Love without barriers?

I would not change where the Lord has put me and the time that the Lord has put me. I don't know about you brother, but I feel that it is a privilege to be a Christian in the city of Boston at this time, it is a privilege that the Lord entrusts us with the responsibility is more, again, forgive the word privilege again , but the privilege of being those who stand in the gap and who raise the banner of the Lord and who proclaim that the law of Jehovah will be our law and we will not serve another God and proclaim his word for an entire nation. That is a privilege, and that is the privilege that we will be exercising this week, from Wednesday to Wednesday.

Now, having said that, if you notice, in the last two weeks the words that the Lord has brought through our pastor and through the psychologist who preached at this time the Last week, they have been messages with an internal focus. Have you noticed? We are entering a time of spiritual warfare on a social level, of a social structure, but the focus of the word of the Lord has been directed to our hearts, to our spiritual constitution, within us, do you know why? Because I believe, brother, that the most decisive battles that are going to take place these days will take place at the level of our hearts. The most decisive battles, the most decisive battles that we are going to face in this age and until Christ comes, will be carried out in your heart, by your heart and through your heart, the most decisive battlefield is your heart. And there is a text of the word that focuses on a particular battle, and it focuses on a battle for our faith, and it also has a promise, brothers, that if we managed to embrace that promise, we would be practically indestructible Christians, practically invincible, that text it is Isaiah chapter 49.

Let's go to Isaiah, chapter 49 verse 14, (Isaiah 49 verse 14) we read from verse 14 to 16. And brothers, while you are looking for the text, I will share with you what that promise is, that promise that I invite you to receive and embrace and name and live in it, that promise is this: if you don't hear anything else this afternoon, if you don't hear anything else, go with it, receive this promise, the Lord tells us , look brother:

"Love your God, love your God without limit, love your God without restraint, love your God without barriers, love your God without fear, if you manage to love your God, in this way, the Lord promises you never to abandon, the Lord will never forget you, he will never abandon you.

Let's go to the word of the Lord, Isaiah 49 verse 14 "But Zion said: The Lord left me and the Lord forgot me", have you perhaps heard that complaint? Have you perhaps repeated that complaint? (guilty), I, I know that I, in my moments have said: “Wow, where is the Lord?, Would the Lord forget about me? Would the Lord leave me?, and the Lord responds with a rhetorical question in verse 15, "will a woman forget what she gave birth to stop pitying the son of her womb, even if she forgets, he says, I never , I will never forget you, behold, in the palms of my hands I have you sculpted, and your walls are always in front of me, I will never forget you.

Brother, these three verses, imagine that this is a dialogue between the Lord and Zion, as if it were the Lord advising Zion. The Lord in this chapter, in chapter 49 of Isaiah, has just given Zion a long list of beautiful promises, and he says to Zion, perhaps as he says to the others, and by the way, church, Lion of Judah congregation Do you know that we are sons and daughters of Zion? Do you know that these promises are your brothers? The moment we are…the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our King and as our Lord, we become a part of that everlasting covenant with Israel, we are sons and daughters of Zion and he says here, but Zion said , Jehovah left me. You know even after hearing all these promises, I am going to bless you, I will restore your place, I will reopen the land that has been closed, I will return to you... I will return to you children that you have lost, I am going to bless you, Zion, I am at about to open the heavens and bless you, even hearing all those promises, they resist receiving the promises of the Lord, they resist believing that the Lord is speaking to them, they resist thinking that perhaps the Lord will be about to bless you.

Brothers, I don't know if that has happened to you, even the Lord promising us a blessing, there is something inside of us that says: "it can't be, it can't be that the Lord is going to bless me, no It could be… even though he promises to bless me, I know that the Lord has already left me, the Lord has forgotten about me”. Brethren, where does that complaint come from? Where does it come from? You know what the Lord does, as the eternal counselor, as our eternal father, as our eternal shepherd, he takes this Zion, and he takes the children of Zion, he takes you, having heard this, that perhaps your You have not said it in an audible voice, perhaps this came from your heart, but the Lord..., we serve a God who cares about how we feel, we serve a God who cares that we believe in him.

