The attitude of triumph - Part 2

There are several passages in fact, but I want to isolate one, let's say, that can be useful as a starting point for the topic that I want to discuss with you. We could choose many passages, brothers, but, look, we are going to go to Deuteronomy 28, because perhaps it is one that I will not have the opportunity to discuss, but at least I want to plant there in your heart the promise that is in this passage that we serves as a starting point. Because we're talking about what are the elements of a successful life. What are the elements of success?

And I have also called this series of sermons that I began last Sunday "the attitude of success", because I realize more and more as I prepare the topics, that if you don't you have the right attitude, the right predisposition, the right frame of mind, anything, any suggestion that I give you, any principle that I share with you, is going to fall on fertile ground. If your soil is tight and hard, the seed will bounce off the ground. Your land has to be prepared, removed in order to receive the nourishment of the word of God and that land is your attitude. That land is your disposition and if I don't prepare your disposition, your attitude, your frame of mind, then everything else I say is not going to be successful. Success begins here, in the mind and in the will and in the disposition of the human being. And God wants to change our mind and he wants to change our attitude.

That is why the word is full of references and examples, “case studies”, as they say in universities that train people for business administration. The Bible is simply particular cases illustrating universal truths.

So there in Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, for example, the Jewish people, the people of Israel, are ready to leave the desert where they have been for 40 years and enter the promised land, where God wants them. to inhabit permanently. And that is something important that we understand even before we start reading. God can have you for a while in the place of drought, lack, scarcity, sterility, or trial, but God's final destination for your life is the place of abundance and success. Amen.

Test streaks may come into your life. times of scarcity and crisis may come, but you always have to say to yourself 'okay, maybe I'll be here for a while while I learn some things, but my God will take me out and put my feet on stone', as the word of the Lord says , he will direct my steps and put a new song in my mouth. Test time is just for me, training time, that's all. But God is going to take you out of the desert and put you in the promised land.

So here we see the Lord speaking to Israel before entering them into the Promised Land. The Lord wants, precisely, to call them how they should behave in this new land to which He calls them, and what are the promises that He has for them and what kind of life they should expect in this new land, as long as they remain obedient to the word and principles of God. Because I'm not here to give you easy answers to success. Many people come and go to inspiration and self-improvement seminars looking to be steamed with magic recipes and formulas for success, and there is no such thing. It is a whole system composed of different truths that complement each other. And one of them is obedience to the principles of the Lord.

For example, if you want to be financially successful, you have to be financially consistent with God. That is a truth. If you want God to prosper you, you have to be generous to God. That is a great truth. And I speak to you from personal conviction because I have seen it so many times in my own life and many of you can say amen, from the experience of what I am saying. If there is no obedience to the word of God in other elements as well, you will not be blessed either. So you have to understand these principles.

So, before entering the town, the Lord told them 'look, I want to bless you. I want to read the primer, as they say out there. I'm going to tell you your responsibilities and your privileges as well. And Chapter 28 is a beautiful passage that teaches you, my brother, my sister, what you have the right to expect from God, what you have the right to expect once you enter the Promised Land of the Gospel. When you enter Christ you enter a Promised Land, of possibilities, of success, of victory in trials, of growth, of personal development. For me, that is what makes me fall in love the most with the Gospel, the Gospel is not for slaves, as the philosopher Nieztche said, it is not for defeated people, it is for heroes, it is for warriors, it is for ambitious people, because God calls us to victory and abundance.

So here it says, look at what Deuteronomy 28 says: "it will come to pass that if you listen attentively to the voice of Jehovah, your God, to keep and put into practice all his commandments that I prescribe you today."

Come, there is the precondition, listen carefully to the voice of Jehovah. That means if you listen carefully to what He is telling you to do, his principles, his truths, if you are reverent to the truth that God gives you. Many people come to church thinking about birds in the air, thinking about the movie they are going to see tonight, or about the food they are going to eat tonight, what restaurant they are going to go to after they leave the service, and the pastor The poor man is there skinning himself, trying to cheer people up, and they are over there thinking about other things. So the word does not fall into his sensibility as it has to. They are not blessed because they do not receive it with a stance of faith. You understand? Never take lightly the word of the Lord, always believe and receive it with faith and say amen in your spirit.

It says ".... if you listen attentively to the voice of Jehovah, your God, to keep by deed -because you have to obey and you have to practice- he says "also Jehovah, your God, will exalt you above all the nations of the earth."

Brethren, that is your inheritance. That is the bill of rights that you have. Those are the expectations that you have the right to harbor in your spirit for your children, for yourself, for your future. That is what Lion of Judah as a collective community has a right to expect about the future, and that is what I, as a pastor, is already declaring about you and am seeing and will continue to see for years to come. If Christ does not come, and I reach 80 years of age and I am with you, I will see people transformed: a prosperous community, far beyond what we ever imagined, because that is what the Lord has called us.

It says "Jehovah, your God, will exalt you above all the nations of the earth, all these blessings will come upon you"

How nice that is! ... they will come at you, that is, they will fall on you like a sack of potatoes, they will hit you on the head when you walk down the street. I like what the psalmist says who also says "goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life", it is like they are going to persecute me all the days of my life. The hound of God's grace is going to be tracking me wherever I go to bless me.

