The Winning Attitude - Defining Your Dreams (Part 3)

James, Chapter 1 and I am going to use that text, because we could use several others that way, but I think that in particular lends itself to the spirit of what we want to present this afternoon, verse 5, James 1:5, says: "and if any of you... What Santiago is saying here can be any request, in this case he is talking about wisdom but it can be anything else, any other request.

It says "if any of you lacks wisdom - what does he say? - ask God, who gives abundantly to all without reproach and it will be given to him."

And here we go further into the matter, in the next verse it says "but ask with faith, not doubting anything because the one who doubts is similar to the wave of the sea that is dragged by the wind and thrown from a part to another. Do not think, then, whoever does such that he will receive anything from the Lord. It's a very serious warning, isn't it? when we are in that swing, in that lack of definition, right? "Do not think, then, that such a thing means that you will receive anything from the Lord, he says, the man, or in this case also the woman, double-minded, is inconstant in all his ways."

Another warning, not to be fickle, not to be double-minded, to be determined-minded, to be clear in life, to be specific in life. And that is precisely what I want to talk about this morning as part of our series of sermons on the life of success, the attitude of success, the elements that constitute success. In biblical terms we could say, the abundant life, the successful life.

And here we have a third point that I want to discuss with you this afternoon. We have already had two sermons on this subject, and the first we talked about, in fact we know, something that is clearer in my mind every day more and more, is that success is an attitude, it is a life posture, it is a mentality, a way of relating to life. It is not so much the specific actions that we do, although that is important, but there is an attitude that has to be there as a launching pad for the actions that lead to success. If the platform is not prepared, the rest will not be given.

So, there is an attitude that is necessary and that is why I am taking time to define the attitudes that are part of success. And we have said in the first presentation that it is necessary to broaden, broaden the capacity to believe God. You have to throw away the small vessels that limit the grace of God and look for larger vessels. You have to remove the 4 by 8 screen and look for a jumbo trunk, one of those that are put in stadiums to project our dreams there, big dreams, daring dreams, dreams that challenge God, dreams that the Lord can say 'go, that's a dream on my scale. That is a dream that I am going to please myself to bless and prosper.

The site of the store needs to be widened. We have said that before putting up one of those tents, you must first make a larger space so that the largest building can fit. And likewise our mind, so that God's blessings can enter a greater magnitude, we first have to create, dream, desire, visualize great things that God can do in our life. Do not stay in the small only, dream on a large scale and launch yourself then in the name of the Lord to make those dreams come true. Widen the ability to believe.

Secondly, we talked about the importance of believing that God is with me and that he is, how? To my favor. How many remember that I said that? Were all of you asleep? They had already worshiped too much, they were tired, and they had turned off the tuning. We must believe that God is with us and that He is in our favour. Amen.

And when you believe that God is with you, that what you undertake the Lord supports you, that God goes with you wherever you want, that will give them encouragement for you then, dare to undertake things big.

I was saying about David last week with the 9 o'clock group, I think it was, I don't know if I already told the 12 o'clock or the 9 o'clock group something. Well, if you heard it before , well, listen to it again too, it is reinforced more. David was a man possessed by the idea that God is with me, and that is why Psalm 23 speaks of "The Lord is my shepherd, even though I walk in the land of the shadow of death, I will do you no harm", and that confidence of David , that his God was with him, that he had gotten him out of so much trouble, was what allowed him, when the giant Goliath was on the border with Israel, insulting the people of God every day and none of the warriors of Israel were dared to put a hand to that giant, David said 'the Lord is with me, I'm going to do it in the name of the Lord'.

And we see that clear story, when David approaches the giant, the giant tells him 'Am I a dog so that you come to me with a stone and a stick?'. He expected a brave man, full of strength with his armor and all his instruments of war, and here comes this rickety little boy but full of faith, who knows that God is with him.

And David tells him 'you come before me before me with a sword, but I come before you in the name of Jehovah of hosts, because God is with me and I am going to put my hand on you and I am going to cut off your head, and today your head will be exhibited as a trophy, so you don't do it again', as a Dominican merengue says, 'so you don't do it again'. Because? Because David knew that God was with him and that is what allows us to undertake great things.

We saw the case of Joshua and Caleb who were not intimidated by the greatness and height of those enemy tribes and those giants that were in the Promised Land, hoping to destroy it when they arrived, because they said ' No, God is with us and we are going to eat it like bread', in fact we are going to put a little butter on top so that it tastes better. And there were those ten other spies who only looked at the greatness, the height, the strength, the ferocity of those enemy tribes, and they did not look at the God who had told them 'this land is yours, I am going to give it to you and I am going to to honor my word.'

You have to be aware that God is with me. Don't focus so much on limitations, brothers, okay? Last night in the English service we were talking about the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, where when the Lord said to the disciples 'hey, you guys feed that crowd', they said 'what do we feed them, but where is the money to feed all these people, and even if we had the money where is the place to feed them?' The Lord had the answer. He blessed those 5 loaves of bread and two little fish that were not enough for one of the appetites that we have here among us, there are some titans here who eat well, and the Lord said "bring me that", he lifted it up to heaven, blessed it and there was food for everyone.

