Dr. Miranda : Going up from level to level

God wants an agile church, a new church, a powerful church, a church that can function in the 21st century and there are some tremendous resources that man has developed in this time, such as the Internet. And we have to enter this new world, the church cannot be left behind.

The church has to evolve with the times, retaining the Gospel, which as the word says was once given to men, but finding new and more powerful ways to carry it. Remember that in the word it says that the Lord will not come until the Gospel is preached to all nations. And I believe that God is providing ways for this to become possible at this time, because his time is close to coming. So I believe that God is using the human mind to develop ways to reach all of humanity, and that includes, for example, this wonderful technology of the Internet.

Can you imagine that we are here in Mérida, Mexico, and right now there are people, potentially now they could be listening to us in China or in Japan or in Canada or in Australia, at the same time that we are transmitting here, they could be listening to us in a field over there in Thailand or Africa. The time we are living in is incredible! And the church has to streamline its mind to be able to enter this new dimension. We cannot stay behind. Moreover, it would be a dishonor to the Lord, because as we have said before, we have the mind of Christ. Amen. And that means that we have to function at a much more effective level than other people.

This morning Dr. Ernst Diehl and I went to a nearby Burger King for breakfast. How many know what Burger King is? And I was telling Ernst, we were served by a lady with obvious indigenous features, but this lady had her Burger King uniform, she had her electronic device on her ears and to listen to orders and communicate with the people who were making the food, It had the technology of a North American multinational corporation and I was intrigued by this combination, right? Of this lady with indigenous features, representing an ancient culture from thousands of years ago, with her 21st century technology on, right? . And that's the new Mexico, which is joined by multinational corporations, and the world is shrinking. And the world has become very small through communications and technology. And God has placed in our hands a tremendously powerful instrument that we have to learn to use. Amen. And that is why you should also learn to use your computers.

Do not be afraid of that strange machine that is there, that looks at you with a big, luminous eye. Those machines are under your authority and you can learn to use it. say amen And God is going to give you computers in the name of Jesus for you to learn. We declare it in the name of Christ and you try to get one, somehow, and ask the Lord to give it to your children so that they can be trained in it and can use that technology for the glory of the Lord. And God wants to get his church out of shrinking and if we don't do it, God is going to send the unconverted to force us to do it, brothers. Because when God has a purpose, He uses even the devil to train us against it. This is how powerful and effective God is in the use of his children and in getting the most out of them. I haven't even started preaching yet, but it's free. That goes there for you yapa, as we Dominicans say.

But there's one other thing I want to share with you before I jump right in. I have been thinking here these days and I believe that here is a prophetic word for you, this congregation and for all the congregations that are represented here tonight. I have been thinking about the process that you have just gone through in these last weeks as a church, and Pastor Antonio was talking to me about how you have been in a certain conflict and a certain tension due to the sound that a dynamic congregation like this one emits and that is embedded in a residential neighbourhood, and how people, well,... of course, also because of certain religious oppositions and other things, have reacted to this and how they have had fights with the authorities and have had difficulties sometimes in open his temple and other things. And I told brother Antonio, when we came from the airport that I feel that the devil has wanted to use this to destroy this congregation or to oppress or hinder it, but God has actually used it to bless this congregation.

The Lord Jesus Christ once said, 'the enemy only knows how to kill, steal and destroy, but I have come so that you may have life and have it in abundance'. In other words, the Lord has come to neutralize the bad intentions of the enemy and turn them into ways and instruments for blessing and life for his people. Because that is what happens when you are in the grace of God and the love of Christ is flowing into your life, and that blessing that God has declared over your life that we talked about last night is developing within you and you are moving in that atmosphere of blessing that Christ makes possible. Look, even your enemies God uses them to bless you and to get you ahead.

And the Lord gave me a word about that which is found in Proverbs and it says there in Proverbs 16 verse 7 that says: “when the ways of a man are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him." Look at that, when your ways are pleasing to Jehovah, they are pleasing because you are in Christ Jesus, even your enemies God takes them and tames them and makes them be at peace with you and uses them to bless you and to take you to another level of glory of blessing and provision. And I believe that that is what has happened in this process and what is happening that God has used the adversity that this congregation has been going through and the difficulties to force this congregation to enter a new level of excellence and ministerial and evangelistic effectiveness. Because in those contacts with the authorities and in those negotiations, and all those anxieties and talking with different people outside of authority, their leaders are losing their fear of these dimensions of dialogue, God forces us to leave the cocuyo that protects the walls of the church and of the evangelical world and makes us swim, throws us into the water.

You know that when the eagle wants to train its chicks, it takes them in its beak, lifts them to the heights and releases them. And that chick either learns to fly or there are crashed eggs at some point. Because the eagle is a bird of prey and it is a warrior bird and it trains its young through pressure and war and so is God too. God wants to train men and women filled with the holy spirit, warriors, aggressive in spirit, powerful towards God, and He uses means, sometimes a little harsh, to enter us into the greatness to which He wants us to enter.

So God has been using that to force this little bird that is just testing its wings, to rise to a higher level. And when I look around they tell me that recently there weren't these walls here, and now, look, my brother here told me, pastor, they changed the color of the platform. A little while ago it was green and look now how beautiful this very formal platform looks, already very pretty, these beautiful curtains and all this and this place, I imagine it looks more like a church than before and you are more protected, more formal. God is taking you to another level of excellence. God has used the problems out there to take the church and develop it and put pressure on it to jump to another level and has forced you then to give more and commit more to your pastors, to your leaders, to the vision of the church so that the church can move to another level.

