Dr. Miranda : God's travels

I am standing up here letting the Lord direct my thoughts, I have here some things to back me up, just in case, but I have been, says the Lord, what is the next idea that you want me to share with my brothers, and I have in the mind here an image of the journey, the journeys of God and the processes of God. We have a God of journeys and processes and that is what I am going to try to share with you here, that the Lord speaks through these minutes.

When you enter into the ways of the Lord, and you conceive the desire to serve the Lord in some way in your life and to be used by God and you enter into the development of your gift God gives you give a travel ticket, it is not only a physical journey, but it is above all a spiritual journey and it is a journey within yourself, within the unexplored territory that is within you. You are a world, you are a universe, you have a limited and concrete body, but God has created you in such a way that you are also a galaxy, you are a precious world, your mind, your spirit, your emotions, your ideas, your Thoughts, your will, your experiences, all these things make you a dimension where you can go in and travel and explore and discover things.

So when God calls us, he calls us to start a journey with Him and that journey takes place in time, it takes place in space, many times, like our brother who came from Guatemala to Mérida, México, and it also occurs within him. When he discovered things that he did not understand about himself, and added other things, in his person and so it happens with each one of us when God calls us to service, when God calls us to the Christian life. He tells us: come, ride with me and let's take a trip. The next years of your life are going to be a trip, fasten your seatbelt, ask for a coffee, look out the window, and try to enjoy the trip as much as you can. Sometimes you're going to go through some stormy places and the plane is going to move, but don't worry, I'm going to take you to the other side of the other place. Do not be impatient, do not get anxious, do not despair, I am with you and that boat is not going to sink because I am inside it.

And then the rest of your life and the rest of your spiritual journey, you have to conceive it like this, like a trip with you and God in a ship, to a land where God wants to take you. And everything that happens on that journey is going to have a purpose, a reason, a meaning, something to learn, and nothing is going to waste. Everything that you see, everything that happens to you, everything that you experience, God is going to make sure that you take advantage of it. There will be a memorable photograph of that moment that you can then visit and look at and share with your grandchildren or with your disciples, because the Lord will make sure that nothing is wasted. It's like those sisters who have that turkey there, they make their turkey, they season it and they start pulling all the meat out of it and nothing goes to waste, not even the fat goes to waste, because there's someone who likes that fat. And when the bones are left, they take the bones and cut them up and make a soup. yes or no? And when the bone has been given all that it had, they take it and make a statue of the bone and hook it to a wall to still take advantage of what is left.

And so is God with all the events of our life. When we get into God's journey, God is going to make sure that nothing is wasted and that everything leads to some blessing, some growth, some learning, something that is a blessing to someone. It is training and that is why the word of the Lord says, and that is why we can understand what it says in Romans 8 that to those who love God, that is, to those who are called by Him, what does it say? All things work together for good. That is what it means, that God has called you, God has commissioned you, He has sent you on a journey with Him on the journey and then He says: do not worry because everything that happens to you is going to have meaning, purpose, reason for being, and profit and value. Wow!

Look, even when I tell you that, I don't totally believe it. Because if I believed it, I would never get anxious or worried or anything because I would know that everything that happens to me is because God has allowed it or designed it that way. And then I could be at peace and not be afraid, but my brain and my biology continually betray me. And what my spirit knows, my mind rebels against it, and that's why I get anxious, but I know in my spirit that it is so. Hey, but how hard is it to believe that when the Indians are shooting arrows at you and you're in the middle of the circle and the wagons are all around and the cavalry doesn't arrive to get you out in time. And you say: well, maybe there is an exception there and I am the exception. When financial difficulties come, or ministry struggles, or times of greed and sterility, or marital problems, or the rebellious child, or the disease that does not go away, in those moments how important it is that we say: I am still in the ship and God is still with me and the ship is not going to sink. God did not call me on this journey to fail. This ship is not going to sink, it is not going to crash into the precipice because God has said: well, he will command his angels near you to guard you in all your ways, in their hands they will carry you so that your foot does not stumble in stone. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because You will be with me. The journey, even though the journey is through a valley where there are monsters and in the dark I can only see their phosphorescent eyes, full of hatred against me, I will feel the hand of my Father, who tells me: don't worry, I want you to You go through this jungle because I want you to learn not to fear monsters and to know that your father is more powerful than monsters.

Do you know that sometimes God lets the devil look us straight in the eye so that we learn not to be afraid of him and learn that our God is more powerful than Satan. A little while ago I was in my office giving counseling to a lady who had just arrived at the church, she had been with us for a few weeks, two or three months, a special, pretty, sweet woman, a well-behaved, educated lady, and we were talking about her life and how she felt spiritual oppression and her past, and a lot of things and I took her to confess some things that...... because I felt that there was a demonic oppression in her life and we started talking and I already have a process through which I take people when these things happen and then I said: now sister we are going to pray, after going to renounce and confess and everything. She closed her eyes for a moment and we began to scold and in an instant the air became dense and she opened her eyes and what was looking at me was not the woman I had with me a second before. It was a sinister being that saw through me and saw into me and my whole being was filled with fear, I confess, because you know what it is like to sit here and this person that you thought you knew now looks at you and is another person that you have in front of you. And he looked at me with that arrogant smile and I felt the fear and tried to hide it as much as possible, and he told me: you are afraid of me, right? And I had to pull myself together and remember who I was there with, that it wasn't just her and me but there was the holy spirit whom I had invoked and the angels of God, before beginning the session, I pulled myself together and reprimanded and declared the authority of Christ. We got involved as these things often happen, for about 45 or 50 minutes, while different demons came out, different levels of arrogance and understanding and lucidity and a number of things, but in the end, the last demon had to leave and that woman was left. completely free saying, I even see the colors I see different. I have heard so many times of people who are liberated, who see life as new, newborn. But that look of the enemy when he looks at you and pierces you, if you let yourself go, it freezes you inside, because it is a look that knows who you are, you know that you are simply a fragile and sinful creature, it wants to frighten you with that and fill you with guilt and fear, but you have to know that God is with you and that he who is with us is more powerful than he who is in the world. But sometimes God allows us to look at the enemy and for the enemy to touch us and for the serpent to open our mouths and see its teeth full of venom so that we learn not to fear him, we know that our God is more powerful.

