The attitude of triumph (Part 7)

This particular four-part message that I have given on Hebrews, Chapter 12, the life by design, the life of success, the abundant life that Christ has declared over us and my encouragement has been to instill in you insight on how to live a productive life. .

In Hebrews, Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, we have discussed that here the writer of Hebrews calls his readers to a Christian life of integrity and a life that fulfills the purposes of the Gospel . And he gives some lessons on how to reach that spiritual, successful Christian life. But I have told you that there are also some teachings here on how to live a successful life in any aspect of life.

And what I am going to do, I am going to make a quick summary of all the main elements, because I believe that these things have to be repeated, renewed, given different details, until they are clearly recorded. in the brain the principles that we are enunciating.

Perhaps the first time you hear these principles you will not fully understand them, but the second and third time they will have an impact on your life and on your sensitivity. And we have said that the writer begins by saying that we also have around us a great cloud of witnesses. This word 'also' is referring to Chapter 11, where he has just enumerated a series of heroes of the faith who achieved great goals, achieved great spiritual achievements and who deserve to be imitated as tutors, as models, as mentors of what is a successful life in the Lord.

And then he says 'we also here in León de Judá, in the 21st century, who, like them, also have around us a great cloud of witnesses.' we many people, I said, looking at us. We are a community that is under the gaze of the whole world around us and that community out there wants to see in us a life of success, a life of excellence, an entrepreneurial life, a life of integrity.

People want to see Christians with healthy marriages, they want to see Christians living lives of height and excellence in their economic life, a disciplined life; in their moral life, in their life as parents, as children. We have to be the best children in the city of Boston, we have to be the best fathers, the best husbands because around us there is a great cloud of people watching us, and we serve as an encouragement and example for them.

Our church is being called to be an exemplary church, a church that exemplifies the best values of the Gospel. Having around us a great cloud of witnesses who are watching us, he says, let us shed all weight.

There is a very important principle there. We have said about stripping ourselves, removing all excess. To live successful lives you have to get rid of yourself, you have to remove many impurities. You have to get rid of bad habits. You have to get rid of bad attitudes. You have to renew your mind. You have to remove things from the past, things that prevent us from running.

A runner runs lightly, he doesn't walk in heavy clothes, with big boots, with heavy clothes, because he needs to run lightly, he needs to reach the finish line. We have to think about what areas in my life there are that make me run with weight, what dramas from the past, what attitudes, what ways of thinking, what behavior patterns, what relationships, what things prevent me from running lightly, reaching my goals , live a life of success, live a life of self-improvement. And we have to renew ourselves, we have to change ourselves, we cannot stay in yesterday, we cannot stay with the same way of thinking and behaving. You have to get rid of

Before building a new house, many times you have to destroy the old structure or you have to remove everything that is already worn out of a structure to be able to put new things. You have to get rid of If we want to live successful lives, we have to be willing to change our mental patterns and renew our mind and adopt new habits. "..... let's get rid of all weight."

And then the writer goes on to say "...and the sin that besets us." Life is full of bad examples. The modern world is a big trap, its values are not the values of the Kingdom of God. We are surrounded by bad teaching, bad indoctrination, bad examples and the world wants to harass us, it wants to surround us, it wants to attack us, it wants to pressure us, it wants to model us in its way.

And the writer of Romans says, “...let us not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.”

If you want to have a successful life you have to get rid of the things of the past and not let yourself format your mind, format your mind by the values of the world that will want to do it.

I told the brothers, it not only refers to the sinful things in life, obviously sinful, but it also refers to things that prevent you from being in communion with the Lord, that prevent you from having time to meditate on the things that you need to meditate on in order to be a growing person.

I told the brothers, three or four months ago, that if you call my cell phone it will tell you that my message box is full. And do you know why? That is because I have decided so. At some point I was receiving.... in one day the message department of my cell phone filled up once or twice, and I lived in guilt, I felt bad because now with email, with the cell phone, with the telephone the office and the telephone of my house, one does not live. It has a list of messages and people..... and each person thinks they are the only one calling you.