And when you have already taken this level and have learned to function in it, God will take you to an even higher level, with more expectations, more demand, but also more glory, more scope. and more capacity to cover more people. Because the Lord takes us from level to level and when a people is being directed by the Lord, and is being trained by the Lord, and when the holy spirit is moving in a family, in an individual or in a congregation, the Lord He is the coach and He takes control and begins to take us in a strong but also tremendously gentle and loving and fatherly way to new levels of effectiveness and reach.

So, I want to tell you that the Lord is working and the Lord is coordinating the growth and development of this congregation. And the Lord is making sure that you grow in an organic way. He's going to put certain levels of pressure on them when they feel comfortable to take it to another level, and another level. And that is what the word says, the word of God says that 'the path of the just is like the light of dawn that increases until the perfect day'. And that's how you have to see your life, brother. You have to see your life as you go from glory to glory, as you go from growth to growth, as God has called you to be better every day, wiser every day, deeper every day, more dangerous every day. for the devil and the hosts of evil, each day more understood in the mysteries of God and the holy spirit will guide you step by step. And you have to cooperate with the holy spirit, you have to be attentive to the movements of the holy spirit. You have to be alert to the prophetic voice of God that is going to speak to you through the circumstances and events of life and through the people that are going to come into contact with you. And you have to believe that every moment of your life, every thing that happens, every conversation you have, every event that happens in your life, everything is part of God's revelation to take you to the level where He wants to take you.

Don't waste anything. God is always speaking to us. God is revealing himself to us, but sometimes we are clumsy and rough in our understanding and we cannot appreciate that subtle voice of God that wants to speak to us through small things and small revelations. And every time you leave your house, and even more so before you leave your house, you have to believe and say 'today God is going to speak to me and today God is going to use the events of my life to train me and prepare me and make me more useful to his kingdom and train and break me so that I can dwell at peace with myself and with others'. And God is going to be using all the dimensions of your life for this.

That is why the Lord Jesus Christ said 'he who has eyes to see, see' because there are many people who have eyes to see, but do not see. God's words and God's revelations pass us a thousand miles an hour over our heads and we waste those moments that God is using to train us, to take us to new levels. That is why we have to see that God is always going to be speaking to us, and God has been speaking to this congregation and God tells them 'pay attention because I am training you. Pay attention because I am leading you and there is a purpose that I have with you and I am going to direct you step by step.

This is how the Lord worked in our life and has worked in my life continuously throughout all the years that I have served the Lord, twenty-something years as pastor of my congregation, I have always been able to see the hand of God coordinating all aspects of my ministry, not because I'm the great thing or anything, but because God wants to do it with anyone who surrenders to the Lord and who surrenders and who opens up and who wants to be used greatly by the Lord. God is going to take you seriously and is going to start a training program exclusively designed for you, according to your temperament, according to your qualities, according to your past record, according to your circumstances, according to the purpose that He has for your life, according to the endowment that He has put in you. God is going to read all of that and design a training plan specifically for you, like great coaches do when they receive an athlete who has potential, they identify where that athlete's strength is. If he's a boxer for example, and maybe he's not very heavy or muscular but he has agility, then what he lacks in weight, he makes up for in agility or size. Then the trainer will see the strength of the boxer and will adapt his training to develop the strong part of that boxer. Because perhaps that boxer will not be able to compete with his opponent at the level of strength, but he will be able to recover at the level of agility, intelligence. So the trainer uses that to train him.

And likewise, God is capable of understanding exactly what is the call that is in your life, what is the endowment that He has placed in you, what is the area in which you can serve, and then God goes to design a program, a way of training that will be every day, every moment, every meeting, every intervention, God will be using it to develop in you the call that He has for your life. And if you are alert, and if you have faith and if you believe that God works that way with men, then you will be an observant student and you will learn every day what God is saying in your life, and your growth will to speed up and develop much faster because you are going to see with spiritual eyes and you are going to be able to interpret what God is doing in your life. And you will be able to enter into the flow of God and that will accelerate your movement.

It is important that we learn to flow with God's dealings in our lives and quickly catch up with the teaching that God is giving us and run with it, before God has to come at us with a 10-pound bat to hit us over the head. God sometimes begins with a feather, and if we don't understand with a spoon, and if we don't understand, he takes a board, and if we don't understand, he takes a bat, and if we don't, he takes a steel beam and hits us over the head. I prefer to listen to him and understand him from the moment he picks up the pen. Amen. We have to be sensitive to God's voice and understand what God is doing in our lives.

I have seen the hand of the Lord, and I already entered my sermon a long time ago. I have decided that in these times I am going to simply let the Lord speak as He wants. I have seen how God has been intervening in our congregation through the years and let me share some of that testimony because perhaps it can be a blessing for you as leaders and for this congregation as well. Because that's how God works. God puts a calling on our lives.

The actual text that I was going to use, and I am simply going to relate it, is a text that many of you know, and it is the text of when the Lord Jesus Christ meets Peter, after Peter has been a whole night trying to fish and not finding any fish. That's in Luke Chapter 5, you can look it up there if you want. It says that there were some fishermen who were on the shore washing their nets, after a night of trying to catch fish, and the Lord Jesus Christ was overwhelmed by the crowd that wanted to hear words of life that came from Him, and the Lord was seen for a moment overwhelmed by all those people and he understood that he had to use an instrument, something, a platform to be able to speak to so many people, because they were all around him and his voice could not reach that way. Then he looked around, saw Peter's boat that was a little removed from the shore, called Peter, got into the boat, and asked Peter, he says that he begged Peter to let him use the boat to preach to the people. crew. And after the Lord finished his message to the crowd, he turned to Peter: 'Peter, now launch out into the deep, launch out into the deep and cast your nets for a catch. And Peter obediently took his boat, threw it into the sea and then when he was there the Lord told him: 'cast your nets', and Peter said: 'Lord, we have been fishing all night and we have not caught a single fish. but at your word I will cast the net.” The Bible says that Peter obediently cast the net and what happened? .... caught a multitude of fish, so much so that the boat sank. And when Peter saw this, astonished and filled with holy fear, in the presence of one whom he clearly understood had to be God, in order to be able to perform such a portentous miracle, he threw himself to the ground immediately out of the boat, fearing, as they have feared. the prophets throughout history and everyone who has had an encounter with the deity of God, his terrible presence, and as one of the prophets said 'woe to me because I have seen the glory of God' and God always says 'no topics'. And the Lord Jesus Christ told him 'do not be afraid, because from today you are going to be a fisher of men'. The Bible says that Peter, leaving his nets, followed the Lord. What a wonderful passage! No?

