Galatians 2:20
Dr. Roberto Miranda
: The speaker reflects on his recent visit to Medellín, Colombia, and observes the great need for spiritual healing and support in Latin American cities. He emphasizes the need for churches and individuals to commit to serving as resources and refuge for those in need. He also discusses the importance of dying to self and living only for Jesus Christ, giving everything to Him so that He can use us to bear much fruit. The speaker encourages the congregation to make this commitment and to understand the true meaning of baptism, which symbolizes dying to self and rising to a new life in Christ.
The speaker talks about the importance of dying to oneself and giving everything to the Lord. He refers to the biblical story of Baruk, who was more concerned about his personal glory than the impending destruction of his city. The speaker emphasizes that in these difficult times, we need to focus on becoming sanctified instruments of God to help those in need. He also mentions the need for a larger temple for the congregation and asks for support in its construction. The speaker encourages the congregation to consecrate themselves to the Lord and to be willing to die for Christ.
The speaker talks about the importance of dying to oneself and giving everything to the Lord. He refers to the biblical story of Baruk, who was more concerned about his personal glory than the impending destruction of his city. The speaker emphasizes that in these difficult times, we need to focus on becoming sanctified instruments of God to help those in need. He also mentions the need for a larger temple for the congregation and asks for support in its construction. The speaker encourages the congregation to consecrate themselves to the Lord and to be willing to die for Christ.
Galatians 2:20 and 21. Verse 20 says: “Say with Christ.... I have been crucified together.... and I no longer live...... but Christ lives in me.... and that now I live..... in the flesh..... I live it.... in the faith of the Son of God,..... who loved me..... and gave himself for me.....” Let's leave it there.
I chose this verse as a starting point for my meditation this morning. As you know, I just told you that I came to visit the city of Medellín, in Colombia, and it was a great experience, a very beautiful experience, and I am very grateful to brother Fabio Alsate, his family there, the Alsate family, who sponsored me. and they blessed us with their support and much help that they gave us there. But one of the things that I experienced... Medellín is an essentially Latin American fifth city, it's like it's a kind of microcosm of the Latin American continent. There you can see all the beauties of our continent and also all its broken aspects. Medellín is a city that is as if you imagine a great mountain and a finger comes and squeezes the top of the mountain and puts it like this, imagine like a rubber mountain, right?, and that finger comes, squeezes the mountain in the middle and makes a cavity in the middle, and there is the city of Medellín, in the center, and then all the way around that mountain, great mountains around it, the city has grown and spread out on all the sides of those mountains. mountains, and that is a beautiful view of the city of Medellin. On those slopes of the mountain there is everything, there are very expensive and very luxurious buildings, and houses with a lot of money, with villas and large extensions of land for very rich people, and there are condominiums like here in the US and there are also huge extensions of poverty. Families that are piled up with each other and there is also extreme poverty as there is in all Latin American countries. Just like in Latin America, because in Latin America we know that everywhere, in Brazil I understand that it is like that, in the Dominican Republic where I come from, it is definitely like that. Many times you are on a very luxurious street and cross two blocks and you are in the midst of the most extreme poverty. And so it is in all Latin American countries. It is the same everywhere. If you go to Thailand, Indonesia, Asia, Africa it's this incredible mix of great wealth and great poverty.
Another thing that strikes me about Medellín is the great spiritual sensitivity that people have, people love God. And yet one also notices a great spiritual sterility. A lot of dead religion, a lot of dead religiosity, a lot of spiritual tokenism, a lot of people who actually know about God but don't know God, haven't had a personal experience with Jesus Christ. The taxi drivers pass by a church and make the sign, they cross themselves and they are all very respectful. And also Medellín, like all Latin American cities, is a city of great sensuality as well and of a lot of sin like any city, that does not distinguish it at all from any other city in Latin America. I believe that Medellín, as you know, has been the site of the famous Medellín cartel, but it could have been any other country in Latin America, I assure you. The devil chose that place for reasons that he knows well, but in that sense Medellín was nothing extraordinary, rather it was the place where an evil settled there for a while, but that sensuality that is seen there in that city exists in any other country in Latin America. Medellín needs God's healing. The culture of drugs and death has left in Antioquenos a sense of pain and mourning and many people are injured, they are like refugees who went through a war, and they talk about the war, which has just ended and there is a lot of pain, many people who lost their children and the city was under an evil power for many years. Thank God that has been broken to a certain extent, but do not think that the roots seem to have not yet been completely uprooted, the evil is there as if crouching, ready to rise again if given the opportunity and there is a great need. of spiritual healing.
