Traveling towards perfection 2

Second Peter, Chapter 1. I want to continue this series of messages, which turned into a series of messages -- it wasn't intended that way -- about being partakers of the divine nature, being partakers, having intimate fellowship with nature. of God, his character, his way of being. Becoming a reflection, a reflection of the glory and the divine personality and how God calls us to add different qualities to our life, of the qualities that characterize the character of God. Second Peter, Chapter 1, we are going to start with verse 3. The apostle Paul and, again, I am going to repeat some of the things a little, but I am going to do as basting, I repeat a little, I go forward, forward . I have asked my brothers if they feel that this type of careful, detailed, meticulous reflection is worthwhile. And they say yes, so I, well, I don't want to be giving away anything that you guys don't ultimately appreciate. If you feel that it is from the Lord, I do it and that is why I am insisting on these things.

Verse 3 says, "As all things that pertain to life and godliness have been given to us." Remember what I was telling you, that Paul, as he uses a very elaborate way of stringing together his thoughts, was a man of complex thinking. Sometimes Paul's introductions are more important than the part itself, which is supposedly the most important. "Like all things that pertain to life and godliness, they have been given to us by his divine power through the knowledge of him who called us by his glory and excellence, through which he has given us precious and great promises, for that by them we might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."

Five things he says here before getting to what he supposedly means. But that introductory part is just as important as the part that follows. “As a consequence of all these things, which I am elaborating at the beginning,” you too, Lion of Judah Congregation, you and me, “you also putting all diligence for this, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue add knowledge; to knowledge add self-control; to self-control, patience; to patience, mercy; to pity, brotherly affection; and to brotherly affection, love." And look at why all these things are so important, at the end he says, "Because if these things are in you and abound", that is a very important qualification, "If they are in you and are in to a great extent, they will not let them be idle." That is, not to be lazy, to be without work, without exerting themselves. "They will not let them be idle or unfruitful, as far as the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned. But he who does not have these things has very short sight," there are Christians who have very short sight, do not have these things and believe that they have already accomplished everything. And he says, “no, no, if you don't have it, “…you have very shortsightedness. He is blind having forgotten the purification of his former sins.” And this is the warning and the call to us. "Therefore, brethren, seek all the more." Everyone say try, try. Seeking means making an effort, working hard “…to make your vocation and election firm, because by doing these things you will never fall. Because in this way you will be granted a wide and generous entrance into the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, the savior.” Amen.

How many want to enter the Kingdom of God widely, generously, instead of entering when the doors are already closing, scraping there to get in, because it barely smells of smoke. We want to enter with a welcome, “Come, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little, I will put you over much.” We want, when we enter the Kingdom of God, to receive a wide welcome, because we work hard, we strive here on earth, and that's what Paul is saying. Last Sunday I spoke about this call from God to an energetic, striving Christian life, where we are always acquiring new skills, learning the things of God better, becoming more like Christ, becoming more purified, more perfected. That image of Paul, of the believer as a living sacrifice, continually burning on the altar of God and bringing joy to the Lord. Because we are always being consumed little by little, everything excessive, everything carnal, everything material, everything human, merely human is being burned by God. We are like a sacrificial victim, our humanity being diluted and squeezed. Because we are being treated by the Holy Spirit, crucified, tested like gold, being brought to a higher position in God.

The word of God calls us to perfection, brothers, it does not simply call us to do, do, do. He calls us to be, be, be, be more like Christ. And we have to live our lives like this, desiring to be more like Christ. And the only way to be like Christ is when God treats us, works with us, tests us, crucifies us. The life of a Christian is the life of a hero, a heroine striving, running the race of faith, going further and further towards the finish line. The difference between religious and ineffective Christians and those who are filled with the Holy Spirit, is that, lies in that idea of the believer as actively involved in the process of his own sanctification, actively cooperating with God, to put off the old nature in order to participate in the divine nature. That is what Peter says, so that you may be participants, partakers of the divine nature. In the life of a man, a woman given to the Lord, there is no rest, there are no limits, there are no barriers regarding what God wants and needs to do in us.

