Dr. Miranda : Giving in the zone of discomfort (I Kings 17:8)

God bless you, my brothers, a pleasure to be with you again this morning. As always, the adoration that you bring before the Lord blesses me a lot and that charges my energy and encourages me to come and share the word with you. They are a congregation, as Pastor Antonio said, absolutely adorable, and I am in love with your children, and with your young people, with all of you, with the great affection that you have shown me to Dr. Diehl, too. Well, we are delighted. We cannot ask for more. Last night the sisters blessed us with delicious cake and well... we haven't stopped eating since we got here. So Glory to the Lord and thank you for all your love. I know that God is going to do great things.

One knows when a congregation is.... the Americans have a word called 'momentum', it comes from the Latin which means like impulse, movement, how it goes, that it has a breakthrough and carries momentum. Like when you start running from a hill and run and run, and it increases, accelerating the movement. You feel that, you feel it in the smile of the people, in the ability to laugh, in the vitality that is shown, in the diversity of ministries, in the new things that are being done, in the enthusiasm of the pastor, the relationship between the pastor and his congregation, the joy of the children, the ease one feels to worship the Lord, many things that are good indicators to the trained eye that there is life and health in a congregation. And you show that.

So I'll let you know that's already there. It's there, and when it's there, when people come, they don't have to be experts in church growth, or in theories of how churches grow or anything like that, people feel it visibly and in their inner being they know if it's a a place where there is life and where there is vitality and joy of the Lord and love, and they allow themselves to be attracted, because the need is always seeking to be filled. So, many times people get carried away because when they arrive at a place their spirit feels at peace. And where they experienced that feeling, they say 'I want to go back there'.

So it is so important that a congregation, that we take great care of that atmosphere, brothers. We must take great care of the atmosphere of our congregation. And you know what? Each one of you, in this case I'm going to talk about you, because I say the same about my congregation, each one of you has a little piece of that atmosphere to sustain. As those columns each support a part of the weight of the roof, so each of you plays a role in maintaining the health of your congregation and protecting that health. Because in that health, others will be able to come and find blessing.

And that means that my wife is preaching, probably right now out there, about forgiveness there in Boston in my church, and there are such important elements that are what allow the grace of the Lord to rest on a community. Some of these elements are, for example, forgiveness, forgiving each other when siblings have friction that is inevitable, cleaning that up right away, asking for forgiveness, giving forgiveness, tolerating each other's differences in style, temperament, preferences. Prefer one another, recognize the gift that another has that I do not have, suffer the damage, if necessary and refer our cause to the Lord, instead of us seeking our own justice. These are elements that we must actively practice in our relationships as a congregation. Although they can also be practiced in the family to maintain the health of a church. Because many times, 'ah, it offended me' and then we begin to damage the atmosphere with gossip or negative feelings and we have already stolen a little bit of life from our congregation. And if that is done by 10, 15 people in a congregation, well, imagine, the damage is beginning to be felt. And if that is done by senior leaders who have more spiritual authority, the damage is even greater.

So one always has to be thinking 'I am responsible for the well-being of my church and therefore, I prefer to absorb the damage and that the Lord heal me or restore me, but that my church be keep healthy'. If you practice that, God will bless you greatly. Amen. So I thank the Lord for that beautiful spirit that is here. Protect it with tooth and nail. Don't ever let him come into your church and divide it or sow discord among you, or gossip, or any kind of evil action that glorifies the devil. Everything we do always has to glorify the Kingdom of God and the values of the Kingdom of God.

Any behavior that you know does not glorify God is radioactive. Even if no one finds out, the air will find out, that's why you have to protect your heart, you have to always guard your heart and mind. Because even when we do not express things, the spiritual waves that move within us affect the environment. We are mysterious beings and there is a terrible connection between the physical and the spiritual, the emotional and the mental. Everything is interconnected. So we have to keep that as a precious vessel, a precious jewel so that there is the atmosphere that allows the grace of the Lord to flow freely through a congregation. And that is the most powerful resource for church growth. Remember that always. And practice the fruit of the holy spirit because that will bless you, your family and your congregation.

Let's go to the word of the Lord in Chapter 17 of First Kings. There's good light here so maybe I'll even be able to read without glasses, let me see, otherwise I'll put them on. How good is that fresh light, that rich air that enters and .... to be in that environment! They tell me that in Boston it's snowing right now, so I thank the Lord that he has me here. Yet another reason to be happy to be in Merida. Yes this morning, in fact, I gave my regards to Boston. We were able to communicate with the congregation, through the Internet, interesting, I could see my church there in their meeting and I called them and we greeted them and we sent greetings from here, from Mérida, and our brothers from there send greetings to you also. What a blessing those technologies that God is making possible!