Because the Lord takes our limitations along with our efforts and turns them into food for life, plenty that is left over, enough for the whole day. If you believe that God is with you and is in your favor. It is important so that we can undertake big things and bold things in the world.

And here I have a third lesson that I want to share with you. It's the specificity. I practiced it a lot this morning before coming here. Everybody say 'specificity' with me, quick. Now say it ten times real fast. Specificity is very important in life towards success. If you can't be specific, you'll simply remain in vain dreams. Dreaming of chimeras, little birds in the air, but you will not reach that point of being able to give body to your dream. Defining your dreams is so important that you name the things that you need in life, the things that you want to achieve. You have to write your dreams, you have to express them specifically. If you do not define what you want, you will never be able to clearly present to the Lord what your need is.

The Lord likes, brothers, that we present clear needs, clear projects, that we put a name, surname and even the mother's surname next to it, so that He knows exactly what is you need. The Lord likes us.... that's why the Apostle Paul says that we approach confidently before the throne of grace. And the idea is that......more than confidently, in the original Greek the idea is boldly before the throne of God.

There are passages in Scripture that show us that when people dared to ask the Lord for specific and clear questions, God blessed. And that is why in this passage here from Santiago that we are exploring, Santiago says something very important, it is a principle of faith. When you go to ask the Lord for something you have to be clear, sure of what you are asking and that you believe, then the Lord is going to bless you.

The Lord does not like us to come with vain dreams, with half-formed requests. It says here that a double-minded man is inconstant in all his way; he who comes to the Lord with a request should not think that he is doing it generically because he has seen that others do it. Others go to university and I would like to go to university, but you have not even thought about which university you want to go to, what subject you want to study, what profession you want to pursue. You haven't spent time discerning what your talents are and what your limitations are, do you like working with people or do you like working with machines? Do you like to work alone or with people around you and in a team? What are your limitations, what are your strengths? Many of us do not take inventory of our gifts and our limitations. We don't know what we want to do in 5, in 10 years, we are not clear. We just have a vague land ahead of us, no definition, a lot of fog and then we come before the Lord and you know what? That God will not be able to bless your dreams unless you define them clearly.

I like life, and every day I learn more and more the importance of writing down what you want to achieve and presenting to the Lord your well-worked dreams. This is like a project. And this actually works in the academic world let's say. When you're going to do a 10-page paper, or a doctoral thesis, or a senior thesis, the first thing your academic advisor is going to say is 'let's sit down and define specifically what topic you want treat', yes or no?, those who have gone to university and have done graduate studies too, whatever. The first thing that time is going to be spent is clearly defining what topic you want to deal with and not like that in general. For example, the history of the United States from 1700 to 1900 is not even good. No, in the year 1814, in the month of May something happened there, what happened there? And perhaps others have already written about that topic and you have to look for something that has not been discussed before. You have to be very specific.

And it has been discovered, and experience proves it, that the more specific you are in your subject, the more chances of success you have to do a successful and successful job. And so it is in life. Much of life's struggle must be fought in the field of reflection, planning, definition. When you are already well defined and very clear about what you want to do, you have already won half the battle, my brother.

When there is a dream that you have cultivated within yourself and that has grown like a 9-month-old baby and you already see that tummy that no longer fits inside of you. You have to get out of that dream, you are ready to receive God's blessing. But you have to take time first to define your dreams and to present to the Lord something well worked because that is a good part of success.

Why is this, brothers, do you know why? Because God is a specific being. The Bible says that God is all yes and love and the Lord likes people who are like Him, very clear, well defined. I see many passages in Scripture where God honors people who were clear about their dreams. And this morning I used Jacob as one of the most eminent figures, he was a person who had a vision, a dream, something he wanted to achieve and that from his mother's womb, a great mystery, for those who say that Babies in the womb are still a fetus, or they call them that, they depersonalize it, they are just flesh with a little bit of movement. No, in the womb there is life, there is spirit too.

And the Bible says that Jacob, who was a twin with Esau, struggled in his mother's womb to get out first. Now don't explain to me, this boy is a phenomenon, obviously, but the fact is that his spirit knew that there was something called primogeniture, which was that the firstborn, the firstborn male in the family was the one who received more honor and became as the spiritual patriarch of the whole family. And the blessing of God ran through him first. So Jacob instinctively, intuitively understood that even in his mother's womb. And he says that he fought with his brother to get out of the womb first. And because of a technicality, the one who came out first was Esau, and you know what? That when Jacob his dream was still holding him there, he wanted, he wanted to have the birthright and he used a ruse to steal the birthright from him. That is a mystery too. He stole the birthright from Esau. But you know what? Esau deserved it for manganzón because he did not appreciate the birthright. Esau was a man from the fields, he was an athlete, he was a rough man and he was not with that fineness of his birthright, and... what I want is a sancocho, where is the food?