That is what I saw, this afternoon, seeing you adore the Lord with so much passion and seeing this people that God is forming in different ways. You are a people who are on the sacrificial table. The Lion of Judah could, perhaps, even look, rest on his laurels and say, “Look, we've done enough. We have many programs, we serve the Lord, we have an exemplary physical plant, we have people who work, we have a good reputation in the community.” But God help us, there is much more to achieve, still. We have to be restless, Lord, what more do you want from us, how can we be more effective, what things can we get rid of so that you use us more, how can we adore you more effectively, how can we please you as a people? God wants a people that will worship and serve him, God wants a people that will bring delight to his heart. God is tired of a lazy, comfortable, conforming people. God wants passion and that is what God wants to form in us. My desire, as a pastor, is that God treat me first, crucify me, and I say it with fear and trembling, and He is doing it and has done it. And that it leads all of us to that same process. Dealing with the Lord makes us more like Christ, brings us closer to his destiny, which He has, for us. And if we ask him, we will see that he does it.

I was mentioning, last Sunday, about this idea that how everything that pertains to life and godliness has been given to us, and I was saying that it is important that we understand. God has given us so many excellent, sublime things like his people, so many revelations, so much wisdom, access to it, so many heavenly treasures. He says that even the angels long to look upon them. He has given us things that the angels themselves cannot taste, that the great prophets of the Old Testament did not taste, because they served our table, but did not eat from it. Like Moses they stayed on top, seeing the Promised Land but not being able to enter it. We have entered, by entering into the reality of Christ. The things that for the ancients were symbols like the most holy place, the proposition table, the chandelier, the incense table. All these things, for us are a reality. The most holy place that was, for them, something that only high priests could enter once a year, now we enter whenever we feel like it.

And God tells us approach the throne of grace confidently. We can approach the most holy place, why? Because Christ has already purified us, through his purification now, what for the ancients was something distant and symbolic, for us is a reality. So these men and women of old saw these things but did not understand them. God has given them to us to enjoy. That should provoke in us a sense of wonder and a great desire to please the Lord and that is what Paul is saying, like all things that pertain to life and godliness, all sublime and spiritual things, all the revelations of God, the mysteries of God, have been given to us, so we have to live a life of longing.

They have been given to us, he says, by his divine power. That's important, you see it there? They have been given to us by his divine power, and that is important, that we stop there, because it is the power, the grace of God that gives these things to us. You cannot be more holy, more pleasant, more humble, just you, by your own effort. It is the Holy Spirit who imparts these things to us and that is why we have to understand that we need more of the Holy Spirit in us. We have to seek more communion with God, so that God imparts more of these things to us. We always have to live with great humility, what you have God has given you, you don't give it to yourself. If there is something worthy of admiration, something worthy of praise, it is because he has put it in you. And we always have to live life humbly, knowing that every good thing, every gift, every perfect gift, comes from the Father of Lights, not from us. So, if you want to be like God, if you want to be like Christ, you have to always be humble and grateful. Because there is nothing that you have that is yours, everything is God who gives it to you. They have been given to us by his divine power.

Then Paul adds, "By the knowledge of him who called us by his glory and excellence." By knowledge of him who called us by means of his glory and excellence. There you have to stop at that, "by the knowledge of that one", who is that one? Well, it is God and it is also above all Jesus Christ. This refers to the Lord where everything begins. The Christian life is a life of relationship with Christ, not as a system, not as a church, not as a religion. None of this is what gives us the divine nature, it is an intimate relationship with Christ, it is being so close to Jesus that the nature of Christ is transmitted to us. Remember that image of Moses looking at the glory of God and the glory of God being transmitted to Him in such a way that his own face would shine, because he had that fellowship. He who called us, the knowledge of Christ makes us like Christ.

