The attitude of triumph (Part 5)

Hebrews, Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. This is the text that forms the basis of our meditation on how to live a successful life.

It says here: "... therefore we too, having such a great cloud of witnesses around us, let us throw off all weight and the sin that besieges us and run with patience the race that we have for in front of. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the reproach, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Amen.

I have told you brothers, about these two verses that I read that originally when I began to look at them, my only desire, my only intention was to use it as an illustration for one of the points of this subject that I have been developing during these sermons on success, the successful life, the prosperous life. But later, when I looked at it more closely, I realized that there was so much material, so much teaching in it that it deserved a separate focus, a sermon, and it has become, I think this is the third one that goes in that direction, and I think one is missing. more at least because it has so much material.

I was telling you last Sunday that these two verses kind of make up a skeleton of what the successful life is no matter how you look at it, even though the original purpose of the Apostle Paul was not for us to focus on it. from the perspective of success, but from the Christian career, the Christian life, what we have to do to have a successful Christian life.

But certainly the elements that he says help us to live a successful Christian life, can also be applied to how to live a successful life period, in any area of life. It can be the area, for example, professional, the arts or the media, like Carla, or it can be in music, like Abby and Jessica and Jocabed, are developing, and Elías who accompanied them. It may be in the ministry, or in your marriage, or in your finances. If you want excellence and success in any of these areas, I believe that there is a base, a structure that can help you to develop that success that you are after.

And I told them that each sentence here kind of has a meaning, it's like a link or a step that you can use to climb towards that peak of success. And each of those sentences, last Sunday we talked about the fact that we have a cloud of witnesses around us, which is important. We talk about getting rid of every weight and every burden and the sin that besieges us. I touched that more in the 12 o'clock service and patiently running that race ahead of us.

Each of these expressions indicates something about the life of success. It is what I want to develop a little more. Again, I was telling you last Sunday, you remember, that the first thing says "having a great cloud of witnesses around us." The Apostle Paul is using these two verses as an image of runners who are running a marathon, because of the way he expresses himself here.

In the Greco-Roman world in which he moved, there were the Olympics and there were marathons. Everything that is done today was learned from the world of Greece and Rome. That already existed, the Olympics and all these things, and the runners would run 26 miles with a huge crowd of people accompanying them, like in the Boston Marathon, all along the 26 miles there are people cheering them on. They have a large cloud of observers around them who are watching their effort.

Like us Christians, I was saying that we have a lot of people watching us: your family, non-believers at home, neighbors, people at work. Even if you don't want to, they are watching you. Since you identify yourself as a believer, as a child of God, as a Christian, people immediately look at you in a different way. You are no longer just a neutral person, but people now expect you to live up to what you profess to be, what you say you are.

And they want to see if the Gospel really works, if it leads to success and the achievements that the word says. We Christians talk about how Christ prospers, Christ blesses, I can do everything in Christ. They say: 'Okay, let's see. Let's see if that's true. I will be watching you.

And that is why Christians, brothers, have a duty in one sense: to live lives of excellence and lives of success and lives that show the highest values of the Gospel. And it's not so that we live thinking 'oh, like... we live at the mercy of the opinion of others' No, but that we live with a healthy awareness that I represent the Kingdom of God, I represent a universal church and my life should exemplify a life of effort. It should not be a life of laziness and comfort and mediocrity, but a life that represents a person who is in perpetual growth, with high values, developing himself, burning emotional stages and going towards spiritual maturity and with a tidy apartment, and with children who are functional and show excellence.

We were saying that our children are looking to their parents to see what kind of example their parents are setting for them. How is a young man going to learn to be a man who loves his wife and respects his home, and a man of honor and good values if his father or mother do not exemplify that? We always have witnesses around us who are watching us and that is why we always have to be better and better and better.

And many times there are things that we are not going to do even though everything inside of us screams 'do it', out of respect for those people who see us and if we disappoint them, we are hurting them in their heart and in their own growth. So that is one reason why we have to be excellent in life and continue to seek high goals, and want to live a life of excellence that exemplifies that powerful Christ and who says that he is with us every day until the end. of the world.