17 First Kings, beginning with verse 8, a passage quite familiar to many of you. The text of the meeting between Elijah and the widow of Sarepta. Thus says the word of the Lord “.... Then the word of the Lord came to him (that is, to the prophet Elijah), saying 'Get up, go to Zarephath of Sidon and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded there a widow woman to support you. So he got up and went to Sarepta and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow woman was there gathering sticks and he called her, and said to her, please bring me some water in a glass. for her to drink,' and as she went to bring it to him, he called her again and said, 'I beg you, bring me a morsel of bread in your hand as well,' and she replied, 'As the Lord your God lives, I have no baked bread, I only have a handful of flour in the jar and a little oil in a jar and now I was collecting two logs to go in and prepare it for me and my son, so that we could eat it and let ourselves die.' One of the saddest words that I find in all of Scripture is that passage, that expression of this desperate woman, ready to let herself die.

"Elias told him 'do not be afraid, go, do as you have said but do me first.' Say everyone first. Again 'first'. “..... make me first of all a small cake baked under the ashes and bring it to me and then.....”

Say everyone later. “.... then you will do for yourself and for your son, because Jehovah, the God of Israel, has said so; the flour in the jar will not be scarce, nor will the oil in the jar diminish, until the day the Lord makes it rain on the face of the earth. Then she went and did as Elijah told her, and ate he, and she, and their house for many days. And the flour in the jar did not run short, nor did the oil in the jar dwindle, according to the word that Jehovah had spoken through Elijah.” May the Lord bless his holy word.

Lord, we certainly bless your word that is life and food and we ingest it from now on, pure, as we have read it, Lord, and we now ask that You release the nutrients that it contains within us, and that allow us to offer it to your people, Father, shelled and elucidated through the illumination of your spirit. We believe that your word is alive, that it will reach the hearts of your people and settle there to give life and to generate new energy in each one of us. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

In the world of international development there is a whole profession and a class of experts, who are development experts. They are people who have studied economics, have studied the problems of poverty. They study the economic and political structures that keep a nation poor or underdeveloped, that do not allow a nation to reach its maximum development potential. And these international experts travel to underdeveloped countries to serve as advisers and also in the same countries people develop who..... economists, or sociologists, etc., who study how to advance their societies, how to take them to a higher level. development, how to find where the bottleneck is in the national machinery and as mechanics they want to find how to solve those bottlenecks, so that things run and the development machine can flow and a nation can develop and can get out of the economic or social bottleneck .

And there are many theories of how a nation can develop, how a society can develop. I am sure that here in Mérida, sociologists here, economists here, and your government of the city of Mérida, have made studies of where the problems are and where the bottlenecks are, which could lead to your city and your province or state to a level of further development, and how prosperity could come to their families and to the citizens of this region.

I am not an expert in development or anything like that, but I think I have a suggestion and more than a suggestion it is a rule, a law of development that I want to share with you.

How many would like to see this city and this region fully developed? How many would like to see their family financially prosperous? How many would like to see their children educated and become powerful professionals? Amen. We all want those things, right? Well, I think I have something to share from the word of God, for how you can enter into prosperity and joy and abundant life that Christ has come to give you.

And it is a secret that I assure you that sociologists and economists and development experts would not think of, because it has nothing to do with the material world, but rather has to do with the spiritual world. One of the most important laws that we have to understand in the world, in the universe, in the cosmos we inhabit, is the following: spirit dominates over matter.

What happens in the spiritual world governs what happens in the material world. The natural man, the man who only sees things from the economic, sociological, psychological, or political, historical point of view, does not understand this. And it only moves within the world of the visible, of time and space, and its inquiries and questions, explorations, and the answers they offer, only occur in the superstructure of the world, that is to say, in what is above the surface, what visible, what can be touched, what can be put in the laboratory tube and see if it works or not. Because today the mind of man is more than ever a naturalistic mind. The philosophy that underlies science and almost all the explorations of scientists and different experts is a naturalistic philosophy. That is, everything that happens in the world is purely the result of natural processes. And they don't believe in the spiritual dimension. And if some allow space for the spiritual dimension, it is simply for religion, for things of morality and for things that have to do with the church. But they do not try to mix the spiritual with the natural, because they think that this is contrary to the correct spirit of the sciences.

We as Christians know, right?, that it is not so. We know that the spiritual and the material are connected and that what happens in one dimension affects the other. I can give you an example from the Bible to illustrate this principle because it is so important that we understand it.