Then it says “these blessings will come upon you and they will overtake you”.

There are people who, look, don't receive a blessing from God or get hit on the head with a bat because they don't believe that God can bless them. He says they will reach you even if you don't want it, the blessings, I believe that the son of God, even if he doesn't want to, will be blessed by God's mercy. He will be more blessed if he wants to and if he applies himself, but it is the natural state of the child of God, to be blessed, to be prosperous.

".... they will overtake you, if you will listen to the voice of Jehovah your God."

Look, here begins one of the greatest blessings in all of Scripture. This is one of my motto passages, my favorite. Underline it, frame it, put 4 colors on the letter, but remember it because this is very important.

It says “....blessed will you be in the city and blessed will you be in the country. Blessed is the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, the fruit of your beasts, the young of your cows and the herds of your sheep. Blessed be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed will you be when you come in and blessed when you go out." Glory to the Lord.

Today I would say, blessed will be your computer, blessed will be the fridge you have in your house, blessed will be the stove on which you cook your food, blessed will be the car in which you leave and enter your city and to your house where you live. Blessed will be your apartment full of mercy and grace, the presence of God. Blessed will be your children when they go to public school. They will listen to the truth and receive it, they will be an example to others. Blessed will be your marriage, blessed will you be in your studies, in your profession. That is what the word of the Lord is saying in modern terms.

“The Lord will defeat your enemies who rise up against you. They will come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways," says the Lord. Jehovah will send you his blessing on your checkbook, your barns and everything where you put your hand, everything you undertake, the Lord will prosper. That is the promise of the Lord, and God is not a man to lie, nor a son of man to repent, says the word of the Lord.

What he promised his people under an imperfect pact, how much more now under a perfect pact such as Christ Jesus.

“And he will bless you in the land which Jehovah your God is giving you. Jehovah will establish you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you, when you keep the commandments of Jehovah your God and walk in his ways. and all the peoples of the earth will see that the name of the Lord is called upon you and they will fear you, says the Lord. And Jehovah will make you superabundant in goods in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your beast, in the fruit of your land, in the country that Jehovah swore to your fathers that he would give you. And Jehovah will open his good treasure, heaven, to send rain to your land, in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands." May the Lord bless his holy word.

I could continue reading but I'll leave it there. This I would say is the magna carta of the children of God, it is God's testament for your life. It is what God wants to give you, it is the framework for all your undertakings and for all your efforts. I was speaking with a brother this week from our congregation, he launched into a real estate business and the truth is that when I saw him launch himself, I feared for his life, because I thought, within myself, 'mmmm, I don't know if he it's going to go well'. But you know what? I have already learned not to trample on the dreams of the children of God and to respect them and to say 'well, the Lord be with you. Throw yourself in the name of the Lord.’ And this week, how are you doing? It's been a year or so now and brothers he ran amok talking about the blessing he received. And how God has blessed him and prospered him. I think we can do those things.

I jumped into this sermon prematurely, there is a sister who shared with me something of what God did in her life lately and also what God has done through her life. I told her, 'Look, you're going to have 5, 7 minutes to testify about how God has blessed you.' She's a young woman I've known for years, she's a psychologist, Maribel Quiñónez. Are you there Maribel? Come quickly if you are there. And Maribel is a young woman who loves the Lord, works serving young people and Hispanics here in the community and I told her 'Maribel, take a moment and share what God has done in your life. Because they are illustrations, what he has done in Maribel's life, he can do in your life too. You understand? That's the key, so go ahead.

God bless you, brothers. I want to make a correction, I am not a psychologist, I trained to be a therapist. I don't want..... I don't want to take such credit. Brothers, I want to tell you that I am the product of a promise that God had with my mother. My mother grew up and was raised in spiritualism in Puerto Rico. His mother was a spiritualist and his ten siblings were raised like this. My mother says that when she was working in the factory in New York 50 years ago, when she was coming back from factory work, living in Harlem near 110th, she heard a voice that said 'I want you here,' and she looked around. and he did not see anyone, it was already night. 'Here I want you, stop here', and she thought, they must be one of those spirits that are dead, that are calling me, and she looked and there was no one. And she heard for the third time, "I want you here," and she looked to the side and when she saw it was a church, the Bertel church, and she went in scared, because she had never been in a church, and there was no one there, only an usher. And she sat in the back, and the usher told her, "Sister, sit there, we'll start preaching right now and the brothers will come." My mother says that she doesn't even know how it was, but when she opened her eyes, after the preaching, she opened her eyes and was at the altar speaking in tongues and the spirit took her and promised her that every family will be saved. Today only one of his sisters practices spiritualism, 9 have been saved and his father of 102, before he died, accepted Christ, just like his mother. My mother married at an advanced age and thought she would not be able to have children, but when she saw, they told her she was pregnant with her first child, she asked Christ to give her a daughter, and she begged him and said 'God , I promise you that if you give me a daughter, she will be raised in God's way and I will always talk to her about God. And here I am, brothers. Here I am. And I thank my Christ for my mother, because she promised him that he would save her and her house.

