When I understood the Gospel and its proposal for life for the whole person, I soon realized that the rest is just the rest.

It is only possible to receive the new from God by becoming a new vessel, that is, a new heart for a new man who receives the newness of life by and for Jesus. And this demands reconstruction, the Gospel of Jesus is frightening, because it is only possible to receive it and embrace it as good for the soul if what receives is demolished as a fallen and sinful nature and is remade as a cell by

cell, be it concepts, precepts, certainties, thoughts, beliefs, this house built on sand has to be undone, demolished and built on rock.

Being,theGospelputalone,withoutadditionsandableoftransformthemanputwhole.On this path that Jesus tells us to follow, we are in the process of life, learning from our own lives and being confronted daily between the antagonistic life in the world and the Gospel as the opposite of this.

If we ask ourselves, for example, why Jesus did not address issues that we consider essential to life and that we consider vital to a good life, such as marriage (he never called a couple to counsel them), issues such as being a man who “honors his pants” among so many other issues, we will be left without an immediate answer. Precisely because we do not address life as a whole for the entire Gospel. In other words, the Gospel does address all of these issues, how? Simple, the Gospel of Jesus addresses the basic essence of man, which is himself, a spiritual issue (not spirituality).

The essence of the Gospel is love. Enough. Love for God above all and for your neighbor as if he were you. Period. Nothing else is left.

Everything else is a mask implanted and agreed upon by the clergy, to try to give a characteristic, or a “modus operandi” to escape the confrontation that Jesus presents to me every day when we look in the mirror. To alleviate relevant moral and social issues such as religious standards.

However, we have never had so many courses, procedures and standards within churches such as face to face with God, married forever, manhood courses, business in the light of the Bible, and so on; for all tastes and shapes, all that was missing was a “course to save yourself”.

For me, sorry to the promoters, followers and participants, all of this is nothing more than masks for the Gospel, a waste of gospel time; Honestly, psychoanalysis or group therapy can do better than many of these courses, because it treats the cause and does not put a veneer on the being. Sometimes they seem like Alcoholics Anonymous (worthy of respect, because it has helped many) in secret, with spiritual clothing.

I have heard from many people about the wonder of face-to-face contact (although they say very little, because it is a secret to say what they do – the Gospel hides nothing, it shows its face). They come back from there saying that they cried a lot, they hug, kiss, speak in a sweet and serene voice, but for most it is a matter of time before they return to their old concepts, everything was nothing more than a coat of inappropriate paint, which comes off with the rains and confrontations of life.

At the end of it all, we only need courses to get married, to live in a marriage, to become a man, to organize our lives financially, to have parents forever, to be a “feminine” woman, among dozens of others because we lack LOVE.

These masks of the Gospel can teach us how to behave, mold us, transform us into little robotized lead dolls, but they can never teach us to LOVE.

Only the impact on the chest, which destroys and rebuilds it every day, is capable of making us LOVE.

Against love there is no law, no behavior, no meeting, no organization, no “forever” other than love. Only love makes us human, the rest is just a veneer.

And my greatest defense against this is that many people are getting used to “going” and “being” in a place with walls, chairs and set times. They go to churches, but that is not a Church. They are going to self-help circles, but they are not having an impact with God. They are being hammered with guilt and more guilt, but they are never face to face with a mirror that shows us how empty we are of Him. The best we can be does not support His dwelling in me, if it is not confronted by Him, with a unique and personal calling.

The result? The coming decades will prove just how many nominal evangelicals this country will have.

Church is people full of God and not buildings full of people.

Let us preach, live and be confronted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Fabiano Moreno