So that's why sometimes God allows adversity to come into our life and difficulties, and failures and failures in the journey because that's part of the training, and that's part of what God wants to show us. And that's why we shouldn't be afraid to embark on the journey, we can't be afraid of jumping into the water and starting new things and trying to do things we've never done before and trying our wings on another height that we're not used to trying and risking. new things and experiment with new ministries and new ways of doing things because that pleases the Father. The Father is infinitely creative and he likes it when we are creative too and invent new things and experiment. He loves that game and He sits with us on the floor and says, go ahead, I like what you're doing. Because God is a God of processes and He loves them more than the results. He loves the journey more than the place of arrival. How interesting! But many times we are thinking more about the destination than about the trip and God says: I already know what the destination is, what interests me is the trip. Looking out the window and seeing things and seeing you, my creature interacting with the world and the experiences that I allow to come into your life and seeing what you get out of those experiences. That is what God likes because God is infinitely creative.

He no longer has anything you can teach him. God entertains himself with our games and our ideas, as the father entertains himself with the baby's occurrences when he speaks a new word or does a mischief or does something different and is delighted and laughs because his son surprised him with something new. And that's what the father likes. The father does not want the son to be born at 9 months pregnant, to be a big guy with a beard or hair on his chest, or whatever, overnight. The father wants to see his son grow from a baby to an infant, to an adolescent, to a young man, to an adult and sometimes even to see him as an old man. That's what the dad likes, it's the game, it's the delight of interacting with his child and watching it develop..... why is it that women often want to have a baby? It is because they want the joy of seeing that creature, conceiving it in their womb and then interacting with it through all its facets and feeling that it is part of that life, and feeling that it is also the creator of that life and fulfilling itself through interaction with that creature, yes or no? That is what fills the mother or the father too.

And in our Father it is the same. Our Father is immensely interested, he loves what happens on the trip when we get on it. And He wants to have experiences with us and that is why we should not fear the trip, but we should get into the ship, confidently because he who began the good work will be faithful, and is faithful to finish it.

In the sea of God there are very few shipwrecks and the shipwrecks are of people who stopped trusting Him because they took them out of the boat. But those who kept him in the boat have never been shipwrecked, nor will they ever be shipwrecked, because while He is in the boat, the ship cannot be shipwrecked. That is why there is the story of when the Lord sends the disciples on one of those trips that are in Scripture and tells them: get on the boat and go to the other shore where I am going to meet you. Do you remember that passage? Look when the Lord already gave them the commandment to travel to the other shore and that He was going to find them, there was already an implicit promise that they would arrive. Because He would not have told them: go to the other shore, if it was not going to be fulfilled, because He knows everything and therefore if He had known that they were not going to arrive, He would not have told them: go to the other shore.

When God sends you his own command, his own order is already a successful constitution. Because God never commands you to do something with which He does not commit to bring you to a successful conclusion, if you follow the manual of faith. But what happened on the trip? The disciples faced something they did not expect and the sea became stormy, and the Bible says that they were rowing all night in the middle of the sea, that I was there now when I was in Israel recently, and it is interesting because in the Gospel It says that He was praying in a high place, in one of the versions of that event from where he could see them. And it is interesting when I went now to the Galilee area, if you look at the Sea of Galilee which is a huge lake, there are mountains and there are hills around precisely where a person, if they are standing there, although the sea is quite..... they don't call it sea, but it's a big lake... it's not so big that you can't see it, there are places where you can see almost two thirds of the lake and therefore that's how the text suggests. That's why the Bible is so real, isn't it? That is, there are those places from where you can see everything. And the Bible says that the Lord was there praying and saw his disciples rowing all night because the current was against them, a storm broke out, and he was there praying and watching them. And I imagine that if now the camera goes from Jesus looking at the disciples, to the disciples in the boat, it's a change, like in those movies... right? There is Jesus praying all calm, silent, quiet, peace and at the moment the camera changes and there is the noise of the storm, the disciples shouting: we are going to sink, take out the water, this and that, and a tremendous noise... ... and the Lord there looking at them. And they are not aware that the Lord can see them from above. They are not aware that the son is there praying, interceding for them perhaps. And that the son also knows that in a moment he is going to come down from that mountain and he is going to climb over the waters and he is going to walk towards them. And that He is not going to allow them to sink in the boat. And that He has allowed that storm to break loose because He has a purpose in it. And when He begins to walk on the water and they begin to see Him, He was giving them a tremendously important lesson that they were going to need as founders of the universal church of Jesus Christ. And it was, He wanted to show them that He is Lord of storms, that He is Lord of nature, that He is Lord of the force of gravity, that He is Lord of all the laws of the universe, and that He is above of any stormy situation that one of their children may experience. And that He is always seeing them from his height and that his eyes never leave those who love and serve him. And when He came walking on the water, He was giving them an eminently visual and graphic lesson that would be engraved in their hearts for the rest of their lives. That Christ who walks on the sea and does something that is totally inconceivable to the human brain and when he gets on the boat, he gives a word to the storm: be quiet, and in an instant the sea clears, the wind is silent, the waves they soften and there is a total calm, because the Lord is the Lord of nature and the Lord of storms.