And what about that? So one lives in toil, one lives guilty. You wake up in the morning, and before you brush your teeth you have to go to the computer to see who sent you an email, and then you have to reply and sometimes..... So what happens, what is supposed to work for you to you, he makes you his slave. You don't have time to pray, you don't have time to seek God, you don't have time to reflect on your life, and you're tied. And that's the world people live in today.

So, one has to say at some point 'No, I'm not going to let myself be formatted by the world's values, I'm not going to live continuously from one thing to another, from one desire to another.' And one has to say 'STOP' 'FOR', I am going to determine what kind of life I want to live in the Lord and according to the values of the Kingdom of God.

That is the sin that besets us. You understand? It's not just the immorality part, sometimes sin is what prevents you from reaching a higher level of life. It can even be something good, like a cell phone, or email, email, but if that prevents you from accessing another level, then it's not good at the moment. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the excellent and then one has to put those things aside and say 'No, I am not going to live as the world lives, with that eagerness, that hustle and bustle, but rather I am going to decide what kind of life I'm going to live. I need to take time to be with the Lord, I need to take time for my wife, for my children, I have to rest, I have to read new things, I have to go to church.

If you're going to go by the pattern of the world, the pattern of the world is more money, more money, a new level in your career, a new title, and you finish one thing and you're gone. to the other and to the other and you live life without reflecting, without examining yourself, without examining the values that are influencing you. That is the sin that besets us, it is not only sin in the sense, as I say and emphasize, moral or ethical. Sometimes sin is simply a materialistic and circumstantial style of living life, letting go of all weight and the sin that besets us here comes ".....let us run with patience the race that lies ahead of us."

This running with patience. Brethren, patience is the key to any successful life. If you get tired too quickly, you will never succeed. Let me give you 5 key elements for success regarding patience specifically. If you want, write it down there, I'm not going to charge you anything for this.

Number 1: be persistent, keep going, stay on target. Try again and again until you reach your goal. As I was saying, if you want to get out of debt, perhaps it will take you 5 years to do it, and it will be little by little there, and at one point the card will go up a little more or the account will go down a little, and you will be there fighting. If you were disappointed and discouraged on the first try, you're not going to get there. You have to stay there, persist. Persistence is important.

The word says "...ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you". There is a repetition, you have to persist in things. Don't give up too quickly. Persistence.

Second: Long-term vision. Very important. Don't think that you will reach your goal overnight. Give yourself time, expand the measure, the scale of your goals. Rome, they say around there, was not built in a day.

For me one of the keys to a successful life is being able to stretch the frame of reference for things. If you want to have a good marriage, it is not done overnight. You have to persist even if you have a fight with your wife, go back again and try, little by little, you will catch up.

If you want to control your weight and want to have a healthier weight in your life, you are not going to do it overnight, you have to change your mind. So you have to say, 'I'm going to take 2 years,' and little by little one day instead of eating two chops, you eat one and a half and take half out before you're tempted to eat it. Get her out of there. Next time it will be quarter past one. After that, stop eating a lot of red meat and start eating meats like chicken and fish and little by little you change your diet a little bit at a time. Your mind gets used to it, because if your mind is used to seeing a plate, a mountain of food every time you sit down at the table, your brain is already used to that. You have to go little by little until you win the battle. It is in the long term, until your mind and your sensitivity get used to it.

Persistence. Long term vision.

Third: make small decisions that you will repeat many times a day until you form a habit. Start small in life. Many times people fail because they are too ambitious and start too high for what they can achieve. So a person decides 'I'm going to start running, I'm going to start exercising', and the first day they run 3 miles and then you see them that they can't even walk, because their muscles are destroyed, their bones are not used to , their whole body hurts for 3 weeks. And they say, 'Oh no, if that's running, I don't want to know about that.

She had to start by walking, go around a small park, walk for half an hour and then pick up her pace. Didn't even start running. Three months walking and accelerating the step a little more. After that you start to jog a little bit and walk a little bit. And little by little you jog more, walk less, until you can only run.

After that, pick up the pace a bit and then increase the distance number. Little by little. That can take you two years. But little by little your muscles, your bones, your tendons, your mind get used to it and you didn't even realize how the process happened and it already becomes a lifestyle. Because the brain is like that, the brain operates little by little and so does the physical system.