When the Jews were fighting with the tribes of Canaan, the land where God had sent them, the first city they fought with was Jericho. A city that the Bible says, that had very high walls, that was closed, well closed, it says. And the Lord gave them a very simple answer, He told them: 'March around the city six days, once, on the seventh day march around it seven times and on the seventh time to go around it shout, all that you can and the walls are going to come down and then go in and plunder the city, and destroy everything in it.' The Jews did it and it also happened because God keeps his promises. And they looted Jericho, they completely destroyed it, but a man allowed himself to be fascinated. And God told him 'do not take anything from that city, you have to destroy everything. Everything, life, animals, material property, everything because it is cursed, is radioactive with the curse of the sin of that city.'

But a man fell in love, he says, with a very beautiful cloak of a very precious fabric , a Babylonian cloak, I think it's called, and also an ingot, that is, a piece of silver or gold, I don't remember right now, I think it was gold, very large, obviously worth a lot of money. He was fascinated by this and took it and hid it. No one saw him and he said 'well I make an exception, geez what harm can that do? And he chose it, hid it, buried it and realized that nothing had happened.

When the Hebrews went to fight a second city, much smaller, less powerful than the first, Ai was called, a good name because they suffered quite a bit as a result. The city was called Ai. And they went and said 'look, this is a little thing, if we destroy Jericho, this city, we are going to eat them like bread, so don't everyone go. Let most of the soldiers rest and we will destroy these people in a moment. What happened? When they got their hands on it, the Jews were completely defeated. They said 'but how is this? Look, they started blaming God. See, the first thing was a coincidence or maybe God was inconsistent, but now if we can't fight with this mob, how can we fight with the other more powerful tribes?

And they started blaming God, just like we do a lot of the time, right? When there are things that happen in our lives, there are things that are stuck, closed in our life. our economy is not working, our marriage is not going well, our health is a disaster, and I am not saying that all these things are only due to sin, there are other reasons, but sometimes there are hidden things.

So, Moses inquired from God 'Lord, what is happening, how do you do this to us? Again, blaming the Lord. And God told him 'Look, the problem is that there is sin among you. Do you see the spiritual dimension? The material was war, the conquest of the land, the military struggle. That was the material area, but below that material area was a spiritual area that was not arranged. The law of the spirit was not being respected and God told him 'there is a curse. Someone has taken something that was cursed from me and that is why you will never be able to defeat your enemies until you solve that problem.'

So through a spiritual process they reached the person who had committed the spiritual crime. They found the anathema, they took it out, they confessed it and then everything was fixed again. They were able to defeat their enemies and everything went exactly as God had determined.

What happened? In the spiritual world there was a defect and therefore it was affecting the material world. And until the spiritual world was fixed, the material could not function properly. It's like right now we're building these beams and these things on shaky ground that's supposed to hold it up. It may last 3 or 4 days, but in the long run the fragile nature of the ground will begin to show and that strong and hard structure, which is supposed to support a lot of weight, begins to break down because the foundation is not right.

And so, brothers, many times if we do not respect the laws of the spirit, the laws of matter, they do not work properly. But scientists and experts refuse to understand that connection between those two things. Now, we as God's people have to be wiser than they are and understand how these laws of the spirit work.

If we want developed societies, prosperous cultures, blessed families, may God's blessing and promise flow in our families, brothers, there are spiritual laws that we have to understand. And for me one of the most beautiful laws that allows nations to develop and societies, cities, churches, families to develop and God's prosperity to enter, is to give, give, adopt an ethic throughout the life of being generous and giving. And that has to do with grace, which is the driving force of the entire relationship between God and man, because all God's relationships with man are by grace, otherwise he would have destroyed us long ago.

And we have to imitate our Father by living lives of grace, always giving. And I am not referring only to money, although that is an important part, but I am referring to being generous with everyone, brothers, with our time, our talents, our energy, our knowledge, and our money and our possessions. But we have to adopt a generous attitude with everyone. This also includes forgiving, including tolerating, including avoiding, and ignoring offenses, including loving the weak and preferring the humble person. All of that is part of that element, of that ethic of giving, giving, giving. The one who lives like this is a person who is blessed.

And many times to give, and this is really the gist of my meditation, we have to give into the zone of discomfort. If I could title this sermon I would say “Giving in the discomfort zone”. In that zone, when we enter that zone, it is where the great miracles that God wants to do in our lives take place. And I want to suggest to you, young man, that you still have your whole life ahead of you, your studies and all that, adopt this as an ethic of life. hug him. I will be a generous giver. I am going to be a person known for my generosity and I am going to be generous with others and with everything I have. And I will give in the name of the Lord always. I am going to distribute to seven and eight, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says. And whenever I can help someone and bless someone with my gifts, my possessions, I will do it, always in the name of the Lord, as a spiritual act, as something intentional. Not because I'm being pressured to do it, not because I want to manipulate God by doing it, not because I like people to say 'oh, what a wonderful person,' but because by doing it I'll be entering into a secret pact with my God. And even if no one else sees me, my God will see me and bless me.

