The life of the spirit is a life that flows

I now want to invite you to go to the word of the Lord. I don't think I'm forgetting anything at the moment. Let's continue, I had already determined to end this series within a larger series that perhaps you have already forgotten which was the larger series, on fundamental truths of Christian life, and we entered this matter of the Holy Spirit and we stayed there.

I was looking at my notes and we started in September talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the life of the Holy Spirit, the filling and all of this. And then they invited me to Puerto Rico where I was preaching at the Barbara Anne Rossler church and they invited me to speak about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the life filled with the Holy Spirit, because they had seen some of the León de Judá programs and they liked it. that topic for your congregation. And actually, since I had to squeeze everything into 5 interventions, I created new, different things, packing some things that I had already touched on, but in a different way and I feel like the Lord to share with you this that is going to be new material anyway. .

And I believe that God is using this time in the life of the Lion of Judah to seal us and underpin this doctrine of the Holy Spirit so that our entire congregation remains very, very engraved in their hearts of the importance of being a people filled with the Holy Spirit, with the power of God, a people with a supernatural vision, which is so important. And I know that there will be no redundancy in what I am going to share with you this morning. I encourage you to prepare your heart for what God has for us.

Remember, I'm going to read a couple of verses to frame what I'm saying. That well-known verse of Ephesians 5:18 where we are reminded that, instead of getting drunk with wine, says:

“... do not get drunk with wine in which there is debauchery but rather thirst filled with the spirit speaking among yourselves with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in your hearts, be filled with the Holy Spirit....”

But actually the passage that interests me the most is He finds in John, Chapter 4, the well-known passage about the Samaritan woman. John, verse 4, beginning with verse 7. I'm going to skip read a few verses. You remember the story. A woman from Samaria comes. Samaria, a city that was the enemy of the Jews and the Jews enemies of the Samaritans. They were distant racial cousins, but they had different religions, religions that were similar and shared certain elements, but for a long time the Samaritans were not of the Jewish Hebrew religion, they had been with other doctrines and other things. And the Jews considered them impure people, and the Samaritans evidently did not appreciate the favor but quite the contrary, but they also hated, there was enmity between Samaritans and Jews. But the Lord is in Samaria and a woman from that town comes to draw water, verse 7 and Jesus says to her:

“... give me a drink, for his disciples had gone to the city to buy some eat. And the Samaritan woman says to him, 'How can you, being a Jew, ask me to drink because I am a Samaritan woman? -Because Jews and Samaritans did not treat each other-. Then Jesus answers him, and says: "... if you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, 'give me a drink', you would ask him and he would give you living water...."

Here the Lord is entering into the matter and is intriguing it and is speaking in a spiritual language.

“... and the woman answers him, 'Lord, you don't have anything to draw with... – she is thinking that he is literally talking about physical water - .... you don't have anything to pull it out and the well is deep. Where then do you have the living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well from which he and his sons and their cattle drank? Jesus answered and said to him, 'Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst, but the water that I will give him will be in him a fountain of water that springs up. eternal life'. And the woman said to him, 'Lord, give me that water so that I no longer thirst and come here to draw it.' Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered and said, "I don't have a husband." And the woman then tells him, 'Sir, it seems to me that you are a prophet'.... – he is telling her something that she knows to be true and perhaps not so well known by everyone - ..... our parents They worshiped on this mountain and you say that it is in Jerusalem that is the place where they should worship. Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the now is coming, when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You Samaritans worship what you don't know, we Jews worship what we know because salvation comes from the Jews. But the time is coming and now is when the true worshipers will adore the Father in spirit and in truth, because the Father also seeks such worshipers to be worshiped. God is spirit and those who adore him in spirit and in truth it is necessary that they adore. The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah, called the Christ, will come, when he comes he will declare all things to us." And Jesus said to him, 'I am the one who speaks with you'....”

The Lord bless his holy word. Brethren, I want to speak again and emphasize it from a little different perspective, about the spirit-filled life, which is the life that each one of us, if we are in the Kingdom of God, is supposed to live. And I want to draw a difference between the spirit-filled life and the Christian life lived not in the spirit, a rather religious, institutional life, but not a vital life as God wants us to live it.

And to understand life in the spirit we have been approaching it from different perspectives and to understand life in the spirit you must first understand the opposite of that life in the spirit, that is, that merely formal life, religious.

And I could summarize the difference and I'm going to do it today from this perspective. I could sum up the contrast between the two lives as a difference between an externally oriented life and an internally oriented life. I believe that the spirit-filled life is a life whose foundation, whose starting point is internal, sort of helps me think of the internal as the foundation of a spirit-filled life.