At the age of 13 I was in Puerto Rico very sick, I had asthma attacks every day. I lowered too much. My mom took me to doctors, and my father, and they didn't know what to do with me. What's more, her sisters, who weren't safe at that time, told her, "Give her to me, we're going to take her to New York to take her to a spiritualism center," and my mother replied, "I'd rather my daughter die before to go to a séance center.” And you know what?, she ran, she said to my father, “I'm going with her and my other men to see what Christ is going to do with her here, in Massachusetts. And he moved to the suburbs of Massachusetts, the suburbs of Boston. Brothers, I'm up here. When the doctors in Puerto Rico told her "give her everything", in front of me they told her "give her everything", she will not survive for a long time and here I am up, brothers, and God has taken away my asthma, only once in a while I get tired, but I don't get the asthma attacks when the teachers told my mom, 'Take her out, because she can't continue here.' And brothers, at the age of 14, since my parents were poor, I went to a program called Cita, which no longer exists, but they help children who look for jobs in their teens, and I began to tithe at the age of 14 years. I don't think he gave even 5 dollars every two weeks, brothers. That was my tithe. And I wrote my happy tithe with my little envelope, because my mother taught me to tithe and give offerings. Since she was a child, she gave us a peseta each and said "put that on the plate because you have to thank God."

You know, at the age of 17 I was on the show because I didn't know much English,....... second language. My teacher, who was Jewish, saw something in me that I didn't know I had, and she told me 'you have to go to university, to a private university.' I told him 'I don't have money. My family has no money. Well, she went to my parents' house and told them 'This girl is very talented and she deserves to go to a private school', and my mother told her 'well, I can work two shifts so she can go to a state university, but my teacher already put in me to go to a private school. And I said 'My God, what will it be like'.

My teacher told me where to apply and I took all 5 college applications and filled them out. And what did I do? When I was in church, I put them right here on the altar, I cried for them, and I told him, 'God, you will tell me where I have to go. My teacher tells me that I should go to a private school, well, You will say, Lord.

And I had gone to my high school counselor and told him that my teacher told me to go and apply for Boston College. Do you know what the counselor told me? Boston College? No Puerto Ricans go there. He told me so, brothers. Be careful when you have these counselors who don't support your children because we are in the minority. Well, you know what? I will never forget that I had to give a presentation in high school in my class and the topic was to talk about your best friend. Well, brothers, young people, I was never afraid to talk about Christ. My topic was talking about Christ in class. And you know what? The master was stunned. I swear, he never thought I was going to talk about Christ. But I had a schoolmate in that class who seems to have been on drugs and disturbed. I always prayed for him. Me as a child, and he drew and made drawings of the devil, everything was dark. He dressed in black. And when he heard about Christ, and I finished my talk and sat down, he told me 'you know, no one has ever told me about such a Lord called Christ. You did a good job. Who knows where he will be today? But, brothers, let me tell you that when I received a letter from the universities in the spring of that year. I got a letter saying Boston College accepted me on a full scholarship, I didn't even know where Boston College was. I didn't know where Boston College was, but I thank my Christ because He promised me. I was obedient, I gave my tithe, I gave my offering and my mother promised Christ, God promised Christ the promise of his daughter.

And let me tell you that later I started doing my master's degree. Once again God gave me a scholarship with very little loan and while I was doing my master's degree, a professor told me 'Maribel, I have received news that President Bush, the father, has a program through the Defense Department, the Department of Defense, for students to learn other languages and the opportunity to go to other countries, and I want, I choose you, to write a proposal if you want to go somewhere else.' I don't know how to do this. I am in competition with students from Harvard University.' Well, the teacher said 'don't worry, I'll find someone to help you write as if it were a grant.'

Well, I didn't know anything about money. Well, this person helped me calculate, excuse me, to calculate the money I needed and then I was also a nanny in a house and the girl in the house told me 'and if they accept you to go where you are writing, what do you do? would you?'. I said 'that would be a blessing from God', that's what I told the girl. But I prayed to God and you know that God sent me to where I wrote the proposal. I wanted to study the minority races in China and God sent me to China for a year. And I thank my Christ. Because the world saw a person like me, who comes from the projects of working parents, but they did not have enough money, but they wanted their children, when they came to this country, to study and advance, to learn about the world, to have their homes, and that was what God has given me and my family.

And let me tell you, not only that, I also studied at Yale University and this was another scholarship that I did my master's course, when a wife of another teacher said to me 'do you think you're going to be accepted there? ? And I told him 'of course, yes'. As soon as I finished with him, I went to pray to Christ because my faith is great, very great. Since I was a child, my mother used to read Psalm 21 to me. Since I was a child, before we went to bed we had to pray and read a psalm, and she would read me Psalm 91 'he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will abide under the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to Jehovah , my hope and my castle in whom I will trust'.