We have to.... says the Apostle Paul to live according to that supreme calling that we have received. Being a Christian is something high, exalted and we have to exemplify that. So, that's why the Apostle says 'having around us a great cloud of witnesses', then he talks about stripping us of all weight. He continues with the image of the corridor.

Marathon runners, since they have to run so much, and long-distance runners, lose weight. You're never going to see a long-distance runner with big muscles because that's not what......he has to be as lean as possible. A heavyweight boxer does have to be very heavy, or a soccer player or a baseball hitter, but a runner has to be "lean", as they say, very thin. He can't have a lot of fat because every ounce is extra weight he has to carry, more work on his circulatory system, his heart, his lungs. So he tries to lose weight to the minimum to be able to run as much as possible.

Why do you see the racing cars? They are not cars like Cadillac or SUV type. They are tiny cars, very thin, very economical in their weight and in their shape to be able to run quickly, so that the engine does not have to carry more and more weight. Nowadays, that's why cars are made as I said, metals are fine..... rather, what they have today are synthetic substances, very hard like metal, but plastic many times to take weight off the car. car to save gas and to run more efficiently.

And that Paul says "... removing all weight,..... leaving all weight." If we want to run a successful race in life, we have to identify those defects in my character that make me run more slowly in life: a bad temper, for example, or a critical attitude, or anger, or speaking badly, or being a resentful person, who holds resentment towards others, who is easily hurt, etc. All these things are a weight on us: verbal abuse, not expressing affirmation to our children, the wounds of the past that drag us down.

Many times we were hurt as children and we saw terrible things that hurt us and we have had failures in the past. All these things are weight that we have to leave behind. Leave it behind. What happened, happened, leave it behind and now go forward and forget what life did to you. Now you are in Christ Jesus and you are a more than conqueror, says the word. Don't regret the past. Do not live in the past. Look now at that Christ who says 'I am with you.' I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I cannot let the world behind me and what I went through continuously deform me like a recording that is continually dragging me and putting weight on my life. No, no, you have to throw things away and move on.

That saying that says 'don't cry over spilled milk'. For the Christian it has a lot of meaning: don't let the past rule you. Take the weight off, keep going. Everything that prevents you from being a man or woman of excellence, tear it down. Because if you want to live a life of excellence, you have to leave behind thought patterns that do not lead to success, but to a stagnant life.

In order to be successful in life, you have to change your mindset. You have to renew your mind. You remember that I told you at the beginning that one of the things that one has to do to have a successful life is to widen the mental space, which one can believe. If you can believe great things, great things will come into your life. But if mental space is tiny, so will your life, tiny.

We have to ask the Lord, 'Lord, broaden my way of thinking. Renew my mind so that I can believe that I can achieve great things. Many of us have been taught, 'No, you can't get there. That's just the Americans, the green-eyed gringos.

But no, in Christ Jesus we are more than conquerors. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, says the word of the Lord. Nothing can drag you down, so don't depend on thoughts of the past. Take that weight off and lean forward. lose weight. Make yourself as economical as possible in your emotions and in your mental psychological makeup, as efficient as possible. Every day remove every little thing that prevents you from running with agility and skill the race of faith.

So, it says 'removing all weight, stripping us of all weight and the sin that besieges us'. The sin that besieges us. The Apostle Paul says 'look, every attitude in you, every sinful imperfection, everything that hurts you spiritually and also in the culture in which you live, that is the idea.

We live in a culture, brothers, that has moved away from God and everywhere we only have bad examples. In the media, in entertainment, journalism, in the university they teach you the opposite of the correct spiritual values, the society out there. What do we have today? Homosexual marriage, suicide, divided and broken marriages, young people who do not work, separation between parents and children, rebellion. It's a mess out there, of rejection of God and moral values. And the society out there is paying the price and we live in that society.

In a sense, that society besets us. The word besiege means what?: encircle, surround, as when an army surrounds a city and prevents food from entering and people from leaving to destroy it, to reduce it to defeat. So the Apostle Paul says 'get rid of that sin that surrounds you in your life and don't let it influence your life, don't let it control you, and change your way..... don't let the world with its bad thoughts influence you '. Because many times the world will tell us, for example, how to achieve success.