While the religious life, the life that does not know the force of the spirit is a life oriented towards the exterior, towards the external. On the other hand, we could also approach it this way: the life of the spirit is an organic life, it is a life that flows, it is a life made of parts that are perfectly united and it is not known when one ends and the other begins, like the body. human, fluid completely. There is a totality although it has a structure, but life is like that. Life is organic, it moves easily.

While the religious life is a mechanical life, it is one of angular movements. The difference between a well-arranged human body and a Toyota robot trying to do the motions of a human being. Have you seen those robots that they are trying to invent today to do different things, to move like a human being moves? Still far from being able to capture the fluidity of the human body, of a living being.

So, difference between external and mechanical on the one hand, the religious, formal life, which does not know the spirit; and a life of internal and of something that is organic and fluid. The religious is generally oriented outward, the spiritual generally has to do with the interior, the inside.

Then I could mention certain words: robotic, rigid, square, religious life, versus, organic, fluid, round, life in the spirit.

These are things that help us like pictures that help us understand something that is extremely complex.

When the New Testament talks about life in the spirit, the spirit-filled life remember something, it helped me to think about the context in which the New Testament talks to people about the spirit-filled life. It is a context in which he is speaking to Jews who until then only know the Judaic, Pharisaical, external religion, and the word of God wants to establish for those people and for us what Christ represents and what the new economy of the Gospel brings it is something totally different from that life that these Jews knew.

Look at some things, for example, in Judaism you had to go to the temple to meet God. There was the most holy place, supposedly, where the shekinah glory of God was. The high priest could only enter there once a year under sentence of death if he was in sin. And there was supposed to be the glory of God, the condensed presence of God in that most holy place, in a physical temple.

Secondly, in Judaism you had to perform external rituals for everything: washing hands, killing animals, doing different types of rituals, looking for leaven throughout the house, external rites that pointed towards a spiritual reality. , but that spiritual reality is based on external things, mechanical acts.

Third, Judaism depended on human intermediaries. Now, notice something that all these things apply to a formal, religious Christianity that does not know the vitality of God and the Holy Spirit. It is possible in Christianity, both evangelical and Catholic by the way, these things too, people think that you have to go to the temple to meet God, everything depends on external rituals and external things, mechanical acts, and depend on human intermediaries so that bring us into the presence of God. One is sitting there and up here is the pastor or the priest executing things that connect to the zone of the spirit but you are there, the priest is here and God is there. And the priest or pastor is the intermediary. And that is not necessarily what Scripture presents as the ideal state of affairs.

And fourth, God is outside and not inside the individual. God, in Judaism, God was out there and in the best of cases, a priest, a prophet, a king through a special anointing could enjoy intimacy with the spirit but it was to carry out a very exceptional task and superhuman. Most human beings couldn't be intimate with that totally other God on the outside. It was an outside religion. And that is why we depend on human intermediaries to connect us with that God who is outside of us.

And in the last place, the law was external based on commandments, the moral life is based on commandments, on statements that must be adhered to in a very, very rigid way in order to have contact with that supernatural being .

You see, then, that it's a religion based on the external and that's not it, that was good for a while, but God wanted to overcome that and God wants to overcome that in our lives. God does not want us to feel that we have to go to church because that is where God is and that is where I have to meet and I have to give myself my injection of religion today Sunday. And I have to depend on the pastor to enter the presence of God, and if he is not a pastor, a deacon, an elder, an anointed person, I do not have contact with God.

God doesn't want you to depend on rituals, singing or jumping though those things are good, but that's not where God's presence is necessarily. And it's easy to fall into those things, even, I would say, in Christian sectors that call themselves Pentecostals and charismatics, you can fall into the same type of routine, because the external of religion is always there ready to catch you if you don't take care of yourself. and you do not use the discernment of the Holy Spirit.

Now, all that I am saying here is illustrated by this text of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. We see here in a sense in that conversation implicitly, the contrast between the Old Testament that this woman represents, that she's still in the prophets, even though her religion is a mixed religion, but she's still thinking in Old Testament terms. And Jesus represents the new of what God brings to humanity, a new and different revelation.

And it's like seeing the Old Testament and the New Testament speaking face to face between these two people. And we have to ask ourselves which of these two dimensions do I represent, and where am I in my faith? Do I truly have a life in the spirit?