That happened to the widow. Why is it that God likes widows? Here we saw a widow and now another widow too. The widow who gave everything she had, remember? The Bible says that the rich went to the temple and gave a lot of money and put it in the coffers, but it says that there was a widow who only had a peso to buy coffee, and she came to the temple and had such love for God that she took the only thing she he had left, his only sustenance, it was all he had in the world, and he threw it into the urn of offerings. And what did she know that the Lord was seeing her? Because it is that God sees everything. And the Bible records these things so that we understand something.

Look, there's nothing you do that God doesn't see. Not even the smallest movements of your soul are out of God's vision. Don't ask me how He can do it, because that's beyond the mind, but God knows. Even fleeting thoughts that pass you by in a microsecond, God records them. And that's why we have to walk like this.

And this woman did not know that the Lord was there looking perhaps from a staircase in the temple, looking at the people down there, how the rich gave their money and this widow. And he turned to his disciples and said, 'Look, guys, did you see that scene? Those rich people give a lot of money, but they give from the excess they have. It costs them nothing. They give, let's say, a thousand pesos, but it's because they have a million pesos in the bank. And for them 100 pesos or a thousand pesos is nothing. They don't feel it. One says 'wow, he gave a thousand pesos, imagine an offering'.

Now, for this widow those ten pesos that she gave, represents everything she had. And that, proportionally, that million pesos that they would have given and God does not need.... for God ten pesos or a billion pesos is nothing, because He owns the entire universe. But what pleases God is the movement of the heart. You understand? What this action of preference to God represents, of faith in God, of militant and fierce love for God. And the Lord said, 'That woman gave more in the eyes of the Father than those rich people,' because they gave in the zone of comfort, of what was comfortable, of what did not cause them pain or discomfort. That didn't threaten their economy, it didn't threaten their well-being, it didn't threaten their survival, nothing. They had it extra there.

But this woman entered the zone of adventure, discomfort, risk, possible death, madness, and for this reason the Lord liked this woman's offering more and surely she left blessed.

Brothers, we need to understand that in all our lives, because there is a great secret of how to release God's blessing in our life and how to make God's power flow in our life.

Nowadays, however, I want to make a clarification, in many Christian circles giving has become something like a mechanic, something that you use to manipulate God and a beautiful and beautiful doctrine has become, In my opinion, crooked and like that, something crude and rough has been made, when it is something precious and almost artistic. Because today there is so much talk that giving is like twisting God's arm, right? I don't know if in this country they use that of turning the saint upside down. Is that used here? That they take the saints and put them upside down until they give them the miracle that you want them to do. Those are things perhaps, only in the Caribbean, those superstitions.

But, sometimes we believe that if I do something specific well, then God is going to give it to me. And you know what? I think that in that there is something of superstition and even witchcraft, if we don't take care of ourselves. And I know that we say it with good intentions and we hear it from other preachers and all this, but you have to be careful, because when things become mechanical like that, and they don't come from the heart, they don't come from an ethic of life, They do not come from a conviction, they do not come from a style of living, they do not come from a process of awareness through which we have passed, which has spread through all parts of our being and which fills us equally, mind , body, soul, spirit, everything. So it's like just picking up a hard rock and throwing it on God's ground. Whereas what God wants is for our entire being to be permeated by a belief, a faith, an attitude, and then as a product of that attitude, organically we give, and God is glorified. I don't know if I can explain what I'm trying to say?

That we have to adopt an ethic of constant giving, not only when I want God to do something to me, but I give because that is my nature. May God have made me a joyful giver. Not in a person who gives only when there is a need or when it suits him or when he wants to get something from God, but we simply have to be a giver that comes naturally from us.

Like when the woman came with the issue of blood and touched Jesus from behind and touched the hem of his cloak. What happened? They say that grace, virtue, came from Him. Why? Because the Lord was a natural, supernatural, and natural healer. That is, healing came from Him. And when this woman touched him, as the Lord embodied healing, virtue came out of Him and healed her, and the only thing that was not even was that he felt an escape of virtue, because Jesus was, his spirit, it was healing. He said that the spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has sent me to heal the sick, the blind, etc. And then, that's how we have to be, brothers.

We must be in such a way that when people stick to us, grace flows from us because we have absorbed the Father's nature of being givers. And sometimes we give when it's inconvenient or when we can't get anything out of it, but simply glorify our Father, for being like Him. And that's the secret. When you learn to give in the zone of the uncomfortable, you will be blessed in an extraordinary way, your church will be blessed. Churches have to be generous too, they have to give.

