BROTHELS TO BROTHERHOOD

Article from The evangelistic newspaper of the modern Jesus Army 2006
Visit modern Jesus Army

Fabio’s stepdad tried to convince him that taking smutty porn pics to advertise a brothel was “just another job”. But it sucked Fabio into addiction.

Selling sexy undies to Spanish prostitutes was just the beginning of Fabio da Cunha’s stepdad’s business plan. Next he had the idea of setting up a porn website to advertise their brothel with pictures of the working girls.

Fabio, 23 at the time, now 26, was the “photographer” he took along to the brothel with him. That way they’d get twice the cash as Fabio claimed his own separate “expenses”.

Sex sells. The money rolled in – but Fabio found himself becoming obsessed.

“I was addicted to porn,” he says. “I couldn’t get off it.” Desperation set in as he realised he was losing control.

“I got totally depressed, crying a lot,” recalls Fabio. “I felt stuck in the website. Eventually I said I wasn’t going to take any more photos. But I still designed the website, sometimes working on it all night. I felt trapped even though I knew it was not my stuff.”

Fabio’s childhood was a far cry from the seedy Spanish sex underworld he’d got tangled in. He grew up in Brazil living with his mum and grandparents. His grandmother was a godly Roman Catholic. (“I remember her collecting clothes for the poor at the age of 76”).

Fabio found her religion “boring”. But when an aunt took him to another church to hear a famous preacher, Fabio had a powerful experience of God, falling to the floor when the preacher prayed for him.

After that he travelled for an hour and a half to get to church each week. But Fabio found that, after he moved to Spain a few years later, some so-called Christians he knew looked down on him because he was poor. He began to get disillusioned and his faith unravelled. Then his stepdad suggested the website job and Fabio’s slide into chaos began.

Desperate for a new start, Fabio moved to the UK in 2004. The night before he left Spain he prayed to God, “I just want got a job in a chicken factory and moved into a company house with nine other men and lots of drugs and alcohol. Not exactly the new start he’d been hoping for.

“I was in a mess” Fabio admits. But then something happened that would change everything. “One of the guys in the house went to London and came back with a load of papers and dumped them in the lounge. One of them was a Jesus Army Streetpaper. On the cover it said ‘TEXT US’ – so I did.”

A few days and several texts later, Fabio met up with his new Christian friends.

“They accepted me as a brother,” says Fabio, “even though I was just a poor bloke working in a chicken factory! Over the next few months I found brotherhood really freeing. My faith came alive again.

“One time, in a Jesus Army meeting, I suddenly started to cry,” remembers Fabio. “Some brothers prayed for me and I felt freed from all the darkness from the porn and other things.

“Jesus has renewed me,” says Fabio, “and brotherhood has freed me. I just want to say to everyone who struggles with porn, like I did, that there is a way out. You’re trying to fill the gaps inside you – but only God’s love and Jesus brotherhood can truly fill that gap.”

dW 08.27.07

scripture

 

Ephesians 6:11 & 12 (10-18)

Put on God's whole armor, that you may be able successfully to stand up against the strategies and the deceits of the devil. For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood, but against the despotisms, against the powers, against [the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly sphere.

 

quote

 

I want you to realize that we are commanded to put on the whole armor of God for protection before we enter into warfare on our knees in prayer. For we place ourselves on the frontline of the battle between God and Satan the moment we get on our knees. We must enter into warfare, beloved. We dare not sit back any longer. As the church of Jesus Christ, in hopelessness and unbelief and allow the devil to destroy this land. We have weapons. And the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. There are no strongholds that the Devil has that we cannot pull done through prayer. – Sermon, unknown speaker

 

dW - My Jesus

daily Word

Has anyone else heard this song? Read these lyrics. Tell me what you think.

-Kyle

My Jesus

Todd Agnew - My Jesus
From the album Reflection Of Something

Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ,
Why do you look so much like the world?