The Apostle Paul is always emphasizing life in the spirit. for example, he says, “.....now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit...”

He says, “ ... walk in the spirit and not in the flesh....”

Continually Paul is drawing that contrast between those two lifestyles. Let's look at, for example, there are some 8 effects that I'm going to go through quickly because what I want is for you to understand this dimension, when we talk about the spirit as something internal, something individual, intimate, a person. That is the spiritual life that God wants for you. It is good to come and enjoy ourselves collectively, it is very important, but the primary need is that you live a life of intimacy with God, that you know where to go to get water yourself. What's more, that you know that you already have the water with you. And that is important, you have to change your mentality, you have to change your focus. Much of the life of the spirit has to do with a change of mentality.

That is why the Apostle Paul says, in Romans Chapter 12, verses from 1 to 3, among other things, “...do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by renewing your understanding. ....” because that's where it all begins, it's in the renewal of understanding.

Now, look for example, the Samaritan woman represents external water. She is drawing water from an external well. The Lord tells him, "hey, if you knew who asked you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you water that springs up for eternal life." The Lord is referring to the water of the spirit, that water that he says I will give to everyone who follows me.

The Lord said, "whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them." The Lord is often associated with water, that is very interesting. The life of the spirit in many religions is associated, by the way, with water. The Ganges River in India, other Scriptures from others, man instinctively knows that there is something in the water, associated with the presence of God, with the divine. And the Lord here is associated with water.

This woman represents that religion that continually needs, with a lot of work, to go. How many of us have seen or perhaps ourselves caught a can of water? Those women in our countries, with a can of water and a rolled cloth on their head walking to go home with a can of water. Admit it. Perhaps some of you here had the blessing of once carrying a can of water. There is nothing to be ashamed of about that. Quite the opposite.

But she represents the external water versus the internal water that the Lord..... we are supposed, brothers, that the life of God is within us refreshing us, instead of continually having to go outside . On the other hand, it is also in her this of the temporary effect of religion.

The Lord tells him, you are going to drink this water but you are going to be thirsty again. But if I give you the water that I know how to give, you will never thirst again, what the Lord is saying here is a metaphor. But brothers, it is like that, external religion, the person who does not have a true life of the spirit, who does not have an intimate, personal connection with God goes to church, and while the show lasts they feel close to God, but when The music ended and everyone went home and got back in their car, the decay again. Everyday life, time and space again fall like a curtain on the consciousness of the individual and he is no longer a vital Christian, until he returns to service again.

Water. People draw water, have it for a while and then leave. Like going to a disco, for a while very well, everyone is very happy, or the person who gets drunk, their problems go away, but in the morning the headache and the hard awareness that your problems are there as fresh as before you got drunk.

Because man is like that, man can drink water even from religion briefly but unless he does not have a personal relationship he does not know how to nourish himself when problems come, when difficulties come, when he is alone, when you feel depressed, when there is illness, when there are financial problems. That water is not there because the effect of religion is only temporary. While you can intoxicate yourself in the ritual, the symbol, the stained glass windows, the incense, the dark color of the wood, the priest's or pastor's clothing, for a moment you can inhabit the sacred, but when everything disappears, you are another time in the daily reality of time and space.

And that's not what God wants. God wants you to carry the sacred within you. Amen. God wants you to carry eternity inside of you. God wants you, the Holy Spirit, to be able to take it out at any time to revitalize you when you need it. This difference between temporary effects and effects is very important, the Lord tells him, 'you will not thirst'. When you have Christ in your heart, you have a vital relationship with Jesus, you can continually resurrect Christ, so to speak, every day, 24 hours a day, when you need him he is there ready to rise again and heal. your wound, bring an awareness of God's vital presence in you, renew your vision, whatever. You don't need a pastor or a person to remind you that God exists. No, you know why he is inside you, he is with you. It is not a fictitious, temporary effect, dependent on symbols, but is dependent on the uninterrupted presence of God within you.

Another thing that I see here in this woman is the effort. Formal religion is associated with work. For me the religion of the spirit is associated with rest, “be still and know that I am God”. "...In rest and rest you will be saved, in stillness and trust will be your strength...", says the Lord. "... you will keep in perfect peace the one whose thought remains in you..."

Rest. "... come to me all you who are labored and loaded and I will give you rest..." says the Lord. "... take my yokes over others, because my yoke is easy and my burden is light, you will find rest for your souls...."