So, small decisions. A small decision that you make every day becomes a habit. A habit practiced for a while becomes a character trait. And a character trait over time becomes a condition of life. All little by little. Small decisions.

Fourth: don't be discouraged by failure. If you failed once, try again until you succeed. See, all this is related to patience. Run with patience the race that you have.

I was asking the painter who is with us up there. In fact, he is self-taught, he never went to an academy, he was never taught painting classes. He learned by himself. And I would say to him, 'how did you come to paint such beautiful pictures? And he said, 'you know what? Damaging many paintings. Damaging many paintings.

And it is so, a sensitivity to color or painting technique or textures does not develop overnight. It takes a long time and you have to damage many paintings, you have to fail many times, but if you stay in the process and don't get discouraged, you improve, improve, improve until you reach your goal. treat it. Keep going. Don't think 'Oh, I already failed, I can't go back'. No, go on. And failure is part of success.

Paradoxically, I say brothers, there are no failures. What there are failed experiments. That's all. I love to experiment, I am always looking for different options, I explore everything I can. Every person I meet is a possible resource for my life, my ministry, or for something in the Kingdom of God, and I see every opportunity as an experiment. In those experiments something good happens.

Salespeople say that, say, out of a hundred calls you make on the phone, maybe ten will work for you, but those ten make you a full year's salary. The 90s are failures in a sense, but it takes a hitter to get up to bat, and if he hits 300 it's a great achievement, 350 is phenomenal, that means that out of 3 times he gets up to bat, he fails two or three, of four.

So, it's important that we understand this because life doesn't... every time you try to do something it doesn't mean you're going to succeed. Get used to try a lot, experiment a lot and not let yourself be defeated by failures, but look at the achievements and let those achievements guide you to success.

The fourth thing I think is: persistence, long-term vision, small decisions.

Yes, refine and improve with each effort. Improvement. Every day you make things a little better. Small increments are what take you to the goal. It gets better, better, better every day. Learn from the things that happen to you in life. Don't just stay with failures, but learn from failures.

Ok, how can I improve this, how can I overcome this, what can I learn from the other. I did it this way, now I can improve a little bit. Improvement.

So the scientific system of experimentation is like that. How did those that we hold in the palm of our hand, those laptops that today weigh up to a pound, have reached the computers. You look at the first computer and it was a thing the size of this building, huge.

And guess what? Today a laptop sometimes has more power than one of those machines that took over an entire building 30, 40, 50 years ago. Because? Because men have learned to get better, better, better. One day they change the cables, another day they discover a device that can do it as a transistor, another day they discover a synthetic material that helps compress things. Another day they learn to use a microscope to see things more closely and each day they reduce the size of things until they become more effective, more economical.

Today we talk about nanotechnology, that means today science is dealing with machines that cannot be seen with the human eye. Imagine how tiny they are. Because they have reduced, they have found the capacity... every day to improve, improve, improve. That is the key to success in life. Improve little by little. This is all part of patience.

So you have 5 elements: persistence, long-term vision, small decisions, don't get discouraged by failure, and refine and improve little by little.

The writer says “....let us run with patience the race ahead of us”.

We were talking about how you have to look at life as a race and you have to define what lies ahead.

The Apostle Paul in Philippians, Chapter 3, verse 12 to 14 says: "....Not that I have already reached it, nor that I am perfect, but that I continue - see there the question of persisting - to see if I manage to seize – that is to say to seize – that for which I was also seized by Christ Jesus.”

He says “....Brothers, I myself do not claim to have already reached it”, and Paul was a man of much experience and had spent a lot of time in the Gospel, “....but one thing I do –here there is the key, he says- certainly forgetting what lies behind and reaching out to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Do you have your career well defined ahead of you? In life you have to define a vision clearly and live with your eyes on that vision until you achieve it.

It says “... fixing our eyes on Jesus”. Last Sunday we talked about fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Brothers, if we want to have a powerful life, we have to base it on Jesus Christ. Christ has to be the center of our existence. The Christian lives a Christ-centered life. Christ is the source of power.