There I see God dealing with a man whom He wants to use, how God is dealing with you who He wants to use, how God is dealing with you, pastor, how God is dealing with you, leader of the congregation, how God is dealing with the pastors of this congregation, how he is dealing with my life and with my congregation. Because when God calls us, He always makes deals with us.

This morning I was talking about the journeys that God designs when he calls us, when we accept God's call. God always takes us on individual journeys where He messes with us like He messes with Peter here, and takes us to a place where He wants to reveal something different to us about His glory. And he wants to give us a vision of who he is for us. And then he tells us, as he says to Pedro here..... he takes us on a journey and tells Pedro to 'row out into the deep', which is a symbol of Pedro's clumsy and merely human trajectory, a fisherman like any other another, anonymous, with nothing to distinguish him, and takes him out of there, takes him on a journey out to sea, but which is also a journey towards his destination, and when he is well removed from the shore, he reveals himself and takes off his Clark Kent's suit and is revealed as Superman who is the Lord Jesus, son of God.

And so God wants to give you a revelation of his glory. God wants you to know him. The Lord loves us to know him. He wants to reveal himself. He will never be able to reveal himself in all his glory, but he does want to reveal himself to you in a different way. He wants you to know him intimately so that you can be of use to him then. Only a person who has had a powerful encounter with Jesus can be useful to the Lord. And that is why in this passage, and I see that there are 3 levels of closeness that Peter has with the almighty Christ. There are 3 levels of spiritual depth that Peter occupies in that passage. As there are different levels of spirituality that we occupy in our spiritual path.

Look, we see Pedro, at first on the same beach, along with a bunch of people, very close to the people. He is there washing his nets to fish, he is on dry land. That is the first level. The second level is when the Lord tells him 'move your boat away from the land a little so that I can speak to the crowd', that is the second level, move a little away from the mainland where the crowd is. And the third level, when the Lord finishes preaching, tells him 'now, launch out into the deep', which is a level of greater separation and distance from the crowd and from the mainland.

And I believe that there are 3 different levels of spiritual depth, 3 different levels of knowledge of the Lord, 3 different levels of ministerial development in Peter's life. So we understand that God does not want you to remain static. God does not want you to be the same ministerially, or temperamentally, or relationally, that you were a year or ten days ago, or five years ago, or what you will be ten years from now. The Christian always has to be evolving. Churches always have to be developing, ministries always have to be in motion, because we are not lakes, we are rivers that have to be always flowing. If we stagnate, we die. We always have to be in process, we always have to be going to the next stage, to the next level, to the next goal, and God is glorified in that. God hates the lazy and comfortable person, that's why he tells Joshua 'look, I command you to make an effort and be brave because God calls us to always be in process, always in motion. When we stop, we die.

We always have to be alert. Where the cloud is going to move, where the glory of God is going to move, where the column of fire is going to go, and when the Lord says 'move', you have to move because if you don't move, you you will die. And that is why we have to always be alert, where God is taking me, what God is saying to me, how he is speaking to me. I want to instill in you a vision of a dynamic God and a dynamic Christian life where you have to always be alert to what the holy spirit is telling you and where is the next mountain that you have to climb.

So, in the first stage of Pedro, in that journey is where Pedro is there on earth, along with the bunch of people. And for many leaders that's the level where we're just people doing things in the Christian life or in ministry or maybe we're just out in the world and we're not even God's children yet and nothing separates us from the crowd. We have a religious spirituality, we come to church, we make the movements that everyone else does, but there is no spiritual depth, there is no contact with God, there has been no entering and establishing a personal relationship, a dialogue of communication with Christ and with the Holy Spirit. And most Christians unfortunately are at that level where 70%, 60% of the congregations are people who just come to the congregation. Glory to God because they accepted Christ. Glory to God because they are going to heaven, but what a pity that they are missing the opportunity to be useful for the Lord here on earth and they are missing the opportunity to drink the milk and honey that God has for those who they serve it. And it's a waste, a waste for the church, because it steals talents and resources that it could use to expand and it's a waste for the people who live at that level because they don't receive the blessing and the glory that God has destined for their lives. . And I tell you not to stay at that level. 'Wake up you who sleep and Christ will light you up', says the Lord tonight. Those knees that are paralyzed, that bend in prayer and fasting to seek the glory of God. Those hands that are fallen and placed on the floor and in the pockets, that rise up to receive the fire that will come upon your life when you cry out to the Lord and seek the anointing of God in your life, when you hunger for God.

God tells you 'wake up, jump out of the pile, develop hunger, thirst for me because I want to use you, I want to bless you, I want to reveal myself to you, I want you to know me in a different way. I am not a generic God. I am a personal God, an individual God and I appear to my children and I want to speak to my children and I want my children to know me as I know them. I want my children to have dealings with me. I want to speak to you in the dream of the night. I want to use the circumstances of their life to reveal myself to them behind the curtains of time and space. I want my children to see something of my glory and to know my dealings, that they can transfer to their children the legends and feats that they have done through my power and that they can transmit to their children the passion for the Gospel and that they can turn them then into instruments too, into a new generation that has seen the glory of God reflected in their parents'.