The life of the spirit is associated with rest, even when there is difficulties too. There is an agonizing dimension to the Christian life as well, but it is because there is being, it is because there is conquest, it is because there is gain, it is because we are advancing, it is because God is working on us and is polishing us, and is disciplining us. and in that there is a certain level of work, but it is a work that does not kill, but revives and strengthens.

The word of God says that when God's discipline has been fulfilled in us, it leaves a sweet and peaceful permanent of peace and life in us.

So, this woman is with her can, putting it in the well, drawing water. You have to put it on your shoulder or head and go back to your village to use that water. And Christ says to her, do you know what, woman? I have water that you don't have to put that can in there to get it out. That water is within you and springs up to eternal life, it will continuously refresh you.

You see, the religious person has to... it's a life of toil. Martha was close to Jesus but she was anxious, and the Lord said to her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things and that is not....'

You see, the person can have Christ is very close but she is busy, she is living in her own strength, her own energy, she burns continuously, she gets frustrated. It is a tremendous effort.

You have to make promises and that was what tired Martin Luther. The terrible desire of the formal religion of the Middle Ages and all the terrible economy that had been created of saints and promises, and of supposedly sacred articles that had the power that I don't know, bulls and walking to Rome on your knees , and all this apparatus of work that had to be kept going round and round so that people would remain hypnotized with religion because religion could not stand on its own.

Men when they don't have the Holy Spirit have to continually sweep things up to keep people entertained and with a sense of the sacred. Religion without Christ inside is a religion of work, brothers, instead of rest. I believe at times, I have refused to keep my church entertained. There are churches that depend on 27 campaigns a year and 40 healers and 17 demon rebuke sessions, and 8 concerts, and this... and the thing is to keep people always active, entertained, something new, something different. And I say, and what happens when we can't have that, everything falls apart, because people have gotten used to the device. Religion without Christ, without the Holy Spirit, is a religion of externalities, of objects, of actions, of effort.

That is why Paul, in First Corinthians, Chapter 2 says, “.. brothers, when I came to you I promised myself that I would know nothing but Christ and him risen, and I came to you, not with the excellence of the word of human wisdom, but with the power of God so that your faith should not be based on the wisdom of men but on the power of God..."

Paul did not want to entertain the people, he did not want to go there with a declamation, a rhetoric, orchestrated and rehearsed movements, he said, I went there like this, humble, simple but with the power of God, because I do not want you to be depending on a lot of shouting , a lot of apparatus, a lot of question. That is not faith. The Christian life is a seat where the presence of the Holy Spirit is within one.

You don't need to keep turning the handle to feel the Holy Spirit. Life without Christ is a religious, eager, carnal life, I keep doing, looking around here, looking to keep oneself always excited and hypnotized with something new, something different because you need that: a new preacher, a new program, a new book, a new place. I see people like that continually busy with things. They're over here, they're over there, a new prophet, a new movement, a new church, and you see them running there, and I'm like, 'hey, the spirit is within you.'

You cannot depend on me, nor on this church, nor on the deacons, nor on anyone. Christ has to be in your life. And if he is not in your life, you have to look for him and keep looking for him until you feel that he enters and takes possession of your life, that the Holy Spirit is within you. The person who has a vital experience with Christ, the world can collapse, twenty thousand churches can collapse, ministries can collapse and that person remains firm in the Lord because Christ is within them, not in the pastor, not in the church, not in the institution, not in the denomination. It is important to live focused on Christ because otherwise you will be there continuously, one will fall and you will have to raise another, another saint around here, that one broke, you have to look for another one: eagerness, continuous work.

And you say, no, it's not eagerness, it's not struggle, that carnal struggle, that eagerness is not what God wants for you. There are so many examples we could use. Think of Betheesa's cripple, the water, it has to be removed and when the water is removed, the first one to jump is the only one who can be healed. And here comes Jesus Christ whistling, calm down and he sees those men who have been there for years and years at the edge of the pond and he says, 'hey, what's wrong with you, why are you there', 'well, I've been there for years and what's happening is that once in a while an angel comes and stirs up the water and the first to jump is the one who is healed and I am paralyzed, imagine, I can't do anything'. And Jesus says, 'would you like to be healed?' The Lord gives him a word of healing, the man stands up and is immediately healed.

And there was an image, there is something recorded. Look, water, but there is something when you have the risen Christ within you, you have life filled with the Holy Spirit, your vitality, your blessing does not depend on competition. There is water for all, there is sanitation for all. And healing finds you, you don't find it. you have access to the vitality of God, it is not a matter of the first one that shoots out when the gun fires, the life of God manifests itself spontaneously, fluidly within you. That's the different. For me clearer, the difference between Pharisaism and evangelical religious life with the fluid life of the spirit that is organic, that things occur in a magical, beautiful, beautiful, spontaneous way.