I say to you, who do you trust? Because the promises are there waiting for you to pray and have faith because Christ has a lot for us. A year and a half ago I asked since I was a child because my mother always wanted, 'Maribel, you have to be an independent woman, not depend on men and be enough for yourself', and she said 'you have to have a house'. Since I was a child, he told me that. And a year and a half ago I prayed, it was time in January, I prayed and fasted and I began to fast and pray and ask Christ to give me a house, because it has always been my dream, because my mother planted the seed there. And you know what, brothers, through the Boston program, through a lottery I won a house, a new house, and here I live now in Boston today. And I give thanks and glory to my Christ.

I think we could very well, but it is something that I am not going to do, close the service and we have already put out a good word from the Lord. There is preacher material in you, Maribel definitely, a lot of good material.

That's what it's all about, brothers, believing God and believing God for our children, for our community. Who said that the Hispanic community has to be a dysfunctional community or the African American or Latino community in general? We have so many treasures of culture and beauty within us that we should be reigning over this nation. But Christ unleashes, unleashes the potentiality of human beings, as he unleashed it in Maribel's mother, who was enslaved by Satan for so many years. But when Christ comes in, he changes all things.

I stand here next to Maribel and I can say the same about my family's life, about my own life. How God has released his grace in so many ways. God puts us in the places of kings, brothers, and the poorer we are, the more God delights in putting us in high places. Thats the reality. Thank you, Maribel, you have blessed us so much and I did not know what we had in this woman. I want to commit you for 12, hopefully, if you have something unavoidable, we understand, but I would love it if you could rehearse your preacher wings now. Thank you. Amen.

That's the beauty. That is why I live in love with the Gospel and that is why I serve the Lord. Because the Gospel is something atomic, when you receive it you enter a new dimension and there is nothing more beautiful than making it easier for people to enter the dimension of the divine. What a noble thing to be able to help loosen the chains of people's minds and place them in the love of God! There is no nobler profession than that, I would say. So that's why I serve the Lord.

And that is what you have to understand when you enter the ways of the Lord, you enter a land of promise, a land of possibilities, where the Lord tells you 'look, this is what I have for you, these are the things, these are the rights to which you have access. Now, get to work for them and I will bless you and give them to you. Do your part and I will certainly do mine.

I began last Sunday by saying that the most important element is that, to expand and broaden our mental field. If you want to live a successful life, you have to expand your capacity to believe that great blessings can come into your life. if your territory is small, God can only locate small things. If your expectation is small, God can only give you small things. But if your expectation is great and ambitious, God will be able to put greater things in your life, according to what you visualize and expect, so will be the blessing that you will receive. Amen.

If you expect little things, God will give you little things. If you ambition great things in the Lord, if you don't settle for going, and Glory to God for the state schools, they are tremendous, if you are in a state school, don't be ashamed of that; But God gave Maribel a measure of faith that said, 'Look, you don't just have to go to a state school. You have enough to go to a private, high-ranking school,' and God blessed her with that.

Someone reminded me of a passage that I preached and have preached many times, it is the passage about King Jehoshaphat and Elisha, when Elisha on his deathbed calls him to come and have one last conversation with him. prophet. Because that is something else, when God blesses the church, the church calls kings, and kings have to come to her. Elisha summoned the king to come to his bed and said to the king: 'King, take the arrows that are on the floor and take your bow and stand at the window, towards where Syria is, the worst enemy that Israel had. He was always persecuting and mistreating Israel. And he said to him first 'take', then Elisha said a word 'arrow of the Lord of salvation', and he shot like this symbolically, and said 'take the arrows in your hand and hit the ground with the arrows'. And Josaphat, who was a mediocre man in faith, if you look at his life, took the arrows in his hand and struck the earth three times. And Elisha, there on his deathbed, became angry with the king and said to him, 'You don't know what you've done. You have missed the opportunity. If you had hit 4 or 5 times on the ground, God would have destroyed Syria until there were none left. But since you only hit 3 times, you're only going to defeat him 3 times, but you're not going to completely destroy him.'

Do you see, brother? The faith of this man only allowed him to enter into the purpose of God minimally, but if he had been a man of courage, if he had been a David, those arrows would have shattered them on the ground, hitting him, and would have completely annulled. God wants to bless us, but he blesses to the extent of our ability to believe God.

And it is something incredibly revealing, that according to your ability to believe, God may want to bless you to much more, but if your faith to believe God only gives to a certain level, God will bless you and in your hand It is, in your control is how great the blessing and abundance of God will be in your life.

Here there are many people that God would like to have in the places of kings, but their ability to believe God does not allow them to dare to undertake great things: to be daring, to be determined, to be enterprising. So God has blessed you at the level of your ability to believe to broaden your mind to other levels.

I ask you in the name of Jesus, widen the site of your store as we said last Sunday. Open the mental solar so that the house that God puts there is a mansion instead of just a little hut. How sad that there are people who are missing out on immense blessings because they do not have the capacity to expand their capacity to believe the Lord!

So I said, the first rule of success begins in conceiving big dreams for the Lord and in the Lord. Believe great things about your children and expect great things about your marriage. Expect great things about yourself. Expect big things in the future about finances.