You cannot give to your children or to the people you are discipling, you cannot transmit to them what you have not experienced in your life. You cannot expect your children to love the Lord and grow up with a passion for the Lord, if they do not see that passion reflected in your life. You cannot wait to tell your neighbors about Jesus Christ if your voice is weak and without authority, without the tone of authority that only comes from having battled and fought and tamed the demons and the powers of the enemy. , having suffered a lot and gained a lot and then your voice turns, from a simple private to the voice of an army officer who when he speaks has the weight of God in his voice and the people line up because they understand that there is someone there who has authority.

Need to get off the heap. Tell your brother there next to you 'jump off the pile'. Tell him, tell him, 'jump out of the pile'. Amen. We have to get out of the crowd. We have to get out of mediocrity. We have to get out of the generic. We have to get into the specifics. Hallelujah! We have to go into that secret place and we have to go to the mountain for God to speak to us, so that we can then come down from the mountain with the glory of God manifesting on our faces. The word of the Lord says that 'looking into the face of the Lord we are transformed from glory to glory'. If you do not look at the face of the Lord, the glory of the Lord will not be able to be transferred to your life. You need to spend time with God. You need to get out of the crowd. You need to step away from the ordinary so that God can deal with your life and reveal himself to your life. You have to develop an appetite for God. Unfortunately, the majority of the church is asleep, they are indifferent, they think 'God has nothing to do with me, that's for the educated. Ah, that's for so-and-so who went to high school. Or that is for that little brother who prays a lot and fasts a lot. That is for the other who knows how to speak and who is not afraid of people. Look, the revelation, the gift of God is for everyone. The Lord has called us all to develop a plan, a goal in life, and you have to stop thinking of yourself as insignificant, as not called, not gifted. We all have something to contribute to the Kingdom of God.

The Bible says that God came and distributed gifts to men. We all receive a gift. It doesn't matter how new you are, it doesn't matter how tiny you are, it doesn't matter how uneducated you are, God can use you if you dare to use his glory and get away from the crowd and get away from the generic and ask the Lord and fast and ask God for a call for your life. believe it. And knock on God's door until God brings down his fire into your life and transforms you into a man or woman filled with the holy spirit. But don't stay, don't stay on the shore. Don't stay with the crowd, don't stay with the heap because you're going to die there and you're going to waste God's blessing on your life. And you will never enter the destiny that God has determined for you. In the name of Jesus I right now unleash the mind of the people of God so that they understand that their eyes are opened, that the veil is removed from understanding, that they are awakened to understand that God is calling them to fulfill a purpose to reach a goal. Let them be restless, let them not be allowed to sleep or rest until they seek the glory of God and find God's call for their lives. In the name of Jesus, Hallelujah! Receive that tonight. God is calling you. God wants you to get out of the pack and into a level of power and effectiveness. Dare in the name of the Lord. That is the word of the Lord for your life. Dare to believe that God has a call for your life and begin to take steps of faith, small at first, but they will become bigger and bigger, more and more firm, more and more confident and if you are faithful in a little, in how much you will be put, says the Lord.

But you have to get out of the comfortable, you have to get out of the general, you have to get out of the dream that many of us are into. And then comes the call to service and the Lord says to Peter, 'Peter, let me use your boat so I can speak to the crowd,' and there is something wonderful there that reveals something to us about how God works to carry out the message to the nations and multitudes. Notice that there was a great need, the people were hungry for the word of God, they were like sheep without a shepherd, says the word. The religious leaders had failed them, they had turned God's revelation into dead religion. The Pharisees, instead of attracting people to God, had alienated and separated them with a bunch of commandments and laws and it was a dead religion, full of letters, but the spirit of God had left that place for years. letter, and all they had was then were prohibitions. And religion had become something for the privileged, those who had studied, those who were athletes of religion, respectable people, good people in quotes, decent people, middle class people, upper class, and We know that God is not there, God cannot be there because his revelation is for everyone, for the great and for the small. But Pharisaism had failed him, Judaism had failed God, and it had failed the people.

And when Jesus comes with his power expressing a living faith and a personal spirituality and a Gospel of hope and good news, people feel in their spirit that there is something that this being has that the Pharisees do not have . You see that there were continually people who passionately followed Jesus, because at some point he had touched them with his message of life and hope and love and redemption and those people who had felt rejected and without hope by the leaders religious, and they thought that God did not need them, nor wanted them, and what's more, he hated them, for the moment their spirit woke up and they felt that there was a possible call for their lives, that there was hope for them. And when they expected to receive condemnation from Christ, what they received was love and grace and forgiveness and hope.

And that is why we see this woman in the pages of the Scriptures who approaches Jesus, she was a woman of bad life, a woman who was rejected by everyone when she passed through the streets they murmured about her, they whispered . The women saw her coming and grabbed their husbands and took them to the other side of the street. And it seems that this woman was touched by Christ and by his message of hope and that woman felt that there was a possibility for her.