In many environments, for example, in the world where our sister Carla lives and in the business world, they tell you 'look, step over anyone to achieve success. Do not let yourself be controlled by love or tenderness, or respect for others. If someone is in front of you, remove them. If it doesn't work in your business, put it aside and find someone better, even if they worked for you for 30 years. There is already a young man out there who knows more than him and thus he does not have to pay his retirement, so throw him out early and get another fresh drink from whom you can also get the juice.'

But the Christian says 'no, those are not my values. I have to be loyal to people. I have to be faithful, I have to love, I have to take the person when he is weak and strengthen him and remember that he invested in my life and blessed me, and now I am going to be faithful to him.

And you know what? God tells you 'you know that because you did that I am going to bless you, I am going to give you more'. There are things, sometimes it seems that we are going to lose, but in the long run, we win because the Lord is there. So our values are not the world's values. If you want to succeed you have to do it according to the values of the Gospel, not according to the values of the world. That sin that besieges you, those bad examples that exist in the world and that pressure you and that everywhere you look you see them.

One, as a Christian has to say 'no, those are not my values. My values are the values of the Kingdom of God. If I am going to succeed according to the values of the Kingdom of God. And you know what? You arrive, because you arrive.

The Apostle Paul says 'do not be conformed to this century, to this age, to this culture, but rather be transformed through the renewal of your understanding'. We are rather against culture. Not conforming to culture. So he says 'let's get rid of the weight and the sin that surrounds us and pushes and squeezes us, and let's run with patience the race that lies ahead of us.'

I want to stop there on that word 'patience'. It says 'let us run with patience'. Again, the Apostle Paul is thinking of a marathoner who has to run 26 miles, 26.2 I think is exactly miles, and that runner has to run patiently. If you go too fast and give everything you've got in the first mile, you still have 25 left.

So one of the things about how to run a marathon, I've never run one, but I've read about it. One has to measure their energies and know the trajectory that one is going to traverse: where are the hills, where are the low parts, where are the rocky places so that one can save their energies and manage them in such a way that when one reaches the last mile one still has energy to reach the goal. And if there is someone close to you, that you have enough energy to pass him and have that last burst of energy to reach the finish line.

Watch a marathon so you see that it's not just running, there is also a science to how to run a marathon. And you have to run it with patience, with a good pace. The marathoner's pace is as important as his energy and many other things.

So, the Apostle Paul says 'look, Christians you have a long career ahead of you. Young people you have 30, 40, 60 years still ahead of you to run the race of faith, so make sure you run it with patience. Don't get too far ahead, don't get tired too quickly. Don't be knocked down by failure. Get up on your feet, wipe your knee, and keep going, because it's a long-term race. Amen.

The Christian life is a race of many miles, brother. Even if there are failures, even if there are pains, even if there are adversities and struggles, one goes ahead with patience. And one reaches the goal then.

And you know what? It's also success. If you propose any achievement in your life, any success, any goal, you have to look at the long term.

Brothers, if I can tell you anything today looking back on my own life, ministry and so many other church pastors and leaders that I can observe, I can tell you that one of the most important things of success is patience, the one to go little by little achieving the goals. If you are one of those people with a short fuse, who only has a very short attention span, and if you do not get what you want in three days you have already thrown in the towel, forget it, you are not going anywhere. Successful people, who have careers that last and who accumulate things and who build lasting churches and strong ministries, are people who have a long-term, long-term vision.

I can tell you that this is one of the most important secrets of success: taking a long-term view. Someone said that Rome wasn't built in a day, and it's true. A career is not built in a day. A profession is not built in a day, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes persistence to get there.

If you set out, for example, to get out of debt in three years, but when the third year came around you still have some debt, well, extend it a little more, up to five. But at least set the goal and then assume that this is going to take time, I'm going to have to be patient.

If you determined, well, I want to lose 30 pounds. Tell yourself I'm going to lose them in three years, instead of saying in 3 weeks. And then there you are, holding your mouth and suffering and biting your knuckles and you arrived, but you know what? When you've lost 30 pounds, you're so desperate for revenge that in six weeks you'll gain it all back, because you didn't take something patiently, long-term.