That is why I find my ministerial ethics summarized, and I don't always say it, let me tell you, I am human and I sin like any other. But in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 11, I think it is, where it says 'cast your bread into the waters because after many days it will return to you'. And further on he says 'deal to 7 and 8. Don't be thin'.

There is always a call in the Bible not to be scarce and to distribute to 7 and 8. I believe that the minister, the church, always has to be sowing in people, always has to be sowing in projects and in things and you always have to put yourself in zones of discomfort and give and sow grace in the city and not worry, because when you least expect it many of those seeds come back to you, in the most wonderful and blessed ways.

And we have to be like that, in that way. Jesus exemplifies that, in a maximum way. The writer of Philippians, Chapter 2 says "Let there be the same feeling in you." Look at that, God calls us to have the same feeling that there was in Christ Jesus who, being equal to God, did not take being equal to God as something to cling to but emptied himself (there is giving), he stole himself, he plundered himself, and assumed the form of a man and went to his death, and not just any death, but death on a cross. The Lord was generous, he became a man and not only a man, but a poor man and not only a poor man but a persecuted man, and not only persecuted but a murdered man, and not only murdered but tortured.

Because when he gave to the Father, he gave generously, and when he gave to us, he gave generously. And how wonderful that it does not stop there! Rather, it says "....for which God raised him up, exalted him to the highest, and gave him a name that is above all names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow that is in heaven and on earth." and under the ground."

It all started with giving. It says “for which reason God”, because He gave himself, because He gave generously, because He became uncomfortable, because He stripped Himself, because He did something crazy that no one can rationally understand, for that reason God raised him to the utmost. His exaltation was even greater than his lowering. His enrichment was far greater than his self-induced impoverishment.

And so this dynamic, sister, brother, is fulfilled in every human being who adopts the attitude and behavior of Jesus in his life. If you live as a person who gives and always gives, you are also going to experience in your life that blessing from God that is going to lift you little by little, it is going to raise your children, it is going to lift your economy, it will lift your mind, it will lift your emotions, it will lift your marriage, it will lift your church, it will lift your city.

That's amazing, it's a mystery. But it is ultimately the mystery of the cross. That on the cross, the ugliest, most terrible, cruelest instrument that man has ever invented to torture a human being, the most gloomy thing that exists, there was life there. In the Lord getting on the cross and stripping himself and feeling sin, He who never felt it in his being, being bled, being unable to move, right there, says that he stripped principalities and powers. The power of God was manifested as never before in the impotence of that sacrifice.

And that happens when we steal from ourselves, when we crucify ourselves in the selfishness that is natural to the flesh. Self preservation is the most powerful instinct in the individual. When you violate the most powerful biological instinct of all, which is your self-preservation instinct to maintain your comfort, maintain your permanence, your survival, your belongings, when you go against that carnal, earthly, diabolical principle of selfishness, then you are entering the zone of the divine, where God can work miracles in your life. When you get on the cross through an act of personal dispossession and preference of another, you are, at that moment, entering the same dynamic that Christ Jesus entered, and the same will then be fulfilled in your life. Because just as He was also raised by self-emptying, so you will also be raised by self-emptying, by stealing yourself to give to another.

How wonderful is the wisdom of the Lord! We flow then, in the same dynamic. In this 21st century God wants to do great things through the churches. And the churches, to be able to do what God wants them to do, are going to need quality physical plants, they are going to need good sound systems, they are going to need electronic devices to preach the Gospel, they are going to need pastors in the area of counseling, youth, children, social services. They are going to have to serve the community out there and give to people who are not going to be able to repay them for what they give. They're going to have to be generous in the city. They are going to need well-prepared pastors who are also going to need their salary, because the worker is worthy of his salary, yes or no?

And where is all this money going to come from to conquer the nations? Where are the resources and talents going to come from to create a powerful church that can serve as a weapon of war to conquer the city and society? Is it going to come out of us, yes or no? God is not going to send, God is not going to rain money from heaven. He could do it if he feels like it, he creates it in droves, he sinks us into money. But God doesn't work that way.

Just last night while I was preaching we saw that the Lord could have, if He wanted, supernaturally magnify His voice and preach to the crowd that was pressing upon Him by a supernatural process. But He didn't do it that way, did He? He looked and looked for a man named Pedro and asked him to lend him his boat, his possessions, his property to use it, to bless the crowd.

And God is glorified that his creature, his church lends him his money, his talents, his time for him to carry out the redemption of humanity and advance his historical plan. He could do it supernaturally, but God always does things in partnership with his children, with his prophets. But the wonderful thing is that the Lord says 'look, I want you to do this as a symbol of your adherence to me, of your faith in me, but when you have given I promise, then, to bless you far beyond that you have given. So it turns out that what we give is rather an investment, rather than a sacrifice. But the way your church is going to prosper is when you, when all the churches and the parishioners learn to give generously to the Lord in the zone of discomfort.