The Christian life is something alive, it is not a mere religious adherence, it is a process, it is a relationship with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is about knowing and being in a dynamic and intimate relationship with Jesus who imparts his personality to us and deals with us directly. Our desire must be to know Christ in all dimensions of his life. Paul says, "I want to know Jesus in his resurrection and in his death, in his sufferings and in his glory." Not just one aspect, but all aspects of Jesus. And, then, these things, "Through the knowledge of him by his excellency glory, by means of which he has not given us exceedingly great and precious promises."

God has given us beautiful things, I'm not going to dwell on that, I think I mentioned it last time. But here's the central part of it all, it says, "That all these things that we have received, intimacy with Christ, the great revelations, is that through these things we may be partakers of the divine nature," verse 4. So that through these things we may be partakers of the divine nature. You know that God wants you to be intimate with the divine nature and for you to be part of the divine nature and for the divine nature to be yours, too. God calls us to be like God. What does the Bible say? “Be holy as I am holy,” we have to imitate the Father. So that idea of being participants, the word is Koinonia, that we have koinonia with the divine nature. Koinonia means having intimacy, communion, an intimate relationship with the nature of God.

The final objective that God has for our life is that we be like Him, that we add to our personality and our spiritual profile the qualities that God himself has, and that if we acquire them they will make us part of his own beauty and holiness, of his character. God's desire is to perfect us, brothers. It is not that we work more, it is not that we evangelize more, it is not that we give more money, it is not that we come to church more often, it is that we become more like Him and like Christ, because if we are like that we will want to tithe, we will want to come to church, we will want to serve, we will want to give more of our life to Him, if we are like God. So God wants to perfect us, work on us, polish us, crucify us, slim us down so that we are more like Him and reflect His glory. God wants to form the character of Christ in us, He wants to make us more spiritual, less carnal, more angelic in nature, so to speak. That is God's number one purpose in our lives. We must cooperate with this, be so aware of what God wants to do in us, that our life be a perpetual desire for more, desire to be more like Christ.

That means that our life has to be dedicated to that, it's like an athlete trying to shave seconds off his performance. An Olympian, a swimmer, for example, works in terms of seconds, not minutes, because almost all Olympians, let's say swimmers or runners, can achieve seconds of perfection, but sometimes it's a thousandth of a second. Nowadays, the races are measured with stopwatches, they are so precise, because the athletes have developed so much, in the last decades, that their performance is incredible. So a race is won by thousandths of a second, tenths of a second and that's how we are. We have to, every day, be losing less carnal weight to become more like Christ. You know, for example, Olympic swimmers shave their entire bodies. Look at Olympic swimmers, they don't have a hair on their bodies, why? Because they shave so that not even the hair on their body steals their speed, because those hairs on their body, when they are in the water, steal a thousandth of a second. So they want to remove every obstacle from their body so they can swim faster.

How about that? And so we must be, how many things do we drag in our lives? Those character flaws, those things, brothers. God's purpose is that throughout our life, we lose weight, getting rid of everything that seems animal in us, and being more like Christ. And we have to have that appetite for perfection, we will never fully acquire it, but we have to be aware of those things that we have to be giving to the Lord, and be willing to do so. Say like David, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and guide me in the way everlasting." How many of us are longing for God to examine us? Shine your light on us. Like a woman when she's putting on makeup, if I'm not mistaken, women even use magnifying mirrors. You don't have to raise your hands, sisters, how many? What's more, nowadays they make mirrors that have light bulbs around them, yes or no? Tell me, admit it, won't you? Because? When they are putting on their makeup, they want to make sure everything is okay. They want to see themselves exactly with all the magnification and all the lighting possible. And so should we be, too.