Your mind has to get used to eating a certain way. Also your stomach, your nervous system and all that. So what you have to do is go little by little. Cut out the coffee, or reduce the sugar, ride the stairs instead of the elevator. Set yourself a long-term goal and with patience and you will reach the goal. It is little by little that you arrive, brothers. You understand? Whatever goal you have in your life, forge a plan and then take a chisel and tap by tap go removing bits of that block of cement and you will see that you will form a beautiful image at the end of all that.

Patience. Patience is required to reach any stage of success in life: long-term vision.

Everyone say 'long term vision'. 'Patience, persistence, little by little, you get there'. Amen. Glory to the Lord.

It is little by little that we reach the goal. Let's run patiently. He says 'the career we have, how? in front. They know that there is something very important at this point and it is precisely that Pablo is thinking of a runner who has the image in front of him. The race, he knows the race he is going to run.

Again, marathon runners plan, as I said, the race they want to run: where they are going to accelerate, where they are going to slow down, they calculate, they know their competitors, the main ones, and they know where they are weak. They know, for example, that at the end, in the last stretch of the last 100 yards or 200 yards, the runner who most promises to beat them is their main competitor, he is not that good at speed. So, they wait until the last moment and when the other competitor is close to them, if they are stronger, they give that last explosion and leave him behind because he is not so fast. So they plan. They have a race ahead of them and they plan it to reach their goal.

So, the image that Paul uses here is an image that suggests a certain path, a certain direction and a certain distance. The athlete is focused on a clearly defined goal. The Greco-Roman marathon, as I said, required that type because they ran it in the fields. It's not like here in the cities, although this also has its diversity, but they ran in the clean countryside. There were hills and rocky areas and difficult places that they had to go through and they had to plan, they had to know the race ahead.

I say here, most of us are not afraid of a clear vision of the kind of life, the kind of career we want to live. We live by improvisation, not by design. You have to first see the life you want to live in your mind.

I am going to talk a little bit about vision at some point, but you have to know life and you have to anticipate as much as possible what are the obstacles that you are going to encounter in order to be able to getting to the finish line. You have to plan in life.

You have to sit down as I said, and determine 'well, I want to be an engineer'. Well, what does that mean, you'd better get stronger in math. There are young people that I ask 'what do you want to be are you in high school? I want to be a doctor, oh....., but if you look at his grades they don't reflect the ability to be a doctor. They are not good at science, biology, math, or chemistry, and they have bad grades. They don't understand that there is terrible competition. Only thirty-something percent of people who apply to a medical school are accepted. And those thirty-odd, and one hundred percent who apply are already high-level people. So, better not think that you are going to be a doctor, be a little more modest and say, 'well, I'm going to be more of a nurse or I'm going to be a physician's assistant or whatever,' but you have to know what type of life.

Another thing: a doctor often has to be available 24 days a day and it is a very difficult life to live and sometimes he has to spend 24 hours in a hospital. And if they call you at a certain time while you are at home sleeping because there is a patient who is dying and they need you there. You're on call. You have to ask yourself, is that the lifestyle I want to live? Or I want a slightly softer, more normal lifestyle.

So, you have to know what career you have ahead of you, what kind of life you want to live. You have to set a goal, a plan and then adapt your life according to that plan and that is why many human beings fail in life because they do not look at what lies ahead. They don't plan.

If you want, for example, a happy marriage, brothers, here is a little thorn that I have with many of you. There are people who continually complain, for example, and rightly so, that my marriage is not working as it should. But when I give a workshop, or someone gives a marriage workshop, we don't see them here. So, you have a goal: you want a good marriage, but you are not adequate, you are not thinking about what is required?

Brothers, to have a good marriage, you have to study. Look, let's see, people take classes to drive and yet for something a thousand times more important than managing a marriage, they don't take instruction, and they think that's just random, right? Shoot to see if I hit, when planning is so important. You have to invest, you have to read good books, you have to cultivate a good marriage.

If you say: 'well, I want my marriage to change one hundred percent within 5 years. That is the race that you have ahead of you, you set the race for yourself. So you look at, well, what is the trajectory I have to go through? Well, my wife and I don't communicate well. Whenever we talk we end up fighting, when we talk. Ok, so I have to improve communication.