We have to open doors so that people can come. When they enter then we teach them, when we have shown them that there is a possibility in Christ, that they do not have to do it but the spirit of God in them, and that God is going to redeem them, God is going to change them, it is not you and I am not I am not even the church that is going to change sinners. When a church is being eminently evangelistic it is going to have huge problems that it is not going to find the manuals that tell you how do I deal with this? I have never seen this situation before in my life. Because? Because God is going to be bringing people with all kinds of problems and strange and difficult situations and you are going to need the holy spirit and the grace of God to be able to solve it. Because? Because that's what God wants. Christ came looking for him because he was lost. Christ is not interested in people who are with all their things figured out and all the papers in order. God wants people who come with all the problems that have been and will be for the church to solve. Christ tells the church, 'Give him something to eat.' A church that is being used by God is a church that is going to have problems and praise God for it. Dead churches are the ones that don't have problems, but a church that has the life of God is going to have challenges and it has to be prepared. That is why God tells the church "wake up!", because we are in a time with so many problems and people are going to come tied up with all kinds of ties, and if you want a very clean, very pretty church, where no one breaks a glass, where everyone behaves well, you are not flowing in the will of God. Because if you look at Christ, he was always surrounded by people that the respectable did not like. Plunder, publicans, women of bad reputation, people with a bad temper like Pedro, etc. etc the Lord was always surrounded by people that most of us don't want to be seen with on the street.

But what I want to say, brothers, is that this woman came with Jesus because the Lord had given her hope, instead of rejecting her, instead of judging her, instead of punishing her, the Lord told her: 'Look, you can get out of that life. God using you and working with you in your life can break your ties and make you a respectable woman, a counselor, a wife.' And that woman felt such gratitude for Jesus that she searched for him until she found him in the house of Simon, the Pharisee, and He came and brought a glass of expensive perfume in an alabaster glass, he broke the neck of the glass and poured the perfume on the Lord and with his tears he wet the feet of the Lord and with his own hair he dried the feet of the Lord. Because? Because I had received hope, because the Gospel that Christ preached was a Gospel of blessing and when there is a church that preaches blessing and grace and love and potentiality and possibility of transformation and the power of God to change lives and to transform generations and bring prosperity and holiness and power and authority over yokes and bonds, that church is going to be prosperous and people are going to come to it, they are going to want to find that church.

And that's why when the Lord is there, the crowds came to him and crowded around him and jumped on him because the Pharisees didn't preach that way. If you are filled with the glory of God, if you spend time with God, if you are close to Jesus, you will be contagious and the same thing that happened to Jesus will happen to you, that people will look for you and not You will be able to rest easy because they will be knocking on the neighbor's door so that you can give her advice, the one who has a marital problem will look for you so that you can pray for him. And they are going to ask you to take them to church, instead of your having to beg them to go, because the power of the holy spirit is going to manifest itself in your life. That is why the Lord Jesus Christ says 'remain in me, remain in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit'.

Brothers, bearing fruit comes as a product of abiding in Christ, of being intimate with Him, of putting Christ inside of us and us getting inside of Christ. And then the vitality of Jesus, the very style of Jesus, the attractiveness of Jesus, is transmitted through us and we become magnetic people that others come to us. And God fertilizes us and we go from being sterile, as we were saying last night, to living as a family. Because God loves to turn our sterility into fertility and blessing. That is why there are so many barren people in Scripture, so many barren women that God turned into fruitful women and many of the great leaders that we see in the Bible are born from barren women, like Samuel, from Ana; like John the Baptist, from Elizabeth; like Jesus of Mary who, although she was not sterile, could not conceive because she was not yet a wife; like Sarah who gives birth to a son, Isaac. Why does God always use barren women to bring in his great leaders? Because God says to humanity 'I want to turn your sterility into fruit. I want to take your sterile, unproductive, impotent life, at the mercy of circumstances, under the yoke of the devil, and I want to turn that life into an instrument for my glory. I want to turn you into a man, a woman who can bless others, who can be used to bring redemption to humanity. I want your life. I want you to give birth to spiritual children. I want to change your name from Abran to Abraham, father of multitudes. I want to change your name from Sarai to Sara, a woman who lives in a family, mother.

God wants to change your name, God wants to change your identity and the Lord is looking for people whom He can impregnate, excuse me for using that graphic word, impregnate us with his life so that we can give birth to children and bring others to know Jesus. But there is a price to pay. You have to stick to Jesus. You have to be filled with His life. We cannot be used. The Lord Jesus Christ wants us to imbue ourselves with his personality, which is an eminently fruitful personality, that is why where Jesus went, miracles went, revelation went, consolation went, healing went, the multiplication of resources went, the word went of potential that gave life to people who broke their ties, who defeated death, and the Lord is saying 'I want that same life for you. I want you to be like me. I want to transfer my genetic code to you so that you too can be a giver of life, so that you too can be a transmitter of the Father's grace, but you have to get out of the crowd.'

And that's why when the Lord He is there preaching, the people come to him, the people look for him because the people were hungry and knew that he had something to give them that the institutional, religious church could not give them. Yesterday I was talking with an eminent doctor here in Mexico who went to Boston to visit, there he met the Lord in our church. He lives in Morelia and when he found out that I was going to be here, he came and honored me with his visit here and he brought another eminent doctor from here in Mérida and he spoke precisely about his life, and about all things how God is now opening his life and is making transformations in him and is drawing him closer to the Lord.

That is the idea, that God wants to touch people and bring them to know the Lord and disturb them and turn them into people who can in turn bring others to know Jesus. And he said above all, he said this, because he is a new believer, he spoke...... and look, brothers, I have nothing against the Catholic Church. I believe that there are many people of God in the Catholic Church. I don't know what their theology is and I respect it, but I believe that there are Catholic people who are going to go to heaven with everything and their shoes, because it is not a matter of religion, it is a matter of relationship with Jesus Christ, but many of their leaders they have failed you and that is why you are having the problems you have. But there are also many evangelicals, many in my country right now there are many evangelicals who are supporting abortion and homosexuality, churches that call themselves evangelical and are receiving all kinds of people, they are telling them 'continue with your sins', nor They don't even call it a sin, no problem because God loves you like that. And those people are as far from God, those churches are as far from the will of God as are the Catholics. Because they are evangelicals that does not give them the privilege of violating the word of God.

