Since 2009, when I’ve been taking Kidsong World seriously, God has used it to teach me amazing things. And I’m loving it! Last week was the 25th Hillsong Conference. As usual, I was serving as a kids leader in our kids conference Kidsong World.

This year was different because I was a tribal leader instead of a group leader and didn’t have a specific group of kids allocated to me, but a group of about 7 leaders who were leading a group of 100+ kids. And I had two electives to present. In addition, my friend and leader Dave had a great idea during conference and needed my help to execute it. As a result, I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted with the kids.

However, this lack of time didn’t stop God from using me to impact the lives of a few children, which made me happy. I love when God does that! I love when I see the smiles of children after conference, and how much fun they had, and how sad they are to leave (ok, this part is not fun, I also feel sad when conference ends and I have to say good bye to the kids who live far away and whom I might never see again).

After Conference, when I stopped to thank God for everything, He reminded me that even though I feel good when He uses me to change children’s lives, He is the one who makes it happen, and it is all for His glory. He also reminded me of the great honour and privilege that it is to be trusted as a leader to the little ones whom God loves. And He reminded me of the impact my life has in these kids.

While being a children’s leader with influence is amazing and is a blessing, it is also a great (and I cannot stress this enough) responsibility, because the kids watch every step I take, and my decisions can have a positive or negative impact in their lives. As it is written:

“But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck.” – Mark 9:42 (NLT)

Now, I definitely don’t want to be thrown into the sea, or, even worse, make the kids I lead to fall into sin, or stumble. Of course, that doesn’t mean I have to be paranoid about everything I do, but I must live a life that honours God and leads people to God. And it is not supposed to be very hard, because the Holy Spirit lives in me, and all I have to do is listen to Him and do what He tells me.

And this is one of the great things about God: when He reminds you of something, He already has all the tools you will need ready to go! What an amazing God!

Cadu

PS: By the way, you should watch the video Dave, FMD and I made during conference (this was Dave’s great idea):

Instead of sleeping I decided to sing a song to God. Since I have an awesome new microphone I decided to record it and now I am sharing it with you. I didn’t sing to put it here, but to worship God. Therefore it might be long and possibly boring (not to me or to God) and it is mostly in Portuguese (with some parts in English), but feel free to listen to it or download. It was not edited and it has clear errors, but I don’t really care…

My free translation of the words is as follows:

Oh I love you God

I love you God
God of my Salvation
Neither on Earth or in Heaven
is there a King greater than mine.

I will look in your eyes
I will jump on your arms
Like a child spin me around
This is the moment I am longing for
This is the moment I want more
The moment I will meet with You

Download audio file (te_amo_oh_Deus.mp3)
Download: flac ogg mp3

Enjoy,
Cadu

It is the 3rd of May, and I missed the opportunity of posting something yesterday (the only day of the month which is prime and even). Nevertheless, today is also a prime number day, and I shall post something before the spiders decide to move from my house to my blog and fill this place with spider webs…

First I would like to apologise for the lack of posts. And now I would like to inform you all that I moved! I really don’t like moving houses, but hey, now I live in Coogee, 3 blocks from the beach, and the photo above I took this morning while reading my Bible and having breakfast (sitting on the sand, at the beach). Isn’t it awesome?

The not-so-awesome part of all the moving thing is that I have so many things yet to be organised and cleaned. I am also trying to stop doing nothing while I should actually be studying maths, otherwise I will fail again this semester, and this is not something I desire. In addition, I am working on an iPhone (and Android, of course) app that will soon (at some point between today and next decade) be announced and fill you all with wonder and excitement. But that is all I can say about the app for now.

This means that if I fail to post on prime number days, please don’t eat me alive for at least two reasons: 1) I think I don’t taste good; 2) I have good reasons for it… 3) if you find a third one, write it on the comments!