When we are in the mirror of God, we have to put light bulbs everywhere and tell him Lord examine me. Because many of us have things that we don't even realize, we have a leaf between our teeth and we are laughing like we have nothing. Realize, that beam that is in your eye, remove it. We have to ask the Lord, Lord make me lose weight, Lord take away everything that is not yours, examine me, test me. God will be working in your life, if He loves you, He will be working in your life until you die, taking things away from you, and when you die, then He completes the work. You are already totally unchained.

While we are here on earth, we have to be anxious for God to polish us and how sad it is that there are many Christians who do not understand that and believe that, simply by doing a few things here and there, already, they fooled God. They give God the wing to eat the breast, them. We give the Lord a little bit and say, now, you have enough. No, but God says, “No, no, I don't want that heart of yours, don't give me a finger, don't give me an ear, no. I want your heart, I want your entrails, I'm going to cut you to the very core." And we have to be willing like this, let's not be like children, brothers. I believe that the biggest problem in the church is that the people, the believers, have a very poor idea of what God wants to achieve through us. No, God wants to remove all the imperfections, I want you to be a better father, a better mother, that you be a youth mentor, that you be a teacher, that you have knowledge of the depths.

Do you know what I ask the Lord? Father, take me to the foundations of your Kingdom, I want to see the basement of your house, I want to see the unseen beams, I want to know you intimately. And I think that when you ask him like that, you're asking something terrible. If you ask the Lord to show you his face, that costs a lot. And God is going to show you, this is how he is going to take the mirror with one of those lights, those spotlights, and he is going to show you all your impurities, if you ask the Lord that you want to know him. And that's why many people don't ask him, but we have to tell him, "Lord, if it's hard, with fear and trembling I ask you to teach me." Because God wants to perfect us, He wants to form us, He wants to make us partakers, partakers of the divine nature.

Again, there is a lot there, a lot of fabric to cut through, but that is important, that we have a deep understanding of what the Christian life is. Lastly, if you look at the great men of the Bible, you will see that God put them all into the fiery furnace to purify them. I think of Jacob, right now, Jacob was going to be a patriarch, the birthright was running through Jacob. God put Jacob to flee, he put him in Laban's house for how many years he was exploited. Jacob wrestled with the angel, Jacob limped all his life because he told the angel, "I'm not going to leave you until you bless me." When you have ambition for God, God is going to crucify you and dislodge your hip and the rest of your life, you are going to limp knowing that God treated you and that is going to be the mark of your treatment.

Peter denied Jesus three times, don't you think that Peter lived his whole life a little tormented, because he denied the Lord three times? Hell yeah, he writes about it and the Gospels record it. Because Peter, who was going to be greatly used by God, had to show him, you are worth nothing, you think you are a lot but you are nothing, everything is by grace. Moses did not enter the Promised Land because God dealt with him. Brothers, Elijah was in the desert and reached a place of depression and frustration, which asked God, kill me because I don't want to live anymore. And there in the depressed and disqualified desert, God showed him his glory through the gentle whistle. She put him in a cave and showed him a dimension of her person that he didn't know, the soft, tender, maternal dimension of him, and she took him deep. And so the great men, Joseph who was such an upright man before God, God put him in jail, his brothers sold him, because God tests and God treats the people he wants to use, God treats them.

And that's why we sometimes don't want God to treat us, but you know what? Always remember this, if God works on you, he will always do it with the utmost care, whatever God cuts you off, it will be for your good and not for your bad. Submit yourself to God's scalpel, submit yourself to God's operating table, because God will never hurt you. You are going to do better, you are going to lose fat that you do not need, you are going to lose attributes that do not please the Lord and that make you run the race heavily. So God is there for you to be a participant in his nature and he tests you, treats you. He gave Pablo a sting that tormented him all his life, he told him, "Lord, free me from that sting, I don't want it, it humiliates me." God told him, "No, no, my grace is sufficient, that is my discipline in you, to keep you humble and my power is perfected in that weakness." The mysteries of God are great, brothers, and we have to learn to trade and negotiate with that God, who wants to form Christ in us, wants to remove everything that does not belong to Him. In the fire of the crucible, that is where God he forms men and women purified like gold for his work. And God wants to deal with you, if you take God seriously, God will call you to his workshop, and he will tell you, "Come, come closer and I will treat with you."