And all of that made me think, brothers, of the great need that exists in our continent, including Brazil, that great expanse of land in Latin America, in our continent of Jesus Christ. I remembered a lot while I was there, seeing those masses of people. In the hotel where I was, it was very much in the center of the city and I discovered a little balcony in a corridor and there I took a chair, I took it with me, sometimes they thought that I was stealing the chair from the room, and I took it there to that corner and there I would look at the whole city. I believe that God gave me that place to observe both the mountains where the city was and the street where there were all kinds of vendors, selling absolutely everything there. And while I looked I saw a cell of what Latin America is with its souls so in need of the Gospel. And I remember the word of Jesus Christ that he said when he saw the crowds, he says that "he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd." When one talks with the pastors of Medellín and with the people, one realizes that although there are many churches, there are still many churches missing and there are churches that, like, as I say without sounding critical, but... that the churches don't they are doing everything that can be done. They are not giving the testimony that should be given. There are many dissatisfied people and many pastors who themselves understand that, there is still a long way to go, a church is needed that gives a credible testimony, a solid testimony of the Gospel so that those masses who need it can find where to go. Churches are needed, people are needed who can serve to support the need that exists in our countries, who are places of refuge, who are places where people can be shepherded, can be taught, can receive instruction from the word of God, can receive love, they can receive support, where there can be a solid community, where they feel that: Ok, I have come to a calm place and where I can rest and I can amend my life and move on with what God wants for me. And that is the point that I want to emphasize today.
I have given all this background as information, but also as a way of preparing what is the word that God wants for us. The essence of that meditation is brothers, well, who will go? who will go? God needs, God needs men and women to go to those cities and right here in Boston. I am going to use Medellín simply as an illustration, but who is going to go but us? Who is going to preach the Gospel but us? Who is going to be the resource for humanity if not us?
God is reminding us that there is a great need and that God needs workers, God needs churches that are resource churches, that are refuge churches, He needs men and women who are willing to die and give everything and give their lives, and consecrate their resources and live to the minimum in one sense and dedicate all the excess that remains to the Lord. The way we compute and calculate in life is: well, first I take care of myself, first I make sure that all my needs are generously taken care of, that I have everything I need to satisfy myself and to live in great comfort, and then I Let me stay, I will give it to the Lord. That's the way, isn't it? Most of it for me and the least for the Lord, and God wants us to turn that pyramid upside down, that we do the opposite. I'm going to live where I can, right? Because it is not that we are going to live in rags and with nothing, but I am going to minimize the needs of my life and I am going to give the Lord the maximum so that his work advances, so that his work continues. That is what I think God wants. And that is why when I read what the Apostle Paul says here. Paul says: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." Paul was a man who had seen the need and had said to the Lord: Lord, I am going. The Lord told Saul that he needed him and Saul gave up everything, he gave up his career, he gave up his Pharisaical knowledge, he gave up his prestige. He says that he had everything as rubbish, to conquer what Christ had for him. Paul said "what I now live, I live in the faith of the son of God." In other words, Paul was no longer the man wanting to earn his life, but Paul was the crucified who lived as an instrument of God for the salvation of humanity, lived as a means through which God could carry his message and channel his resources. so that humanity could know Jesus Christ.
God needs brothers, that we make a commitment that we come here as the living dead. That each one of us when he arrives at church, a ghost arrives. In other words, when each one of us receives Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, brothers we have to understand this, what we are doing is dying to rise again in a new identity and I think that is the problem with many Christians , that we do not understand what it means to truly give our lives to Jesus Christ, which means that we have to die to personal priorities and be reborn to a new life in Jesus Christ, a new identity, with new values, with new priorities. What most people want is to come, they simply pass, they give themselves an evangelical varnish but they continue the same with their same priorities, the priority is the world, me, their own benefit, money, work, what people think , but they do not know that what Christ calls us is to die and assume a new identity of a dead person, who now no longer lives for the world but lives only for Jesus Christ.