I tell you, brothers, I cannot wait for the next 10, 15, 20 years to see what God will have done in my life. Because I live in love with that God who said 'I am going to bless you all the days of your life'. And for me life is a beautiful box of surprises and every day I open new things. And I expect great things from my God because I have been seeing great things for so many years that I have learned to always expect great things from the Lord. So expand your capacity to believe God. That is for me one of the most important rules of success.

And the second that I want to share with you, so briefly, is the sister of the first, it is what is called in the field of philosophy, a corollary. In other words, it is a sister aspect of the first and it might seem almost the same, but it is not the same, it is a distillation, it is something more subtle than the first thing I have just said. So subtle that last Sunday when I was going to start the sermon, actually and in my original notes, I put them both together and I was going to do it like this. But the moment I opened my mouth I realized that they were two different things, so I decided to separate them for learning purposes. Therefore the second law of success is to believe that God is with you and in your favor.

The first is to believe that God can bless you beyond your current place, but the second is to believe that God is with you and is in your favor in everything you undertake, at all times of your life, God is with you. And He is there to help you, that's why the holy spirit Christ called him the paracletos. The prefix 'for' means 'next to' in the original Greek. The holy spirit is always by your side and it is your helper, it is your coach, it is your cheerleader, it is your trainer, it is your supporter, it is your provider. The Lord is always by your side saying 'wherever you go, I will go with you. And if someone fights with you, they're going to fight with me. If someone talks bad about you, they're going to have to talk to me. And your enemies, I am going to fix them. Do not hurry. I am going to take care of them so that one day you will wonder where they are, and you will not even be able to find them.’ That is what the word of the Lord says in Isaiah.

So, brothers, what allows me many times to undertake daring things, that I myself sometimes in my carnal mind, believe that I am going to fail, is that law that is in my spirit that God is my helper God is my backup. God is with me and what I don't have God puts it. The deficit in my life, God fills it, God supports me. When I undertake something that is beyond my strength, I always say 'I have a God who can pay the deficit. I have a God who at the end of the day, who even though my account is in less, says 'Don't worry, sleep peacefully, because I have settled it'. That is the God I have believed in.

And I have already learned that I cannot think about if I am afraid, if I doubt what I am doing, if it seems that I am going to break my head in the abyss. I say 'my God is with me and He will know how to get me out of this mess in which I have gotten myself in his name and for his glory'. That allows me to undertake things that scare me when I look at them. That allows me to dare to do things that I think to my human mind, I don't see how it is possible for this to happen.

I can tell you brothers that I have not lost a battle in the name of the glory of the Lord and if I have lost something, God has always replaced it in other ways. Because it is that when one undertakes things in the name and for the glory of the Lord, God always gets you out of trouble. And if you make a mistake along the way, God fixes it for you because your heart will be like David's, who loves the Lord, but God says 'Don't worry, you got into a mess but I'm going to get you out of it because you are with me'. That is very important.

And I see all through the Scripture that, you have to tell yourself and therapy yourself continually and tell yourself 'God is with me. God is in my favor.' I believe that one of the texts that most beautifully and eloquently expresses this truth is the famous and well-known Psalm 23. We all know it by heart:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I will lack nothing Instead of delicate pastures he will make me rest. Beside still waters will shepherd me. It will comfort my soul. He will guide me through paths of justice, for his name's sake, -and look at what he says- and even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil -why?- because you will be with me."

Do you see? God is with me. ........... to see those tables in front of me in the presence of my anguish.

David is possessed with an overwhelming sense of the continuing presence of his God and he looks at him from the perspective of a helpless little sheep who is confident because his strong and loyal shepherd is always shepherding him. And that, brothers, David was that type of psychology, a man who undertook everything he undertook, saying "Jehovah and I are the majority." Everything David undertook, he undertook with his God by his side.

I ask the Lord to untie our minds to believe that God is with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the kitchen while you prepare food for your family, God is with you, while you wash the dishes, while you make your children's beds, while you go to the factory in a cold of 10 below zero, with a wind that is biting your cheeks . While you feel alone and separated from your family that is in Central America, South America or wherever, God is with you. The same God who was with you there is with you here. And if they take you there, they will also be with you there because the whole earth is God's land and his arms are not shortened, not here, not in Guatemala, not anywhere. Wherever the Lord is present in your life.

God, the Lord Jesus Christ said 'Behold, I am with you always until the end of the world'. When you believe that God is in your favor and that He fights your battles and that He supports you at all times, that should give you courage to undertake daring things in your life, to apply to a university that seems to not suit you. to accept.

I shared with you what a great blessing it was for me to receive those 630,000 dollars to train Hispanic pastors when I never thought they would give us that money, never in our lives. But I did it in obedience to my God because God is with me. God supports the projects of his children.

Right now many of you were there Friday at Tremont Temple and you saw what a blessing that was. Brothers, I was there, when I saw those people arrive, arrive and arrive from all parts of this area, there were about 40 or 50 pastors there from different churches, when the pastors were ordered to come forward; When I saw those gringos wanting to receive from the Lord and I saw a group of Latinos ministering to them through praise and I saw the spirit of reception and love and dedication of those people, I repented of my little faith, one day before , because already in the morning I myself had spoken that that night was going to be a great blessing.