That time of panic and terror that they experienced, those hours that were probably around two or three in the morning, according to the story. They spent about four, six hours at sea, fighting the storm. And I imagine those 6 hours would be equivalent to an eternity for them and while they were inside that storm, inside that bubble of panic and terror and uncertainty, impotence, God was working on them to form their character, to form their attitude, to form their ministerial mentality, form their concept of who Jesus is, because the Lord is interested in us knowing who He truly is. That He is not simply a prophet or a very powerful person, or a great thinker or a highly developed spirit, He is the son of God, God himself, the way, the truth and the life.

And that is why he asks his disciples at one point: who do men say that I am? And some say that you are John the Baptist, others say that you are Elijah, this and that. And He says: well, and who do you say that I am? Because until we solve this problem, who is Christ for me and how do I conceive Jesus in my life, his role, his involvement in my life, his involvement, his meticulous look at every event in my life, his control of all the events of my life, until I am fully immersed in that idea, that if He has control of all aspects of my life, He is going to do everything possible to teach me that that is what He is. And he is going to put me through different experiences so that I can know him in his totality, not in his totality, because we will never know him, but at least in what relates to me, what he wants me to know about him. : his mercy, his love, his power, his justice, his holiness, his grace, his creativity, his wisdom. They are elements that He wants us to know and that is why He is continually exposing us in different ways to different aspects of His personality, like when one takes a statue and moves it in different areas or looks at it from different angles to see it in its entirety, because we can never see it 360º.

Thus, the Lord is continually teaching us different facets of his being and his relationship with us through experiences that can only be achieved on the journey. And sometimes those experiences are going to be experiences of failure, betrayal, sin, ignorance, illness, economic crisis, marital problems, problems with our children, so many different things, because remember what I said that the trip is both outside and inside, so that we not only know Him but also know ourselves. And that is why God sends us on trips so that we can get to know Him and so that we can get to know ourselves. Because the man who doesn't know himself, the woman who doesn't know herself is going to have problems in service and in the ministry. God needs you to know yourself, with all your wrinkles and warts and all your virtues too. That you do not deceive yourself and that you know who you are, because when a person knows himself he knows what to watch out for, and he also knows what he is capable of, and he has no illusions about himself, he is no longer proud. of the account, but he does not throw dirt on his head either because he knows what he is and knows what God has given him and he is not proud of that and he knows that everything comes from God and when he does not behave well God takes it away from him, if he has than take it off

You look at the Apostle Paul, he was a man who knew himself very well. Pablo did not suffer from low self-esteem, gentlemen, let me tell you. Paul sometimes even sounds a little proud and self-assured, but he was also an immensely humble man, which is why God also confronted him. God put Paul on a journey as well, Saul, in this case, one of the several journeys that he puts Saul on is when... in Scripture there is a passage where Paul says, I think it is First Corinthians 12, or Second Corinthians 12, where Paul says that God took him to heaven, to the third heaven and there he says that he saw things that were so sublime that he was not even allowed to share them with other human beings. And then he says: and so that the greatness of the revelations would not exalt me beyond measure, God sent me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to slap me so that I would not be proud, about which I have asked 3 times to be released and 3 times he has answered me: my grace is enough for you because my power is perfected in weakness. Paul says; well, then if when I am weak, I am strong, rather I will glorify myself in weaknesses. He learned a lesson about himself. God allowed Paul to get into an aspect that we have discussed, people have tried to sanitize what Paul's problem was, because they cannot think that the great Apostle had a spiritual or emotional struggle of some kind. And they have said that it was that he suffered from blindness in his eyes, that this and that. Look, it's bullshit, that's a lie, that's us trying to help God. God does not need our help. God always struggled through people who were impure and prone to fail.

Why do we have Abraham on his journey there, Moses on his journey, and David on his journey failing God? Paul was a man...... Elijah says, he was a man subject to emotions and passions like us and he said to God, he prayed for it not to rain for 3 and a half years and it did not rain, meaning you yourself can, if that being so flawed, so imperfect could be used by God in that way, God can use you too. Don't worry. In all creative work there is always waste and waste, but that doesn't matter. We must move forward. If you were to worry about the garbage generated by construction, you would never do anything, brothers. And the human being, when he works, sweats and stinks, whether you want it or not, even if you are the purest saint on earth, you will always go to the bathroom, you will always sweat, and you will always smell bad. Unless he doesn't take a bath again. Because that is..... and God understands that, bad smells do not bother God, because God is a country God, it is not that he comes from Campeche, just in case there is one here, but God is a realistic God and plain and He sits at the table and eats an omelette as well as a chicken cordon bleue. God loves simple people and he loves things..... like the Lord Jesus Christ, who I think sat down and ate a sancocho like any neighbor's son.