He did not think about those subtle things of the spirit. But Jacob says that he was a delicate, artistic, spiritual man and he knew that there was a blessing in that. If we're going to look at the one who should have.....by his physical constitution and his greatness and everything else, he who should have been the birthright, was Esau. He already had it indeed, but Jacob had a dream, he had a vision, he had an appetite for greatness. And he was delicate, but God doesn't care how weak he is, on the contrary, the weaker he is, the more God glorifies himself in lifting him up and blessing him.

Never let your limitations get in the way of defining a dream and pursuing it. Jacob knew how to appreciate the dream and set a trap for his brother. Hey, and what a thing that God still honors those things. Because? Because God is a legal being and God goes for definitions and clarity. And since he saw that this man did not appreciate it, and that this other one was desperate to receive it and that he had defined it, had cultivated it, needed it, he would die if he did not have it. God told him 'okay, you're going to receive it', and Jacob was blessed.

And then Esau, because what he did was he sold his brother his birthright for a plate of food. Look how terrible. How many of us often sacrifice God's anointing by sleeping too much, or eating too much, or watching too much television, or having too much fun. Personal, carnal appetites often make us stumble and we sacrifice God's blessing or because we seek comfort, we simply seek to be comfortable and calm and God wants a person who, if they do not receive the blessing, will die.

You have to get to that point of wanting something in your life, be it to go to university, be it to learn English, be it to develop a talent, be it to serve the Lord somewhere in the world, be it to be an exemplary mother Be a model husband, whatever, but you have to want it and get to the point that... I'm going to grab you, you say that, and you throw yourself behind it, rain, shine, wind A thousand demons get in your way, you keep going until you receive the blessing you want in your life. You have to be daring, otherwise we never get anywhere, brothers.

How many sisters do I hear out there 'oh, I would like to learn to drive. Ah, but I'm afraid to get on the road. You have to do like brother Ernesto, don't worry, the Lord will take you forward, you will go around 7 times, you will get lost, but you will arrive even with your tongue hanging out, because the Lord will bless you. And He is going to glorify Himself even in the twists and turns, the Lord is going to rejoice in that, because He says 'my son wants the blessing and is willing to risk it.'

Dare, throw yourself in the name of the Lord. Be specific, define your dreams and dare, then go find them. And the Lord says 'I will not leave you, nor will I forsake you. I'm going to give you because you fought for that blessing.

And even after receiving the birthright blessing, Jacob had to flee because when Esau was already full, and he realized what he had lost, he sent his brother back and wanted to cut him off. head for setting him up. And Jacob had to flee and one night when he was fleeing from him and sleeping in a field, he saw a ladder that went up from heaven to earth and angels were going down and going up and an angel came down from heaven and Jacob said 'to this one too. I'm going to grab and I'm also going to get a little blessing from him'. And he plugged into him and put a wrench and a bite and told him 'I'm not going to let you go until you bless me'. And the angel wanted to go back to heaven, and it says that Jacob was fighting with the angel all night until finally the angel blessed him. It is true that his hip dislocated and he was limping all his life, but brothers, sometimes you have to pay a price even for blessings. Do you know that?

The word says that the kingdom of heaven becomes strong and the brave, the violent take it away. Perhaps there will be a scar from some fight in your life, but listen to me, that scar is like a warrior's scar, which is an ornament, not a stain, but rather a war trophy. You took God's blessing and God says 'ahah, you got away with it. Amen. I am glad that it is so.

The Lord likes a few warriors in his kingdom. The Lord wants to develop warriors. Certainly the Lord does not like parasites. He only knows daring people. The word says that 'the kingdom of heaven advances – is what it says in the original Greek – it advances forcefully and the forceful people snatch it away. The natural temper of the Kingdom of God is an aggressive temper. God is a conqueror par excellence. And he likes men and women who emulate him, who imitate him, who project their energy.

That's why God wants a determined church. He wants determined people. He doesn't want lukewarm people. The word says that God hates warmth. In Revelation we see that it says "I wish I were hot or cold, but since you are neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth."

How many have ever tried drinking warm water? Raise your hand, won't you? When you had nothing else to do, you took one day and you know the results. Warm water is rejected by the body. God likes defined people and He likes to have dealings with defined people, with people who take time to define their dream, to refine it, to filter and purify it until what is left is a dense and heavy essence. And that is what you come and present to the Lord after times of defining your dreams in prayer.

Many times the dream that you have in your life, what you want to achieve, will not begin to be achieved until you have a long pile of prayer, which you have been increasing, depositing in a cup Precious every day your prayers. And every time you pray for that dream of something that you have in your life, perhaps it is a character trait that you want to improve in your life, perhaps it is a mental or emotional tie that you have, perhaps a past wound, a defect. of your dealings with others. And you say 'Lord, I already hate this and I want to leave it and I want to leave it and I want to be the man that You want me to be, or the woman that You want me to be', and every time you pray and you phrase that dream with other different words, and you are depositing that accumulation of prayers there, and the Lord is looking at it and a day comes when your cup overflows and says 'today, I bless your request and your need', and the time of prayer begins. restoration in your life.