I am a closed man, like all men, I don't like to communicate. I come home with a hard face, and the wife asks 'what's wrong, dear?' Ah, forget about that, I'm fine! We don't communicate so she feels rejected, she feels distanced, she feels useless, because the woman wants to bless, she wants to help, she wants to communicate. But if you close yourself off, how will she be part of it? When she communicates to you too, you have to listen to her, you have to sit down, you have to make an effort even if it hurts and you clench your teeth, but listen to her. Pretend you are interested in what she is saying. Invite her to eat one day and prepare her before so she doesn't die of a heart attack. But, take her to a restaurant and sit there. If they are not used to talking, perhaps the first session will be uncomfortable, but by the third or fourth, you will see how communication begins to flow and things improve.

Do you understand? Talk to him about your past and your fears, talk to each other. You have to exercise, because the race ahead of you, one of the hills you have to climb is poor communication. So, if you want to have a marriage with good communication, you have to work on it, because the career ahead of you demands it.

If your children are the problem and your goal is: I want to have good communication with my children. I want my children when I have or when I have died to remember me as a father or a mother who blessed them, who was a support for them. I want them to remember me as a model for their lives. Because I believe that one of the best gifts that a father or a mother can give a child is a good memory of a father who loved them.

That, brothers, will be like a lighthouse that will guide you in the midst of the storm in your lives. Don't necessarily leave your children thousands of dollars, leave them a good memory of a father, a mother who loved them, who supported them, who was with them through thick and thin, who tolerated them and who gave them affection. Because that's going to be a piece of burning coal that's going to keep you warm when it's cold in the middle of life.

So if you want to be that kind of parent, well, you've got to communicate with your kids, you've got to affirm them, you've got to date them, you've got to stop attacking them and lashing out and verbally abusing them. . You have to behave well at home, because it is a long-term career, every day you will have an opportunity to put a little bit on top of that image that you want to build. Each intervention, each action will be a small chisel that you give to the statue that you want them to see when you have disappeared from life.

So, each intervention that you do will be an opportunity to leave a bad memory or a good memory, an accumulation of experiences and memories that say my father, my mother was a woman, a man of honor, a man of his word, an honest person. He loved my mother, he treated her well. She was an enterprising woman, a brave, hardworking woman. Those are the things that our children want to remember, so you, father, mother, have to ask yourself, what is the career that I have ahead of me and what kind of image do I want to leave behind?

Most parents don't even ask that question. So, we live defective paternity or maternity and in the end what our children have is a statue made by a madman, with three noses, a finger, an eye on the forehead and 4 ears, because we don't worry about sculpting a coherent image that has sense, and that it has coherence and harmony, because we do not live life that way.

Every day, every action, every intervention, every contact, every word that you give your children is a chisel of that statue that they are going to look inside, when they are in crisis or when they They are going to be a father or a mother, or a husband or a wife. And you have to start building that image from now on, chiseling by chiseling, that career that you have ahead of you.

How many understand what I'm saying? Okay. That's a race, if you don't have a well-defined race ahead of you, you won't reach the finish line. You have to propose a career, the career that lies ahead. Can you see what I am saying?

Having witnesses let us shed all weight, all sin and run with patience the race that lies ahead. What career do you have ahead of you? There are many races that one runs through life: marriage, finances, physical life, relationships, temperament, character, resolution of past traumas and bad memories. All of these are races in life, and each of them requires a plan and looking at it before running it so one knows how to succeed.

That is why I am speaking, brothers, all these messages that I am giving about success depend on this idea of life by design, living a life by design instead of a life by improvisation. Design your life and don't let life design it for you. May men or society or past events design your life instead of you designing it.

Guess what? I'm not going to burden you with more than that. I am going to ask the musicians to come here now and bless us.

But, brothers, that is very important. If you want, give the Lord a round of applause. and remember that..... amen. Glory to God for that, yes. While our musicians arrive, I tell them, I emphasize that, to live with a vision ahead, a goal that we have ahead of us. Run patiently.