Another thing, religious life is a life of enmities, controversies, competition. A limited God who, if he gives to that one, cannot give to me and vice versa, while life in the spirit is a life of grace, it is a life of acceptance, it is a life of love, it is a life of tolerance, it is a life in which you see the life of God in others and you rejoice and that does not mean that you are more impoverished because God is blessing those others. It is a life where you respect diversity in the Kingdom of God, everyone does not have to believe the same thing as you believe as long as there are certain fundamental beliefs, but within that there is freedom to breathe as well.

And if the little sister paints herself, praise God, if you don't paint yourself, don't worry, let the Lord deal with her in due time. If the little sister is 2 cm less curly than you would like, leave her alone, and in due course, don't send her an anonymous letter. And so many other things.

This woman tries to draw Christ into a controversy. Ah, we worship here and you say that it is there. Look, woman, the life of the spirit has nothing to do with this question that there in Jerusalem, here in Samaria, or the temple or whatever. That's not. He says, the day is coming and it is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

The spirit zone is where the Lord is worshipped. And there is freedom. Brothers, the formal religious life is the mother of all the great religious wars that have taken place in the world. Look at Ireland, look at the 16th century wars in Europe, look at the internal wars of the Arabs. Now, I believe that when there is a true life of the spirit, a relationship with the Holy Spirit and the word of God, these fights, those fights between brothers, it is very difficult for it to happen, because what prevails is the spirit of Christ.

When the Apostles come to Jesus and say, look, there is someone out there who is preaching in your name and does not follow us, he wants us to silence him. The Lord tells them, leave him alone because no one who preaches in my name or heals someone in my name can be my enemy. He who is not against us is with us.

He said something there that I think had to be qualified, but he told them, don't worry so much about it. Again, there is one over there that we preached to and he did not want to accept you, you want us to make fire fall on them. The Lord told him, you don't know what spirit he is in... the spirit that is moving him right now is the spirit of the devil, he wanted to tell them. Because they did not have a vital experience with the risen Christ.

That came to them, by the way, that truth came to them when they had the encounter with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. I think they understood a lot of things there. But the staid, religious robotic man is always trying to draw sharp lines, in high definition, between us and them, those who believe and those who don't. While I believe that the life of the spirit is a life of unity, where Christ is there is unity.

That attitude that I am, I have, and they don't, that's from the devil, that's from the flesh, that's not from the Holy Spirit, from the true Holy Spirit. There are people who believe they have the Holy Spirit but they don't have the Holy Spirit. But where the spirit of Christ is with all his love, his goodness, his unitive, harmonious vision, there is unity, there is peace, there is joy, there is blessing, there is benignity, there is grace from the Lord.

While where there are religious there is competition, there is controversy, there is disunity, there is conflict, there is me who is still not redeemed trying to occupy my own space and who feels poor, because another is being blessed , as if God had measure. God can bless you a thousand percent and the other one a thousand percent, and not a single drop of his glory runs out in his blessing.

The Christian life is a life of love, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, it is the blessing of God, it is not a life of controversies, enmities, difficulties, conflicts, accusations, divisions, preferences, all that it is of the flesh and of the devil. Let us ask the Lord to make us a church truly of unity, love, harmony, tolerance, grace, that we can bless one another. Because where the life of the spirit is, it is a beautifully unitive and harmonious life.

Another thing too, I see here that formal religious life is a life of buildings and sacred places. All of this is here, this temple, this place, religious people are tied to an architecture, to a physical configuration, and the son of God has the temple with him 24 hours a day, he is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You carry the temple with you 24 hours a day, my brother. And what you come to do here in this place right now is simply, right now there are two, 300, 400 temples united in a single temple worshiping the Lord. There is a mystical temple that is erected when all the temples of God come together at the time of worship. And that's what we're doing now. Here are temples, all inhabited by the Holy Spirit, within a physical temple in contact with the supreme temple that is the eternal, infinite temple of God, up there, something mystical, something completely formless. And we come to church but it's not to be injected with religion and faith and spirituality, it's simply to have a great concert of worship to our Father and each of us take our little fathom and unite it and make a great fire that reaches as far as the throne of God. That is the difference.