When I have undertaken this effort to unify the churches in Massachusetts to work in favor of Christ and the Gospel, brothers, I tell you, my heart is full of doubts and fear. The more I explore the dangers and divisions in God's people, the less certain that undertaking seems. It is the most ambitious and most public thing that I have undertaken in my life and I live continually in fear that it is going to disperse into nothing. But do you know what I do? I put one foot in front of the other and I believe that my God, who has put me in this job, is not going to let me be embarrassed. And then every step that I take, I see that God blesses him, that the things that I say in my mouth, sometimes not even believing them, begin to happen.

And God has given me this project. I don't know where it will lead and I tell them that I am afraid, but I have already learned, I can no longer let myself be carried away by my emotions. I have learned that my emotions, doubt and fear, I have learned that I am going to live with them every day of my life, but what I am going to do is put it aside. Keep talking there if you want but I am going to follow the voice of my God. The ultimately successful person is no different from the person who lives in failure, who lives in mediocrity. Everyone feels fears and doubts, the difference is that the successful person has known how to put their doubts and fears aside and simply believe that God is with them and move on. That is the only difference.

Even in the secular world, people will tell you, the honest ones, that their struggles and the things they undertake, many times they feel doubtful, but they simply do it because there is a natural strength in them, even the secular man, who tells him 'I can'. How much more in Christ Jesus.

Because Paul says: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." If you don't feel that you can't in yourself, appeal to Christ and plug into the power of God that is in your life. He has an unlimited engine and that engine transfers energy to yours, it runs like an atomic war tank in life. Believe that God is in your favor. That is the key. I have so many texts that I could share with you in the time I have left.

There is a price to pay to receive the Lord's teaching, so let me, don't get bored, don't get bored sitting there, okay? Look, there are so many texts that I could show you on that. we are going to continue with David since we are with him.

First of Samuel, 17, an extremely revealing text and I am going to continue sharing these things, as time allows me in the coming weeks and we have the opportunity.

First Samuel, 17. It is the famous David and Goliath passage and it reveals a lot about David's mentality and things we should learn, because David was a very successful man in war, in music, in finance, in politics, in all the areas he undertook, he was a multifaceted man, but he had a big heart and believed that his God was with him at all times. And here we have David still a young man and we see how God blesses him in this undertaking.

Let's go to 17, verse 26. David, a little boy still inexperienced in war, has just been anointed by the Lord through Samuel, but he has not yet entered into his reign. He arrives at his brothers' camp, where his brothers are as members of the Israeli army and he just comes to do a little housework. He comes to take a meal to his brothers at the camp, bread and cheese, some cheeses that his father sends him with him; a little errand boy because that's the thing. It doesn't matter where you start, with God it's where you end that matters. David starts there like nothing, just to command.

There are times when God is going to send you to a place to do something and you are going to do it in obedience, and that is going to seem small but there will be God's blessing in your life. when you serve others begins the blessing of God. Never despise small beginnings. It is one of the truths that I want to share with you in the future. Do not despise small beginnings. Winning people do not despise small beginnings. David is taken to bring cheese to his brothers and there he realizes that there is a giant who is continually insulting the people of God, a guy who measures 8 feet and a peak, an experienced warrior, and no one in the army of Israel dares to get your hands on that giant. Every day that man stands there to shame and insult God's people.

This young boy, inexperienced in war, arrives and look at what David says in verse 26 "... then David spoke to those who were with him saying 'what will they do to the man who defeats this Philistine and shall I remove the reproach of Israel?'

I was there for something about the psychology of David, there is a lot in that question. Because David is saying 'well, what benefit is there for..... this little boy is already thinking about his future, he is thinking about what benefit...... Brothers, there is nothing wrong with you wanting a life successful and blessed. Sometimes we want to be more Catholic than the Pope. And he says 'oh, I'm going to serve the Lord even if he doesn't give me anything, this and that'. Look, we all want to be blessed by God. There is no harm in you being ambitious and wanting big things. You have to be restless in life. You have to want to succeed, you have to want success. If you do not want success, if you do not want God to bless you, if you are not concerned about success in the ministry or in your job, or in your marriage, you are not going to receive anything.

David, in his heart, wanted to progress. God had put ambition in him, had put an entrepreneurial character in him, and when he sees this he says 'look, who knows, here, I can advance my life and my career', then he begins to ask questions. You have to ask in life. You have to knock on doors. You have to be restless.

Remember I was telling you about that in success? The people who are industrious and ask and touch and get involved and undertake and take risks, that is the person who is blessed. So he starts asking. And look at what it says:

"For who is this Philistine, uncircumcised, that he should provoke the armies of the living God." And the people responded with the same word because Saul had promised a great reward for those who dared to get their hands on Goliath and no one had been willing. Go? It only required a man of heart who believed that God was with him. And you know what, when his brothers hear him asking, what's up? They jump on him and insult him. How dare you...? Who are you, boy, there brat, to be asking and asking? Go home right now. Mediocre people, when you have big dreams, will want to drag you into mediocrity too. Never listen to the voice of Maribel's counselor who tells you "Hispanics don't go to Boston College."