But to not post something useless, I will teach you two important lessons, one regarding maths, and another one regarding life. Let’s start with the most important one (or not):

Did you know that any integer greater than 1 can be written as a factorization of prime numbers? Not only this, each number can be written as a unique product of prime numbers (not considering the order of the factors)! For example, 25 = 5 x 5; 192 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 3; and 100 = 2 x 2 x 5 x 5. Isn’t it awesome? This is called the Unique-Prime-Factorization Theorem, and it is the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. See, now you know…

The second (and probably more relevant lesson): If you ever have a problem with someone, please choose one of two options (or both): 1) talk to a good friend about it just to get the problem out of your mind and then pray for the person and forgive him/her; 2) or if it is something you should do something about, talk directly to the person you have a problem with (after praying and/or talking to a good friend might help), and solve the problem. Do NOT talk to other people about it in an useless attempt of fixing the problem. This is not only idiotic and foolish (ie. totally unwise), but it will make everything worse. I am not very old, but I can tell you this advice is true and good by (lots of) experience (and the Bible says so; it must be true).

That is it for today… I love random posts!
Cadu

5/5/09 – Redfern

Isaiah 40

“All people are like grass, and all human faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the LORD blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of MY GOD endures forever.”
- Isaiah 40:6b-8

“WHO can fathom the Spirit of the LORD (YHWH),
or instruct the LORD as his counselor?
WHOM did the LORD consult to enlightem him,
and who taught him the right way?
WHO was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?”
- Isaiah 40:25

“‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the HOLY ONE.”
- Isaiah 40:25

“He, the LORD, gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
[...] those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary;
they will walk and not be faint.”
- Isaiah 40:29,31

WHO can compare himself to God?
Nothing in the universe is comparable to God.
Idols are made of wood, metal, plastic…
they have eyes but don’t see,
they have ears but don’t hear,
they have hands but can’t move.
Not even flies are scared of them;
Flies come and sh*t on their faces,
but the idols can’t even clean themselves.
They are useless like a fly’s sh*t.
But GOD, THE LORD OF HOSTS, created the flies.
And with His word He can kill them.
The LORD is Almighty, Holy and Glorious.
His word will remain forever.
His enemies fear Him,
they run away like a scared rabbit.
Before the LORD they can’t do anything other than surrender,
for the LORD of HOSTS is powerful.
People are like ants to Him,
He can kill them with His pinky finger.
One little breath and they fly away like sand in face of a hurricane.
Compared to the LORD, they are NOTHING.
He is GOD. He is what He is.
He is because He is.
He is Almighty God.
He is the alpha and the omega;
Everlasting, Beginning and End.
Creator of the Universe, King of Kings,
Lord of Lords, Perfect and Eternal.
He is the Righteous Judge,
the LORD of HOSTS,
the ONE that never lies and keeps all his promises.
He is also MY GOD.
He came to Earth, became an ant like me,
layed down His life for me and died on the cross.
His death was not an accident, He died for me.
That cross was mine, the punishment for my sin, but He took it!
He died and rose again.
He is victorious over death!
And all His power is now mine, through His Son Jesus Christ!
Even though He is so HUGE and powerful, He calls me “son”.
And I call Him “Daddy”.
And if anyone wants to harm me, I can call my Dad.
He is scared of no one.
I am victorious, because of Him.
And because of Him, I fear nothing.
Daddy, all I am is yours,
every moment of my life is an offering to YOU.
Please take it and use me as it pleases you.
You are mine, and I am yours.
And I love you…
even when I don’t understand anything.
Even when it looks like the world is falling apart, I trust in you completely.
I just love you forever.

Amen.

Cadu

A number of weeks ago there was a leadership event for all the volunteers at our Church, and I served in the kids program. It was a Thursday evening, and not many kids came to the program. I ended up hanging out with a kid I didn’t know before… he likes soccer and I am from Brazil, we played for a while, talked for a bit and at some point of the program we prayed for each other. That was basically it. I serve at Voltage (for kids on Year 5 and 6 at school), and he is on Year 4, and that is the reason why I didn’t know him before.

A few weeks later I saw him at Church with his family and stopped to say hi. It turned out his mum already knew me as “the soccer player”, and she said that he talked about me for ages since that evening when we met.

I have to say I was very surprised that his mum heard about me, and that he talked about me for a while, since we hung out for only one evening, a couple of hours… it made me think about the impact we can have in a child’s life if we stop for just some moments and show interest in their lives.