But this man said, this doctor said, about ..... he says there is a huge cathedral there in Morelia and all the people go there and what is done says, read the Bible, a few minutes and what the priest does is that he reads it literally and doesn't even explain it. And everything ends there and the people leave and have not received the word of life, and they leave as they entered. I hope that God brings a revival to the Catholic church. I hope that God awakens them and that they can enter into vitality. It is not that we are speaking against them, they are people that God loves and there are many people there who love God, but their vision has failed them. And where we have to be is where the word of life is being preached, and where that word of life is preached, people will come and where there are people who have an understanding of God and an experience with Christ, with the personal Christ, that people are going to be effective, and that's why people come to Jesus and are there. And so Jesus has a dilemma, how do I reach these people?

See, when a church is filled with the holy spirit it's going to have problems and the problem is going to be not, 'we don't have people,' but 'we have too many people, and how are we going to solve the problem.' That is the kind of problem that I as a pastor want to have. Right now there in Boston we have that problem. We built a church ten years ago and it allowed us to jump to another level, and we had to go to two services, we already have two services and we are already clear that these two services are still not giving us and we have to keep thinking, breaking our heads what's the next level And there we are at that moment right now. I had a conversation with Dr Diehl this morning, what do we do, we build a new temple and we are in that process, do we rent, what do we do, spend millions of dollars on a new temple, what happens, what are they...? There are problems that arise when God is using you, when the power of God is in your life, when your church is experiencing the glory of God, they are going to have problems, but they are going to be good problems. I prefer to have the problem of what am I going to do with people, that there are no people to do anything with. You understand?

And when you are filled with the holy spirit, your problem is going to be 'I have too many people, they are looking for me, I have to hide. Because I get home and they are already waiting for me there and ask me for advice and ask me to pray with them. That is the problem with Jesus, wherever he went, people were already waiting for him. You remember? He sent his disciples, they were working and he said 'let's go to a place there on vacation, let's go to Playa del Mar, del Mar or del Carmen? Playa del Carmen, let's go to Acapulco. The Lord told them, 'boys, because the Lord liked to rest from time to time. Their shepherds must also have time to rest. say amen You have to cool off, you have to search. But what happened?. When they got there the people had already somehow discovered where they were going to be, and when they get there they are all smiling waiting for them. 'Lord, how good that you came! We were waiting for you. Glory to God.'

That's the problem with people who have God's anointing. People are going to be looking for it because there is a need in this world. In your neighborhood there are people who are cooking in their own juice, every day, with problems, with financial difficulties, with marital problems, problems with children, problems at work, health problems, existential problems, problems from the past, Present problems and future problems, problems with the boss, problems with friends and problems with enemies, and they need advice, they need a redemptive word, and that word is in your mouth because you know the God who can solve problems. And God wants you to share that word. And when people know that there is a believer filled with the holy spirit those people will flow to where that person is, that is why we need Christians filled with the holy spirit. We need people who are experts in war so that they can fight in favor of the poor and the powerless and defenseless that the devil has under his yoke, in all the neighborhoods of the city of Mérida. And God needs women like the three I see here right now. You sisters like this, God wants to use you, he is going to use you in the name of Jesus. You represent that humble Merida that God needs your voice, your presence in the neighborhoods of this city so that they preach the Gospel of power and transformation in your life. God has a call for you, enter into your call and let yourself be used by the Lord. Become counselors, spiritual mothers, teachers of the Gospel. Right now in the name of Jesus I release the power, the potentiality of God in their spiritual bowels, I declare them anointed in the name of the Lord to be used by God greatly. Receive the endowment of God's power in your life.

Brothers, God wants a redeemed church, a church filled with the holy spirit, a church that knows where the water is to drink, where there is bread to eat and then tell others 'come here there is bread, here is water. Eat.' But if we haven't gone to those sources, how can we take others. That is why we have to ask the Lord: 'Lord, help me to enter into your intimacy.'

And the Lord had this problem, wherever he went people followed him. There we see him portrayed, where this text begins in Chapter 5 of Luke, he has the problem, people are flowing to where he is, and he looks around and his divine mind tells him what he has to do, and he sees a boat. Brothers, these passages are so deep that one could spend a lot of time exposing them and thank God that I am going to be respectful of your time and I am not going to do it like that. But there are so many things because look, for example, if you give me a couple more minutes, okay?

The Lord saw the boat and I have always said that the Lord is the creator of the universe and He could have magnified His voice, if He had wanted. You know that He had power to do it, yes or no? He did not need this microphone, on one occasion they came to collect his taxes and he told Pedro, I think it was, 'go to the sea, catch a fish and there you will find some coins. Go and pay with that. I think the Lord was laughing, he was making a joke with that. Because then he said 'hey, who are the ones who pay the taxes? Are they the citizens, the mere citizens or the sons of kings? Well, of course, those who are citizens, kings, do not pay taxes. The Lord was saying: 'come, I don't have to pay the taxes' but for the Scripture to be fulfilled and to respect the law, then go and pay it, that's fine, boys', but he winked at the disciples, using a supernatural instrument to pay taxes. You see? He had the power to do what he wanted.

He could have supernaturally preached the Gospel with a magnified voice. What's more, He could have risen out of the air ten feet tall and preach to the people without any problem. But what did he do? He looked for a human, natural solution to solve the problem and he found a boat, and he found a man who was the owner of that boat, and he asked that man to let him use that boat. And you know what? God, if He had wanted to, would have developed a much cheaper plan to preach the Gospel. He could have sent a powerful archangel, with a trumpet voice, who neither eats, nor sleeps, nor sins, and sent him to preach the whole Gospel in all parts of the world and the world would have been converted in a few days, yes or no? No? Imagine an archangel appears to you and says 'receive the Lord'. You are going to tell him, 'well, let me think about it.' You are going to throw yourself on the floor right away and you are going to tell him where, where, where I have to go. But God chose a plan, he chose to use us, he chose a humble way of carrying it out, because God always wants to cooperate and work in partnership with his creature, which is man, humanity. The Gospel will not be preached if you do not help to preach it. That is the plan that God developed. And that is why the Lord looked, and instead of doing the work supernaturally, He looked for a man and looked for a boat so that this man would lend him his boat, so that he could preach the Gospel.