But, brothers, there is nothing better than that, there is nothing like when God thins a man or a woman, when he prunes them, when they look ugly, like that, after God's treatment of their lives. So that allows you to bear more fruit, bear more fruit. It says that if someone bears fruit, God will prune it so that it bears more fruit, but we do not want to be pruned, we want to always look lush and beautiful. But if so, we are robbing ourselves. So, God wants us to be partakers of the divine nature. “We who have fled from the corruption that is in the world,” God wants us to flee. There the key word, I think, from that part is to flee, the original Greek text says, pheuge is the word to flee, pheuge is a strong word. Having fled from the corruption that in the world.

There are other places where Paul uses that, look at First Timothy 6:11 for example. First Timothy 6:11, there is the word and this word and for Timothy, who is a man who has been called to the ministry, to the pastorate, and First Timothy 6:11 says: "But you, O man of God, woman, flee from these things and follow justice, mercy, faith, love, patience, meekness." You see there that other list of things that we have to ask the Lord to give us, but before that we have to flee. And what? Paul says, what are these things to flee from? Getting rich, falling into temptation and snare, these things that plunge men into destruction and perdition, envy, lawsuits, blasphemies, bad suspicions, foolish disputes of men corrupted in understanding, all of this is in the previous verses. And Paul tells Timothy, "Look man of God, if you want to serve the Lord, flee from all these things."

I think of Joseph, fleeing from Potiphar's wife, he fled, why did he flee? Because, I'm sure, he knew that if he stayed one more second, he was going to fall, so he sent himself running. They say out there, better say here he fled, that he died here. And it is a lesson that we have to learn, brothers. Many times we will not be able to kill temptation, but we will have to flee, flee from it, flee from situations that put us in temptation. And that is a lesson that we all have to learn, including the speaker. To become like Christ, we have to run away from many things. The profile of a true Christian is not achieved with a comfortable and indifferent attitude, it requires a great effort and the rejection of many things. Why does God tell Joshua that he is going to be the substitute for Moses, "Look, I command you, that you strive and be brave." Because the Christian life requires effort. Paul also tells Timothy, "I advise you to fan into fire the gift of God that is in you, because God has not given us a spirit of cowardice," that is, of laziness, of timidity, of passivity, "but of what Of power, love and self-control.”

The Christian life requires effort, it requires more anxiety, appetite, effort, running the race of faith. Those passions of which Paul speaks, here, the corruption that is in the world because of concupiscence. Those passions have extraordinary power to attract, trap, seduce the man or woman of God, so we must flee from them in order to defend ourselves. We will never be able to eliminate those temptations and those passions, we will never be able to kill, brothers, the carnal part in us, that is a fight that we are going to have until the day we die. But we have to fight the good fight. You are finally perfected when you die, meanwhile, the Christian life is a life of resistance, of purification, of strengthening the good in us. We are going to have to fight and battle against the flesh until the last day of our lives,

And I tell people that, a lot of people, today in the twenty-first century, say, "Oh, but if I feel this, it's so strong in me, how can it be bad? Why would God have it for me?" given if it's no good? What if I've prayed for it to be removed and I still have it." I was talking to a person who, I'm not going to be very detailed right now, but I told him, look, this person is struggling with issues of sexual identity -I told him- there is one thing that I understand, and that is that anyone can being tempted by same-sex attraction, no matter how manly or how feminine. Anyone can be tempted in that direction, but the difference is whether one gives in to temptation or resists it. Do not think that because you feel something, that it is from God or that it is natural to you. Many times we will battle with different appetites, sexual ties, mental ties, drug temptations, alcohol, resentment, traumas we have received.