The Lord has said “...abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit”.

It says "... without me you can do nothing". The figure of Jesus has magical power. When you look at the face of Jesus, when you read his word, when you read his examples, when you continually meditate on his person, there is something mysterious that I cannot tell you, but it is like plugging your life into a power socket. that transmits the life of Christ to you.

That is why we have to always be looking at Jesus. I am not talking here about a mental, emotional, positive thinking process. I am telling you that when you look at Jesus day by day, he then becomes your mentor, becomes your tutor and that gives results to what you undertake.

Magically to use that word, the power of Christ begins to be transmitted into your own life and wonderful things begin to happen.

Look, for example, if you look at Second Corinthians, Chapter 3, it says verse 17 and 18, it says: “....for the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom."

Where Christ is in a life, where Jesus is the example, the model, the center, there is freedom to undertake great things, to seek ambitious projects. He says “.... therefore, as a consequence of that power that is in Christ Jesus, we all beholding with unveiled face, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are transformed from glory to glory into the same image as by the spirit of the Mister."

What does that mean? When you focus your gaze on Jesus Christ and that Jesus is the center of your life and you love him above all things, and you seek his glory, you seek his honor, you put him first in your life, you analyze his messages, his teachings, it is as if you were looking at him and mysteriously, your face, your life is acquiring the same configuration of Jesus Christ. That is why it says, "....we are transformed from glory to glory as looking in a mirror into the same image as by the spirit of the Lord."

It is a mysterious spiritual process that occurs that your life is also going to be transformed and the glory of Christ, the power of Christ, the achievements of Christ, his victory over circumstances, his enterprising character that is not let it beat for nothing, it will become part of your own life and your own character.

“.... fixed our eyes on Jesus”. It says here, "....the author and finisher of our faith."

And let me point out two little things here and that's it. It says "... who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the reproach."

The Lord did two things that led him to success, led him to consummate his career. Number one, it says that he "......suffered the cross for the joy set before him." The cross is the most terrible instrument of agony and torture that has been designed in the history of mankind and the writer of Hebrews says that if the Lord had not set his sights on the joy that was before him, he would not have been able to pass by the cross

And here you have a lesson about success. If you want to be successful, don't think too much about the cost, as much as about the result and the benefit of what you are going to do. Don't think... I was talking to Pastor Teo Alcántara this morning that he has been an athlete all his life, and he told me that this is true. if the marathoner thinks about the agony of a 26-mile run, he doesn't. But the marathon runner thinks about reaching the finish line, about the satisfaction that he will feel when he reaches the finish line and he thinks about the trophy that can be won, the prize that is going to be won, and that in the glory that he is going to receive, that is what encourages him to go through suffering.

To reach the cross, the Lord Jesus thought of the thousands of lives that were going to be blessed by his sacrifice and therefore "by the joy set before him", by the fact of being lifted up, as says Philippians, Chapter 2 ".... the Lord gave him a name, which is above all names so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of what is in heaven, on earth and under the earth" , the Lord thought of that.

He saw the angels receiving him there in heaven. He saw the celebration that was going to be in the universe as a result of his sacrifice and he let that seeing him and celebrating it in his mind lead him to go through agony and suffering.

Always think positively in life. Do not think about what it will cost you, for example to have your degree. No, think rather of the joy and the profit and the satisfaction that you are going to feel in it and let that encourage you. Christians suffer from always thinking about limitations, we always think negatively.

When the Lord told the disciples 'Feed the crowd', they said 'but how are we going to feed them if we don't have bread or money, and even if we did have money, where do we go? to get so much food for so many people?’ They thought about the limitations.

The Lord could see beyond and he saw that with just a little he could multiply it and bless the whole crowd. So it was. He told them 'go, look over there, what do you have around you? They searched, they entered, they searched positively and found 5 loaves, 2 fish, they brought them to the Lord and with that the Lord blessed him and fed the whole crowd.

You have to think about the positive. What's in your hand, what's in your hand in your life? and what can you do with it. Start with that and think that God can multiply it little by little until it becomes something great.

