THE SPIRIT OF THE BRAVES

Empowering your successful destiny

By Salvador Montoya/Writer

To my beloved and sweet pearl

1

The cook teacher. In our Venezuela the times are really toughful and painful. But I see this teacher of fifth grade cooking meals for her students. Yohana Ranuarez, a beautiful wife, mother of two girls, the cook teacher, is who finishes her chemestry class at a private school around 1p.m. and then she took a bus to teach at a public school in Pozuelo, Pto La Cruz. Why is she cooking for her students? Because the economic crisis in the country has affected the budget of the poor families. And some of the students’ parents they don’t have money and they don’t have food to cook for their children. So they send the kids to the school with empty stomachs. But Yohana, the cook teacher, in the middle of this labyrinth, found an answer for that challenge: she began to ask people for food donations. It doesn’t matter the quantity. Some offer sugar, rice, potato, meat. “It’s really bad and frustating to see little kids with hunger in my classroom. So my first teaching is eating and then we move on into science, math or a reading”, the cook teacher says to me. Yohana is an example of a prophetic code: abundance mindset generates quality of life. She has the spirit of the braves. She is empowering the succesful destiny of her students with answers, with attiude, with creativity, with action.

2

We are prosperity trees. Once the powerful playwright and thinker William Shakespeare wrote: “To take arms against a see of troubles”. We are facing brutal problems in our daily life. We are facing a lost and hurted generation. We are facing depression, discourage, sickness, racism, corruption, vices. But we are called to prosper. We are designed by God to be a prosper humanity. So, in order to overcome a see of troubles we need the spirit of the braves. We need the arms of the braves ones. In Psalm 1, the author declares, in verse 3, the power of a prosperity tree, the arms of the braves. The psalmist says: “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers”. First revelation: we are trees. Our spirit functions like a tree. We have a prosperity nature. Wether you have money or not. We are prosperity trees. Maybe you come from a country with violence, with poverty and misery. But you can be a prosperity tree. Maybe you come from a family with a toxic atmosphere but you can be a prosperity tree. The poet Eugenio Montejo wrote: “They talk too little, the trees, it is known. They spend the whole life meditating and moving its branches”. Montejo is revealing the power of a tree: you have a mindset to move your life toward prosperity. In other words, your mentality reveals what kind of tree you are.

3

The trees live standing up. There is a famous play from an argentin writer Alejandro Casona called Los árboles mueren de pie (Trees die standing up). But a person that has a brave spirit lives as a standing up tree. In the Bible we find differents qualities of trees, levels of spirituality. Jude said that he find: “autum trees, without fruit and unprooted, twice dead” (Jude 1.12). Those are dead trees. Jesus of Nazareth talks about “a bad tree bears a bad fruit” (Matthew 7.17). Those are problematic trees, trees with envy, with emotionals disorders, with vices and frustrations. And also our Savior Jesus he commands us to observe this wisdom: “Look at the fig tree and all trees” (Luke 21.29). Jesus of Nazareth knew the hidden wisdom of the trees: a tree is a treasure. In fact we find in the Bible a parable about a kingdom of trees (Judges 9.8-20). And it show us that every tree has a potential and a wealth. Don’t compare yourself with anyone: your own tree has the prosperity that you need. The Bible explain to us the quality of four trees as prophetic codes. In Psalm 92.12 the singer says: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon”. Two trees: palm and cedar tree. In John 15.11, Jesus of Nazareth says: “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener”. Third tree: vine tree. In Revelation 22.2 we read: “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations”. Fourth tree: the tree of life. Those are powelful trees, the prophetic trees.

4

Palm tree reveals that you can prosper even in the worse times of your life. Be stand. Cedar tree reveals that yourself must be used to empower others lives. Be stand. Vine tree reveals that you are conected with Christ and you will bear a lot of fruit. Be stand. The tree of life reveals that the leaves of your life can heal the nations and the cultures. Be stand. Bill Emmott, a futurist, a wise economist and writer has created the Wake Up Index 2050. This index configures how the countries are facing the future and what are the qualities and skills that we need to develop to have a better position to prosper. Emmott indicates that we need five factors: demography, knowledge, innovation, openness and resilience. In Emmott’s words: “Which countries are in the best shape to deal with the big forces we all know will pummel us over the next decades, and what should other countries do to emulate them?”. It is not strange that the epigraph of the index is a thought of Miguel de Cervantes: “Forewarned, forearmed: to be prepared is half the victory”. Emmott is talking that the world needs wisdom trees.

Because Psalm 1.3 points how to be a prosperity tree: be planted by stream of water (formation-mentality), yield fruit in season (timing/productivity), don’t kill your leaf (innovation/dinamism) and prosper in everething you do (multiplication/investment). You are living like a standing up tree. As Maya Angelou sang in her great poem: “You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise… You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise… Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise”. Yes, we rise like Yohana with her sutudents. We rise like a prosperity tree. Yes we rise with the spirit of the braves ones. We rise.