You are sitting here right now in an environment that is obviously better than what you had, as the pastor said, a few weeks ago. This environment here looks very beautiful, the curtains, the ceiling that covers them. They are already taking more and more of a church shape. Now how did this happen? There are people here who contributed their knowledge, they contributed money, right? They contributed time. When I got here on Thursday night, there were brothers working at that time. I saw the pastors sweating the fat drop to be able to finish some things so that everything would be ready for Friday. And now we are sitting here, with fans that are cooling us, but behind all that, there is sweat, there are people who gave, there are people who gave. Some contributed talents, other sisters cooked for those who were working. Some brought refreshments, others gave money for the beams. Some gave knowledge and manpower and all worked so that this is built.

And many times the congregation will come to the venues, sit on rugs and comfortable chairs and look at very beautiful surroundings and see musicians playing, and the sound being magnified through a very elegant system. But all this has been possible, not because God sent money from heaven, but because people dared to give, many of them in the zone of discomfort, sacrificially. If we want powerful churches, churches that do the work of the Lord, we need generous people, generous of heart.

If you look at the great projects of Scripture, for example the construction of the tabernacle, the different temples, it always speaks of people, the generous of heart. Search, if you have a good match, look up the word generous and then that match is limited. A concordance is one of the big ones, not abbreviated and you will find that there are many references to the generous of heart who gave for the construction of the tabernacle or the first temple or the second temple, etc. and I have always said, I want to belong to that select caste of men and women called the generous of heart.

Churches advance and grow through generous-hearted people, brothers. Many studies have been done about churches and there is a law that generally governs many areas of humanity, and it is the following: in most churches, 20% of the people give 80% of the money. I suspect that if we analyze here, it is so, and in most churches it is so.

There is a group of people who stand out for being generous and because God has blessed them. But sometimes one wonders 'well, what comes first the chicken or the egg? Are they blessed because they are generous or are they generous because they are blessed? I believe that generally the generous person is going to be blessed. And I have continually seen that in the church there is a correlation, that God blesses people who are selfless, who are generous, who are always the first to say present, when there is a need and when there is a project that is going to be carried out. carry out.

So, I say, brother, be you of that chosen 20%. Do not lean on the generosity of others. Give according to your ability and give even beyond your ability. In the Bible, in Second Corinthians in Chapter 8 it talks about the Macedonians. In verse 1, Chapter 8 he says, "...in the same way, brothers, we make known to you the grace of God that has been given to the churches of Macedonia."

Look at that, the grace of God fell on them and therefore they gave. Giving is a grace, even from God. ".... that in great trial of tribulation the abundance of his joy and his deep poverty abounded in riches of his generosity".

Guess what? There are people who say, 'I am too poor to tithe. I have too much need. That can be done by people who have money. You are not understanding something, if you reason that way. What God asks you to give 10% of what you have, not what you don't have. Okay. The one who has a lot comes and gives 10% of how much he has, the one who has very little money gives 10% of the very little he has.

And these people, the Macedonians, gave, not because they were rich, but it says “that from their deep poverty they abounded in riches of generosity”. Look how much praise these people have. It says "... for I bear witness that with pleasure.....", the Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver. When you give, don't give looking at that little money that goes away like this with a terrible sadness, watching the pesos take wings and leave. No, give with a glad heart. Give with a bold heart. Give a shout of Hallelujah! even if you don't believe it yourself.

"...... have given according to their strength, willingly, and even beyond their strength." People say 'well, what is this about tithing. You have to give, you don't have to give. I don't believe in tithing because that's from the Old Testament.' Well, let's put it that way for a moment, that tithing was only for the Old Testament. Here I see something interesting is that God praises, in the New Testament, God always praises who? Those who have given beyond their strength. That's why he praised the widow, that's why he praised the Macedonians, that's why Jesus Christ was praised. Whenever God praises someone who gives, he praises the generous person.

Paul says “he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully”. So the question is, well, it's not the tithe. If you don't believe in tithing then okay, I'm going to propose something to you. Give, as the Bible says, according to your strength and beyond your strength. You know what? They will then have to give more than the tithe. I'd rather keep my tithe than have to continually give beyond my strength. Choose what you want, choose to give according to the tithe or give beyond your strength.