The experience of worship within a place is nuanced and relativized, and you know that you can worship God anywhere, in the bathroom of your house you can worship the Lord there, because the temple is with you, in you and around you. You walk in the street and you are in the temple. You work on the sewing machine and you are in the temple. You make the food and you are in the temple. Glory to the Lord. There is no distinction. You work and you worship the Lord, you are in the temple.

And it's in the church and it's in the temple too. And he is praising and he is in the temple. And he is writing a letter on the computer or by hand and he is in the temple too. There is no distinction, it is all sacred in a sense. When we understand that it is something revolutionary.

While this woman inhabits, religion inhabits her in the physical. She is still tied to Samaria, her controversy with the Jews, the temple, and the Lord tells her, 'woman, I am speaking to you of something very qualitatively different.'

The other thing that I also see here is that the spiritual Christian religion, the true religion of the spirit, is a life of grace and not of condemnation. The formal religious life is a life of condemnation and not of grace. and that is why the Apostle Paul says, '...now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...”

Why? Look, this woman is still in that place, some say why did she choose that time at noon? She is a sinful woman, and she is under the condemnation of God. Her sin is within her. She charges it every day. Her sensuality, her morally disordered life, and she is isolated from other women, she cannot feel the grace of God, she is tied up, she is isolated, she is alone, because that is what religious life is.

Religious life cannot give you a sense of reconciliation with the eternal. You always have to be living on substitutes and symbols that give you a sense of connection to the eternal for a moment. But when you have Christ in your heart you know that you have been forgiven. You have freedom.

In the Chapter on Hebrews, I don't have time to read it, it talks about that we approach confidently the throne of grace opened by Christ through his cross. The Christian life is a life of blessing and peace with God, reconciliation with the Father. While religious life is a life of condemnation: don't do, don't touch, don't drink, don't do, don't go, don't eat, don't dress, don't do this, don't do that. It is a life of waiting any moment that lightning is going to strike you from above because God got up in a bad mood today and you offended him.

Whereas in the Christian life, the spiritual life is a life of joy. They called Christ an eater and a drinker because he liked to be in places where there was celebration, where there was peace, and they accused him that his disciples ate and did not fast, and that they gathered ears on Saturday, and they accused him of healing on the Sabbath and all these things, because formal religion is a religion of condemnation. It cannot give you true rest, true peace with God. This can only be done when Christ enters your heart and you know that you are a daughter, a son of God and that your life does not depend on what you do, although what you do is important, but that God loves you because Christ died for you on the cross. It is related to you through Christ Jesus and you have access to the Father, you have the freedom of a child who can enter his father's office even though his father is a great statesman and your father is received because you are a son of God.

Two more things, the formal religious life is a life of ties, it cannot give you freedom because the devil will always have ways of keeping you tied. There is no hope of your being released. This woman is tied to a sensual life, she is tied to a lifestyle that has her in chains and Christ says, 'Look, I can free you from that, I can give you rest from your bondage.'

And that's why he confronts her to perform an exorcism. It says 'you have 5 husbands you've had', because before being free we have to be clean, we have to be confronted, we have to bring things to light through an encounter with Christ. And when you have Christ in your heart, that is where I believe the time of true liberation in your life can begin. Never be ashamed to bring to the Lord all that is within you. Never be ashamed to ever tell him your most intimate, deep and terrifying sins. He already knows them anyway and he is not scandalized by anything. What he wants is to take that and lift it up and make it fly and transform it into a white dove that blesses your life and that you can then find rest.

And if you are struggling, the Lord says, I am going to give you victory, keep fighting because victory will be yours. Never live in slavery. The child of God cannot live in slavery. Any ties that you have mentally, emotionally, whatever, bring it over and over again to the Father until the Father answers with a total liberation. No matter what your bondage is: depression, fear, inner conflicts, inferiority complexes, past hurts, whatever, the Lord is powerful to set you free.

This woman could not be free because of religion. She was living a schizophrenic, divided, compartmentalized life and Christ unifies her and then sets her free to go and serve the Lord and bring others to the knowledge of Christ.

And finally, religious life is a dead religion, versus a living person. Religious life is made up of a belief system, an external apparatus, a theology, a theological apparatus, a number of teachings, rituals, men, buildings, constitutions, declarations, as Judaism was with all its decrees and closely guarded things.

Christ tells him, look, you have to know me, note that the climax of this encounter is when Christ says, 'I am the one who speaks with you.' He has been taking this woman to that point of showing himself to her as the Son of God. When she has an encounter with him, then she is free to go and look for her companions and bring them to meet Jesus, because when you meet a living being, like Christ, then you truly have spiritual life.