And circumstances begin to change and align according to your needs and opportunities, resources begin to emerge, people come into your life, energies come out of you. Circumstances align with your dreams. Those prayers that you began to give began to define your need, your dream to the point that it is like an immensely dense pebble that you can then throw against your need and receive God's blessing in your life.

Many times the Lord will wait a long time, even take you through a process until you can state your dream to the Lord in the specific words that you need to state it to Him.

Now, I'm going to talk a little more about that, but why this, why, why doesn't God just listen to anything, or just open the chest of the human being and read what is there and give it to him, if he can do that too? Because God takes us seriously, brothers, he takes us so seriously that He is not going to do a part of the work that only we can do, because if God did it all for us, it would take away our dignity.

God has created man and woman, with immense dignity and when God put man in the garden, Adam and Eve, he told them 'I delegate to you dominion over the earth. God, on this earth, on this reality of time and space, gave man his authority and told them 'now, you have authority on this earth. Rule over her. Be fruitful. Multiply, create cities, build ships that sail through the air and the seas. Explore the depths of the sea and space. That creation is for you to rule over.

And the Lord, as an executive, gave authority to man and gave dignity to man, and gave free will and free will to man. It gave him the capacity for reasoning and reflection and decision-making and gave him artistic gifts of creation and visualization. And then the Lord already says 'now, whatever you do on this earth, there is a part that you have to do, and if you want Me to do a part, you have to work in partnership with Me. I am not going to do the job for you because I value you too much, I respect you too much, and I have delegated too much authority over you to do the part that is up to you. You understand?

Man has great power with his mouth, the son of God has great power in his mouth. What you pronounce, what you ask for, what you formulate in your mind, what you visualize, what you desire, we have been made with authority. We are birds of prey, brothers. We are eagles with great dignity. Many of us waste that beauty, but God doesn't want to rob us of the opportunity to hear us say what we need.

And so He wants to bring us to the point of definition. There are things, brothers, that God wants to do on this earth that he will not do until he finds someone who is a channel through which that blessing can reach the earth. The Lord appreciates us so much. And there are passages that I can give you about that in the Scripture.

Furthermore, I believe that if Christ has not already come, it is not because God does not want Him not to come, but because the church still needs to reach a point of maturity and definition and in which then Christ can say 'now I can look for my church'. Because God does not come looking for a church of tadpoles, God comes to look for a church of eagles, birds of prey, game animals, powerful people, clear people. He comes looking for a church without stain or wrinkle, well defined, well determined, very clear.

So, you always see that interaction of God with man. I always see that God tells the people he wants to bless 'what do you have that you can give me as a deposit for the blessing that I am going to give you?' How interesting! There is something in you, that if you want the blessing, you have to bring God the raw material so that God can work on it.

Listen to me. I give it to you for free. I'm not going to charge you for that word. God always wants a raw material that you bring to him, for then He will fall on it and bless it. It is like the wood that Elijah put on the altar. There is a part that Elias had to do. God did not send fire so that it would just fall, no. Elijah built an altar, put wood on the altar, did a whole series of things around the altar and then said to him 'Father, now send your fire and it will fall', and the altar caught fire.

And that's our life too. There is firewood that you have to bring to the Lord, that firewood is the definition. That firewood is knowing exactly what you want to receive from God. That firewood is a time for reflection, planning, thinking carefully about what you want, defining your personality, taking steps of faith, doing the necessary diligence in your life. So, when you've done your part, God meets you halfway and says, 'Okay, son, my requirement is met. Now I am going to bless you.

And that is precisely where the great struggle of many of us lies. When we have a dream, a project in our mind, a desire, something we want, many times we are not willing to give that part, because that part is eminently threatening, because it implies that you are going to launch into something and you don't know if you will succeed or not.

Even if you hear me speak, I myself who preach these things, sometimes I don't even believe them myself, brothers. I have to do things out of obedience. Half the time I am doubting and fearing to see if I am going to make a fool of myself or if God is going to honor what I am doing. And in the middle of the road there are obstacles, and struggles, and mistakes that are made and waiting times and blind alleys, and you are there splashing this matter and making an effort and erecting altars that fall down and you come again and put it trusting that one day the Lord will bless you and will send his fire on your presentation that you offer him and that he will bless your life and give you what you need.

But you have to dare. You have to offer the Lord a part first. That is why when the Lord wanted to bless the crowd, and the disciples said "we have nothing to feed them", He said "go around in the crowd and see what they have". And he sent them around and running errands, because that's part of the process. And in that process of exploration they learned certain things. What was not there, what was there, what could be useful, all these things, and in this process, they themselves were learning because God sometimes sends you through life in trial and error processes, so that you can define yourself. better.

Many of us spend time in the desert wandering around like Israel until the time comes when all the unnecessary, negative energies have been purged, like the Hebrew people who had to all die. Only the new generation entered with the heart of Joshua and Caleb.

And so God sometimes leads you to explore things, to spend time waiting, doing experiments, trying things that don't work out, but in the whole process you are learning things and you are forming your personality.