If you stop to do the maths, if a child comes to church every week, he or she will spend about 110 hours at church in a whole year. That is 1.25% of the year, and it is almost 7 times less than the time this child will spend eating (about 8.5% of the year) and almost the same time this child will spend in the toilet (about 1.5% of the year)…

One of the things that God is teaching me this year is the art of being available so He can use me to make a difference in a child’s life. When I am serving in the kids program, if there is at least one child in the room, there I am, talking to them. The last thing you will see me doing during the kids program is hanging out with other leaders or doing something by myself.

We don’t have much time, but we can make the most out of the time we have. If we let God use us during those couple of hours that we have every weekend, we can be powerful instruments in His hands to make a huge difference in the lives of the children that come to our kids program. It is a simple choice that can change their lives forever!

Cadu

Last week I was busy studying for three maths final exams that I had at uni. Because the maths courses I took were really hard, I knew I had to study for them during the semester and not only a few days before the exam, but I didn’t… The result? I failed one of the tests. I know, it is terrible… and I could try to find many excuses to justify my failure, but I won’t… I decided I want to finally learn something from it.

The interesthing thing about it is that I knew I had to prepare earlier. Not only because they were hard, but also because the last time I studied maths was about 4 years ago in Brazil. In fact, I couldn’t understand the first 2 weeks of lectures, and I only started to understand some of the stuff they were teaching in the middle of the semester… I knew 3 final exams were coming, and that they would be really hard, but for some reason I still didn’t preapare for them very well…

Well, it is obvious that we need to prepare for the things that we know are coming, and there is no need for me to write about it. But what about the things that we don’t really know about our future? Can we prepared for them? Or, should prepare for them?

Hebrews 11:1 says “NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].” (AMP)

Many times we want things to happen in our lives or ministries, we pray for them, we say we believe they will happen… but if we really have faith, if we are really convicted of their reality (even though they are not here yet), shouldn’t we get ready for them?

For example, if I want my ministry to grow, shouldn’t I get ready for it to happen? Or if I want to be a missionary in China, am I learning about their culture and language? The big question here is: if God gives me what I am asking for right now, am I ready for it? If the answer is no, then it is time to get prepared!

I was not born in a Christian family. In fact, I don’t know anyone from my extended family that is a Christian… and today, the only ones that follow Jesus are me, my mum and my sister. How did everything turn around?

Since I was 6 months old I had a baby sitter, Fátima. She was (and is) a Christian… a very strong Christian! She was a bit shy and didn’t really talked about Jesus with my mum or dad, but there was one thing she did: she prayed for us! She prayed for us in her bedroom, in her church, and while taking me and my sister for a walk… and she gave birth to me, my mum and my sister. We were born again! Because she prayed for us, today our lives are changed, and not only our lives, but the lives of everyone else me, my sister or my mum impacted and will still impact one day. Only God can count how many people this woman, my spiritual mother, blessed because of a simple and powerful thing: prayer.

How simple is that… to bring our children (real or spiritual) before God… to stand in the gap for them when maybe no one else will… to profecy blessing over their lives! Sometimes we strive to make things happen in our kids’ lives, strive to change things by our own strength, strive to make them sit down and pay attention to whatever we are saying, and forget about praying for them… but there is nothing more powerful than just shutting up, calming down, and bringing their lives before God.

I had (and still have) problems remembering kids names… Sometimes I know a child for months, they all know my name, but I don’t know their names… it is terrible, yes. But since Hillsong Conference this year I decided to change: I started to write down the names of the kids I know, and the names of the kids I meet every weekend. After the service, I go through the list and check who was there and who wasn’t, how much time I spent with each kid and so on. Before the service I have a look and think about who I expect to be there. But the most powerful thing is what happens to this list during my week… sometimes when I am praying, I just go through the list, and pray for each child in that list… I think about them, remember the good and not so good things that are happening in their lives, and I just bring all that before God, and I know that if I care, God cares much much more! They are His children, and He actually wants them to be blessed, succeed, be empowered, be happy and transformed by Him.

As Fátima’s prayers changed my life, I know that my prayers are changing the lives of the kids I pray for. Most of the time, I have no idea what is happening because of my prayers, but I KNOW that God is moving, turning situations around and changing their lives forever! Only God can do this kind of stuff! I can’t change their lives… I can’t be with them while they are crying at night because of whatever problem they might have. But I can pray! And God will do everything to be with them, love them and impact their lives forever!