You know the Palestinians, suicide bombers often put them in a coffin and bury them alive for a while so they can visualize what it's like to die and to better prepare to explode into a bomb because that way they can kind of visualize and go through the process. And so it is that we have to do when we die in Christ we have to understand that what we are doing is already losing our merely human identity and that we are resurrecting to a new identity.
Look with me at Romans, for a little while and there we can see that a little bit more. Romans Chapter 6, where the Apostle Paul talks about this in baptism. He says: “... or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?, because we are buried together with him into death through baptism so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in new life." That is the meaning of baptism. In baptism when you enter the waters, you symbolically die. And when you come out of the waters you rise to a new life. That is the meaning of baptism. Baptism tells us: you have died, you have risen to a new life, to a new identity and now you have to live in that way, with new priorities. Christ is needing people so they have already taken that step and now they only live for what He needs them to do. Any type of Christian existence, brothers, that is not an existence completely dedicated to Jesus Christ and the needs of the Kingdom of God is not authentic. It is false, it is a false, fictitious Christianity. I hope that you and I can ask the Lord, Lord, kill me so that I can live only for you.
The Lord has been talking to me a lot these days about dying, finally dying, and giving what's left over to the Lord. That is something very personal that God has been speaking to me and I believe that he is speaking to the whole congregation, to die so that God can truly use us. Many of us believe that we have given everything to the Lord, but you know what? There are still little bits, there are roots that if we do not deliver them to the Lord yet then God cannot do what He wants to do through us. He wants us to give everything, everything, everything to the Lord so that He can make what He wants to make of us. We have to die. The Lord Jesus Christ says that if the grain of wheat does not fall to the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.
There are many passages that tell us about that, for example in Second Timothy we see there in Chapter 2, verse 21, it says there: "...so if anyone cleanses himself of these things he will be an instrument for honor , sanctified, useful to the Lord and disposed for every good work”. There has to be a process. God needs workers, brothers, but he needs sanctified workers, prepared workers, treated and worked workers. The Apostle Paul says that if someone purifies himself, sanctifies himself then he will be useful, he will be prepared for every good work. What the Apostle Paul says is that if you purify yourself, sanctify yourself, surrender to the Lord, die to Him, let your mind be conformed to the mind of Jesus Christ, then you will be prepared for every good work. So God needs men and women who sanctify themselves, men and women who give their all to the Lord so that He can then use them.
That reminded me of another passage in Jeremiah Chapter 15 where the Lord says to Jeremiah: ".... therefore thus said the Lord, if you return I will restore you", he says it to an already consecrated prophet, a men who have suffered a lot and one would think they no longer need more but he says: "if you convert I will restore you and you will be before me and if you select the precious from the vile you will be like my mouth, they convert to you and you do not convert them." In other words, brothers, if we separate the holy, the Christocentric, the biblical, what is of God in us and we separate it from the daily, the secular, the carnal, the personal, the merely biological, if we make a separation of those two things and we are left with the gold of the spirit then he says that God is going to use us so that when we speak we are going to be like his mouth that is speaking. what power! Why sometimes we don't have authority like we want? Because we lack that relationship of compenetration with Jesus Christ, then it allows us to speak with the authority of the Father. And we can say like Elijah then: lives Jehovah before whose presence I am, that there will be no rain or whatever, or there will be rain, but by my word, because then our mouth becomes the mouth of God. The price must be paid so that God can use us in a society that needs God but needs men and women, sanctified instruments, prepared, who have done the hard work of dying and who are willing to live the Christian life authentically.