So God sent the disciples 'look and see what's there', and they came back with 5 loaves and two little skinny fish that even out there smelled bad because they had been there all day, the heat of the Middle East, imagine that, at 6 in the afternoon, at 7 in the evening those fish there. How will they have appeared? And they told him 'Lord, look, this is the only thing we found. And He said 'that's enough, give me that and you're going to see what's going to happen here'. He made a stew that fed 5,000 men and all the women and children that were there too, brothers, because when the Lord touches the initial deposit that we bring him, there is food for everyone and it is left over.

But you have to put a part. That is the human part that God is not going to do without your participation. You have to sweat a little first so that God will then bless your dreams. You have to invest, brothers. You have to work to harvest, says the word of the Lord. You have to sow first with tears many times and you have to spend time defining what you want to receive in your life and don't worry if you don't have it the first, the second, the third, the fourth time, but if you stay on the horse Even if you fall, get back up and one day the Lord will give you what you need.

And that happened to them. The disciples brought that. God blessed him and so there are so many passages throughout the Scriptures where God asks Moses, when Moses, God said 'look, I want you to go and tell Pharaoh to let my people out, and I want you to go and define as the prophet that I am going to use before the Jews'. And Moses said 'well, Lord,... what? Always obstacles. I am a stutterer, I never took a public speaking course, I don't have the necessary education. And God told him 'don't worry. I am not the one who commanded you. And he said to him 'well, and what credentials am I going to show people so that they believe that you have sent me?' What was the Lord's question? He said, 'What do you have on hand? Remember? Look for it, there it is, I'm not making it up. What do you have on hand?

Because brothers, the beginning, the deposit for the miracle is close to you, you have it. There is something you can do, ask, conceive in your mind, define what God needs to do the miracle. It is the raw material.

Moses showed him his hand and said, 'take your hand, put it in your side,' and when he entered it, he took out his hand, it was completely leprous. 'Put it back in', when he took it out it was completely healthy. And he said to him...he also had a spear in his hand, a staff 'throw the staff to the ground,' he threw it away and the staff became a snake. 'now take it again', and the rod became a normal rod again. ‘With those two signs that you have there in your hand, go, I send you, and begin your ministry.’

And even there Moses failed and had to learn other things in the process. You know the story. It was a long and dynamic story, because success does not happen overnight. Even at the beginning you are only going to start learning and in the process God is going to define more and more. And that's what we're going to talk about, about the importance of experimentation and failure in the process of success, too. All of that is very important.

But there is something that God wants you to do and only you... if you don't do it, God won't do it. Stop dreaming vain dreams and get to work on your vision so that when the time comes you can present a clearly defined dream to God. Ok, I want to lose weight. Ok, but how many pounds do you want to lose? And how do you want to do it? Do you want to do it based on a diet, based on exercise, fighting in wrestling on television, how is it, but in what way? In how much time? Have you got any books to learn how to do that? There are many ways, that is, the important thing is that there is a clear, measurable, nameable definition.

Abacuk says he writes the vision on tablets so that he who reads it may run through it. We need to define in our lives the things we want to do, the achievements we want to have, the areas we want to overcome, the giants we have to head off. And then we have to present to the Lord exactly what we need and for that well-defined word that we present to the Lord, God will do the work.

One of my great heroes in all of Scripture is Neemiah, the great builder. And I have preached in the past about Neemias and one of these days I am going to preach again because he is an exemplary man.

Look in Neemiah, Chapter 2 and guess what, for example maybe you didn't bring your Bible today, I encourage you to get your Bible and bring it to church, in that spirit to be specific, and bring pencil and paper and take notes, because that way we can, something is specific, just get a Bible.

Nehemiah, Chapter 2. this is how your spiritual growth begins, simple things, clear things, taking a discipleship class that is being offered. Don't tell him 'Lord, just bless me, make me a man, an enlightened, enlightened, wise woman. No. You have to peel your eyelashes, you have to take classes. And don't tell me that 'oh, I don't know how to read well, I don't know how to speak'. Don't worry, go take the class. Let the Lord enlighten you. God will give you what you need along the way.

Neemías, with this I finish, it is an illustration here that we have. Nehemiah was a man of vision, and Nehemiah knew that the walls, the walls of Jerusalem, his native city, were destroyed. Nehemiah was a Jew who had been deported and had been at the court of the king of Shushan for many years, and Nehemiah had not even been to Jerusalem in his childhood, but he knew that the destruction of the walls had wreaked havoc in Jerusalem and that his city I was ashamed, the city looked completely destroyed. There was no protection for the exiles who were coming back to Israel. And Nehemiah had a dream in his heart, he wanted to restore those walls. And that's why I see, Nehemiah was a very clear man, very specific in things.