If you failed once, return to the effort and continue. Our musicians, for example, sometimes I have controversy with our musicians and let me tell you why, and they are a great blessing to me, but I take advantage of that for example for a career ahead of them. For me, for example, if I want to be an effective worship leader or an effective musician, a psalmist for the Lord, I have to set a goal for myself: what kind of singer do I want to be? What kind of musician do I want to be? What kind of worshiper do I want to be? The musician, the person who sings or plays or leads in a church has to forge a plan, a goal, they have to be prepared.

My goal, for example, is that the musicians are always ready for whatever I need them to do, so that you don't even have to call them, but rather that they come and are always ready, that they are like soldiers ready to go into action. So, you have to set a goal and you have to stick to that goal.

You have to ask yourself, what kind of musician do I want to be? What kind of worshiper, what kind of psalmist, what kind of spiritual warrior? And one has to think beforehand to be able to reach that goal and one has to think about it first, not improvise, but rather think about it.

An usher, how can I be an excellent usher? Well, if there is a need, I can be there right away. You have to first define what type of usher you want to be and then you want to be a person who is always available, diligent, observant, quick to detect needs, patient to calm an exalted person, you have to come in prayer, you have to dress well, he has to use mouthwash to get close to people. All these kinds of things, simple things and big things, but all of that makes an image. You have to first consider the race ahead of you and then run it patiently, day by day, learning, improving, working with your team, preparing it, instructing it so you can reach the goal.

If we do not propose excellence in our lives, we will not reach it. And sometimes I can be impatient with you, sometimes my wires get crossed because I know that by dint of insisting I am sometimes a little harsh, but I so want my people to be excellent. I cannot tolerate mediocrity, brothers.

And the first one who has to be demanding is me with myself. But I want to create a community in the name of the Lord of excellence, people who know how to behave. The usher knows what to do, the musician and worshiper what to do, the deacon knows what is expected of him or her. The director of a ministry knows what is expected of him or her. The believer sitting in the pew knows that faithfulness in tithes and offerings is expected of him. The husband knows that he is expected to be an exemplary man with his wife and children. The wife, an ideal help for her husband, a mother who shows excellence and strength, not a timid and dependent woman. Children, young people who honor their fathers and mothers because they know that this is a call from God in their lives.

Each person knows what is expected, and each one of us in the capacity in which we find ourselves wonders what I have to do at this stage of my life or in this condition to be a man, an excellent woman, an excellent young man, an excellent student? What constitutes being a big, beautiful, successful student? And how can I reach him? Set a goal for myself, a race that I have ahead of me and reach that goal.

Do you understand me, brothers? Glory to the Lord. Stand up now. Receive the word of God in your heart this morning. That is what God wants from us: that excellence. I want to form an army, an excellent army that will inspire fear of the devil and hell. A community of excellent people who take advantage of what they have received from God, a powerful spirit that raised Christ from the dead, that is the spirit that you have within you. You can't be mediocre.

Rebuke mediocrity and get it out of your life. and launch yourself into a race of excellence and run it with patience. Every day improving a little. You are unfortunate enough to have someone who believes what he preaches and who is going to force you, he is going to push you and I am also going to force myself, okay?

I'm going to try to do my part. We are training marathoners, not sprinters and short durations, and that is going to require discipline and it is going to require clear instructions and clear values. But I believe that we are going to bring out, in the name of the Lord, the best that is in you for the glory of the Kingdom of God. Make a commitment this morning to be a man, a woman of excellence.

Father, we want to run this race ahead of us and reach the finish line, run it patiently, persistently, with a long-term vision. We are not going to settle for mediocrity or improvisation, but we want to live a life with purpose. We want to shed the weight, any weight of sin or the culture around us. We want to be people who are a good example for that great cloud of witnesses that we have around us, Lord. Help us Lord an exemplary community, an exemplary church, that brings glory in the name of Jesus and to you we will give all honor and glory, Lord. Keep us from dishonoring you, Lord. Keep us from bringing shame to your name, Father, the Gospel that we have received is so high.

We want to live up to that Christ who is our example, Lord. Bless this town, Father. We bless our mothers again on this day that their hearts are sealed by you today, Lord. All sadness banished from them and placed for your joy and your hope, Lord. Thank you for a community that can live in harmony. We bless you, Father, and we give you all honor and glory. Amen and amen. Give the Lord a big round of applause this morning. Hallelujah!