And he takes Zion aside, don't you see this scene?, he takes her aside and says: "Zion, I heard you say, Jehovah forgot me, I heard you say, he abandoned me... this time if Jehovah abandoned me" and he asks her the question, will a woman forget what she engendered?, a rhetorical question and one perhaps in the city of Boston in the year 2006 and that is what we are going to talk about, maybe the answer is "well we are very capable of that" and that is the problem.

Why, where does this complaint of the Lord abandoned me come from? Did you know? The kingdom of God is a rare kingdom, the kingdom of God is a kingdom that consists of love… The word of God says, the Lord says that it is with cords of love that he has called you, here brother, if you are here you are not it's because an angel came to him this morning with a shotgun and forced him to come to the house of God. If you are here, it is because you arrived of your own free will, because there is something inside of you that says: "perhaps this word is true, and perhaps this God that they preach, perhaps that is true", it is more so if I you are looking on the Internet and you are taking this time to see me from your country where you are, of all the options you have on the Internet you are tuned in here, because you believe that maybe this idea of a powerful and loving God is true, and such Maybe it applies to you... Perhaps this eternal God can be your God if he is capable of getting you out of your predicament, it is with cords of love that he brings us, it is with cords of love that he calls us.

And brother, the most that Satan is interested in doing and that is why the battle is about your heart, that is why the most sensitive battlefield is your heart, because it is necessary to cut Satan those ropes, cut those ties, separate your heart from the heart of God. That is his strategy, that is why he whispers to you, that is why he repeats to you: "perhaps this time Jehovah left you, it is necessary to separate yourself from that love."

And the problem is this, the Lord loves them, but as in any love relationship, he expects us to love him too, and to love him in the same way that he loves us.

Brothers, as the pastor preached last week and the week before, we cannot bribe God, in many of us we prefer to sing or dance or serve, or be active in a way, but the most we can frightens is as we say in the discipleship class, the most that frightens us is a total surrender and the dilemma is this, the Lord will not be satisfied, and Satan knows that the Lord will not be satisfied, until we offer the Lord a surrender total.

One of the first commandments that the Lord gave to Israel before they entered the promised land, and that is repeated in an orthodox Jewish household even today. The Jewish child is the first words many times they learn is this verse in Isaiah chapter 6, "You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." In other words, what is a total surrender? Every nook, every hiding place, every closet, every corner, every cell house, everything we are, every atom of our existence is his, we hand it over to him, he is her king, he takes possession of her.

Now, if we are sincere brothers, when we try to love God in this way, we are confronted with barriers, all of us, we are confronted with borders. Brothers, I am sure that if you are here it is not out of indifference, you are here, I am sure that the majority of the brothers, perhaps I am being too generous, but I sincerely believe that if you are here it is because within you… you want to love God, you want to love him, you want to respond to God's love in the same way that he has responded to you. Perhaps you have struggled, and for many these are more public struggles than others, and perhaps you have slipped and you have had your struggles, but your desire is to please this God, your desire is to love him. But when we try to love God in this way, in a total way, a way without limits, a way that knows no barriers, sooner or later we confront what Columbus called an unknown land, we confront a dark side, a frontier, that we ourselves fear to step on, and it can be something very simple. Perhaps your frontier is the tithe, the time to tithe, to offer, and it is a drama every time you tithe, offer, because perhaps you think that your budget will not be enough until that week, you know the tithe is the offering, it is...

God is a genius because he creates, each week an exercise of faith, a symbol of our total surrender to the Lord and perhaps that is our struggle. Or as the psychologist preached last week, perhaps his border is a wound that hurts and he has been slow to forgive, he has been unable to forgive that wound, and that wound continues to hurt you, and it is there and that is his border. We all have our borders, which weigh us down to cross, and why? Why is it so difficult for us to cross those borders, brothers? I suggest this, we are afraid to enter that fearful place and surrender those areas to the Lord and trust in the Lord those borders, because something inside of us tells us: "That is very dangerous, I have never entered there, and if I enter that place maybe the Lord in the middle of the way will abandon me. If I experiment giving my love to the Lord in that area, sooner or later he, like many others, will forget about me, he will turn his back on me”. We fear that if we jump off the diving board at the last moment the Lord is not going to remove the net. We fear that if the Lord commands us to leave the safety of our boat, in the middle of the road even though we saw him walk on the waters and we saw that he has dominion over the wind and the tide, we fear that..., that's him, but if we get out of the boat we are going to sink, we are going to drown and he will be unable to rescue us.