One of my favorite passages is when he arrives, before we jump in here for a moment. When Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem, he says that he stayed one night, he took his horse, he says, he didn't tell anyone what he was going to do. That was when he had just arrived in Jerusalem, after a long journey. He arrived in Jerusalem, he took his horse at night, and I have always imagined Nehemiah riding his horse, while that animal passed over those fallen walls and those huge stones, reconnoitering the area, while the Jerusalem moon shone above his horse and illuminated it. Nehemías was reconnoitering the entire city, looking at the fallen walls, thinking about how much wood we need, how many masons to do the work, how much cement mix, how many bricks and large rocks we are going to need, how are we going to bring them, where are they from? we are going to bring, looking, observing, cultivating the vision, defining what was needed. Planning, putting all that scenario into your spirit and determining the magnitude of the task, because that is what must be done, brothers, in our life. You have to take your horse and get inside yourself, in that vast territory that is your mind, your spirit, your emotions, your past.

You have a universe in there. What's more, you need a spaceship to travel inside of you. Get in, and recognize your life, your dreams, your potential. The things that you want to achieve, the obstacles and the defects that exist in your life and plan a trip for the rest of your life to cultivate and conquer each area of your land and putting the flag of the Kingdom of God in each black area of your life and in need of your life. Putting God's order, God's excellence, God's self-control, God's love, God's hope, God's joy, God's anointing, God's order in all those areas that the enemy, the flesh or the world are dominating.

Say, 'I am going to rebuild these walls and they will shine for their excellence and their beauty in the name of the Lord.' And throw yourself into a battle then to do it. But first you need to define what you want to do in your life. I want to spend the rest of my life, conquering different areas of my life, in order to be a little better each day than I was the day before or the year before. And that becomes an appetite.

That is why I say that triumph, success is a life posture, it is a lifelong program that you tell yourself 'I am going to be a person of excellence, a powerful man, an accomplished woman. When I get old, even if I'm crawling, but my spirit is going to be shining for the Lord and people will want to get close to me, stick around a little bit to receive God's blessing in my life.'

So You throw yourself into it and set an agenda for your whole life, each day a little better, each day conquering one more inch of land and thus you reach your victory and you become a woman, a powerful man of excellence. Don't worry about the magnitude of the job, just make sure that you present to the Lord what you need. And be honest with yourself, recognize the areas of need in your life. Do not hide, do not put another title, another label to the devil. call him by his name, 'you are my enemy'. Resentment, criticism, obscene words, dirty mind, drug or alcohol dependency, bad temper, past hurts, depression, low self-esteem, whatever, mistreatment from people, name it. Make a list and go beheading those giants one by one while you present them to the Lord.

And set yourself a lifelong agenda and live like a person on a mission. Everything you do align it with your dream. What does not contribute to your dream, remove it from one side. People who are dead weight in your life, stay away, run away from them. Surround yourself with people who encourage you in your dream and who are pilgrims like you who are in search of the blessing in your life. It must be clearly defined. You have to define what you want and live for that alone. We have to align our life, according to our dreams. You have to live with an appetite, with a wild look, looking at the blessing that is there. Like a pilgrim, like a foreigner, on the way to blessing, to that city not built by the hands of men of the word of the Lord.

And we have to be like that, Nehemiah recognized the land, visited the places and saw the rubble and said 'I'm going to defeat you, don't worry'. He did not go with anyone, he went alone, because that, brothers, the person, one of the most important things for success, the ability to be alone, to dwell in silence. The person who is all the time with people around and with the radio on, and with noise around him is not going to come to anything good, brothers. Many people get up in the morning, turn on the radio, go down to the kitchen, turn on the other radio, put on a transistor if possible while going to the car, turn on the car radio, are in the factory listening to the radio, arrive at the house, turn on the television. Always noise, noise, noise. Where is the time to think, reflect, take time for God, take time to cultivate the dream, to define the vision, to present to the Lord the order of what you need? It is first necessary to build enough pressure to shoot the bow, so that it reaches its goal and this can only be cultivated in solitude and silence, in prayer, in reflection.

Men, women of God have to take time, alone, where there is no other voice than the voice of God within you to reach the goal. Vision must be cultivated, it must be defined as a laser beam.

Look at what it says here in Nehemiah, Chapter 2, I haven't forgotten, Nehemiah conceived a dream and the first thing he did, we don't have time, in Chapter 1, he prayed, cried, cried out, he agonized over the rubble of his town. He confessed the sins of his people and then appeared before the king waiting for his opportunity. He spent time doing what he had to do. So, it comes at a time in verse 4 of Chapter 2 where he appears before the king, because he worked before the Royal Court. He had a very important position before the king and was the king's cupbearer and was always in touch. He used the resources he had very important, what do you have at hand? At hand he had access to the king. He didn't know about construction, he didn't know about engineering, he didn't know about architecture, but he had something at hand, he had connections. Create connections in your life, that is something very important for success. Meet people. Go in and be insulted, go into places where there are people and get to know yourself and introduce yourself, give them your card, talk to people, make contact, because whoever you least expect will one day be a resource for your life.

I've continually discovered that. Make your bread to the waters because after many days it will return to you. You have to create relationships, you have to create contacts. You have to go to meetings. You have to be where the people are. You have to read the newspapers. You have to read the internet. You have to watch the news. You have to receive 4 or 5 magazines at home, because all of this creates information that you can use one day, and that will be the raw material that you will use to advance in your dreams.