How about you? How often do you pray for your children?

WARNING! This post may contain stories that normal people would classify as unpleasant. You’ve been warned!

This past week I was forced to remember an interesting event that happened to me in one of the triathlons I did in Brazil. If you didn’t know yet, I trained triathlon for 2 years while in Brazil. I stopped when I came to Australia, but still have plans to restart training. Anyway, one of the competitions I did was a long distance triathlon, which included 1800m swimming, 66km cycling and then 18km running (Here is a photo of me finishing it). For some reason the start was just after lunch, which is unusual for a tritahlon. But that was not all. Everything was fine until the running…

As soon as I started running, I felt sick, wanting to vomit… but at the same time, I did NOT want to vomit, because it feels so bad to do it (you have to agree with me). Then I kept running, and running, and running… My legs were already tired after all the cycling, and I still had a lot of running to do. I tried to drink some water, but it didn’t help. My mind couldn’t work anymore, all I could do is keep running. I wanted to FINISH it! And more importantly, finish in front of my friend, who was 2 minutes behind me. But I was getting sick of being sick, and asked a friend for advice on how to get better. He said what I didn’t want to hear: “stop and vomit!”

After some fight with myself, I did. I stopped to vomit, but it didn’t work… nothing came out… and then I kept running. But not for long. After running for a little while, I needed to pee, but I didn’t want to stop… I was almost finishing. Then I had a great idea: “I can stop, open my legs and pee”. Since I was wearing skinners, I thought the pee would go straight on the ground. So I stopped and peed… but… for some reason the pee ended up inside my left shoe, and I couldn’t do anything other than laugh! When I started running again, the noise my left shoe made every step was very cool! I will never forget it…

Maybe you are wondering why am I telling you this terrible (and funny) story… well… the fact is our Christian life is like a long distance triathlon. In fact, the Bible compares it to a race many times (2 Timothy 4:7, Hebrews 12:1, 1 Corinthians 9:24, …). And it is true! It is long, and it is hard. We find difficulties along the way, sometimes we are tired and want to give up… sometimes things don’t go well and all we want is stop and rest. But in a race, if you stop, you lose…

Paul said: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-25, TNIV)

God gave us a race to run… He called us and every day He gives us oportunities to bless and impact other people’s lives! And our prize is not a medal or money… Our prize is to bring people into the Kingdom of God, and one day, to Heaven! Our prize will last FOREVER!

The big question is are we running our race in such a way as to get the prize? I’ve known stories of professional triathletes that defecate while riding so they don’t have to stop… it sounds terrible, but many of them won their prizes! And they did all this crazy stuff for a prize that will NOT last!

Our race is much more noble than a triathlon… and sometimes we don’t want to make a sacrifice and run it in such a way as to get the prize. Paul said in Hebrews 12:4 (still talking about the race): “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”. Are we resisting to the point of shedding our blood? To the point of having to pee in our shoes? To the point of having to defecate while riding? No, it doesn’t sound pleasant… but sometimes it is the only way to win the race.

Maybe things are not going well in your life, in your ministy, in your race… maybe you feel like sitting down and waiting until the pain goes away… maybe all you want to do right now is to give up… well… don’t give up! There are good news: God is running this race with us! He is there to help! And with Him, we will all win the race!

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18)

“For me to live is Christ [His life in me], and to die is gain [the gain of the glory of eternity].” – Philippians 1:21 (AMP)

I love the whole book of Philippians, specially the verses 20-26 of chapter 1. In these verses Paul is talking about a hard and important decision he can make: either to die and be with Christ, or to be alive.

When I was younger I was fascinated by the idea of dying for Christ. I used to say that I am going to die anyway so why not die as a martyr, for the cause of God’s Kingdom? I even used to think “maybe I will be a missionary in the Middle East and one day they will bury me alive” and crazy things like that. But lately God has been showing me another idea about life and death.

