Avante Alegria!

Name: Leandro C. Maia

Age: 21 (never-married single)

Location: Campo Grande – MS – Brazil

About me:

I have been the founder and the current writer of  Onward Joy! since July, 2007, when I decided to sistematically write the amazing things God had been showing me daily, which made me to be in a joyful spirit condition about what God has prepared  to those who love Him. So I thought I shouldn’t remain those things just with me. My goal with this website is to encourage youngs, men and women with their relationship with God, through of what happens in my own life. The website wasn’t intended to be a blog alone, but it would have several paralel projects to serve the Body of Messiah, firstly here in Brazil and then abroad.

My life is defined in two parts. The first one was when I had no relationship with God, a tough life, whith no hope and completely sad, and the second one was when I began, in 2005, my intimate and personal relationship with Him through His Son, Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ), who dead at the cross to forgive me from all the violations I made against God. Since then, I have given my life to Yeshua completely, because He Himself gave His to me with no restriction, in the same way I have given all I am to Him in covenant. Today I am in an amazing journey to discovery  the best of Yeshua to my life, which causes joy in my spirit.

I would like to clarify that each time I talk about Yeshua on this website, I am referring to Jesus, the Son of God. I personally prefer to refer Him as Yeshua HaMashiach for two simple reasons. The first one is that Jesus Christ was a Jew. He dressed as a Jew, He thought as a Jew and He even studied the Torah as a Jew . And when He was born here on the earth, the Scriptures say that an angel of the LORD himself  told  Joseph what it should be the baby’s name, and the name should be Yeshua (Matthew 1:20). The name of Jesus has no meaning in our Western language, but Yeshua in Hebrew means “The Eternal (Jehovah) saves”. When Jesus was a little boy, I can imagine His mother telling Him: “‘I have some soap to make here, ‘The Eternal (Jehovah) saves’! Come here to help your mother, please.” or “You can’t do that, ‘The Eternal (Jehovah) saves’! You can fall down into the floor. That can hurt you!”. His name in Hebrew wasn’t a meaningless set of syllables as our Western names are today, but that was the own identity of the person described in a sentence. The second reason for me to  say Yeshua instead of Jesus is to respect the Jews and their culture, which the name of Jesus originally came from. So, every time you see me saying Yeshua, I am referring to the One Son of God, the Messiah, who died at the cross to forgive all sin and to save the humankind.

I am a Yeshua’s follower (a Christian) currently serving at a baptist church in my city. I have a huge passion for the LORD’s stuffs, and I spend much time studying His Word. I also read a lot of books and also am very restrictive concerning them, filtering good and bad things in each one of them, because nowadays there are really few true word masters in the Body of Christ, though many call themselves as one.  Though I talk about many interesting things here on the blog, I don’t share everything I have been learning. I have learning and experiencing so marvelous things! But, so many times, I feel the Holy Spirit clearly telling me for me not to share here on the blog. If I had to identify myself to any biblical character, I would say that I am like David some months before  he faced the giant Goliath. David, at that time was a teenager, a very young guy and considered the lowest among his brothers by his own father. What anyone knew was that he killed lions and bears  (perharps in a regular basis weekly or monthly) which tried to attack his sheep on the shepherd fields, in the name of the LORD of Israel.  (1 Samuel 17:34-36). Those life experiences David had on the shepherd fields caused so much confidence inside his heart that he was able to face Goliath with so much naturalism and with so much confidence of the certain victory. Nobody had notion of the amazing things David had experienced with the LORD on the shepherd fields when he was young and anonymous. That is the very context I find myself today, and that’s the reason I think the Holy Spirit don’t allow me to share all my experiences.

As a Yeshua’s follower, I believe that every Christian can behalf or as an ambassador or as an tourist, and depending on which one of  them you behalf   and see life’s circunstances , you will relate to God acordingly, under the Truth or not (unfortunatelly).

I believe in God’s Ancient Paths (Jeremiah 6:16), the timeless ways He made and walked therein before the foundation of the world, which caused life to  work perfectly in ton with our personal relationship with Him, but unfortunately, after the Fall of  mankind through sin, they have departed farther and farther from these days. In my personal opinion, the Ancient Paths God made to the family are the most departed from them through the centuries. I also believe that a huge part of those ancient paths are “hidden” and implemented in the Jewish laws and culture,  because, in the end, Israel was always God’s people.  I really love to study the Jewish culture and language, in hoping to discovery more about God’s ancient paths there.