And God says, "Resist all those things even if you feel them, not because you feel them you should obey them." What we have to do is run away from them. If you were an alcoholic one day, don't take an apartment above a liquor store. If you have problems with pornography, don't watch movies, look, better sell the TV. If you have problems with any area and the Internet feeds it to you, sell the blessed phone, buy one that is not intelligent, only that you receive texts, if anything, and can talk on the phone, not images. The Lord says, "If your eye causes you to fall, gouge it out, cut it off. If your hand causes you to fall, cut it off." Because it is better that you go to the Kingdom of God maimed or blind than go to hell with all your members intact.

At that level we have to want to flee, it is a very strong word, if we do not flee from temptation because temptation is strong. I think that this is what this idea indicates, having fled, means that these things are very strong and if we do not take care of ourselves, we are going to succumb to them. Now, if you succumb, stand up, confess your sin, move on. Clean up your accounts and God will forgive you. Because the devil will want, even when you have fallen, to leave you on the floor and he will accuse you and he will want you to say, "no, there is no hope for me anymore." When Peter denied Jesus, he surely thought, the Lord doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. Because it was a very strong thing to deny Christ, he denied it three times having known Christ, having seen his miracles, having seen him rebuke demons, having lived in great intimacy with Him, being destined to become a great servant of God and he denied it three times times. Pedro wept bitterly, and he surely thought, there is no future for me in the ministry anymore. And you know what? The Lord in his mercy, when he rose again, what did he do? She pulled him aside and said, "Peter, do you love me?" Three times Peter denied Jesus and three times the Lord gave him the opportunity to confess him again. "Pedro, do you love me?", "Yes Lord, you know that I love you." Or not, "do you love me more than these? Peter", "yes Lord". "You love me, feed my sheep." Third time, "Pedro, do you love me?", "Well Lord, you know all things." The boastful Pedro, who told him that everyone should leave you, I will not leave you, now says, "Lord, look, I don't even know myself, you will know if I love you or not." And He said, "Well, feed my sheep."

What was the Lord doing? I was restoring it, I was putting it back in its place. This Peter, who had denied it three times, the Lord told him, "Look, I understand well what you felt, that fear. What's more, I was the one who put that fear on you, so that you remember not to flaunt your justice , which is by my grace, by my mercy and now you can serve me." I have said that God does not use a man or a woman until he disqualifies him. You know ancient kings in the Middle Ages, when a court knight was to be commissioned by the king or queen as a nobility, as a knight. Do you know what the queen or king did? They would take a glove and slap him on both cheeks, why did they do that? Because it was by reminding that knight-errant that it was because of the queen or the king that he was a knight, it was a way of humiliating him. Because a man of war would never accept someone slapping him. They slapped him to humiliate him and to let him know, you belong to me, and what you are is because I give you the authority to do so. Because kings do not want haughty and self-confident servants, they want men and women surrendered to him or her who owe everything.

And likewise God does, before using a man he slaps him and tells him you are useless, but I am going to use you anyway. That is because God wants to deal with us and that corruption, which is in us, God wants us to flee from it. We can never completely eliminate it, many times we will succumb, but then God says, "Stand up." Because the devil is going to want how you fall and he is going to send demonic angels, in the form of church members or members of your family, whatever it is that reminds you of your sin. And he is going to want you to stay on the floor, you have to get up, you have to serve the Lord, again. You have to be restored, because God wants you to be restored. If you have sinned, get up and keep serving the Lord. "My little children, these things I am writing to you so that you do not sin, but if you do sin we have an advocate with Christ Jesus." Stand up and keep going, run as far as you can, but if they catch you with a stone, get up, rub your head and keep going. Ask your mom to mend your pants and move on. That is the truth, brothers.

