, over Israel. 2 Samuel 7:8 (Italics added, laughter)

Do you know what that means? Two things:

1^st: Jesus chooses you independently of who you are. You can be a nobody like Phillip, or a maniac like me, but Jesus loves you in the same way.

2^nd: Jesus chooses you independently of who you are NOT: You do not need to be someone for Jesus to love you. He loves the lawyer as He loves the Judge and even as He loves the bandit. He loves he who has a diploma, and he loves he does not know how to make the letter “o” with a cup. He loves the great, and He loves the small. In the same way, in the same manner, with the same intensity.

It does not matter if you are simple or difficult, if you are easy or complicated. Know one thing: Jesus love you, and He loves you as He loves me, in spite of who you are or are not. He loves you.

Follow me

We arrive, finally, to where Jesus wanted: He made that trip, that marked a specific day, seeking someone special, to arrive today, here and to say: Follow me.

He does not care about your origin or social position. But He found you after much seeking and He makes an invitation: Follow me. It is almost a command from He who says it, but also it is almost an appeal in a sweet way as He asks.

You, who came here, know that Jesus is speaking with you. Yes, with you. Don’t keep looking around you, thinking that it isn’t about you. It is with YOU!

Now, you respond to me. It is better to respond to Jesus. Are you going to say YES or NO to the “follow me” of Him?

Friend, your tomorrow is going to depend on what you respond today, independently of what your yesterday has been.

But, one thing I guarantee you: if you say yes, your life will change. How? How will your life change? Like this:

If you were blessed reading this post… without hypocrisy or arrogance, I know you were. If you got here, I know it was. And how do I know? Because I was blessed in the writing; who will tell you who are reading!

So then, if I am not abusing of your goodwill and patience (OK, I am abusing, but go over there, he gives a discount…laughter), I ask that you value (clicking on the stars, I didn’t like, I didn’t enjoy, No 1, what you wanted to find better), comment telling what you have found and share with others so that they too will be blessed as you were, OK?

God bless you and your life. And do not forget:

Tomorrow, God is going to completely change your life.

In His time, of course, but this tomorrow will come, have faith that it will.

This is more than a blog post Challenging Limits, made to bless you. Thanks for reading, evaluating and / or commenting.