I have discovered that if I let myself be carried away by the limitations and the terribleness of the process..... We have just started a service in English. I don't know how many know about it, we keep announcing it and I invite you to visit us on a Saturday in fact, at 6 pm.

We started a service in English and it is difficult, a very important part of my life has changed, because before I used to take Saturday nights to prepare for Sunday and to meditate and rest a bit and prepare for the hustle and bustle of Sunday. But not now. Now on Saturdays I have to be here. And there are brothers who sacrifice their Saturdays to come and help us and it is... there is a sacrifice, there is a price to pay.

If you wanted to go and have dinner with your wife or something before, now you can't... and you finished at 8 pm and you have to go back home and get ready for Sunday . But you know what? What encourages me is, brothers, that I see in my spirit one day an English community being blessed by our efforts. I, for the joy set before me.

See, when I come here on Saturday and I see 20, 25 people, I tell him, 'Lord, I'm not going to be discouraged because I see this full of people. One day I'm going to celebrate. One day I'm going to say, we did it.' When I see new people and we're starting to see new people.

And, brothers, you don't know what it's like to live life that way. When you dare to undertake things in the name of the Lord and you know that you have to pay a price, you have to make an effort and you don't know if success will come, but you say 'No, I already did it before and I enjoyed it. and I'm going to see him again', and that's what makes one undertake new things in life.

Always think of the joy that is ahead of you. Think about what can happen. Think about the potential of your efforts and that encourages you. For me, this building has been a headache, a lot of work, many postponed completion dates, a lot of money, a lot of effort, but I see hundreds of people there, and thousands of people a year receiving counseling, young people getting a better education, immigrants receiving information about his studies, programs of different kinds there, that joy that is ahead of me inspires me to keep going. You understand?

Always think about the possibility. Think of the glory, why did the conquistadors launch from Spain and from other countries of the world to explore unknown worlds? Why did Columbus jump from Spain to discover new lands? He did not know what awaited him, he suffered a lot, many disappointments, many difficulties. When he arrived in the Americas, his crew was ready to hang him and head back to Europe until they discovered the New World.

Do you know what animated those great men? The desire for glory. Historians have discovered that part of the Renaissance man was the desire to receive glory, to create a name for himself, to have fame and to have a title of nobility. And that encouraged them to keep going.

We must conceive big dreams and think how beautiful it will be when I reach the goal!, and that this encourages you, leads you forward. Jesus for the joy set before him suffered what? the cross.

Every achievement in life has a cross, there is a price to pay. You have to get rid of things, you have to get rid of things that you love, you have to take a lot of real medicine in your life, you have to listen to things that will hurt you, things that will displease you.

There is a cross that we all have to go through. If you want to improve your credit and get out of debt, you have to cut credit cards, go to restaurants less, you have to... buy, lose weight a little and eat more economically and travel a little more to buy the products. If you want to buy a house you have to save more. If you want to reach a professional goal, you have to go to school after work.

There is a cross to pass. You have to suffer a cross. Everything in life costs, you have to pay the price. If you want to be a good father, a model husband, you have to... there is a price to pay, you are not going to be able to go out with friends every night, or you are going to have to spend more time with your wife and with your children. If you want to get A's at school, Saturday afternoon while your friends are hanging out, getting ready for the disco, you're going to be stuck in your cubicle, reading and preparing for a class or whatever.

There is a cross to pay. All successful life, brothers, depends on a disciplined life. Remember that always. Psychiatrists talk about sublimation, that is, one converts certain types of negative energy into positive energy. The man, for example, who invests all his energy in sexual pleasure, what he is doing is, he is taking his vitality, his vital force and he is throwing it out in a non-productive way.

Now, the constructive man, the man who lives a positive life, takes that sexual energy and converts it, sublimates it, converts it into energy for work, for his family, for his studies, for his improvement staff. In other words, it takes the low, animal energy and converts it into divine energy, positive energy, energy for achievements.