The Lord spoke to me about other characters in scripture as I was meditating on this and it's a character that I'm sure you don't even.... I would be very surprised if you know who the character of Baruk is referring to, and it's Also in Jeremiah, 45, which comes to the point of what I am saying about consecrated men and women in a context of great need. It says, words that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruk when he was writing these words from the mouth of Jeremiah, verse 2: “...thus has the Lord, the God of Israel, said to you, O Baruk. You said: woe is me now, why has Jehovah added sadness to my pain? I am tired of moaning and I have not found rest, so you will say to him, has the Lord said, behold, I destroy those that I built and uproot those that I planted and all this land and you seek greatness for yourself? Do not look for them, for behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, says the Lord, but I will give your life as plunder wherever you go." Deep that right? We have to understand that the Lord writes this passage, Jeremiah is a book written in the context of a great destruction that God was going to bring to Judah, because of his sin and the Lord sent Jeremiah as a prophet to tell him, to warn him to the Hebrews in Judah that He was going to destroy the city, and the destruction was already imminent and the Babylonians were going to destroy Judah and take the Hebrews captive and that is the context in which this passage occurs.
In other words Baruk was an apparently successful man, a scribe and it seems that Baruk was thinking in terms of that destruction that was going to happen and he was thinking about himself, about what he was going to lose, about his own glory, about his career, perhaps in the dreams that he had of greatness and personal fulfillment and God tells him: look, man, I am preparing to destroy everything that I love and to bring an apocalypse on this city and you are thinking of great things staff. And brothers like that are many of us, you know what? We live in a world that God is preparing to destroy and to change the lifestyle of humanity in a radical way. These are terrible times we live in. And great things await humanity at this time and much destruction and much judgment from God and God is going to break humanity because God wants to bring repentance to man and there are many lives that need to be saved, but you know what? There are many of us, who like Baruk, are thinking about what we need and about our own career, and our own money, and when God is saying: I want to use you as my instrument. I want you to give me your talents, your money, your time and to prepare yourself because I want to use you and not be thinking about big things because times are difficult times and there is humanity in Medellín and in Lima, Peru, and in São Paulo, Brazil, and in Roxbury, Massachusetts that needs the Gospel and needs men and women who become instruments so that God can use them.
God needs, brothers, God needs men and women like Paul and like others who prepare for the harvest.
I'm going to ask the worship brothers to stop by for a moment. But brothers we have to take a step of faith. We have to take a step of faith so that the Lord can do what he wants to do. And let me give the bull one last thrust, which is you, I'm going to be very, very specific here. Much of this meditation applies to this temple that we want to build. There is a dimension there, our church, our church is going to start a campaign at some point because we need a temple now, because I believe that God is going to bring a great harvest to our congregation and I know that God needs us to have a place more great because God works in orderly ways, you know? God works in orderly ways and He always prepares the place. God does not want..... where are we going to put the souls? And that is why I have been dying in these months, fighting with the devil himself so that the city would grant us this permission and that is why my soul feared, although I have said: Lord, you know all things, if it is not here it will be in another place, but I was afraid because I know how necessary it is for us to have a larger temple prepared for what God wants to do. And that temple is going to cost a great deal of money. We're not doing it for luxury or anything. You know that we have endured here, and we never look for anything fancy or anything like that. We are not here looking to build a mausoleum for the León de Judá church or for any pastor or anyone, it is a place where the souls that God wants to bring for this last time can fit and we need men and women who are willing, brothers to give what they needed. you understand? I am not here manipulating, but I am bringing a need before my congregation and I want you to think about it, because at some point we are going to talk more about it.
Do you understand, brothers? At some point... our church has never had to bleed for its construction, God has always given it to us, he has practically given it to us. Others have bled many times but it is time for us to start thinking about it, because our church is already mature and will need to be able to surrender to the Lord and when that call comes I want you to remember Baruk, when the Lord tells him , look, I need, there is a great urgency, do not think of greatness for yourself. Give to me. God wants that temple to be built and God wants workers to be prepared to disciple those people and for there to be sanctified people, ready to be used by God. All of this is part of a plan that God is... I know something of God's plans and I know that the spirit of the Lord is preparing the pieces because God always works in order. First the soldiers have to be prepared, the warriors have to be prepared, the place has to be prepared, the structures so that then the blessing that God wants to bring can rest.
The Lord wants, brothers, that we prepare ourselves, consecrate ourselves, for Him to have what He needs. How many want to die for Christ? I hope that you can say: yes, I want to, I want to give my life to the Lord so that what the Lord wants of me, what the Lord asks of me I can do in this time.