The apostle Paul says, "Having fled - from what? - from the corruption that is in the world through lust." The word concupiscence does not refer only to the sexual. The original Greek word is epithumia, which means like strong appetites. Concupiscence is all brothers, it is the love of money. Concupiscence is the love of people's praise. Concupiscence is the excessive love for that BMW that you bought, that every Saturday you get up early to shine it, "Oh, beautiful car." There are people who love their car even more than their own wife, brothers, certainly more than God. All these things are useless, that is concupiscence, everything that robs them of the primary place that only God can occupy. We have many idols, concupiscence is all excessive appetite, all excessive, illegitimate attachment to anything in this world that prevents you from loving God above all things.

God says, "You shall have no gods before me." The first commandment is that, brothers, God has to be the first thing in your life, no passion, no relationship, no social position, nothing in this world should rob you of the total love that you should have for your God. If anyone becomes a friend of the world, he is an enemy of God, all things that are in the world are enemies of God, do not appreciate anything. We have to be people who only love the Kingdom of God, we live only for Him. We are pilgrims and foreigners, we have no place to live, we have nothing, until a man or a woman is stripped of love for the world or things that are of the world, cannot be useful to God. You have to flee from everything, you have to give everything, that concupiscence. It is not only, as they say out there, what is from the waist down, it is everything. Concupiscence is everything that robs you of the love that you should have only for God, concupiscence, the world and the things that are in the world. And we have to flee from all those things, when God told Lot and his wife to flee from Sodom because I am going to destroy it and he told them not to look back. Because many of us leave, but we still have the little fires that are still in us. It's like when you put out a fire and there's still something there, and then, when we leave, we turn our backs, it catches on again and burns the whole house. This is how many of us are, we have roots and God wants to uproot the roots so that we can flee completely.

Don't worry, I'm going to finish and I'm going to stay only in this part and then we will talk specifically about each of the qualities and virtues that God asks us to have. So, he is complying and he says, "For this very reason, with all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; etc." In other words, having said all these things, he tells us add, add these things. I say, that word, add, is a very deep word and it means we have to add things, add. This call to add qualities to our character Christian, it means that we are the ones who instill these, it does not mean, rather, that we are the ones who instill these qualities, but that the Holy Spirit will do it. But we have to add things, our part is to do everything possible, to ask in prayer that God add these things to us, ask the Lord, "Father, add to me that which I do not have."

We have to be like collectors of great things, for example, art collectors are always looking for new things to add to their collection. For example, a major art collector, let's say, already has certain works by certain major artists, but he walks by, by an art gallery, and sees a two-inch-sized figurine. Perhaps it is a prehistoric work of art, with a very chubby woman, because the primitives loved women that way, fuller. And he sees a fertility goddess, as her name is, and they see her like this, tiny, but worth a million dollars. And that's how little he wants to have that, even though he has works of art that are the size of ten feet by twelve, etc. But that figure, made by a primitive, prehistoric artist, that fascinates him and he wants to have it in his collection, and he is willing to pay two million dollars for that little figure, to complete his work, to complete his collection of art.

We have to be like this, when we discover a quality that God wants us to have, we must be enthusiastic about it. God says, "I want you to be humble", and perhaps we have lived with pride all our lives and at the moment something alerts us, here there is pride in us, there is arrogance in us. And do you know what we have to do? Get excited about this new project that God assigns us. the Holy Spirit showed you that you must fight with pride. So you say, "Lord, amen, I'm going to get to work on that." And you begin to ask, to confess, to battle with the pride within you. Perhaps one day, you discover that you really like to be praised. We pastors like to be told that we have preached well, and we are always trying to extract a compliment from people, "Pastor, you preached well today!" And that makes us feel happy and many of us reach out to people, subtly, so that they praise us. There are things like that and when you discover something like that, immediately rebuke it and reject it. Because if God allows you to say something good it is because He puts it, not you, you do not deserve to be used. So we have to discover, if you discover that there is a wound in you, a trauma from the past that prevents you from reaching a deeper level of God's life. Look, ask him, "Lord, I'm going to fast and pray until you break that for me."