There are going to be a lot of people in your life who are going to...... and sometimes well intentioned. Sometimes your parents are the first to tell you, 'little boy, don't get involved in that, you're going to have a bad time. You are going to fail and you are going to feel bad. Better go something more at your level. When my daughter Sonia told me that she wanted to go to Harvard in her second year of high school, I made up my mind to try to take that dream away from her as soon as possible and as less violently as possible. Do you know why? Because at the time, she wasn't academically prepared to go to Harvard. And I, who have attended universities ....... and who was an admissions officer for one of the most demanding ones at Harvard, which is Princeton University, knew what was required, and my daughter did not have it, because she was a naturally intelligent girl, but she had not applied everything and simply did things out of natural intelligence.

But when she began to seek God in her life, God changed her mind. It changed her character and she changed her mind, and she put it into her heart that she wanted to go to Harvard like her dad. And I doubted inside myself, but thank God I didn't say anything to him at that moment. She started working and I saw that her grades began to rise and then when I saw her seriously, at some point I said 'well, I'm going to have to support this girl'.

I sat down with her and said, 'Look, if you want to get to Harvard there is no room for you to make a single mistake between now and when you are considered. You will be impeccable and perfect in everything you do academically. And to make a long story, brothers, Sonia finished with the average, the second or third highest in her entire school, an A+. She did an extracurricular project, which earned the admiration of all the teachers in the school and in the end, when she applied, she was accepted not only by Harvard, she was accepted by Princeton, she was accepted by Yale, she was accepted by Brown University, she was accepted by Boston University with very generous scholarships And God turned her from a sure failure to a sure success. When it came time to receive the admission letters, I knew that she was going to be accepted.

Why, brothers? Because when you dare in the name of the Lord and apply yourself and have the wind of God behind your boat, you can achieve anything. And I tell you, you have to dare in the name of the Lord. David had this question that he was destined for success and when he saw that giant, he didn't see himself, but he saw God who was with him.

But many times when people do not have your faith, they do not have your understanding, when they see your dreams they will feel threatened by you and without realizing they will want to lower that balloon that is rising and they will wanting to bring it to their own level. Don't let them kill your dreams. Keep dreaming. Keep daring. If they close one door, go through another, but keep going and God will give you victory.

David went to Saul's and spoke to him, and look at the encounter between David and the giant, and this is the important thing. The giant looks at David with contempt and who are you that you come before me with a stone?, in verse 42 somewhere. "He held him in little, he says, because he was a boy and fair-haired and handsome to look at."

David was a delicate and attractive little boy and this giant, this man of war experienced in fighting, he sees him and says 'this little guy, how dare they send me, I expected a man of war, after all his weapons, and all his swords and his things and his spear. It is not the resources that you have at your hand, it is the power of God that directs those resources.

So David in verse 45 says “David said to the Philistine: 'You come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of squadrons of Israel whom you have provoked." David knew that God was with him. There was nothing in his physique or his immediate circumstances to justify what he was doing. The only thing that justified it was a nagging suspicion in his heart that God was going to honor him and even if he went there, and his legs trembled as he walked, God was with him and was going to get him out of his predicament.

And look how he speaks "The Lord will deliver you into my hand today, and I will defeat you and cut off your head and give the bodies of the Philistines today to the birds of the sky and to the beasts of the earth and all the earth will know that there is God in Israel.”

One of the most important things one has to do when one is seeking success in his life is to speak positively in the Lord. Maybe you can't control the feelings inside of you, but you can control what your mouth says. Because if you speak negatively, pessimistically or neutrally, the devil knows and senses what is going on in your mind and often stops you. But when you speak positively and you prophesy in the name of the Lord, even though your whole being tells you 'no, it's not true', speak anyway. Get in the habit of cultivating positive language in your life. Banish negative language in your life. Banish the continuous confession of depression or sadness or failure or fear and speak positive things, even if you don't believe it. But as you confess it, your mind will reprogram itself and your emotions will learn to obey your statements.

Cultivate positive language in the Lord. Prophesy in the Lord. Talk about the future that God is going to give you. Talk about the success you are going to have. Talk about the things you are going to see. Bless your children with a positive attitude. That is why many children of depressed parents grow up with depression because they got used to the negative language and practices of their parents and were infected with it. It is not necessarily because it is something genetic, but that a spiritual genetic has been transferred to the children.

Negative language creates a negative environment and creates negative results. The positive confession in God reconfigures the external reality, and aligns it to the reality of the children of God. You have to confess positively. Speak positively. Declare positive things in the Lord and they will come into your life.

“And all this congregation shall know –v. 47- that Jehovah does not save with sword and spear, because Jehovah's is the battle and He will deliver you into our hands.

The battles you fight, don't fight them in yourself, fight them with God and in God. The Lord does not save with your painful efforts. The Lord saves with his power through a conduit of faith that is your faith.