Then you are free for a life of service, a life of blessing, a life of fruit, not an anonymous life, to fight your demons within and them with a bare fist. You're always going to lose. But when Christ enters your life, then you have an advocate, a helper within you, a paraclete who helps you in all your struggles and leaves you free to be a blessing to others.

Religious life, spiritual life. All this illustrated by Jesu s' encounter with this Samaritan woman. What is the life you are truly living? If you focus your life right now, your life let's call it spiritual, where do you fit your best? In these two systems, let's say, that I'm clumsily trying to elaborate, where is your life, more or less? Where would you be located? I cannot say all the things in fine detail because this does not lend itself to that, otherwise I am trying to outline a zone and in which of those two zones do you think you fit right now, in which of these two descriptions do you find yourself.

Sometimes we throw a lot of stones at Catholics, but we evangelicals can be more religious than the Catholics themselves, let me tell you, and evangelical religiosity is more treacherous than Catholic, because we think that we already we transcended but we fall again again. So we can do Pentecostal spirituality too, we can fall into the same religious robotics and we believe that we are still further away and we are still involved in the same thing. It is a very treacherous thing. But in this description, what path are you on, what religiosity, what spirituality are you heading towards in your life.

The Lord wants water that springs for eternal life, relationship, temples that we inhabit and inhabit us, personal relationship with a living being, loving, harmonious, reconciling look, power to break ties and chains, effectiveness to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus, comfort, healing and freshness in the desert. Not having to go to intermediaries, although it's good from time to time, but you have your own water and load it, and even though you're in the desert, you open your little basket and refresh yourself and you can continue because the water is inside you. You don't have to go to the church to have the rubber pumped again, which begins to deflate the moment you pass through the door of the church atrium, until you return there again, like those cars without air, the goma circling the church so that once again they fill you with one more sermon in praise time.

That's not the life God wants for you. God wants an internal, fluid, organic, continuous life, that is the life that God wants. If you are not living that life, the Lord tells you, today, ask me to give you water and I will give it to you, brothers. God is telling the people of God, I want water for you, the water of my Son, living water.

How many would like to have that water this morning? Amen. Glory to the Lord. Forgive me if I have extended too much but this is God's word that must be completed. And there is much more still for us in that text.

Brother, I invite you to a life of interiors, a life of interior freshness, a life of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within you. Right now, there in your heart say, I renounce the religious life, I renounce the external life merely, and embrace the life of the spirit. Teach me God how to live that life of the spirit in the name of Jesus, I invite you to open your eyes to a life that God wants you to live. Perhaps you already accepted the Lord but that is simply a beginning, that established a starting point but there is an area, an area, an area that God wants you to continually open doors, deeper compartments of fullness, anointing, vision, of understanding. The Christian life is a life of continuous growth, we have impoverished it so much by making people believe that by sitting on an evangelical bench they will have contact with God. It's terrible, terrible robbery and people are fooled because they want to be fooled, because they don't want to realize their poverty and let God break them and break them. They are afraid.

I was talking to a person recently, he needs God, he is in church, he has accepted Christ but he is afraid to jump into the water, because he is afraid of what might happen to him and it is difficult you have to die, you have to break. God wants us to break the outer shell of religion, to be passionate, to have laughter, to cry, to sweat, to have tears, for the internal to communicate with the external, for there to be rapport with the sacred, the everyday. , time, eternity, the divine, the human, the banal, and the sublime. All these things united in a single substance, that is the life of the spirit. There are no differences. Everything is one thing. Everything in him is yes and amen, says the Lord.

Brother, I invite you in the name of Jesus. Embrace the life of the spirit this afternoon, tell the Lord, enter the Holy Spirit, enter and send your anointing to every pore of my skin, every segment of my being, send your ointment and take the hardened leather and make it breathe again and acquire flexibility, Holy Spirit. We need you, Lord. We want that life of the spirit for us, life that refreshes, life that jumps to eternal life.

I want to invite, if there is anyone this afternoon who has not met that Jesus. Think that you are like the Samaritan woman and you have not even met Christ yet. You have not given your life to him, the Lord would like you to say this afternoon, you know what? Today I found the Messiah and you go to your classmates and your relatives and say, you know what? I found the Messiah, come, let's see him. Amen.

I want to invite those who have not yet received Christ in their heart to raise their hand because I want to pray, I would like to pray for you this afternoon and place you in the hand of the Lord of Lords and King of Kings . Will there be someone who has not yet given their life to Jesus Christ and wants to do so this afternoon? We open a moment to pray for you. Will there be someone who wants to raise their hand and say to the Lord, Lord, I want to enter that dimension?