If you are honest, usually the person who resists tithing resists, because that is beyond my strength. And God tells you 'well, you have to give beyond your strength'. So it is impossible to escape, brothers. Wherever you want to hide, the word of the Lord follows you there, in this case. I'm not saying it to make you feel bad, or maybe to make you feel bad. Because I want to encourage you to go beyond what is comfortable. People do not understand that we impoverish ourselves, we stop the flow of God's grace when we are calculating and counting things with God, when God has given us everything.

And what God wants is that we be generous with Him, that we be happy in giving, that we be almost crazy in giving, because when we do so we open the heart of God and God rains down the blessing until we overflows over our lives. And so it is with everything. When you have to forgive, forgive generously, don't forgive and then look for a way to saw the person who hurt you. No, forgive and forget it.

One sometimes says 'I forgive, but I don't forget. No, forgive and forget if possible. That you get amnesia and don't even remember what happened. Sometimes there are brothers who come to me and say "pastor, forgive me," like recently a lady came "forgive me because once you lent me 700 dollars and I..." the lady was in a crisis situation and she was a member of the church and we saw that it was a necessary and just cause and she said to lend it to her. I have already learned that when there are brothers who ask me for a loan, I know that I will see it when Christ comes or in the other kingdom. I gave it to her, we gave it to the money and she came back about 3 years later, also apologizing to me because she had left the church. And I said 'sister, the truth is that I don't remember'. I didn't even remember that we had given him money or anything, or anything like that, because when you give, brothers, you have to be generous and you have to live that ethic. And you know what? The blessing rains on your life.

Be generous with forgiveness. Be generous with blessing others. Be generous in encouraging others. When you see something nice that someone does, be generous in giving them a word of encouragement. When you see that someone does something that embarrasses them in their image, be generous in looking away, and pretend you didn't see anything, instead of going around announcing it to others: 'oh, you know what so-and-so did, that this and that.....

In the Bible there is the story of one of the generous sons, I think it was Shem who saw his father drunk, lying on the floor. Noah made a mistake, he got drunk, and what did Ham do? He went to tell the brothers to see dad lying there in his shorts, completely naked. Look how ridiculous it looks. And the Bible says that Sem, not wanting to dishonor his father, took a dress and walked backwards so as not to see his father's nakedness and threw the dress over his father. And when Noah came to himself, he cursed Ham and blessed Shem for his generosity, because he looked away from his father's shame. And Sem, that's where the Semites come from, which are the Hebrews, the blessed people of God. And Cam, that's where the Canaanites come from, who were the people cursed by God, who God took them out of the promised land and gave it to the Hebrews, centuries after that act happened.

How an act of generosity blessed a lineage and how an act of pettiness cursed a lineage. Because the spiritual world rules the material world. When we move, brothers, in generosity for our churches, for God, for our brothers, when we give knowing that my Father is watching me. That is the secret in my life and it should be in your life.

I always see God watching me. If I bless a little child, if I pay reverence to an old man, no matter how humble and badly dressed he may be, God rewards me in public for what I do in secret. Because you have to adopt an ethic of generosity, of giving in whatever way is necessary.

With this I conclude, you have seen what happened to Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. God wanted to bless his prophet. The Querit stream had dried up, where God had given it water and had sent ravens to feed it. And I always see something here, I say, the God that made the raven bring bread and meat to Elijah, couldn't the brook spring up again after it dried up? yes or no? One wonders 'well, how do these laws of the spirit work?

But I believe that God allowed the brook to dry up, and stopped the air shipment of food to Elijah because He wanted to bless the widow. And he wanted to establish a principle for his people to learn how to release God's blessing in their lives, and then God says 'look, I have sent a widow in Sarepta to give you something to eat. Go there and you will receive food while it lasts -there was a great famine in the land because there was a drought-. And Elijah goes to that city, which was not even a Jewish city, and there he finds a woman in extreme need. That's why I say it was a depressive situation. The woman only had a handful of flour and a little oil and a few bits of firewood left, and at that moment she was already going to make her last meal to lie down to die because there was nothing else in the whole earth.

Why does God choose the most extreme situations? Many times to show his power and it is because he wants to establish laws, that it is not according to the strength of man, but with the power of God. And then Elijah arrives there, first to a widow, and then to a miserable and poor widow and he orders that widow to give her food, spiritually he ordered it. That is to say, it was already impossible for a widow to refuse because God had given an order. Or well, I think it was possible, in a sense. She had the option to choose yes or no, but God already knew what was going to happen.

So, when Elías gets there, notice that Elías tells her 'give me a little bit of water,' and she immediately goes and gets him some water. He looks for water so spontaneously, without telling him anything, because he had enough water. That was not his problem. He had enough water to probably last him for some time.

At that moment, she was giving from her comfort zone, like we do when we give the Lord that little coin that we don't need and that after all we can survive without. It does not make a dent in the family economy.