Some women -God puts this in my mind- have been raped, for example, sexually as children, they were abused by a father, by a cousin, by a brother, by a neighbor, and still, or committed an abortion. If the Lord is speaking to you, receive this. And that is persecuting them, it is preventing them from entering a higher level of life with Christ. Well, if you discover that, add to your life and your profile release from those things. Ask the Lord, "Father, deliver me from this, forgive me if I offended you in any way, I gave this to you, because it is preventing me from entering the level of life that you want. So I gave it to you." There are entire communities, right now, that are imprisoned by the sense of victimization, resentment, entire communities. And that is why they are as they are, impoverished and bound by the devil, because they have historical resentments of what they did to them a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, and they have not been able to free themselves from them. And they take pleasure in reminding their former oppressors that they victimized them, but they are the prisoners and because they have resentment within them, the devil still has them, those communities, bound. And if you don't get rid of that, then you won't be effective for God.

So, whatever you discover that prevents you from running lightly the race of faith, you have to give it up. Now, what is the connection between adding and taking away? It is the same thing, because when you get rid of something, you are adding something positive. So, we have to say, "Lord, I want to be free, I want to add freedom to my profile. I don't want to be captive of resentment, I don't want to be captive of traumas, I don't want to be captive of losses. I don't want to I don't want to be captive of the sadness of childhood, I don't want to be captive of the fact that when I was seven years old, my mother died and I have had resentment with God. I gave that to you." You have to add things that the Holy Spirit will enlighten you about. Ask the Lord to enlighten you, what do you have to add in your life, right now and visualize a shelf in your collection of virtues in your house and you see that there are empty places, there are very beautiful statuettes, there are beautiful pictures, there are exquisite vases, but between the vases and the statues there are empty spaces. Look at that, on that shelf of collections of virtues there are empty places, perhaps they are occupied by spiders, perhaps they are occupied by demonic and sinister figures. And you know that there, what goes is something beautiful from God. So, you have to immediately remove the old and search your collection for new things and put them there. The believer's life must be a continuous addition of new things, new virtues and getting rid of things and replacing them with good, noble, beautiful things. I want to live like this, I don't know if you want to join me in that race.

Let's stand up for a moment, what does God want you to add? On Sunday -not next Sunday because we are going to have other very good things that I invite you to come- but when I continue with this series we are going to see some things, of the many things that God wants us to add. But, right now, I want you to ask yourself, "Father, what is it about me that is keeping me from running lightly the race of faith, what trauma, what addiction, what memory, what sin, what stumbling block? Is there in my life? What prevents your power from nesting within me perfectly? What grieves your Holy Spirit in me? Lord, I want to get rid of it and I want to add a virtue, I want to add something new. If there is pride in me, remove it and put humility. Father, if there is resentment in me, remove it and put forgiveness. If there is a demanding character in me, put in me grace for my brothers. Whatever Lord, remove it and put the new, add what new, add a new virtue to my life because I want to be like Jesus, I want to be more like Christ."

Right now I am asking like you, I am here asking the Lord for my own things, what I want to add to my life. Ask the Lord now that the Lion of Judah becomes a church of crucified people, of people who smell of smoke because the Lord is frying them little by little on the altar of crucifixion. We want more to be like Jesus, we want to please you more, Lord. Come Holy Spirit, deal with me. God's crucifixions are good, there is nothing better than a crucifixion, even if it is painful and that is what God wants. Help us, Father, to be more like you, help us to be more, Lord, as Christ is. Hallelujah, by this word that has been prophesied about your people, Lord, activate new virtues in us, lead us to be more and more participants in the divine nature. We want to be more like You, thank you Father. We adore you, we bless you, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Thank you Lord, thank you God. Receive this prayer, Father, receive this prayer, this desire to be more like Christ, take us to the place of crucifixion, enter us into your fire that purifies us, Father. We adore you, we bless you. Thank my Lord. Hallelujah, amen and amen, thank you God.