Chorus:
Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, do we pray to be blessed with the
Wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Chorus:

And who is this that you follow
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side
Or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes, curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part
Sometimes I doubt we’d recognize Him

Chorus:

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reached for the hurting and despises the proud
I think He’d prefer Beal St. to the stained glass crowd
But I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus
Can I be like You
I want to be like my Jesus

-----

QUESTIONS:
Do you speak, look, and act like Christ or like the world?
Do you spend more time speaking with the clean shaven man in line at the grocery store or do you take time to speak with the dirty matted haired woman on the sidewalk?
Are you poor in spirit (humble) or do you ask for and seek more earthly wealth?
Do you deny the image of God in the homeless, the poor, the haughty?
Do you seek to please men or God?
Do you read the Bible for yourselves or do you rely on what you once heard in Sunday school or from your grandmother and what the preacher said on Sunday?

"Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church, the blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet" – Is He allowed in your church? Is He allowed in your home? Is He allowed in your life?

May this song by Todd Agnew shake us all up and awaken us from our slumber in this dying world.

dW 08.24.07

scripture

 

Jude 17-21

But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, "In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires." These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts (their sin nature) and do not have the Spirit. But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

 

quote

 

Calvary shows how far men will go in sin, and how far God will go for man's salvation.

H. C. Trumbull

dW 08.23.07

scripture

 

Proverbs 2:7-8   

He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.  

 

quote

 

If you were not strangers here the dogs of the world would not bark at you. 

Samuel Rutherford

dW 08.22.07

scripture

 

Exodus 3:4-5
When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

 

quote

 

(Paraphrase) Did God ask Moses to remove his shoes because the ground had all the sudden become holy or was it that it was holy the whole time and Moses had not known? Are we walking past burning bushes on our left and on our right everyday?

- Rob Bell, dvd 014 Breath, Nooma Series

 

thought

 

Am I moving so fast that I miss chances to experience God? Am I so focused on what I feel, think, believe is important that I miss out on what God feels, thinks, believes is important? What would happen if I slowed down so that I could see things in real time instead of this blur that I tend to think is life?

dW 08.20.07

scripture

 

Romans 12:9

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

 

quote

 

Conversion is but the first step in the divine life.  As long as we live we should more and more be turning from all that is evil and to all that is good. 

Tryon Edwards

 

prayer request

 

Mike Harris, a coworker friend of mine from Processes Unlimited Bakersfield suffered a stroke Sunday night the 12 of August. He has been moved from the hospital to a nursing home to continue recovering. He has suffered some paralysis to his right side, and will begin physical therapy as soon as he is able.

dW 08.17.07

scripture

 

Galatians 1:10

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

 

quote

 

Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you'd rather not go.
Henri Nouwen

dW 08.13.07

scripture

 

Galatians 2:16

Know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

 

quote

 

Roman Catholic theology believes this, that God justifies only the righteous. In other words, you’re never going to be right with God until you have achieved righteousness. My Bible says, God justifies sinners. And that is the difference. Roman Catholic theology says that you will get justified when you get righteous. The Bible says you’ll get justified when you fall on your face and acknowledge you’re a sinner. And justification is not a process that finally culminates in purgatory but its an act that occurs in a moment when God declares you righteous and forgiven. That is a huge difference. One saves the other damns because it is a system of works.

- What is the gospel? John Macarthur

My Jesus

Todd Agnew - My Jesus
From the album Reflection Of Something

Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ,
Why do you look so much like the world?

Chorus:
Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, do we pray to be blessed with the
Wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Chorus:

And who is this that you follow
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side
Or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes, curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part
Sometimes I doubt we’d recognize Him

Chorus:

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reached for the hurting and despises the proud
I think He’d prefer Beal St. to the stained glass crowd
But I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus
Can I be like You
I want to be like my Jesus


QUESTIONS:
Do you speak, look, and act like Christ or like the world?
Do you spend more time speaking with the clean shaven man in line at the grocery store or do you take time to speak with the dirty matted haired woman on the sidewalk?
Are you poor in spirit (humble) or do you ask for and seek more earthly wealth?
Do you deny the image of God in the homeless, the poor, the haughty?
Do you seek to please men or God?
Do you read the Bible for yourselves or do you rely on what you once heard in Sunday school or from your grandmother and what the preacher said on Sunday?

"Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church, the blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet" - Would He be allowed in your home? Would He be allowed into your life?

May this song by Todd Agnew shake us all up and awaken us from our slumber in this dying world.