And the Lord takes advantage of each one of the experiences and each one of the things that we experience and that's why we don't have to fear the trip. Pablo understood that this struggle he had, and he says: as God understood that there was in me a tendency to pride, and one can see it when one studies the psychology of Paul, if one analyzes him psycho-therapeutically from his writings, because God does not bring out that part in his revelation, remember what I told you when God inspired the Scriptures but did not dictate them. In Scripture you see the character of the writers and their time and their struggles and other things. The inspiration of the Scriptures does not mean a letter-by-letter dictation, why? Because God does not take one away, God never turns you into an automaton, he never turns you into a robot, he never takes away your creativity, your personality, your experiences, He loves to work through that. He tells you: look, what I want to say is this, make sure that's what comes out, but if you want to use a photograph or you want to use a painting or a parable, that's your business, but make sure that my message arrive exactly as I want. The rest I delegate to you. you understand?

And that's how the Lord works, then Paul, who had that area of his life, God took him so high and gave him so much. He knew that Paul had to be taken care of because it was so exceptional what he He had received that he was going to begin to be proud and he was going to open himself then to the fall and to the attack of Satan that was going to lead him to ministerial failure. So God takes it and allows it to come, brothers, and this is another thing that the commentators have tried to fix, we try to fix the Bible because we are sometimes afraid of the things that God reveals to us, and we sanitize it or clean it up a little bit. a little bit, because Paul says: God sent me a messenger from Satan, that is the translation in Spanish, a sting, about which I asked him 3 times. In other words, God sent him, it's not even that, as we say sometimes, that God allowed, as if to help God a little because the idea that God sends a messenger from Satan, that scares us a little because... Wow! And then we try to fix the doll a little and we say: God allowed it, but hey, let him always allow it or order it He is responsible, in a court of law He is still responsible, even if we use another little word and take the corpse And let's put a little more lipstick on it, it's still a corpse. And then he says, God sent me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan. I believe that Paul was fighting, battling with something there emotional, mental, spiritual. It had nothing to do with his eyes and I looked up the word in the original Greek which is translated messenger of Satan and the word is angelos santan. You don't have to be familiar with Greek to know what angelos satan is, what happens is that in the original Greek the word angelos can mean angel or messenger, so the translators chose the word that borrowed a little more from, As we said, be careful about God's personality and interactions, because we don't like complexity, Christians don't like simple things, and God is a God who always takes the rabbit from somewhere else. we wait. And there are strange things in the Bible that if they were not in the Bible I would say that is heresy, but they are there and you have to accept them.

For me, what the Bible tells me is what I believe and I deal with what it tells me but I don't try to simplify it. So he says that God sent him an angel, I prefer the idea because the context suggests it, an angel of Satan, which is what?, a demon, a spirit. Now if you can't receive that, don't receive it. Your pastor has the ultimate authority on that, but go to the original Greek and look up the word angelos satan. God sent a spirit, you can say either an angel of Satan or a messenger of Satan, it doesn't matter, whatever it is, it's a messenger, it's an agent of Satan. God kind of allowed a spirit to harass Paul. Because? Because, look brother, many times when God wants to train us, he looks for a good opponent for us. If you want to train a good boxer, if you have a good boxer that you know has the material for a world championship, you're going to get a horny street kid to train him, right? You are going to look for a good boxer, perhaps already a little tired that forces that boxer to get the most out of him in order to reach his potential. And many times God will allow opponents in your life, struggles in your life, processes in your life that will seem to you like they come from hell itself and it is God who has delegated it to train you in war and to take you to the heights to which He wants to take you, because God wants to train warriors. God is not in the business of training parasites. God doesn't want to train turkeys, God wants to train eagles. Hallelujah! And that is why He designs us enemies that train us and take us where we have to go and sometimes they are enemies, I tell you, they are sinister. And they are so sinister that one could never think that they come from God but on the trip He has said that: I want us to stop in such a place, that you see what is there so that you know the war and so that you know yourself better , so that when the enemy comes to tempt you in that area, you have already struggled with it and you have surpassed it and it does not catch you, and destroy you.

There are things sometimes that happen in your life that God is looking at ten years away that he is preparing now, because God is a chess player who has a board with millions of pieces and He can play all of them. pieces at the same time. And he can play with a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand other players, like those great chess geniuses, simultaneously and He doesn't bother. And God is always thinking about eternity and sometimes He makes a move in your life that is not even going to have to do with you but with someone who is going to come three generations from now and He needs you now, at that specific moment, to prepare ten or twenty moves ahead so that something He wants further, in a hundred years, is fulfilled. And you are important now and maybe you will die not knowing that God used you strategically at a given point and you will die saying maybe 'God never used me'. But look, he already used you, but you just don't know it. Because on that trip you are going to have stops that you don't even know you made.

Someone told me yesterday about the great painter Van Gogh, one of the great geniuses of painting. Today he is recognized as a great painting genius and I have seen his paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and there are museums dedicated solely to him in Europe. Van Gogh died without having sold a single one of his paintings and thought he was a total failure as a painter and committed suicide over his failure, completely depressed. However today a Van Gogh painting, a little Van Gogh drawing is worth millions of dollars because it was too far ahead of its time, that's what happened. The man was too bright and did mixes of colors and images that were simply too advanced for his time. It has taken almost a century for society to catch up with the genius that was in Van Gogh. Yet he couldn't see it.

You see that there are passages in the book of faith, in Hebrews 11, it says that some died without having seen what they had been promised and died simply greeting them from afar, and today we are the ones who enjoy of those investments that they made. Because they also made their trips. And I believe that when we embark on God's journey we have to know that He is at the helm, not us. We cannot control experiences. We just have to trust that He knows what He's doing and that every aspect of that journey makes sense and that He hasn't wasted anything and that He knows how to set it up, and how to bring it to completion. We have to trust him absolutely and place ourselves in his hands, and even though the storm rages around us, we have to say 'Father, you have promised me that I will reach the other shore', and you hold on tight, put on a good raincoat and put it over your head, and let the storm blow Don't worry, you are going to arrive and you are going to arrive stronger than before and more confident than ever and more sure of the God you have.