He had something that was contact with the king and he used that. So, it says there in verse 4 “the king said to me, what do you ask for? -because? Because the king realized that Nehemiah was emaciated, he was sad because you have to want something to receive it, and Nehemiah was that he couldn't live anymore, then the king realized his agony. That this is a man who was desperate, and then the king said to him, 'Look, you are sad,' and he says in verse 3 Nehemiah, “how will my face not be sad when the city, the house of the sepulchres of my father is deserted and its gates are consumed by fire?

It takes people like that who are eager for what they need and can't live. Then he says "... the king told me, what are you asking for?" That is what God is always saying to us, what do you ask of me? And you better be prepared to tell the Lord exactly what you need, because if you haven't taken time to define yourself, you're not going to be able to tell the Lord what you need. Go?

The Lord is always telling people what do you need? Bartimaeus, the blind man, approaches him, looking at him there in the dark and tells him what do you need? The Lord likes to hear from your mouth what you need. See, this is how God works, what do you ask for? So, I prayed to the God of heaven, internally at that moment, Nehemiah entrusted himself to all the saints and said 'Father, this is my chance, don't let me waste it'. And he prayed for himself. And then he said to him, verse 5 “....and I said to the king, if it pleases the king and your servant has found favor before send me to Judah, to the city of the tombs of my fathers, and I will rebuild it”.

Brother, you notice there an indecision in Nehemiah's way of expressing himself. Neemiah knew what he had to do. I have to take a trip, give myself a vacation, give myself some paid work time and I am going to go to Jerusalem and I am going to build the city. He knew, his dream was already clear, he had cultivated it in prayer, he had agonized for it. He knew what was needed.

Now look at this, look at how this statesman, the king, who is used to making big money decisions and big construction projects or war or politics, the king doesn't just tell him 'Okay, Nehemías, well, that's fine, so I'm going to sign you up for a 6-month vacation.' Look at what the king tells him: “Then the king told me and the queen was sitting next to him – that little detail is very revealing about Nehemiah's mind. Nehemiah is a specific man. That book was written by him..... and it is a tremendously detailed book, detailed, with visual images, because that is the mind of this man, it is a visual mind. He saw things concretely. "Then the king said to me and the queen was sitting next to him: 'how long will your journey take and when will you return?'"

You see, this man, this executive, is looking for more definition. How long will it take you and tell me a date for when you are going to reintegrate to send it to the bureaucrats in Susa so that they write it down there on the computer to know that you are going to arrive on that day, to plan according to your arrival. Specific, that's how people are in this world, brothers, the corporations, the big executives, the universities work according to the specific.

Do you know what the problem of the underdeveloped world is, we Latin Americans, Afro-Americans, Africans? All this underdeveloped world, the problem is that they don't know how to think specifically, with that kind of sobriety. And the church is even worse. You see the Pentecostals, the charismatics who talk about anointing, and this and that. Look, those cold evangelicals are taking over the world, while we supposedly eating the children raw with the gifts, we are in our ramshackle churches, our homes, our messy lives. Because those people think specifically and we simply with the anointing, anointing, anointing, we don't name our dreams. We don't take the anointing and take it for specific things. That happens in our nations, in the Latin American continent. Everything is just mouth, words, we look for our leaders because they speak a lot and declaim well, but we don't look for them because they execute and make decisions and are executives and that is why they always leave us like locusts, a completely destroyed world to be rebuilt by another administration.

This king asked him what do you need? How long are you going to be there? When you return? And look, how Nehemiah answers him “I also told the king, if it pleases the king 1) that I be given letters to the governors on the other side of the river so that they clear my way until I reach Judah; 2) and a letter to Assaf, keeper of the king's forest, so that he gives me timber to timber the gates of the palace of the house and for the wall of the city and the house in which I will be.”

Nehemiah already had a plan. He needed letters of authority, he needed letters of credit. Today it would be that, that they give me a letter of credit, that they give me passage for all my people, that they give me a visa so that I can pass through the territory, send me some people to help me with this, I need wood, I need bricks, I need so and so. He had made a plan. He had formed a clear idea.

And what happened? The king told him 'I like your day, execute her. He delegated authority to him and the rest is history. Read the book to see what happened there. How God blessed this man's life to rebuild those walls because he was specific.

Lion of Judah Church, God wants to bless you. God wants you to have a successful life. God wants you to have great achievements, that you conquer the heights, that you overcome the giants in your life, that you become a man, a woman, filled with the Holy Spirit, used powerfully by God, that the problems of your family be ordained, that your children enter into the order of God, that your talents be used for the glory of the Lord, but He needs you to define what you want and that you present specific requests to Him and that you make specific efforts in faith that He will send his blessing on your life and you will see the realization of what you long for. But you have to be a clear, determined, specific, hard-working, thoughtful person, meditate well on what you need and what you are going to ask the Lord for.