So she goes very spontaneously, very helpful to get her water, and the prophet Elijah, like someone who doesn't want things, tells her 'look, do me a favor, before that, if you can, find me a pancake there for me to eat it, I'm hungry.' to put to death'. And look at what Elias tells him 'look, don't worry about that, give me (that's why I tell you, repeat give me what?) first, give me first and then do for yourself and for your son, and you will see that you will never lack oil or flour.'

Elijah was there establishing a spiritual principle that we now extract from Scripture and apply it in the 21st century and that it is going to bless Mérida, it is going to bless your life, it is going to bless your economy, your children, your family. When the widow believed Elijah, the prophets of God, we pastors are continually speaking to the congregations, and telling the congregations the same thing. Give to God first. Give God the first fruits of your economy. Don't wait until you've paid all the bills and bought your kids' clothes and everything is okay, then start giving to the Lord. That's not the scoops, that's the 'scoops'. Many Christians are experts in the latest news but not in the first fruits.

God always says 'give me first'. God wanted to put this woman in the zone of discomfort. Because it is in that area where the heart of God is unleashed, where blessing flows, where grace flows. and that is where we have to learn to give to God and to give to others. When this woman obeyed the spirit of Elijah, and the spiritual principle, blessing and prosperity were unleashed. And the Bible says that "the oil did not diminish nor did the oil scarce in all the time that Elijah was with her", until the famine ended in the country.

And notice that after that his son had a heart attack or whatever, he died and since Elias was there, he revived his son too. Because the blessing of the parents extends to the children. Do you want your children to be blessed in the future? If you want a prosperous family, blessed children, if we want a prosperous Mérida, a blessed Mexico, we are going to fill it with people who are generous towards God, we are going to fill it with people who have no grip or brakes on generosity towards God. We are going to have people who say that nothing is missing in the house of the Lord. That we have a church, that when there is a need, there are always a few generous-hearted people who say 'Pastor, we go forward in the name of the Lord, I support you.' As long as things are done within God's order to build the Kingdom of God. If we want a prosperous church, a church that can do everything it needs, that is why the Lord says that there is no lack of food in my house, meaning that food is the provision for what a church needs to carry out its projects.

God does not want anything missing in his house and that rests on each one of us. I can tell you from personal experience, my beloved brothers, that this works. If I had another occasion at some point to preach to you more, I could tell you about testimony after testimony of how I have seen God's blessing in my life give generously. And it is something that you can practice.

When I started tithing to the Lord it was the most fragile time of my life, and the Lord.... I said 'well, if the Bible talks about giving to the Lord generously, I'm going to give generously. It doesn't matter if it's now or tomorrow or whenever. I can tell you about how the Lord unleashed a material blessing on our lives. I was a graduate student, I wasn't working like that full time. My wife was also studying, and yet the Lord released an incredible provision in our lives at that time. And giving to the Lord, my profession and everything else, has unleashed such a great blessing in our lives in so many ways, because we have to give to the Lord in all areas: money, profession, intellect, time, energy, forgiveness, grace , all things must be shared, shared, shared. Give generously and don't worry, sow, put more time throughout your life and you will see how you will always be able to reap. What you planted here will take a while, but it's been a while since you planted there, so you can pick from this and after that and you will always have plants that will be growing and bearing fruit. Always always always.

The blessing will flow into your life continuously. So the Lord says to you today 'get into the zone of discomfort'. Be generous with others. Be generous with God. Be generous with your church and you will be greatly blessed. Amen.

How many receive that word right now in their spirit? Glory to the Lord. Glory to the Lord. Let's adopt an ethic of generosity in our lives. Father, we believe in a faithful God who is committed to his children and you are a giver par excellence and you have already given us the most that is your son, Jesus Christ, and we, whatever we give you will be minimal, symbolic, compared to what that we have received from you. So Lord we commit now as a church to always give, to be joyful givers in all dimensions of life and we believe, we choose to believe that You are going to bless us, that You are going to take us to new heights.

Father, I declare a spirit of prosperity over this congregation, over its pastors, its leaders and I establish this church as a focus of blessing in this community that is to bless and establish its flavor around this entire city . And I ask that you unleash the hearts of your children, Lord, this afternoon. May they understand these laws of the spirit. May they unleash the prosperity of their families, their churches, their communities. Father, you have promised it and we know that you will be faithful to fulfill it. We praise your name because you have never failed us, Father. You have always fulfilled what you proposed in our lives. Spread your blessing and spread your prosperity in this town, Lord. And to you we will always give glory, honor and honor. Thank you Jesus. Amen. Amen. Give the Lord a big hand of faith now. Glory to God. Amen.

Sermon Archive