Sometimes in the Scriptures it says, for example, my children, there is a passage in the Old Testament, it says: "enter the room for a while until the wrath passes" and sometimes it will be like that, Brothers, sometimes God is going to be in business in your life and he is going to be struggling in your life and a storm is going to break out and a persecution and a war around you, and a terrible shooting, and the only thing that you are going to be able to To do is go into your bedroom, lock the door, board up the windows, and hang there in faith until the storm passes, and then take the boards off and open the door and pick up the debris and move on, because God is a iron trainer. He sometimes puts you in situations and you are there with your tongue hanging out saying 'I can't take it anymore' and He tells you 'you can take it, there is more in you, I want to get it out of you. I know that there is wood in you for greatness and if I don't push you, you won't get that wood.

My wife is an occupational therapist, she works with children who have neurodevelopmental problems. And there are children, for example sometimes who can't move their legs well and have low muscle tone and other things, and I have learned that vocabulary by living with her. And she sometimes goes to the houses and she told me, for example, about a little girl who has low muscle tone, she can't move much in her legs, she still doesn't have much strength in her legs, and she's chubby and very comfortable and she She just wants to sit, without moving, without being pressured too much or anything, because she is very happy, just calm down, because her body doesn't ask her to do more. So my wife has to come, take her little legs and move them and stand her up and sit her down and force her to move and sometimes the little girl starts to scream and protest, but she forces her and she sees how through the days the little girl has already started to sit alone and move, but he forced her, he had to force her, he had to take her out of her comfort zone. God often takes us out of our comfort zone and takes us where we don't want to go because He is in the business of getting the most out of His children and bringing hidden greatness to light. And that's why it puts us in trouble many times, to bring to light what we need to know about ourselves, because it's a journey within us as well.

A pastor brother was telling me here how he started his church in a house someone rented from him. And he says that after two or three months of being there, two or three people came, four people and the lady who wants the house came out and he told her 'but, you promised me a year', and he said ' no, because you're here preaching the Bible and this and that, and I don't want you here and you have to leave me', and he treated him badly and said 'well, it's fine'. He paid him what he had to pay him. He felt desperate, he questioned himself. Lord, either you're going to bless me or you didn't call me into the ministry. He fell to the floor. He says that he clearly heard in his mind or in his being, he heard the word 'hotel' and he began to search and all the hotels were too expensive. Finally he arrived at the hotel that belonged to a relative of his and they gave him a hotel room for a ridiculously low price and he already has about forty people, 40, 50 people there. If he had stayed in the snug he would still have maybe 7 cats with him. But God took him out of his comfort zone to another level and we have to understand, brothers, that God is a coach that you cannot bribe him with protests, crying and that it hurts, and that I cannot..... He says 'You can, because I created you and I know exactly what is inside you, and you are going to enter greatness even if it is kicking, but I am going to take you to it'.

That is why the Bible says that no discipline while we undergo it is pleasant, but when God has completed it, it says that it bears a sweet and peaceful fruit of righteousness. Nobody likes discipline. A soldier doesn't like discipline, but discipline will save his life and allow him to be impressive against the enemy. And God is creating soldiers, warriors. God is not creating golfers, He wants to create people who know how to use a sword, who know how to use a bow. As David says 'the one who strengthens my hands to stretch the bronze bow'. God wants men and women who can stretch the bronze bow. You know how difficult it is to take that bronze apparatus and bend it like this and string it in so you can shoot the bow. That is not created by grabbing pillows, it is created by lifting weights, exercising. That is why God always tells us 'look, I command you to make an effort, to be brave'.

He told Joshua 'I have given you everything you step on, but I tell you one thing, strive and be brave.' He told him three times, look him up. Because it says to all of us, 'I'm going to send you on a journey and you're going to have to work hard on that journey. I am not creating parasites, I am not creating comfortable people. God loves hard-working people, brave, enterprising, entrepreneurial, creative, restless people. The Kingdom of Heaven becomes strong and the brave or the violent, in another version, take it away.

God is in the travel business. There is a text, which is one of my favorite texts in Scripture and which tells us about..... and which puts it in a very eloquent way, which is the journeys of God. Look, go to Deuteronomy Chapter 8. “God sent the Jewish people on a journey, a 40-year journey in the wilderness,” a journey that really shouldn't have taken more than about 3 weeks, it took them 40 years. “before taking them to the destination that had been determined for them. He knew he was going to get them into the land of Canaan 400 before they got there, when he called father Abraham and told him 'I, this land, I'm going to give it to you', and he just had Abraham walk on the land on his own journey. Because God told Abraham, 'Get out of your land and from your relatives to a land that I will show you.' And Abraham entered his own..... which was his journey rather within himself.