Let's lower our heads and if you want to stand up, stand up and say to the Lord: Lord, I give myself to you. I give you my being. I give you my mind, I give you my heart. Give your life to the Lord as I want to do right now and tell the Lord: Lord, kill me. Also say to him: Lord, destroy me and make me anew. Bury me and raise me up again in your image and likeness. Give your life to the Lord. Father we consecrate ourselves to you. We consecrate this church to you. We dedicate ourselves to your purposes. Use us, Lord. Use us, Lord. Kill us, Lord. Kill us so we can live a new life. Forgive us Lord because it is so hard to die. And we become attached to life, therefore, take your Lord the knife and do the work, Father. Consecrate us Lord to you. Hallelujah! Thank my Lord.
I chose this verse as a starting point for my meditation this morning. As you know, I just told you that I came to visit the city of Medellín, in Colombia, and it was a great experience, a very beautiful experience, and I am very grateful to brother Fabio Alsate, his family there, the Alsate family, who sponsored me. and they blessed us with their support and much help that they gave us there. But one of the things that I experienced... Medellín is an essentially Latin American fifth city, it's like it's a kind of microcosm of the Latin American continent. There you can see all the beauties of our continent and also all its broken aspects. Medellín is a city that is as if you imagine a great mountain and a finger comes and squeezes the top of the mountain and puts it like this, imagine like a rubber mountain, right?, and that finger comes, squeezes the mountain in the middle and makes a cavity in the middle, and there is the city of Medellín, in the center, and then all the way around that mountain, great mountains around it, the city has grown and spread out on all the sides of those mountains. mountains, and that is a beautiful view of the city of Medellin. On those slopes of the mountain there is everything, there are very expensive and very luxurious buildings, and houses with a lot of money, with villas and large extensions of land for very rich people, and there are condominiums like here in the US and there are also huge extensions of poverty. Families that are piled up with each other and there is also extreme poverty as there is in all Latin American countries. Just like in Latin America, because in Latin America we know that everywhere, in Brazil I understand that it is like that, in the Dominican Republic where I come from, it is definitely like that. Many times you are on a very luxurious street and cross two blocks and you are in the midst of the most extreme poverty. And so it is in all Latin American countries. It is the same everywhere. If you go to Thailand, Indonesia, Asia, Africa it's this incredible mix of great wealth and great poverty.
Another thing that strikes me about Medellín is the great spiritual sensitivity that people have, people love God. And yet one also notices a great spiritual sterility. A lot of dead religion, a lot of dead religiosity, a lot of spiritual tokenism, a lot of people who actually know about God but don't know God, haven't had a personal experience with Jesus Christ. The taxi drivers pass by a church and make the sign, they cross themselves and they are all very respectful. And also Medellín, like all Latin American cities, is a city of great sensuality as well and of a lot of sin like any city, that does not distinguish it at all from any other city in Latin America. I believe that Medellín, as you know, has been the site of the famous Medellín cartel, but it could have been any other country in Latin America, I assure you. The devil chose that place for reasons that he knows well, but in that sense Medellín was nothing extraordinary, rather it was the place where an evil settled there for a while, but that sensuality that is seen there in that city exists in any other country in Latin America. Medellín needs God's healing. The culture of drugs and death has left in Antioquenos a sense of pain and mourning and many people are injured, they are like refugees who went through a war, and they talk about the war, which has just ended and there is a lot of pain, many people who lost their children and the city was under an evil power for many years. Thank God that has been broken to a certain extent, but do not think that the roots seem to have not yet been completely uprooted, the evil is there as if crouching, ready to rise again if given the opportunity and there is a great need. of spiritual healing.