And I have always said that our lives are like Peter's boat. And the Lord is always looking for our lives so that He can climb on them and preach to the hungry crowd. You are Peter's boat, I am Peter's boat, and God is continually reaching out to believers and saying, 'Will you let me use your boat to preach to a hungry crowd? And you can choose to tell the Lord, yes or no, as so many do. And when the Lord comes into their lives and calls them, they become crazy and pretend that they didn't hear and continue doing what they always do in their lives. They believe that the Lord did not realize that they turned away, and the Lord leaves them and continues to love them, but they missed the great opportunity to be used by God.

Twenty-odd years ago the Lord called me and said 'can I use your boat?', when I was in the middle of my studies at Harvard University, one of the most select universities in the world, eager to enter academia and achieve academically and live the posh, affluent life of a college professor, in the US, and that was my dream. I came from a poor family and here at last I had the opportunity to do something outstanding and to enter into an elegant and intellectual life and I was eager to continue on that course. And then the Lord interrupted me and told me 'I want to use your boat' And the pastor who had founded our church had to leave and our church was just beginning, and there will be no one to attend that church, there were no possibilities at that time , that someone trained who could handle a tiny church that did not even have money to pay part time to the pastor. And the Lord spoke to me and said 'I would like to use you to shepherd these lives. Do not miss this that is starting so nice. And I want to use you. Would you let me use you?'

I thank the Lord, twenty-odd years after I had the courage to say 'yes, Lord.' And I left my networks for the glory of God, God gave me the joy and the privilege and the satisfaction of finishing my doctorate in the secular world, but I think I haven't read a book of literature for twenty years, that was my area, because I dedicated myself to the pastorate. And I tell you brothers, God does not owe me anything, God has been more than generous with me. For whatever little thing I have given him, God has given me more and has blessed me and made me the father of multitudes. And every time I see a man who was an alcoholic and a drug addict, lucid and sane and dressed well, living a productive life, and I was used by the Lord to make that life better and heal, I feel glorified, I feel blessed, I feel like what a privilege that God can use me to redeem a life! And that man is a book, I perhaps did not get to write the books that I wanted to write, but that man is a living book that I have helped to write.

As Paul says, 'you are my open letters'. My books are the people that God has helped me redeem by the power of the Gospel. And I left what I loved and I left what I would have liked to do, but that does not give me any glory, as I say, God does not owe me anything. God has paid me much more than I ever would have thought. Perhaps he has not paid me with money, but he has paid me with happiness, with satisfaction, with a sense of destiny, with the privilege of being used by God to bless human beings, of being an instrument through which the blessed and pure and holy grace of God. What a privilege that for an instant the divine energy that blesses and gives life can rush through you and stop for a split second so that you can use it to bless others!

That is why when Peter sees the glory of the Lord, the Lord tells him 'Don't worry, now you are going to be a fisher of men'. Because when you let yourself be used by the Lord, God changes your destiny and elevates it. You could just be doing merely human things that stay here on earth. I was telling someone today, nothing that is in this world is going to leave this world, because the Bible says that one day God will make the elements burn, the very atoms that make up matter, will catch fire and the sky will disappear. to roll up like a scroll and the earth is going to burn in flames and God is going to create a new earth and a new heaven, because nothing can enter into that pure dimension where God has determined that we will live for eternity that has been touched by it. sin. And this earth, and this universe, the Bible says that 'creation itself groans with unspeakable groans because there is sin in it', sin has stained creation and therefore all the works of this world will remain. Nothing that you have done in this world will go away, neither the paintings that are in the great museums of this world, nor the great skyscrapers, nor the shiny cars that are in the streets, nor the dollars that are in all the banks of the world. , nor the statues that sculptors have made through all the centuries, none of that will survive. No book that has been written, no great work that has been done, no construction that has been built, nothing is going to enter eternity. The only thing that will go into eternity is those investments that you have made for the Kingdom of God.

That is why the Bible says that we invest in banks where things do not corrupt, where rust does not penetrate, where insects do not penetrate, where there are no eaters, because those material things are going away. stay here, the only thing that you will be able to claim for eternity is those works that God allowed you to do to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. And that's why God tells you 'don't get excited about the things of this world. Let me use you, because that is what is going to give you a new identity and it is going to promote you to a much higher level. Everything else here is going to stay. You could spend your whole life like Pedro catching stinky fish, and smelling like fish all your life, or you could become a fisher of men who, two thousand years after your life, still talk in Merida, Mexico about you, as we are doing. about that humble fisherman. And that's why the Lord when he finishes ..... with this idea I finish .....

When Peter allows him to use his boat having removed it a little from the earth, because to transmit the message of God You have to withdraw from the crowd, you have to move away, you have to find time, you have to move away from the influence of the people, from the control of the people, from what they will say, what they think of me, the prestige we want, the approval of the people . When we withdraw from all that, we put out into the deep and enter the intimacy where the Lord can speak to us, where the Lord can give us his revelation and there the Lord reveals to us who He is, and there the Lord provides us.