And 400 years passed and God already knew that he was going to bring them to that land, but he did not take them at the moment. And after those 40 years close to the land and he doesn't give them permission to enter, instead he keeps them on a circular journey around the desert. And look at what He tells them after the 40 years have passed and they are close to the arrival and there is little time left for them to enter the promised land, and look how He speaks to them. It says, Deuteronomy 8 "you shall take care to put into practice every commandment that I command you today so that you may live and be multiplied and enter and possess the land that Jehovah swore to your fathers." And look here at verse 2, it says "and you will remember all the way (there is the journey)..., all the way that Jehovah, your God, has brought you, these 40 years in the desert", for what?,.... "to afflict you, to test you, to know what was in your heart (there is the inner journey, the journey within, the inner exploration), whether or not you had to keep his commandments and it afflicted you and made you hungry, and fed you with manna, food that you did not know, neither you nor your parents had known, to make you know that man will not live on bread alone, more than all that comes out of the mouth of Jehovah, man will live. man (there is God, the journey that teaches you who God is and what your relationship with God is)...your dress never got old, (again there is the God provider, the faithful God)...it never got old grew old on you, not even your foot has swollen in these 40 years. Recognize also in your heart that as a man punishes his son, so Jehovah, your God, punishes you. I want you to know and know who I am, how I act so that in the future you don't make mistakes, because if you do things that are out of my approval I will discipline you. Because Jehovah, your God introduces you into the good land, land of streams, waters, fountains and springs that gush out in valleys and mountains, etc... in verse 10 "and you will eat and be satisfied and you will bless Jehovah , your God” for the good land that he will have given you. And then there are a number of things, it says “take care not to forget Jehovah, your God”; 12 "do not happen that you eat and be satisfied"; 14 “and let your heart be proud and you forget the Lord your God” who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. God was already seeing what was going to happen to this town. He knew what he was warning about, he knew what they were going to do. I knew there was pride in them. I knew there was rebellion in them, I knew there was a tendency to criticize God and doubt Him quickly. Look at verse 16 “who fed you with manna in the desert, food that your father had not known, afflicting you and testing you to do you good in the end”.

So we understand that the 40 years in the desert was not necessarily just a coincidence, it was not merely a product of the sin of the Jews, but that God was deeply involved in those 40 years. He wanted this nation that was going to be born a founding nation, an apostolic nation, a spiritual mother nation, that was going to be a model for countless generations of believers throughout history, He had to use this nation to exhibit certain principles of his way of acting with man, to show certain aspects of his personality and to establish legal, judicial precedents, that when He judged them on other occasions, there would be evidence that He was acting justly and with equity towards them. Because God is like that, God is always seeing things from a thousand years away, a hundred years, ten years.

So, those 40 years, that trip that He put them through the desert was to show them 'look, who are you, rebellious people, critical people, disobedient people, people who flee from the enemy when he is very big, when the two spies. You are nobody, you enter this earth, not because you deserve it, but because my grace allows you to enter. I give you that land, you will drink water from wells that you did not dig, you will live in houses that you did not build, walls that you did not build will protect you, and you will defeat enemies that you cannot defeat on your own. but it is with my power. God had to expose all those things, display them as evidence, because God is a judicial God. And He proceeds like a judge, He proceeds like a lawyer who assembles the evidence and the documentation before acting, because He is like that. He does not have to do it, but He is a just God, and He is interested that His justice does not have anyone who can criticize it or question it with contrary evidence. Every man be found a liar and Jehovah just and true.

That is why when David sins and offends God in a terrible way when he orders Uriah to be killed, when he writes Psalm 51, which is the psalm of confession, he says: 'against you, against you alone I have sinned and done evil before your eyes so that you may be recognized righteous in your word and considered pure in your judgment'. David is saying, as if he had sinned so that it would be evident to the whole world that God is just when he judges men, when he condemns and that only God is just, and that we all stray like sheep and that only He remains holy and perfect. Many times God will allow things to happen in our life so that it is first clear that it is by grace and not by works, and therefore there are processes in our lives where God will first have to take us through failure and suffering so you can use us.

He put Pedro on a trip like that when Pedro with his pride and his self-sufficiency and his self-esteem through the roof told him: 'Lord, even if everything is apart from you, this male that is here is not leaving to crack', as the Mexicans say. Those cowards there will be able to leave, but don't worry Lord, I'll be there with you until death. And the Lord told him: 'Pedro, Pedro, Pedrito, look, you're not only going to reject me, you're going to deny me once, you're going to deny me 3 times, Pedro', because God was interested in Peter, who was going to Being a spiritual giant and a foundation for his church in the future, Pedro could not be the man that God wanted him to be with that pride, because at the first bullfight they were going to put a horn on him, they were going to knock him down and they were going to take him out from the square. And so God had to bleed him dry and lower his pride and weaken him and show him that 'you're not as handsome as you think you are'. And like a little servant girl, she allowed herself to be frightened and denied the Lord Jesus Christ, she denied him, she denied, she denied, and the third time she denied him with curses. 'I already told you that I don't know that one...' maybe something like that was what he said. Didn't I tell you that......he did it like God wanted to underline and paint on his face and paint on his shirt so he would know who he was. Because He needed Peter, but He couldn't use Peter because of all that man's pride, that self-sufficiency, that strength, that self-confidence. God hates that and the devil uses that to destroy us many times and God in his mercy sometimes allows us to fall and dirty our knees and peel our pants, out of mercy so that the devil does not judge us then. He gets in first and judges us because He does it with mercy and love to strengthen us, before the devil does it to destroy us.

