Trade destructive patterns for healthy ones

Effective churches in the 21st century, churches that are going to bring a lot of people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and that are going to be sympathetic churches that will spark the interest of the people out there, and effective Christians, the Kingdom individuals that are going to be Effective workers in bringing others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ will have to be people very conscious of what the arduous journey of sanctification and Christian perfection is.

One of the greatest skills required in the Christian life today is how the soul is renewed and transformed, and changing destructive and negative patterns of behavior for healthy patterns that produce healthy and balanced people, and how that process It is something very delicate and very complex that requires a long-term vision and people who join this process little by little with the people who are involved in the journey of the Christian life.

If the Church, on the contrary, is full of impatient people who believe that holiness is something that must be given overnight and that when one enters the ways of the Lord, one must immediately put aside everything that was characteristic of their sinful behavior in the world, we are going to produce neurotic churches and churches incapable of reaching the people who are in the world and that like Saqueo, of whom we spoke in the last program, have a desire to enter the ways of God but think that they are behind and so tied down that it is probably too late for them.

But these people when they find a merciful, compassionate, friendly, generous, patient people of God then they experience the birth of hope in their hearts and they dare to enter the arduous path of sanctification and personal transformation.

That is why Pastors and Christian leaders must continually study some Christian psychology, counseling, principles of how the soul and mind change and transform to abandon the patterns of the past and replace them with new patterns. And that is why I strongly advise believers today to study and read about these elements of human transformation and how they occur in the human brain and nervous system, because, after all, God uses the biology. God uses the workings of the brain and emotions, and memories, and will.

God does not violate the patterns of the human soul but respects them and works through them, and that is why, although many times, people experience very powerful confrontations with the Holy Spirit at the beginning and there are very strong changes but, it will always take things that will take a long time to come to pass in the process of your sanctification and to become people who truly reflect the character of Jesus Christ.

And then it takes leaders, counselors, disciplers, Pastors who are very aware of this process and who give people time to get where they need to go. That is why we see the apostle Paul who says in a passage: "My children, for whom I suffer travail until Christ is formed in you" and that expression of the apostle Paul denotes what the process of Christian perfection is, and that Pastors like Pablo are required to feel the pain and to pay the price of walking with the sinner that long road of falls and of getting up again, and that they suffer in their own being that process, right? but with patience.

As Paul says suffering birth pains waiting until Christ is formed in them. Because that is what the discipler does and that is what the Pastor does, it is: walk with the sinner, walk with the child in the case of family and parenthood, walk with the friend or with the disciple little by little, step by step as the Holy Spirit does with us. The Holy Spirit is the paraclete, the one who stands beside us and walks with us and encourages us, instructs us, informs us, educates us until we reach the fullness of the Person of Jesus Christ.

The Christian discipler, the Christian father, the Christian counselor stands next to the person, walks with them, suffers from the inconveniences of that sanctification process until the day comes, which will never come fully, because we will never be perfect here in the world, but until the day comes when the discipled person comes to reflect the values and principles of the character of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

That is the type of counselor and discipler that we need at this time, that is the type of Church and leader that is required to lead so many people in the 21st century towards the House of God and the ways of the Lord, hopefully that we we can become people like that.