And all of that made me think, brothers, of the great need that exists in our continent, including Brazil, that great expanse of land in Latin America, in our continent of Jesus Christ. I remembered a lot while I was there, seeing those masses of people. In the hotel where I was, it was very much in the center of the city and I discovered a little balcony in a corridor and there I took a chair, I took it with me, sometimes they thought that I was stealing the chair from the room, and I took it there to that corner and there I would look at the whole city. I believe that God gave me that place to observe both the mountains where the city was and the street where there were all kinds of vendors, selling absolutely everything there. And while I looked I saw a cell of what Latin America is with its souls so in need of the Gospel. And I remember the word of Jesus Christ that he said when he saw the crowds, he says that "he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd." When one talks with the pastors of Medellín and with the people, one realizes that although there are many churches, there are still many churches missing and there are churches that, like, as I say without sounding critical, but... that the churches don't they are doing everything that can be done. They are not giving the testimony that should be given. There are many dissatisfied people and many pastors who themselves understand that, there is still a long way to go, a church is needed that gives a credible testimony, a solid testimony of the Gospel so that those masses who need it can find where to go. Churches are needed, people are needed who can serve to support the need that exists in our countries, who are places of refuge, who are places where people can be shepherded, can be taught, can receive instruction from the word of God, can receive love, they can receive support, where there can be a solid community, where they feel that: Ok, I have come to a calm place and where I can rest and I can amend my life and move on with what God wants for me. And that is the point that I want to emphasize today.
I have given all this background as information, but also as a way of preparing what is the word that God wants for us. The essence of that meditation is brothers, well, who will go? who will go? God needs, God needs men and women to go to those cities and right here in Boston. I am going to use Medellín simply as an illustration, but who is going to go but us? Who is going to preach the Gospel but us? Who is going to be the resource for humanity if not us?
God is reminding us that there is a great need and that God needs workers, God needs churches that are resource churches, that are refuge churches, He needs men and women who are willing to die and give everything and give their lives, and consecrate their resources and live to the minimum in one sense and dedicate all the excess that remains to the Lord. The way we compute and calculate in life is: well, first I take care of myself, first I make sure that all my needs are generously taken care of, that I have everything I need to satisfy myself and to live in great comfort, and then I Let me stay, I will give it to the Lord. That's the way, isn't it? Most of it for me and the least for the Lord, and God wants us to turn that pyramid upside down, that we do the opposite. I'm going to live where I can, right? Because it is not that we are going to live in rags and with nothing, but I am going to minimize the needs of my life and I am going to give the Lord the maximum so that his work advances, so that his work continues. That is what I think God wants. And that is why when I read what the Apostle Paul says here. Paul says: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." Paul was a man who had seen the need and had said to the Lord: Lord, I am going. The Lord told Saul that he needed him and Saul gave up everything, he gave up his career, he gave up his Pharisaical knowledge, he gave up his prestige. He says that he had everything as rubbish, to conquer what Christ had for him. Paul said "what I now live, I live in the faith of the son of God." In other words, Paul was no longer the man wanting to earn his life, but Paul was the crucified who lived as an instrument of God for the salvation of humanity, lived as a means through which God could carry his message and channel his resources. so that humanity could know Jesus Christ.
God needs brothers, that we make a commitment that we come here as the living dead. That each one of us when he arrives at church, a ghost arrives. In other words, when each one of us receives Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, brothers we have to understand this, what we are doing is dying to rise again in a new identity and I think that is the problem with many Christians , that we do not understand what it means to truly give our lives to Jesus Christ, which means that we have to die to personal priorities and be reborn to a new life in Jesus Christ, a new identity, with new values, with new priorities. What most people want is to come, they simply pass, they give themselves an evangelical varnish but they continue the same with their same priorities, the priority is the world, me, their own benefit, money, work, what people think , but they do not know that what Christ calls us is to die and assume a new identity of a dead person, who now no longer lives for the world but lives only for Jesus Christ.
You know the Palestinians, suicide bombers often put them in a coffin and bury them alive for a while so they can visualize what it's like to die and to better prepare to explode into a bomb because that way they can kind of visualize and go through the process. And so it is that we have to do when we die in Christ we have to understand that what we are doing is already losing our merely human identity and that we are resurrecting to a new identity.