There is a price to pay, you understand? There is a cross that must be suffered and there is a shame to belittle. What does reproach mean? Shame. You have to.... the Lord Jesus Christ said, I am not going to give too much importance to shame. You can imagine a man standing on a cross, in a public square, people passing by, seeing him half-naked, seeing all his intimacy exposed, his body bleeding, laughing at him, pointing at him, making him an object of shame. That was our Lord, the son of God, the most excellent being that ever existed.

But guess what? the Lord said 'that is nothing, if with that I am going to honor my Father and I am going to make possible the salvation of thousands of human beings.' He despised him, that is what he means. He underestimated it, did not give importance to shame, but looked at success.

There is a certain degree of embarrassment that we have to go through in order to be successful in life. The young man who is teased by his friends, again, for his studies.

In surveys, one of the things that causes the most problems for young African Americans and Latinos when they want to improve themselves is that their friends make fun of them. Studies have been done on that and no young person wants to be seen as a mother's son, as a failure, as a person who is not 'cool' as they say out there. And so, that's why many times they abandon their goals to join their friends.

When you want to achieve a goal, many times people will want to drag you down, because your desire for achievement and triumph threatens them. The person who is living life mediocrely, when you start living in a successful way, they will say to you without realizing it sometimes 'No, we want you to stay here with us'. And then there is a type of shame, a type of opprobrium that you have to belittle, you have to say, 'No, no, no... I'm going to live my life with height'.

The man who tells his friends 'No, I can't go because I have to take care of my wife and children. I'm not going to spend my night drinking. No, I am a man of my house.' Friends 'ah, you are a failure, your wife controls you, that this and that.' Opprobrium. Belittle it and put your eyes on the goal.

What was the result that Jesus got? He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus achieved his goal. He came into the world with a mission, with a clear vision. He knew what his father had sent him to do and when he landed in the world as a baby, he immediately began to create a whole series of circumstances to arrive at his vision.

Do you know when he reached the goal? When on the cross he gave a cry that I believe shook the foundations of the universe and said 'It is finished'. The race is over, brothers.

Consummated means finished it is. He reached, and you know what? At that moment the whole universe changed and when the Lord rose from the grave, angels were waiting for him up there and the Lord was waiting for him with his trophy, for which God gave him a name that is above all names, so that before the name of Jesus bends every knee that is in heaven, on earth and under the earth.

He reached the finish line. He came to success. He lived a successful life and that is the model that we have. Let's fix our eyes on Jesus and live ourselves, let's run our own races in life. There are many races to run in this life, brothers, but with Christ we can achieve it. With him as our model we can reach the goal.

Don't think about discipline, don't think about shame, don't think about the cross, don't think about the failure of the past. Continue to the goal.

Let's stand up. Brethren, God wants a successful church. God wants us to live lives with purpose, lives with design, life... don't live life by inertia, don't live life simply because you did the same thing yesterday, you're going to do it today and you're going to do it again tomorrow. Live life with design.

Say, I'm going to control my appetites. I am going to take control of my energies, I am going to set clear goals. I am going to spend my years achieving things, I am not going to live them simply going around the same circle as the Hebrews: 40 years in the desert going around the same little piece of land. No, we want to live a life forward.

I continue to target. I continue towards the goal, forgetting what is behind, I continue forward to seize what I was also seized by. Ask the Lord now, as you conclude this particular message, to place those elements in you.

Father, patience, persistence, excellence, an awareness that we have witnesses around us, the ability to shed everything that weighs us down. Also, Lord, to be willing to pay the price, to belittle the opprobrium, to belittle the cross in order to sit in our own places of authority and satisfaction, Lord.

That is my request this afternoon that by projecting these ideas, these images on your people, Lord, we see your glory manifested and that each day this church can go from growth to growth, from height to height, Lord, for the glory of your precious name and to you we will give all the glory and all the honor, Lord.

We bless you for our students who have achieved their goals. They have graduated, they have finished their studies, Father, and now they have other things ahead of them. And you, Lord, will see to it that the one who started the good work finishes it because you are faithful, Lord. thank you, thank you, Jesus, in your name. Amen and amen. Give the Lord a big round of applause this morning.

Let's sing that chorus that says 'the one who started the good work'. Amen.