So, you can see there that what governs David is this sense that my God is with me, my God is going to back me. God is my helper. And that is the mentality that you have to cultivate in your life. it is a positive mentality, of possibility and not of scarcity.

We have undertaken this project of starting a service in English. I've been resisting doing it for years because I don't have time. Humanly speaking it's crazy to start a service in English at this time in my life and the church with all its demands on pastoral staff and all that. I cannot justify it in terms of the resources of the church, my time, the time of the other pastors, the space that we have available at this stage of so many activities, the responsibilities that I have in so many other things outside and inside. There's no way, it's crazy.

What has made me do it is two North American people who have insistently told me 'Pastor, when are you going to start a service in English? If you had, we would come every Sunday, and that voice, I have learned that when it comes to me like this, I have learned to listen to it. They are prophetic voices that they themselves may not know are being used. I have chosen to think that these are prophetic voices from God because God has been speaking to me internally for a long time that he wants our church to begin to expand to the English-speaking community as well.

And I met with them, a while ago, I invited them to dinner with my wife and I told them 'it's not possible, now is not the time'. But they came back again in a gentle and soft way. They are shy and soft boys but God has put that on their hearts, and through the years others have come as well. And I believe that we are in a time where God is calling us more to a more public sphere, more extended than simply the Latin field. And you have to learn to observe the times and the seasons and look with discerning eyes because many times the circumstances around you will push you to where God wants. And you have to be attentive to hear the voice. That is something very important, successful people are always attentive to their environment, and they are always observing and measuring things and obtaining information and that gives them places to go and search and be in the place of blessing.

In other words, I have made so many excuses and so many reasons why not start a service in English, there is no time, there are no physical resources, there are no personal or ministerial resources, it requires a lot of planning, 27 things , but I have always believed something and that is that you never operate from a scarcity mentality but from a provision mentality. It's another rule of success that I'm going to discuss with you later.

Always work in terms of what God can do, not what you can't do. So I am looking at the manual and I have learned that I should not look at what we do not have, but look at the God who will provide us if we launch ourselves in faith. Start walking by faith. That is the key to life. Take steps of faith and obedience.

Come forward brothers, yes. Take steps of faith and obedience. The priests were told 'start walking and when your foot steps on the river, the river will open'. They were not told to wait for the river to open up and then start walking. When your foot steps on the river..... you have to start taking steps of faith. And I have learned that on the road God always finds you. Amen.

So, that's why we are..... it's that I'm always living that dynamic in my life, I don't express it in those terms, but I have instinctively learned to incorporate those principles into my life. Behind that service in English there is a whole drama of spiritual principles that are in battle. Am I going to give in to doubt and limitations or am I going to give in to God who is powerful to not allow this to turn into a disaster. I believe, I bet on God. And I believe that God knows how to honor the faith of his children. So one jumps on faith and God gives the answer. God blesses in ways.

Do not give in to impossibilities, but treat according to the principles that you see in the word of God. Do not give in to doubt, do not give in to previous experience, give in to what God has said in his word. Amen. This is how God's people live.

Let's stand up for a moment. Lord tells you, Lord calls you, to believe that God is with you. Stop mourning what happened to you when you were a child. Stop keeping your head on the failure you had 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Put aside the poverty of your family and your origins. Stop looking at the insignificance of your person or your appearance and start looking at the God who is the owner of all spiritual blessings, who has told you 'I have blessed you with all spiritual blessings, the heavenly places'.

God has declared a blessing on your life. Now it is in your hands to take that blessing and lower it into the realm of time and space. It depends on you. Are you willing to believe? God is with me as a mighty giant, as the word of the Lord says. Even though I walk in the valley of shadows I will fear no evil because He will be with me. Apply that truth to all dimensions of your life. any project, be it big or small, any situation in your life, any struggle, any tie, any emotional or mental problem, neurosis, physical defect, whatever, apply 'with God I can'.

Say with me 'with God I can' 'with God I can' 'with God I can'. We are going to say it five times as Josaphat expected him to say it, fourth time 'with God I can', 'with God I can'. And one last time, it is a good measure 'with God I can'. We thank the Lord. Glory to God. .............. with Christ Jesus it is possible. In the name of the Lord we conquer mountains, heights, tear down fortresses, remove the heads of giants in our lives and possess the land that God has given us. Because the Lord in us is more powerful than he who is in the world. Live with that program in your mind. Live with that certainty in your mind. Turn it into a life program and it will completely transform you. The next 15, 20, 30 years, your life will be a life of growth, development, professional and emotional, relational and spiritual expansion. believe. He begins to want great things for my God. Expand your visual screen and also believe that God will be with you to make your dreams come true and launch yourself in the name of the Lord.

I want to ask if there is anyone here this morning who has not yet given their life to Jesus. It's been a while since we made a call.

< /Table> Hear and see more recorded presentations January 22, 2006< br/>
Sermon Archive

Sermon by Dr. Roberto Miranda recorded January 22, 2006 in Congregación León de Judá

Oir

|

View (400K)