Look with me at Romans, for a little while and there we can see that a little bit more. Romans Chapter 6, where the Apostle Paul talks about this in baptism. He says: “... or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?, because we are buried together with him into death through baptism so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in new life." That is the meaning of baptism. In baptism when you enter the waters, you symbolically die. And when you come out of the waters you rise to a new life. That is the meaning of baptism. Baptism tells us: you have died, you have risen to a new life, to a new identity and now you have to live in that way, with new priorities. Christ is needing people so they have already taken that step and now they only live for what He needs them to do. Any type of Christian existence, brothers, that is not an existence completely dedicated to Jesus Christ and the needs of the Kingdom of God is not authentic. It is false, it is a false, fictitious Christianity. I hope that you and I can ask the Lord, Lord, kill me so that I can live only for you.
The Lord has been talking to me a lot these days about dying, finally dying, and giving what's left over to the Lord. That is something very personal that God has been speaking to me and I believe that he is speaking to the whole congregation, to die so that God can truly use us. Many of us believe that we have given everything to the Lord, but you know what? There are still little bits, there are roots that if we do not deliver them to the Lord yet then God cannot do what He wants to do through us. He wants us to give everything, everything, everything to the Lord so that He can make what He wants to make of us. We have to die. The Lord Jesus Christ says that if the grain of wheat does not fall to the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.
There are many passages that tell us about that, for example in Second Timothy we see there in Chapter 2, verse 21, it says there: "...so if anyone cleanses himself of these things he will be an instrument for honor , sanctified, useful to the Lord and disposed for every good work”. There has to be a process. God needs workers, brothers, but he needs sanctified workers, prepared workers, treated and worked workers. The Apostle Paul says that if someone purifies himself, sanctifies himself then he will be useful, he will be prepared for every good work. What the Apostle Paul says is that if you purify yourself, sanctify yourself, surrender to the Lord, die to Him, let your mind be conformed to the mind of Jesus Christ, then you will be prepared for every good work. So God needs men and women who sanctify themselves, men and women who give their all to the Lord so that He can then use them.
That reminded me of another passage in Jeremiah Chapter 15 where the Lord says to Jeremiah: ".... therefore thus said the Lord, if you return I will restore you", he says it to an already consecrated prophet, a men who have suffered a lot and one would think they no longer need more but he says: "if you convert I will restore you and you will be before me and if you select the precious from the vile you will be like my mouth, they convert to you and you do not convert them." In other words, brothers, if we separate the holy, the Christocentric, the biblical, what is of God in us and we separate it from the daily, the secular, the carnal, the personal, the merely biological, if we make a separation of those two things and we are left with the gold of the spirit then he says that God is going to use us so that when we speak we are going to be like his mouth that is speaking. what power! Why sometimes we don't have authority like we want? Because we lack that relationship of compenetration with Jesus Christ, then it allows us to speak with the authority of the Father. And we can say like Elijah then: lives Jehovah before whose presence I am, that there will be no rain or whatever, or there will be rain, but by my word, because then our mouth becomes the mouth of God. The price must be paid so that God can use us in a society that needs God but needs men and women, sanctified instruments, prepared, who have done the hard work of dying and who are willing to live the Christian life authentically.
The Lord spoke to me about other characters in scripture as I was meditating on this and it's a character that I'm sure you don't even.... I would be very surprised if you know who the character of Baruk is referring to, and it's Also in Jeremiah, 45, which comes to the point of what I am saying about consecrated men and women in a context of great need. It says, words that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruk when he was writing these words from the mouth of Jeremiah, verse 2: “...thus has the Lord, the God of Israel, said to you, O Baruk. You said: woe is me now, why has Jehovah added sadness to my pain? I am tired of moaning and I have not found rest, so you will say to him, has the Lord said, behold, I destroy those that I built and uproot those that I planted and all this land and you seek greatness for yourself? Do not look for them, for behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, says the Lord, but I will give your life as plunder wherever you go." Deep that right? We have to understand that the Lord writes this passage, Jeremiah is a book written in the context of a great destruction that God was going to bring to Judah, because of his sin and the Lord sent Jeremiah as a prophet to tell him, to warn him to the Hebrews in Judah that He was going to destroy the city, and the destruction was already imminent and the Babylonians were going to destroy Judah and take the Hebrews captive and that is the context in which this passage occurs.