And that is why I see, when the Lord rises and approaches Peter, I imagine that he approached with a mischievous smile on his face. He says 'Pedro, do you remember what you said? Peter, do you love me? He didn't even tell her what he had done to her or how he had failed him and how he had denied it. No, he said, 'Pedro, do you love me?' Look, the Lord could have left without asking Peter anything. But, how wonderful is the Lord and how kind is the Lord that He did not want Peter to be left with that wound in his being of having denied the Lord, and not knowing what his Lord thought of him. That would have been a wound that would have bled him out all his life. Then the Lord approaches like a good adviser and says 'Peter, do you love me?', and says 'yes, Lord, you know that I love you'. In other times I would have told him: 'Lord, I love you more all those pampalanes that are there, you know it well, I have proven it to you a thousand times, even to death. Where do you want us to go, where are these demons for us to get our hands on right now? 'Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.' 'Pedro, do you love me?' Lord, I told you that I love you. Notice that he asked him three times, the same three times he denied it, how he gave him three chances to neutralize each time he denied it with an affirmation of love, and the third time he looked him square in the eye, like this, 'Pedro, what do you really love me?'. Pedro simply threw his hands up in the air and said, 'Lord, to be honest, I'm not sure right now, after what I did. You know all things, Lord.'

In other words, so we often have siblings, I say, well, I love God and the truth is that I'm not sure if I love God or not. If I loved God as He truly is, I don't know, I would have immolated myself or something to glorify Him. One believes that one loves God, and one believes that one is willing to die for Him. I don't dare to say: Father, I am going to die for you. I hope I can do it one day if the need arises, but I'm not sure. I think that's the right answer, many times. Now if you are secure in Christ and God gives you the grace to know that it is not because of you but because He will strengthen you, well, amen, confess it, but do not be with carnal pride or faith in yourself. Discern the spirit, if there are no things where one is better, as they say out there in my country 'better say here he ran that he died here'. Better take an answer there, soft and that gives you a little space. Because God needs to take us on those trips where we know ourselves, we know what we are made of and for Him to then be able to work with us and use us as He wants.

There are moments in your life, I think that for all of us who follow the Lord that happens to us, when it is like soldiers when they are in times of peace they allow them to be in their homes and live in their homes , comfortable, with their family and everything, but once in a while they are called for training and they have to take two or three weeks and go to the field to do war drills and run and study war and all that. So that? So that they don't get too comfortable and don't lose the art of war and also to give them additional training to fill their military portfolio. They send them to battle training in the mountains or in the cold, or they make them study strategies, different things so that they can complete their military profile. And I believe that this is the case with us, when we serve the Lord periodically, God tells us 'come with me, you are doing very well in the ministry, everything is going well for you. Come, I'm going to put you in to scare you a little bit and to take away a little bit of that excess strength that you have and the confidence that you've acquired from the triumphs you've had lately in the ministry', and it does that to you and makes you stumble and you break your mouth and you rip your pants and discover that you are not as big or strong, or as..... as they say 'the last coke in the desert', as some think they are. And he reminds us of that and tells us 'ok, now come back...'.

In my life, it has already happened to me three, four times more or less, four or five times, where God has put me in times of trial and fire like Israel to get out what was hidden, to show me what I am, to humiliate me and to teach me to depend more on Him. And it has made me more dangerous for the devil than ever. Because the weaker we are, the stronger we are. The more we let ourselves be humbled and work for the Lord, the more God will exalt us.

That was what Paul understood when he said 'if when I am weak then I am strong, then rather I will glorify myself in the insults, in the weaknesses and in the trials, so that the power of God may be manifested with more magnitude within me'. Because the weaker the glass, the more fragile, the more brittle the glass, the more glory God can express through his children. That is why God says 'if the grain of wheat does not fall to the ground and die, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit'. Brokenness is the most beautiful thing about the believer. We all have to be broken if we are going to be used. Write it down, it even came out with a rhyme. We all have to be broken if we want to be used. If you truly want God to use you, get ready because He is going to test you, break you, scare you, put you through trying times, but don't worry, the Lord knows exactly what wood you are made and you will not break into 20,000 pieces. He will take you only to the level where He can take you. That is why it says that we will never be tested beyond what we can withstand. God knows, you don't know, but God knows and sometimes you're going to believe that you can't take it anymore, but He tells you 'you can take it, there's still more there. Don't worry, hang in there.' We could continue on this, there are many more things, I think they have the point, right?

Don't fear the journey. Do not fear the God of travel. Do not fear the God of processes. Do not fear the God who called you. Don't be afraid of the experiences you've been through. Do not look at your past as if you have been a victim, everything that has happened in your life is because God has allowed it, even if you were abused by your father, even if you made a serious mistake in your life, even if you did not loved, even if you had a serious accident, even if you were limited in your movement by something, God was there at that moment and He has allowed that with a sublime purpose that you yourself may not understand right now, but everything that has happened in your life, in your walk, in your spiritual journey, all of God was there with you. Even before you received it and recognized it, even in your mother's womb, the Lord was there. And if you went through something and you thought that you were alone and that God had forsaken you, know that those drops that are on the ground are the tears of God who cried when what you went through was happening with you. And He allowed it for a purpose that is far beyond what you can understand.

And then look at your past not as a failure, not as something that has no meaning or value, but look at it as something God has used, a dark brushstroke in a painting that needs darkness to make the highlights shine. what is in it Because not everything can be light and light colors in a painting, otherwise it is monotonous and boring. You need darkness as a contrast. And sometimes there are dark brushstrokes that have to be given to the painting of our life so that the beauty in it stands out, so that the call of God can shine and be exposed in all its beauty. But if God allowed it, He will strategically place it so that it is for good and not for bad. When you look at your life, from that redemptive, redemptive perspective, then what seemed to you an abhorrent and meaningless act, you will see it in the light of God's positive design and you will understand that God designed it for good and not for evil.