Those fears exist, and why? Now, this is really getting deep. Why do those fears exist? You know why? The frank truth, brothers, is that we do not know how to love the Lord in this way. We do not know how to do it, each one of us has experienced in our lives, the love that we know has been a contaminated love, an imperfect love, we have received love as we have received it in our lives.

The author of this book, the prophet Isaiah, recounts in chapter 6 that when he first encountered the glory of the Lord, the beauty of the Lord, he heard the song of the Seraphim, he saw himself before the presence of the Lord like few men, his first reaction, the first thing that came to his mind, was to lament before the throne of God and declare: 'Woe is me, because I am what, a man of unclean lips, and of a people of unclean lips' And you know brother, that's me, that's you, that's us, we're all filthy-lipped men, a filthy-lipped people, we were raised by a filthy-lipped man, or a filthy-lipped woman, we walked the streets packed, populated by men and women with unclean lips. That is what we are, and the Lord has to teach us how to love, the Lord has to instruct us how to love him.

And perhaps brothers, perhaps, it prevents us from loving the Lord in this way, because the love that we knew is, has been so imperfect, that perhaps the wounds that most They have hurt you brothers, they have been through those who are supposed to love you the most. The wounds that you regret the most are those that perhaps you have received from people who have been in your life, it is supposed to protect you, your mother, your father, your brother, your spouse, your friend of years, not it is an individual who hurts us, it is the person who is supposed to quote 'we love the most'.

And the Lord knows that, and he sees that, and that's why he asks that rhetorical question, “Son of Zion tonight, tonight, daughter of Zion, can a woman forget what she gave birth?" And we, I don't know about Nazareth, I don't know about Nazareth in the first century, or I don't know about Isaiah's time, but in Boston, in the year 2006, we could answer: “yes, absolutely yes. Yes, a woman can forget what she engendered.

You know, in 47 states there is a legal abandonment law, where a woman can surrender her newborn children to a police station or hospital emergency room, leave that baby there, keep walking And... and it's completely legal. Now, why does that law exist? You know what, there is that law because without that law we would have incidents like what happened in Rosindale a couple of weeks ago, where a baby, that baby's crib was a garbage can where a mom wrapped it in a towel, left to the elements, like he was trash, you know what they called that boy…Jordan.

The doctors named it Jordan, the river where the hand cleansed its leprosy, where Jesus was baptized, hope, healing, a baptism of power. And brothers, that is what the Lord wants for you, hope, healing, a baptism of power in his name, although that is the love that we have known.

You know, if this is a mother's love, we would say that it is the most instinctive love of the human being, it is the most natural love that a human being knows, if that is the love of a mother in our society, that it will not be the love of an individual, that it will not be the love of a friend, that it will not be the love of a spouse. No wonder we are afraid of giving ourselves to anyone, no wonder it is difficult for us to give… to show our fragile side to anyone.

And you know, I see it that way, I'm not shocked, do you know why? I see this as one more sign of the coming of Christ, in Matthew chapter 24 the word declares: "because evil has multiplied -in verse 12-, because evil has multiplied, the love of many will grow cold". You have not noticed, brothers, the general aestheticism that exists now, and it is not only in New England, I believe that wherever one goes, one sees that nobody really believes in anyone, and no matter how educated one is, no matter how As elite as the university is, there is less trust.

And we are more certain that the human being is going to betray you, he is going to turn his back on you, guard your back because they can bury their fist in that. We don't trust anyone, nor…well, as the word says, nor in his mother, nor in his mother. And the Lord hears this and the Lord knows us, the Lord knows our background, and the Lord approaches us and says: "I hear, I hear from you, I hear these words, Jehovah left me", where does this come from? ?. Matthew, the next verse, Matthew 24.13 by the way says "he who endures to the end will be saved."