I believe in purity of heart, mind and body, and that God has prepared a especific person to be my wife, my covenant partner. Ibelieve the dicorce is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and that remarriage is doubly an abomination. Marriage is holy unto the LORD. One day I will be holy unto a godly woman in marriage covenant, until  the death. That’s why marriage is the most important thing to me. I, as a man and a future husband, I am the responsible to lead mu future family as the home God-delegated priest. I will serve, fight and love my family as in the same way Christ has loved His church. As a man, that will be such a responsability! Wow! Because of that, I believe that God made the single life to be an exciting preparation to the destiny He prepared in marriage. Today, while I am still single, I can serve, fight and love my future wife by keeping myself pure and holy (dedicated, set-apart, separated) to her, event with no knowledge of who she is.  One way to do it is to partner with God and pray for my future wife and her family, especially for her father, the strong guy. That is one of the most powerful things I live today. While I prepare myself to be a Knight to my future wife, a gift to her, I don’t relate to women in careless ways . There is no reason for me to spend time together with a girl, and there is no reason to share things deep inside my heart to a girl, much less to have some kind of physical contact with her (which I keep it holy). Those things were supposed to be done in a environment of covenant, just with my future wife! God made life to work on that way!

I believe that we should dress ourselves properly acordingly to our genre. Men should dress like men, and women should dress like women (dressing feminine clothes), with widsom and modesty, for the glory of the LORD. Unfortunately, the vast majority of women I know dresses immodestly. Those ones are automatically disqualified to be a wife. The way how a woman (or a man) dresses is the exact reflection of what is deep inside the heart (modesty or immodesty). I believe that the Bible teach us how to dress properly.

Parents are agents to impart the blessing and the destiny from God to children. Children are God’s heritage. Therefore, rather than the way our culture approaches children as “a financial burden on the budget”, I will let the LORD to lead how many children I will have ( I bet I will have dozens of them! hehe). The husband is the   head and the strong one of home (Matthew 12:29, Mark 3:27, Luke 11:21-22 ), the warrior who fights face-to-face all the fury of the kingdom of darkness against his family, and protects it, and the husband is also the God’s channel of financial provision. The husband has his identity in God only, not in the wife and children.  I say that because I see so many husbands looking for his identity in his wife and children, looking for fulfillment and unconditional love in them, making him fail on his function as home’s protectors and priests. Yeshua HaMashiach is the only One who can provide me unconditional peace, comfort and love. With that in mind, I am free to richly release all the love I receive from Yeshua to my wife. That’s how marriage works! I also understand that I will be the home’s financial provider. I understand that God is my everlasting source of provision, and the place I work at is just a channel in which God’s provision arrives to me. That is the “Sparrow Faith”. God’s provision can be finantial or not, depending on which channel God chosose.

Sometimes some people bicker me saying I have too high standards, and that will be very very hard to find such a godly woman to marry with the same patterns,. Yes, they are completely right. I also thought I had placed my family and Christian-life standards too high so that I made things myself impossible to happen someday. But do you know what?! Who has been encouraging me too place my standards higher than today, and to place them up there in the skies,  is the LORD of Israel Himself.  Our relationship has been under covenant, so I am sure that He will do exactly what He has said, acordingly to His covenant Word. My standards are just the biblical ones, and is sad to know that I became “an exception” instead of being “the rule”.

Though all things I have already learned with the LORD  are amazing, I believe that they are just the beginning of the wonderful things  is going to happen inside the Body of Christ soon. I am so greatful for everything He has done in my life.

Additional posts:

http://www.avantealegria.com/blog/2008/09/uma-declaracao-de-pureza/
http://www.avantealegria.com/blog/2009/01/a-identidade-dos-homens-video/
http://www.avantealegria.com/blog/2009/01/eu-disse-adeus-ao-debito/
http://www.avantealegria.com/blog/2008/09/jornada-a-um-mundo-ainda-mais-incrivel-2/