When Joseph approached his brothers, they thought that he was going to kill them as Pharaoh's second hand, and he told them 'don't worry. You did something to me and you did it for bad, but God used it to preserve life. That's why I can't hate you because I know that it wasn't even you who sold me to Egypt, but it was God who was taking me on a journey towards the destination that He had told me years ago when He gave me two dreams, where he told me that my father and my brothers were going to humiliate themselves in front of me. And you thought you were sending me to death, but God was sending me to life and to meet my destiny. And that is why I cannot hate you, what seemed like something terrible and inhuman, now I understand that you were a kindness that you did to me because you were sending me to my destiny as preserver of my family and as an apostle and as patriarch of all the people of God.

And we have to believe that, that everything that has happened in my life, everything that will happen, everything that is happening is my Father who is using it to take me to the destiny that I have determined. Therefore I can't hate anyone. I can't get bitter. I can't feel like a victim. I cannot rebel against God because everything God does by definition is good and is for the preservation of life or for the glory of his name or for the exaltation of my person. Therefore I am not going to look at anything as meaningless, as a violation. I am going to look at it as a mystery that God allows with a benevolent purpose in the life of his daughter or his son, and that even while He sees it and He knows that it is for the best, He cries with me. But He destined for something good. May the Lord help us.

I think this word is for some of you and some here who have gone through difficult situations in their lives or who are doubting the mercy of the Lord or who have had some failure in their lives and God says 'I have been with you on the ship, you were not alone. I have been there and I will be there and I will fight fiercely for you, all the days of your life. And I love you and no one will be able to snatch you out of my hand, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from my love through of my son Christ Jesus, says the Lord. Nothing, no mistake that you make, even, will tear you from my love for you. And no demon in this world, no force within the cosmos that I have created is capable of violating my purpose in your life. There is no man who can divert you from the destiny that I have for you. There is no mistake, there is nothing that has happened in your life, I have handled everything, so you can be calm that what has happened to you is rather a proof of my love, my mysterious love that is so great, so deep and so wide and so complex and so multifaceted that you will not be able to understand it. Sometimes it will be so mysterious that it will seem like hate or carelessness, but it is the opposite, it is a love beyond what you can ever understand. And you will understand it in the light of eternity.

When you look back and can see, as I see, the history that you have lived, when you can see with its complexity, the beginning of the end and then you can see, as I see, the reality that you do you live. Now you are an infant, you are a baby, you can handle a little bit of my revelation and that is why there are things that I do that seem meaningless to you, carelessness, hatred, infidelity, but when you can see, as Paul says, ' when I see face to face, not as a child now as I see, then I will be able to understand, I will be able to know as I am known'. In the meantime, the only thing we can hope for is to say, 'Lord, why has this happened to me? Why is this happening to me? I do not understand. But I'm going to trust that you know what you're doing. And so we leave that in the Lord's hands and move on.

I ask the Lord, Father, if one day something terrible happens to me that really hurts me, I hope that you give me the grace to love you even so. And believe that it was not that you hated me or rejected me or that you are not as faithful as you say, but give me the grace to confess and grit my teeth and say 'I know that my redeemer lives. Even if he kills me, I will continue to confess and love him. As Job said, when his wife tells him 'curse God and die because what is happening to you, no one can explain it. You have behaved well, you have done everything by the book and yet this happens to you.' he allowed it, but even so I'm going to kiss his hand and I'm going to say you're still my dad, even though I can't understand what's happening.'

That's what glorifies God brothers. We have to ask the Lord to give us that grace so that, until the last breath of our lives, confess love and subjection to the Father and kiss his hand when he slaps us and say 'you know what you are doing, do your will and not mine' . And launch ourselves to live life with joy, brothers, that's why this ties in very well with what I was saying last night, when you understand that, look, you can let go of the wheel and dedicate yourself to looking at the panorama and enjoying the trip because you know that already Everything is done. Your dad already determined everything. Then look out the window, lower the glass, breathe, open your eyes so you can see the beauty around you because the Lord has already taken care of all the details. Then you can let go and experiment and do new things and jump in the air, because you know that you are always going to fall into a security mesh that God has placed there, which is his love. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Not a thing. Who will accuse us if God is the one who justifies. Who can come against a child of God if his father has already given everything? He who gave us Christ Jesus how will he not give us all things together with Him. Everything else in your life is tiny along with the one who gave his meritorious son. If He gave you that, how is He not going to give you other things that are so minimal compared to how precious the life of His son was. That is why we can rejoice, laugh and enjoy and that is why the writer Solomon says 'never lack a white dress on your body and oil, ointment on your head. Put on a good perfume, celebrate life, eat a good meal, have a good laugh, go to a party in the Lord because all of that and God has solved all the problems and you already have your ticket paid and your passport stamped and you are going to enter the promised land, because no one will be able to separate you from the God who called you as long as you keep your hand on His hand. And even sometimes things that you are going to do, the Lord will take you by the hand, he will discipline you but he will take you by the hand and will not allow you to let go of Him, because you are one of those created things that cannot separate yourself or yourself, that is why some theologians have preached this about eternal salvation and here one can be lost. I think it is an excess of what the Bible says, but is God's promise so clear, as it says? nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God, neither death nor life will be able to separate us from Him. So live life with joy, enter the ministry, enter your calling with joy, try new things, experiment, deal with new people, new places, new experiments because God has you in his hand and all the twists you do in the air, like the aerialist who spins, but I know that if he falls there is a mesh there that protects him, God will keep you. He will not let your foot stumble against a stone, says the Lord, for he will command his angels near you to guard you in all your ways. The Lord bless us. Hear sermon from Dr. Roberto Miranda recorded December 3, 2005 at Iglesia Adonai Merida Mexico (77 min.)

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