Imagine someone you really love, perhaps your child or a brother or sister… I think most of us would die to save this person. Maybe jump in front of a bus to save him or her or do some other fantastic act from a Hollywood movie.  It doesn’t even sound too hard or too painful… it will happen in one second, no pain, and we will be forever with God. Now imagine this loved person did something really bad and deserves to go to jail for the rest of his or her life. Would you go to jail in this person’s place? Would you give up your whole life to give this person the oportunity to live freely? It is easier to die for a cause than to live for it.

When Paul wrote this letter he was living a life in which he could actually choose if he wanted to die or not. He was often in prison or persecuted for preaching the Gospel, and a simple “mistake” could define his death sentence. His choices were clear: “But I am hard pressed between the two. My yearning desire is to depart (to be free of this world, to set forth) and be with Christ, for that is far, far better; But to remain in my body is more needful and essential for your sake.” (v. 23-24)

While our situation in Australia and in many other free countries is different in regards to dying or not, we can choose if our life is Christ or not. Paul knew that the best choice was to leave this horrible world and be with God forever in His Glory, but he also knew that it was necessary for his disciples and for the Kingdom of God that he remained alive. To him being alive meant only one thing: “fruitful service” (v. 22). To him it meant persecution and prison. But he knew that he was living his life not for his own sake, but for the sake of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know about you, but while there are a few cool things in this world, I HATE this world. It is full of sin, full of rubbish, full of stupid things. I would rather be with Jesus right now. And, in fact, if my heart stops now, I will be with Him, and it will be the happiest day of my life (and this day will never EVER end!). But I am not dead, I am alive, and there is only one reason why God didn’t take me with Him as soon as I received Jesus as my Lord and Saviour (considering that living with Him eternally is much better than living here). And the reason is not for me to enjoy my life (I think there is more to enjoy with Him), learn something, or suffer, or anything like that. No no no! The reason is you!

Yes! The reason is you! And by you I mean you and all the other people that God gives me the oportunity to bless. My family. The people that study or work with me. My brothers and sisters in Christ. And the children I have the oportunity to love and bless every weekend at Church.

I am not saying I hate my life. No, of course not! I love my life and I thank God for being alive. I thank God for my job, for the oportunity to be studying at UNSW, for my friends and family… I thank God for many things. But I do NOT live to work and be a succesful engineer or the first in my class. I do NOT live to have a great house, lots of money and many cars. Job, house, car, money and study are NOT reasons for me to be alive. They are all tools that God gives me so I can use them to live for the only reason that matters.

For this reason I exist: to know God and to make Him known. To be His hands, His feet, His heart, His eyes, His LOVE and His presence on Earth! To give everything I can for His Kingdom and for the people He loves. For this reason I say: While I am alive, I will give my everything for the sake of one child.

Cadu

“The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” – 2 Chronicles 16:9

I love Hillsong Kids, specially VOLTAGE. I love to be there, just be there, talk to the kids, listen to them, watch them, see God moving in their midst. What I love most is when in the middle of all the kids, I see the ones that have their hearts fully commited to God, the ones that have HUGE God-given dreams, the ones that are in the middle of a horrible world but don’t want to be part of it but change it. And when I see someone like that, I do EVERYTHING I can to bless this one kid, because I know it will be worth.

This is me, a man. An imperfect, limited man. And yet, I can be happy for days because I saw just one kid that has fully commited his/her life to God. I know I already said that, but… I am just a man. Now GOD, He is GOD. He is the Creator of the Universe. And yet, His eyes range throughout the whole Earth… 6bi+ of people, and they STOP when they find someone who has his/her heart fully commited to Him.

In the middle of all this foolish and blind people that hate God, mock Him, think everything is funny and fun, there is a child, a tiny little child, insignificant and useless to the eyes of most men. But the eyes of God STOP to stare at this little child. And when God sees a child whose heart is fully commited to Him, he doesn’t just get happy as I get. He also does EVERYTHING to bless this tiny “insignificant” person. But don’t forget, He is GOD, He CAN do EVERYTHING.

For this reason, when I look at the children, I don’t only see them, with their lives, dreams, hearts commited to God. I also see God staring at them, super-hyper-over-excited, just waiting for the right time to use them to shake this world, kick the devil’s butt, make a huge revolution of power and love to glorify His Holy name…

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” And my eyes do the same thing…