Write that letter in great detail to the Lord. Present it over and over again well defined. Have the patience to let God put you through a definition process until you can present a very clear subject matter to Him. Then He's going to say, ok, and on that platform I'm going to land and send my blessing.

I see many young people here and to those young people I say: learn to be specific. Set yourself a goal 20 years, 30 years. Don't be afraid to set clear and specific dreams and then set out to conquer your land. Live a life of excellence. Do not stop believing that God can do great things in your life, but also start studying, start planning, give your dreams a name, live towards success. Promise to be people of excellence, pay the price. Read everything you have to read. Strive in all the areas that you have to work on. Stick to your word. When you commit to something, force yourself to do it. Be specific on things. Determine where you have to be, at what time and be there in the name of the Lord. Unify your life to achieve your dreams and I promise you in the name of the Lord that failure is never a possibility for a child of God, but you have to dare to pay the price.

What do you want? What do you dream? Stand up. What do you want to ask the Lord right now? Throw a dream to the Lord, and if you are not clear about it, tell him "Father, I am going to go home and I am going to spend a couple of days working on that dream, that need and I am going to do everything possible, everything I can." be on my side to achieve it. And get to work in the name of the Lord. Build a space for the Lord, a space for your dreams.

If we had time, brothers, there are so many beautiful passages in Scripture. The Shunammite saw Elisha passing by and built him a room, the Bible says, a room and specifically put a bed in that room, put a desk, a lamp and a couple of other pieces of furniture, in that space. She didn't know if Elisha was ever going to stay in that bedroom because he passed by her house, but he never stayed. And she in her heart, conceived a dream that one day that prophet might have a place to sleep when he went on his prophetic journeys. And she told her husband 'we are going to build a room' and they began and worked and invested money. She built it, I imagine that she painted it, she worked it well, that it was well finished and she put the furniture that that prophet needed. She was specific.

And I wonder how many weeks, how many months perhaps that empty bedroom went by without the prophet staying in it. But one day, the word says, when Elisha passed by, he arrived and stayed in that place that that woman had built for him so that he could rest there. And Elisha, grateful for the vision of that woman, called her and said, 'what do you need? This woman had a great need, she was barren, because when you have dreams and you are excellent with God and you are specific, God gives you the desires of your heart. And Elisha told her... she couldn't have children, and Elisha told her, 'You know what? Before the end of this year you are going to have a child in your arms, and indeed it was. The woman gave birth to a son. It is a beautiful story of a person of excellence and definition.

But what I want to say with this, brothers, is that this room is like the spaces of which we have been speaking. We first have to build a well-defined space for God, we have to dream specific dreams and put a bed, a desk, a lamp there so that the spirit of God has something to dwell on and incarnate on.

Elisha exemplified the spirit of God, God's choice, prophetic. And it may be years until one day the spirit of the Lord visits your dream that you have presented to him, day after day and says "today is the day that I am going to stay in that dream" and the spirit of God enters and what comes? Life. Like that baby that was born. Your sterility is turned into fruit for the womb. Life, product, excellence, result, but you have to build a space for the Lord first, well defined, with a bed, a desk, a lamp. You have to put specific things. So the Lord is attracted by that and brothers, it is the word of the Lord, God wants to bless you. God wants to fertilize their lives. God wants to bring beautiful things to your life, but you have to be specific and present it to the Lord, you have to work on your dream. You have to take steps of faith. You have to dare in the name of the Lord.

What do you think if we join in this journey? Amen. I want to surround myself with people of excellence and people who want to reach old age or death, when it comes, with a sword in hand, knocking down giants to the right and to the left, conquering their land. Life is worth living that way. This is how you never die prematurely because we will always leave powerful things on earth. We'll leave a mark, that's all we need, leave a mark on this world. That's enough already. So give the Lord your dreams now, and commit to living a life of definition, of specificity, of excellence, of concrete effort.

Father, we embrace the position of the specific, of the concrete. You are too big and too powerful to present vain dreams to you, Lord. I ask that our people be enabled to conceive specific dreams, to dare to embark on the path of success, taking sometimes timid and shaky steps, but You affirm our steps on the path, Lord.

This life is a path that you have delegated to us and we want to make the most of it. We want to learn along the way, Father. Lift up this people, Father. May your word not be wasted, Lord, may the bread and wine that you have made fall on this town, fall on people who can make good use of it. Open our understanding, Lord.

Make us a community that pleases you, Father, for its excellence, for its effort. We adore you. we bless you Receive the Lord's Lord in you. Receive the impregnation of the Lord's grace in you. Launch yourself to conquer your land. Launch yourself to conquer big dreams. Don't get tired of throwing your sword in the dark. Do not get tired of having the armor on your head, on your chest, on your feet, in your hands, the weapon of God.

Use what God has given you, people, strive and be brave, says the Lord. push yourself and be brave. Look, I command you to make an effort and be brave. Do not fear or dismay because I will be with you wherever you go says the Lord. But I only tell you one thing: make an effort and be brave. Strive and be brave and present to the Lord definite and clear dreams and He will rejoice in entering into partnership with you. May the Lord bless you. Amen. Amen.