Do you know why endure to the end? Because your brother faith will be stalked, your brother faith will be bombarded by the enemy, and the enemy knowing you are in the condition you live in and the enemy knowing you are living by faith, the enemy, the enemy, at the time... when the The enemy is around him, when it seems that he is in pure battle and there is no way out, when it seems that you have the least hope, it is precisely at that moment that the enemy is going to approach your ear and whisper "forget about your God” as he told Job, deny your God and die. Forget about that, that was a failure, that was an experiment, that were emotions, deny... Where is he?... How is God going to get you out of this mess? Where is your God?

The Lord left me, the Lord approaches you and says: "Look, I'm not like that, Satan is a liar, haven't you heard that he is a liar? He is a liar, I I do not love like this, I will never forget you, I will never abandon you. And we respond: “Well, Lord, I want to believe that, I know what you're telling me, but frankly, Lord, it's hard for me to believe you, because I haven't known a love that hasn't betrayed me. I have not known that, I do not know what you are telling me, what you are suggesting to me, this love that you offer me, it is something strange for me, I have never seen it, I have never experienced it, I don't know what that is, I don't know That with which you eat that, I don't know how to love that way. I'm sorry, Lord, but it's hard for me to believe that you'll never abandon me”

And the Lord knows, knowing this, the Lord leaves us two signs, two signs, the first sign is this: < P> "Behold, in the palms of my hands, I have you carved," the first sign is of this look... the Lord takes Zion, takes you and says: "Look, I will never ever forget you" and then says to you: “Son, daughter, look at these hands, look at these hands, these are the same hands that put the stars in their place, these are the same hands that stopped the sea and allowed Israel to pass dry, these are the same hands. These are the same hands that formed you in your mother's womb. You were formed, I was there the day you were woven into your mother's womb and I put each hair in its place with these hands. You are my creation, I formed you, you are not an experiment, you came into this world with a purpose, I know, because I put you in your place. These hands, says the same Isaiah chapter 49, that his hands... "He covered me with the shadow of his hands", declare the Lord, those hands are your protection.

Now you know Zion, you see these wounds, do you see these wounds? In the palms of my hands your name is carved. These nails were directed towards you and I did not allow them to pierce you, because you are worth too much. These hands, every time I see these hands, I remind myself of you and what you are worth and what you are, these hands declare that you are worth a lot to your God.

And the second sign brothers, “your walls are before me”. Now why walls? addressing himself to Zion, why walls? You know, Zion built walls to protect what he valued most, his houses, his temples, his farms, his cattle, his economy, and these walls through time, if we read the entire history of Israel, we read the history of David and Solomon , we read Neemiah, we read the entire history of Israel. Those walls were built, they were stalked, they were burned, they were rebuilt, and so it is with our lives. Through all our lives brothers, you and I have been building walls. Throughout all of our lives, as the psychologist shared last week, he called them defense mechanisms that we put up to protect the things in our lives that we treasure most: our lives, our health, our self-esteem, our finances, our children. , our days, and we have built walls throughout the days of our life to protect our interior and to protect those treasures.

And just like Israel, just like Zion, the walls of our lives have also been stalked, and maybe they've also been burned and maybe from time to time they've been devastated. The walls of our lives have suffered loss, and perhaps what they have protected, the interior, what is inside of you, perhaps you have lost something precious and you have been about to lose everything and the Lord promises you on this day , the Lord tells you: “You know, your walls, all your walls are before me, I was there, I was there when your husband left you, I was there when your marriage fell apart, I was there when your father rejected you , I was there when you lost your job for a year without knowing where the food for your children was going to come from, I was there when all your friends fell dead in the street and you were the only one who survived, I was there when the doctor gave you that diagnosis without hope, I was!, I was there all your walls are in front of me.

And you know that, despite all that, do you realize? You are here, you are here, we are here, why? Because? Even if those walls were raised, those walls were burned, those walls fell, the Lord is our wall, he is our protection, and that is what he tells you today: "Brother, do not worry about what you are going to lose, your treasures , I am able to keep them, I will be your salvation. Son, daughter of Zion, I will be your healing, son, daughter of Zion, I will be your strength, son, daughter, of Zion, I will never forget you, I will never forget you. Your walls are safe before me, I am your protection.

Brothers, we are going to enter, we are entering decisive times, and we have to enter these times with sure hearts that the Lord is going to support us, you know what? cross the border, cross the border, the Lord will support you and will never abandon you.