Peter had spent the whole night fishing and they didn't catch a single fish, but now the Lord tells him 'look, I'm going to bless you spiritually and I'm going to bless you materially as well'. When you serve the Lord, God provides you. I assure you. One of the reasons I didn't want to be a pastor was because I thought I was going to starve. And I tell you brothers, God has been faithful to me all these years, I have not lacked anything and God has blessed us much more than I would have thought when I started. Because it is that God blesses his servants. I believe that God does not call you to starve, God calls you to bless you, but you have to be faithful and you have to pay the price. And God changes your destiny. I want to ask you if you would like to give your boat to the Lord tonight. I'm going to ask the musicians to come through here.

God is calling Peter tonight to serve him and to use them for his glory, to use them as instruments in his glory and you have the power to say yes or no to the Lord. If you want to be used by God there is a price to pay. You are going to have to live as a priestess, as a priest. You are going to have to be a Nazarite, you are not going to be able to live like ordinary people. There is a price to pay. But I assure you that there is nothing that can be compared to the privileged status of a priest of the Lord. A person who lives in a different dimension from the others, who preserves himself and moves away so that the Lord can speak to him, impregnate him with his life, to then go out and give what he has cultivated in the place of intimacy with the Lord. You will have to exempt yourself from many things. You are going to have to live the life of an athlete, of a consecrated priest. You are going to have to orient your life towards your calling and you are going to have to align your life with the calling that God has given you in order to flow in the power of God and to always stay alert to the voice and training of God, but you are going to to be a fisherwoman, a fisher of men. You are going to see the glory of God manifested in your life and you are going to suckle on the breasts of God. You are going to eat from his table. You will feel the word of God speaking to your life and what a greater privilege than that. It is worth paying the price. It is worth straying from the shore. It is worth going into the deep because in those places there is blessing. If you want to be used by God, I ask you, stand up, do not do it out of courtesy but do it because you truly feel that the Lord is calling you tonight to be a priest, a servant of the Lord. If you do not feel ready, do not get up, but if you feel that you want God to do that work in your life and use you, I ask you to stand up tonight.

And I would also like to ask if there is someone here tonight, I don't know here, but maybe there is someone who has come tonight, and has not yet taken a step of faith to become intimate with Jesus Christ and he is still with the crowd and does not know Jesus, just as Peter did not yet know who Jesus was. And tonight the Lord has spoken to you and told you 'daughter, son, I want to have a relationship with you. I want you to open your heart and let me into your life and accept me as your Lord so that I can make a plan with you. I want to heal you. I want to cleanse you and I want to give you a new name. I want you to live with me in eternity and I want to have dialogues with you and I am interested in your life. I want you to open your heart and let me into your life, because when I knock on the door, if you listen to my voice and open the door, I promise that I will come in and have dinner with you and you will have dinner with me'.

I want to ask if there is someone tonight who wants to say to Jesus "come into my life", and wants to invite him to be the Lord of his life, I ask you to raise your hand if not you did before. I see a hand there. Has your hand gone up? Don't be afraid, don't be afraid. Amen. God bless you. A hand here is raised as well, here next to it. Someone else to tell Jesus "I receive you tonight, Lord, as my Lord and savior." You haven't done it before. God bless you. There are hands going up, hands going up.

Dare in the name of the Lord. God has a plan for your life. God is calling you tonight. God wants to turn you from a mere fisherman of fish to a fisherman of men and women. God wants to give you a new identity. Raise your hand and tell the Lord Jesus “come into my life”.

I want to invite those people, come forward here. Don't be afraid. If you came with someone, come here with that person, come here ahead. Don't be afraid. This is the family of God. You are not among strangers. This is the family of the Father that is here and God wants to bless you tonight and God wants to make you a fisher of women. Come over here immediately. Do not worry. Come here. You took the first step of raising your hand, now have the courage to come forward here. And we are going to pray for you and your life is going to change tonight and you are going to be transformed into a different person because the spirit of God is going to come into your life. If there's anyone else, don't stop, come now.

The word says that today is the day of salvation, now is the moment in which Christ wants to do a work in your life. do not stop. Go ahead and receive and open your heart to the Lord, and God is going to do great things in your life. I assure you that you are not here by coincidence or because you had no other place to go, you are here because the Holy Spirit brought you, because he has a destined encounter with you tonight. If there is still someone else, I want to invite them. Come, come over here. That's it, young man, fear not. There is still time, God wants to do a work. Although you may not understand everything, not everything is clear in your mind, don't worry. Sometimes we say, well, first I have to fix this, I have to fix the other, I have to fix my situation. No, no, the Lord says: "come as you are, come with your problems, come with your obstacles, come with your difficulties and then let's start working together to take you where I want to take you".

If you had all your problems solved and all things in order, you would not need Christ. Precisely because you have obstacles and you have difficulties, it is that you need to come to the feet of Jesus. And even if you do not understand all the theology and all the doctrine that is involved in this, the important thing is that you know that Christ died for you and that He says "if you let me in, I will enter your life, I will heal your life, I will write your name and the book of life and I will give you a new identity”. That's all, the rest comes in addition, it comes with the walk, it comes with the treatment, it comes with the conversation that you are going to have for years and years to fully know what Christ wants to do in your life. But tonight what He wants is for you to make a connection with Him and then begin a pilgrimage that will take you where He wants to take you.

Say with me: Lord Jesus, I receive you as my savior and as the owner of my life. I recognize my sins and I thank you because through your cross I have forgiveness of my sins. I break all bargains with Satan and make a pact with you. You are the owner of everything I have and everything I am. Come into my life and transform me and show me what you want from me. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. Glory to the Lord. Give the Lord a round of applause tonight. Hallelujah!. We adore you. we bless you Now I want you to know, that even if you didn't feel anything, but if you invited Jesus to enter, He entered, He entered, because He says: “I will enter. I will enter. If someone opens the door I will enter, I will have dinner with him and he with me."

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