In other words Baruk was an apparently successful man, a scribe and it seems that Baruk was thinking in terms of that destruction that was going to happen and he was thinking about himself, about what he was going to lose, about his own glory, about his career, perhaps in the dreams that he had of greatness and personal fulfillment and God tells him: look, man, I am preparing to destroy everything that I love and to bring an apocalypse on this city and you are thinking of great things staff. And brothers like that are many of us, you know what? We live in a world that God is preparing to destroy and to change the lifestyle of humanity in a radical way. These are terrible times we live in. And great things await humanity at this time and much destruction and much judgment from God and God is going to break humanity because God wants to bring repentance to man and there are many lives that need to be saved, but you know what? There are many of us, who like Baruk, are thinking about what we need and about our own career, and our own money, and when God is saying: I want to use you as my instrument. I want you to give me your talents, your money, your time and to prepare yourself because I want to use you and not be thinking about big things because times are difficult times and there is humanity in Medellín and in Lima, Peru, and in São Paulo, Brazil, and in Roxbury, Massachusetts that needs the Gospel and needs men and women who become instruments so that God can use them.
God needs, brothers, God needs men and women like Paul and like others who prepare for the harvest.
I'm going to ask the worship brothers to stop by for a moment. But brothers we have to take a step of faith. We have to take a step of faith so that the Lord can do what he wants to do. And let me give the bull one last thrust, which is you, I'm going to be very, very specific here. Much of this meditation applies to this temple that we want to build. There is a dimension there, our church, our church is going to start a campaign at some point because we need a temple now, because I believe that God is going to bring a great harvest to our congregation and I know that God needs us to have a place more great because God works in orderly ways, you know? God works in orderly ways and He always prepares the place. God does not want..... where are we going to put the souls? And that is why I have been dying in these months, fighting with the devil himself so that the city would grant us this permission and that is why my soul feared, although I have said: Lord, you know all things, if it is not here it will be in another place, but I was afraid because I know how necessary it is for us to have a larger temple prepared for what God wants to do. And that temple is going to cost a great deal of money. We're not doing it for luxury or anything. You know that we have endured here, and we never look for anything fancy or anything like that. We are not here looking to build a mausoleum for the León de Judá church or for any pastor or anyone, it is a place where the souls that God wants to bring for this last time can fit and we need men and women who are willing, brothers to give what they needed. you understand? I am not here manipulating, but I am bringing a need before my congregation and I want you to think about it, because at some point we are going to talk more about it.
Do you understand, brothers? At some point... our church has never had to bleed for its construction, God has always given it to us, he has practically given it to us. Others have bled many times but it is time for us to start thinking about it, because our church is already mature and will need to be able to surrender to the Lord and when that call comes I want you to remember Baruk, when the Lord tells him , look, I need, there is a great urgency, do not think of greatness for yourself. Give to me. God wants that temple to be built and God wants workers to be prepared to disciple those people and for there to be sanctified people, ready to be used by God. All of this is part of a plan that God is... I know something of God's plans and I know that the spirit of the Lord is preparing the pieces because God always works in order. First the soldiers have to be prepared, the warriors have to be prepared, the place has to be prepared, the structures so that then the blessing that God wants to bring can rest.
The Lord wants, brothers, that we prepare ourselves, consecrate ourselves, for Him to have what He needs. How many want to die for Christ? I hope that you can say: yes, I want to, I want to give my life to the Lord so that what the Lord wants of me, what the Lord asks of me I can do in this time.
Let's lower our heads and if you want to stand up, stand up and say to the Lord: Lord, I give myself to you. I give you my being. I give you my mind, I give you my heart. Give your life to the Lord as I want to do right now and tell the Lord: Lord, kill me. Also say to him: Lord, destroy me and make me anew. Bury me and raise me up again in your image and likeness. Give your life to the Lord. Father we consecrate ourselves to you. We consecrate this church to you. We dedicate ourselves to your purposes. Use us, Lord. Use us, Lord. Kill us, Lord. Kill us so we can live a new life. Forgive us Lord because it is so hard to die. And we become attached to life, therefore, take your Lord the knife and do the work, Father. Consecrate us Lord to you. Hallelujah! Thank my Lord.