We open a moment here. God bless you sister, glory to the Lord. Someone else? A hand there going up too, that young lady. Glory to the Lord. Someone else? We'll see. There are others like the Samaritan woman. You are like the Samaritan, I am like the Samaritan. We need to have an encounter with the Messiah and we have to go and then tell others.

Will there be anyone else? Let's see, someone else who surrenders Jesus Christ this afternoon, wants to surrender their life to the Lord. Yes, we already recognized her. Come over here, brother, I'd like to pray, someone to come and accompany those people. Join him here now and let's pray for them. Come here and we want to initiate you into an internal life, an organic life, a fluid life.

Young man, God has great things for you and God is going to bless you and God is going to give you what you need and what you are looking for, you can do it this afternoon, you are going to receive something. God is going to touch you. Thank you Lord Jesus.

Will there be anyone else yet? If there is someone else who wants to give their life to the Messiah who is Christ Jesus and live a life uuuf, an atomic life in the spirit, come here. Do not worry if everything is not clear in your mind, there are some doubts, what Christ wants is for you to come, where you are and have an initial encounter with him, he will clear the way for you later. He will tell you what lies ahead. Don't worry, now it's just taking that first step of faith, that first step of faith. Hallelujah!

Anyone else still want to come here so we can pray for you? Come forth and surrender your life to the Lord. If there is someone who is still struggling, I feel like there are maybe one or two other people who are still struggling and are wondering, I don't know, do I or don't I? This is the time, it can still be done. Come over here and we'll settle this once and for all.

Glory to God. Amen. Amen. Come through here, brothers, we bless you in the name of the Lord. The young woman, how good it is to see young people who come to the feet of the Lord. They have a whole life ahead of them and God is going to bless them greatly. Hallelujah! You have a vital encounter with Christ Jesus this afternoon. Amen. Amen. Glory to the Lord. Glory to the Lord.

Brothers, say with me, you who are there who have received the Lord this afternoon, repeat with me: Lord Jesus Christ, ..... as my God and as my savior. I recognize that in you I have forgiveness of my sins and eternal life. Come into my spirit and sit with me and live life with me. Forgive my sins and wash me and seal me.

And now also say the following, I want the Lord to tell me more and more every day to invite people to receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is Christ, but humanly speaking it is something else Also, although they are the same thing, the Holy Spirit also wants to enter to be a source of power in your life and to allow you to walk the Christian life with more energy and more effectiveness.

God wants you to walk the Christian life with power and effectiveness and with the capacity to deal with anything that might come your way, whether it's crises or difficulties or attacks from the enemy of your life, that you can fight back and you can live a victorious Christian life. And so you want to receive the Holy Spirit as well and you want to ask the Holy Spirit to come into you and to walk with you because that's what the Christian life is all about, it's life in the spirit, life with the spirit of God running and jumping and moving inside of you for victory and for life.

Therefore, I want you to invite the Holy Spirit also to enter and say with me: Holy Spirit I invite you to enter my life. Fill me and baptize me and immerse me in you. Tell the Lord, immerse me in you, enter me in you and enter me and fill me until my life overflows.

Imagine that the waters of the river of God are entering your heart right now and washing you inside and invite the Holy Spirit. I invite you to open your mouth and I know that what I am going to ask of you is difficult, but invite the Holy Spirit to enter. Say Holy Spirit enter my life, and say, I receive you, and say, thank you for coming in. Say so and praise the Lord.

Tell him, thank you, Father. Now praise the Lord. Praise him, don't be ashamed. Tell him, thank you Lord, thank you for being with me. Well stay, very soft, because if you are going to enter now into the life of the spirit you have to start talking, moving, acting, taking risks, acting in the spirit. You already have it, the spirit has entered your life because Christ says that if you invite me I will enter. And if you ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, he will give it to you, and if you have asked him, he has given it to you. The Holy Spirit is within you.

The Holy Spirit is inside of you and he will walk with you every step of the way. Know that you have the spirit of God in you.

The Holy Spirit is with your baby, the spirit is with you and it will walk with you all your life. Believe it and know that you have it within you, you do not have to come to church, although it is good that you come, but the Holy Spirit is going to be with you all the days of your life, from now on. Talk to him and ask him what you need, talk to him and he will give it to you.

Thank you Lord. We bless these lives, we seal them with the Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit.