Don't stay in formal religion

I want to share with you a passage of Scripture. Last Sunday, in fact, we had Pastor Gilberto Sámano, do you remember? That he spoke to us about the life of the Holy Spirit and we are, we continue with that. he talked about why the Holy Spirit is important and certain areas in which it is important. And as we told you, look, I don't know, the Lord keeps us on this issue and other issues have come up, of course, but I want to continue as, I feel from the Lord that we have to seal this church with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit , we have to seal each one of our brothers. I am speaking to you, and you, and you, and me about the importance of living in the spirit, of living a life filled with the Holy Spirit. I want to speak to you, brother, that the Christian life is a life filled with the Holy Spirit.

I told them I don't know if I even told them that I was invited to speak at Gordon College, a school that I appreciate so much and that I love that Christian university and they invited me to speak about the life filled with the Holy Spirit because there is restlessness in the people of God, there is a need in the people of God, we are aware that we cannot live without the filling of the Holy Spirit, without the power of God.

And I want to encourage my brothers to change programs and realize more and more. I have to continually refresh myself with that teaching and with that practice. So I ask you in the name of Jesus this message is for you, for each one of you and we will continue speaking.

When I was preaching at the Barbara Anne Rossler church there in Puerto Rico, I had to summarize what I have been preaching here in these weeks and months and then I configured these preachings on the baptism of the Holy Spirit in a different way. Holy Spirit because it was much less time than I had and God gave me new material and I feel it is good that I share it with you to continue equipping it. I want each one of us to ask ourselves, am I sure that I am filled with the Holy Spirit, that I am baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that I live in intimacy with the Holy Spirit. And if not, let's keep looking, we're going to be praying for you, we're going to be laying hands on you, we're going to be doing everything we can to enter that dimension of the life of the spirit.

But today I want to talk to you specifically about the difference between merely formal and external religion and the religion of the spirit. The sterile, formalistic religion, and the religion of the spirit, what characterizes each of these two religions or these spiritualities? It is possible to be a very religious and God-fearing person but live in a sterile, self-righteous, or just superficial way, and not have that direct communication with the spirit of God. And on the other hand, it is possible to live a vital, refreshing, living life that reflects that relationship with God, with the spirit of God. What are the differences and what does the Bible tell us about it, and how can we enter into that dimension of life?

So pay close attention because I know that this is going to be very useful for you. And I see these truths that I am going to speak reflected in a passage found in John, Chapter 4, a well-known passage, it is the passage where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. How many have heard that passage before or read it? Lots of people, right? Ok, let me refresh your memory, I'm going to just skip a few verses and then we'll continue.

Verse 7, John 4, says, "... A woman came from Samaria.... -great, we have there on the screen-...... A woman came from Samaria to draw water – by the way, before continuing. This morning I was driving to church and I saw a man standing at the bus station or standing at a bus stop on Broadway Street in Summerville. This man was in his mid-thirties, an African American male, he looked African American, very dapper dressed in his manly suit, and he had a tremendous brown Bible in his hand. And wow, that was a blessing for me, because I say how nice that this man is so manly, so elegant, but he walks with his Bible in his hand giving testimony in public. Everyone who passed by on Broadway, which is a street with a lot of traffic, could see these men while they waited, because obviously they were going to church. I was giving a message with that. How nice is it for us to bring our Bible to church, right?

So when I saw up here, that's nice to have, but that's no substitute for us to bring our Bible. Amen. Bring your Bible to the house of the Lord. A soldier does not go to war without his weapon, we our weapon is the Scripture, if we go to church, bring your Bible because you are going to enter into dialogue in some way, if your church preaches, it is also having the Bible in hand, bringing it to church is like something symbolic, it's like I am a man, a woman of the word and when I go to the synagogue, I want to take my word, I want to take my Bible with me. That's nice because it reflects that intimacy. Have your Bible, the man of God, the woman of God is a person of Scripture, the Bible cannot be missing in our daily lives. So I encourage you, that's free, that sermon that's free.

John 4:7, “...A woman from Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink,' for his disciples had gone into the city to buy food.. ..”

Let's skip then, well the woman asks him “... How can you, being a Jew, ask me to drink that I am a Samaritan woman?... -Because Jews and Samaritans did not get along among themselves.- ..... Responding Jesus said to him, 'If you knew the gift of God and who it is that tells you, give me a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water'....” < /p>

In other words, the one in front of you is so powerful that instead of him asking you, you have to ask him for living water that is different.

“... And the woman said to him, 'Lord, you don't have anything to take her out with'.... – she is still understanding Jesus' words purely literally,- .... you don't have with What to draw and the well is deep, where do you have the living water from? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well from which he, his sons, and his cattle drank?' Jesus answered and said to him ' whoever drinks from this water... -that is, from the physical water from the well-... will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never thirst, but the water that I I will give him or her a fountain of water springing up into eternal life...'

The Lord continues to establish this contrast between physical water and the spiritual water that he gives.

Then the woman tells him, the woman was not stupid, she says "... Lord, give me that water so that I don't be thirsty or come here to draw it'... – she is still thinking that he has a special medicine, a rare water there that will quench her thirst, she still does not spiritually understand what he is talking about. - ... Jesus told her 'go, call your husband and come here', and the woman answered and said, 'I have no husband', Jesus told her 'you said well, I have no husband, because you have had 5 husbands – wow, this woman was a veteran. How many know Yaya Gabor who had, like, I don't know how many marriages. That will tell you how old I am here on earth, Elizabeth Taylor too, certainly.

“....because you have had 5 husbands and the one you have now is not your husband, you said this with truth...”

This woman lived a life a little loose, free, immoral. “... The woman told him, 'Sir, it seems to me that you are a prophet...'

Thank God she didn't try to hide. How many of us when they point out our things to us try to hide our sins and we get offended and we get half surly. She lowered her head, acknowledging that he was right.

“.....it seems to me that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you say that Jerusalem is the place to worship... – remember that she is a Samaritan and she is talking about the Jews - .... and you say that it is in Jerusalem where one should worship ......”

The Samaritans believed that the true capital of the Judaic religion was on their land. The Jews said, no, it's in Jerusalem and there was controversy between the two of them.

“... then Jesus said to her, 'woman, believe me that the now is coming when neither on this mountain -Samaria- nor in Jerusalem will you adore the Father. You adore what you do not know because we adore what we know,... –that is, the Jews-.....because salvation comes from the Jews, but the hour 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 told him, "I know that the Messiah called Christ is coming, when he comes he declares all things to us." Jesus said to him, 'I am the one who speaks to you'..."

Glory to the Lord. We are going to leave it there, few times, by the way, did the Lord reveal himself so clearly to a person, very few times was he so open in his ministry to tell him, 'I am the Messiah, the one who is speaking with you', very nice that passage.

Now let me restate the point I made at the beginning. What is the difference between a formal, cold and ineffective religion and a vital, powerful, transformative religion, full of life? Which of these two religions would you like? How many would like to have the first religion, the cold, the formal and the ineffective? Raise your hand. I have a good psychiatrist that I can recommend right away.

How many would like to have that vital, powerful and transforming religion? Amen. That is what we have to be looking for. I am going to help you by giving you a little map of what the differences are between those two.

To understand life in the spirit, you must first understand the opposite, the merely formal, religious life. I am going to summarize the difference in a couple of words only. The difference can be summed up in the contrast between the external and the internal. Formal, cold, ineffective religion is oriented outward, toward the external.

While powerful, transformative, vital religion has an inward projection, it is from within. This is a simplification but I think it applies a lot.

Another thing, ineffective religion tends to be mechanical, robotic, square, clumsy in its movements and in its teachings and in its decisions, mechanical. That is to say, it is something rather, it has no life. While the religion of the spirit tends to be an organic religion, like the body. It is the difference between a robot and human body. A robot moves with clumsy movements because it is made by men while the human body is totally fluid, it moves, the fingers have joints, the wrist joins the forearm with the hand and everything is glued perfectly and everything flows. There is life. There is no part, you don't see the seams between one piece and another but everything is perfectly united and connected in an organic way.

That is what I want to look at here in this passage, because I see all of this here in this passage and in a couple of other passages that I don't know if I will have time, later on. So, the religious is oriented outward, the spiritual resides within. The religious is robotic, rigid, square. The spiritual is organic, fluid, rounded.

When the New Testament talks about life in the spirit, you know that the Apostle Paul speaks many times about life in the spirit; he is speaking, remember, to Jews above all, and to people from the Greco-Roman religions that only knew an external religion, outwards. Everything was oriented towards the temples, towards the things outside, the rituals, all these kinds of things. And so they needed teaching that Christianity was something different. Christianity represented a different way for men to relate to God.

Look at the difference, for example, between what Judaism was like, so you can see the contrast with Christianity. In Judaism you had to go to the temple to meet God, one had to take his sacrifices and once a year take him to the temple and that was where the presence of God was supposed to reside, in that most holy place. It was something outside, you had to go to that external place to meet God.

Secondly, you had to perform external rites, you had to kill lambs, you had to light candles, you had to enter special places and it consisted of a number of rites, the yeast that you had to look for in the pantries and all this was ritual. If you look at the religions that don't have a vital relationship with God, they depend a lot on rituals, on external appearances, on external things to remind people that God is in that place, and if they're not full of apparatus and things, people will it feels like they are not communing with God.

While the person who has the vitality of the Holy Spirit can have an encounter with God anywhere, wherever he feels the presence of God, even in a traffic jam at five in the afternoon on Route 93, there he can feel the presence of God.

Third, the external Judaic religion depended on human intermediaries. That high priest was needed to lead the people, who once a year would enter the most holy place to offer for the sins of the people. The priest did everything. People simply brought their little things and deposited them with the priest so that he would take care of being in the presence.

Remember what the Jews said to Moses when the presence of God was on the mountain and there was thunder and lightning and everything, they told Moses, don't order us to go there, go and represent us to us, we are going to stay here, and that lightning strikes you, but we are going to be here calmly and we are going to see what happens. Good luck, Moses.

There was a disconnect between God and the people. The intermediaries were... and how many times do you see that in religions that are not like Christianity there are a series of specialists who are the ones who connect people with God. But in the Gospel you are supposed to have your direct connection with God. Amen. You don't need me to have a dialogue with God, brothers.

I believe that maturity, the more mature one becomes in faith, one is more capable of procuring his own food. Now, that's not to say that we don't come together because there is something special when God's people come together and we share this precious fellowship. We are not lone rangers either. But you are supposed to have a direct relationship with the Father. Amen.

The Holy Spirit is within you. You can go directly, it says, '...let us approach confidently before the throne of grace by that new and living way that Christ opened through his death...'

That is, the spiritual life Alive does not depend on a man, or a group of deacons, or anyone. You directly feel that confidence and security to go before the Father, and you know how to look for what you need. Amen. You know how to seek in the name of Jesus your healing. You know how to look for when a demon wants to harm your family or your life, how to head him off in the name of Jesus because you have a direct relationship with God, you know the word of God, you are intimate with God.

Whereas religion is religious, it's all about intermediaries and people and relationships and programs, and all of this, instead of just a straight cable that connects you directly to the throne of God continuously.

Another thing as well, number four, God was seen as being outside and not inside the individual. I have already pointed out that but it is very important that I isolate that. In the Gospel God says that he will dwell within us. The Lord Jesus Christ told his disciples, look, it is convenient for me to go, because before I was with you, but now I am going to be in you. The Holy Spirit will be in you. The Lord says in Revelation, 'I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.' Glory to the Lord.

You know you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner with Jesus Christ every day. You can have a feast with Christ every day because he is inside of you and he has said I want to be intimate with you. A dinner is the most intimate thing that one can have with a person, and especially within one. The Christian life is no longer about going to meet God in church. Forget that. God is with you, you come with God to church and you are a temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells within you.

Guess what? Last Sunday that occurred to me, that Christian worship is a worship where many small temples come to a big temple to meet and worship God from his spiritual temple. Here right now there are hundreds of little temples adoring the Lord from his temple, from what you are. The Holy Spirit is living with you and all of us make a great mystical spiritual temple within this physical temple. Praise the Lord for his unfathomable wisdom.

So, God is not outside but is inside of us. And finally, religious, formal religion is a religion of laws, of commandments, of things that have to be done outside, all the time you have to be appeasing that insatiable God and offering sacrifices and things and making promises and lighting candles and giving money for this, and turning the saint upside down to do something. It's continually this question of manipulating, of external laws, like the Pharisees. Lots of things they had to do to make sure God was happy with them.

Whereas in Christianity it is not so. In Christianity there is a personal relationship with God. God writes his law within your heart, says his word, within your heart and dwells there.

So all of this is illustrated here in this passage of Jesus with the Samaritan woman. We see in the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman a contrast between that Old Testament religion, the Samaritan woman is still in the Old Testament. She is a character that still lives in the Old Testament.

His characters are Jacob, and the fathers of Judaism, because the Samaritans were a mixture of Jews and pagans. It was a tremendous mix in their religion, but they recognized many of the things of Judaism. So this woman is still planting her foot in external religion, institutional religion, and Christ wants to bring her into what he stands for: a new covenant, a new way of seeing God, a new way of relating to God.

And by the way, let me tell you this, brethren, when I talk about formal religion, external institutional religion, I am not referring to a denomination. He knows that it is possible to be Pentecostal and charismatic and live in the formal, external religious religion. We Pentecostals and charismatics love to throw stones at evangelicals who are not Pentecostals and charismatics, and we say, they are religious, they do not have the Holy Spirit, they do not know how to worship, this and that.

But look, let me tell you, it is possible to be a charismatic Pentecostal and not have experience with the true power of life in the spirit. The charismatic Pentecostal religion can be as religious and as sterile as the religion that does not have the Holy Spirit, I tell you, from experience and from what I have observed.

In the same way, one can in many occasions not necessarily move in a charismatic Pentecostal denomination and be filled with the Holy Spirit and live a life of relationship with God. I see many people in charismatic Pentecostal churches who believe they have but do not have and we all need to look for more of that, we have to continually question ourselves. Do I live that life filled with the Holy Spirit? Do I live that vitality-filled life with God?

Look, how this dialogue takes place, I'm already entering the second half of all this that I want to cover in a little while. Look how that dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman takes place and what it reveals.

We see this contrast between the old system and the new system. The Lord begins by using an image that is very close to her, water. She has come from her village to fetch water from this central well where the entire region was supplied with water. Then the Lord takes advantage of that image of water to engage in a dialogue with it. Water represents life, yes or no? There can be no life without water. Water is the most important element for there to be life and it is an element that symbolizes vitality, refreshment, health, life, all these things are symbolized in water.

And the Lord watches this woman while he waits for his disciples to return because they went to buy food at the supermarket in the city and it was a long walk. While he is there, I imagine the Lord sitting somewhere over there looking like this, this woman arrives with her can and in this case it was a jar, and he is watching her and she picks up and pours in the water with a lot of effort, I imagine who tied the container and then lowers it and has to pull that heavy container with water, and the Lord is looking at her and prophetically he knows her life, he knows the drama behind this woman, he knows her life and miracles, all her things.

And he says, look here a candidate for me to teach her who I am and heal her. The Lord wants to have a relationship with us. It doesn't matter what our condition is. Then he approaches her and says, 'woman give me a drink'. And she is surprised because he is a Jew and he is an obviously educated man, and she says, 'How can you, being a Jew, ask me? She is surprised. and then the Lord tells her, 'look woman, if you overcome who it is that tells you, give me a drink, you would ask him and he would give you water that is different from that water.'

The water in the well was static water, it was there dead, and one put a can in and drew water from it. the Lord wanted to give him another type of water, a living water, a water that ran from within. She had to come to that well to draw the water. Like people who are in religion even if they are evangelical many times they have to go to church to get a shot of religion to feel like they are close to God but as soon as they walk out the door, they start to deflate again and dry up. Sunday is already dragging along with great difficulty so that the pastor fills it with spirituality again. And that's how life goes by: external water. We have to go to the well to fetch water.

And Christ says, 'look, I want you to live with the water running inside you.' God wants you, brother, to live in a relationship with Jesus, that he can give you the water that you need. Religion can only give us satisfaction for a little while while the pastor is giving the handle and passing by the little monkeys and things, then one is entertained, hypnotized and one feels evangelical. But later, when the show passed, we kind of deflated again. There is no power.

And Christ wants his person, the Holy Spirit, that by having a relationship with him, by praying, by continually seeking his face, by having a vital life, that water is continually running within us. It is not the external water of religion, of the church, but the internal water of an intimate life with God. So internal water is what God wants for us, not external water.

Number two, external water has only temporary effects. When you drink water after a while you are thirsty again, and the Lord says, 'look, I want to give you something that will satisfy you.'

I believe that the person who has had an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and with vital life, even though he passes through valleys of the shadow of death as the Bible says, he feels that God is with him or her. There is an intimacy that one feels continuously. There may be on the surface of your life there may be difficult times because there are, why lie. There may be difficulties, but one kind of knows in the depths of his being, I am a child of God, God is working in my life. God is with me, God is going to take me forward and you continue your Christian life and you know that the Lord is with you. And that gives you a peace that does not allow you to collapse, that does not allow you to give in to anxiety or chronic depression, that does not allow you to walk like a sheep without a shepherd, disoriented and neurotic.

The Christian suffers but the suffering of the Christian who has an experience with Christ is a different suffering. It is not the heartbreaking and destructive and deforming and debilitating suffering of the person who does not have Christ. That person has a stream of water that runs secretly and softens his sufferings. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, says the word, but the Lord will bring them out of all.

Now, we suffer and suffer but we do not suffer like those who do not have Christ. We have that refreshing water that continually runs within us. It is not that being dry one time and happy another time. No, we are like the camel, we have a totuma there with a lot of water that continually refreshes us in the middle of the desert. There is a difference in that, isn't there?

Then religion just fills people up for a while and then they live separate, neurotic lives and have to come back again to be healed and the pastor to lay hands on them and then feel the spirit of God again. No, the Christian is continuously healed and ministered by that water that does not allow us to feel dry.

Thirdly, this woman's drawing water requires tremendous effort. Imagine walking maybe miles to get to this well and draw water and put it on your head and go back to your village. What a great job, and to do that several times a week for sure, if not every day. A lot of effort.

And Christ says, 'look,' he is speaking symbolically in the spirit, 'the water that I want to give you is a water that is going to flow from you.'

You're going to go like we do today to the kitchen and boom, you open the tap and there's the water. How good it is when you open your refrigerator and you can put the glass in that little tube and take cold water, fresh water, filtered water. Today we take that for granted, but it was not so at that time.

So, Christ says, 'Look, I want to put the water into your life and not require so much effort to get it out.'

I think that's one of the problems with religious life, how much work it takes for people to feel the presence of God. And how rare is it? And many times one has to do so many things to feel the presence of the Lord.

Judaism was full of little things that had to be done, and this and that. And religion without Christ, without the power of Christ is like that, there are still Christian spiritualities that are full of effort and work and people do not receive from God what they need because they do not know how to communicate with God and they have to be continuously... ..

How many Christians are there, for example, who have so many commandments and so many things? That is why I say, there are religious groups that dress, and size, and I am not saying that this is not important, but it can also be greatly exaggerated, on one side or the other. But what about the length of the neck, and if she wears an earring, and how high the bow can be or not, and if we dye our hair, if we wear a beard, and all these things. Work, effort.

While the person who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, vital, knows that spiritual life does not depend on those things, because we are in a different relationship with a God who now relates to us as a father relates to a son. It does not mean that there are not moments of tension between the father and the son. It does not mean that the father does not have commandments with his son, but there is a relationship of trust. If the son's car keys are lost, he doesn't stay out on the street sleeping that day because he doesn't dare tell his dad. No, he goes to his dad and says, look, I lost my keys. And the father may give him a little lecture but he gets an answer and everything is settled. There is not that question of sterility. There is a naturalness to the Christian life that you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which is so important in that sense.

Another thing too, the spiritual life, filled with the Holy Spirit, is very different in this sense that the religious life is a life of enmities and controversies, while the Christian spiritual life is a life of grace and of mercy towards others.

Let me explain a little more. Look at the world right now how many religious struggles there are in the world. In Islam right now there is so much fighting between Shias and Sunnis, they are killing each other all the time. And now let's bring that to Christianity. In the 16th and 17th century, some of the most terrible Christian wars you can imagine took place in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Christian people died killing each other. Because? Because it was an external religiosity. There was no religion of the Holy Spirit, it was a religion of denominations, of beliefs, of doctrines. Unfortunately, when the Protestant Reformation came, there was also a tremendous religious conflict of doctrines and people killed each other because of it. Because Christianity must be about doctrine, it must be about personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The doctrine comes after the encounter with God, always remember that. And there are many Christian people who believe that doctrine, teaching, all that comes first, and then the encounter with God. people must be facilitated in an encounter with the Holy Spirit and when they are healed with the Holy Spirit then they must be taught how to relate to God and the Holy Spirit. We are continually putting the cart before the horse and what we are creating many times in the churches are people with a huge head, full of doctrine and theology and religious teaching, but with little experience of the presence of God. and for this reason, they are continually throwing stones at each other.

This woman says to Jesus, 'Lord, we say that this is where God should be worshiped and you say that it is there in Jerusalem.' The Lord tells him, 'look, apart from all that, the day is coming when the true ones will adore the Father in spirit and in truth, it will not be a question of a temple, another here, but a mountain there, to go there to do a promise. No, the presence of God is going to be in the spirit within you.'

You see, when a Christian has that sense of the presence of God, he has tremendous discernment and gives grace to others. . Look at the struggle, for example, I want to talk about the evangelicals too, the Christians, thousands and thousands of Catholics and Protestants have been killed in Ireland, terrible armed struggles. Because? Because there is no true discernment of the life of the spirit. It is religious life, it is a life of doctrine, people who have not had a direct encounter with the spirit of God and that is why they kill each other, because the person who has an experience with the Christ of love and mercy, with the Christ alive will never kill, will never oppress, will never exploit another. That I can say with confidence.

In this country, why were blacks enslaved, why were there so many years of slavery and oppression against human beings. Because it was a cultural religion, a religion where people were not preached the word of God, a simply religious religion, worth the redundancy. Where there is an understanding of the person of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, I never see that a person can be enslaved or oppressed or killed or tortured as the inquisition did in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Spain, because there is no understanding of the word of God, there is no understanding of the Holy Spirit.

That is why, brothers, we have to continually renew our understanding of the spirit of God so that we are not throwing stones at others because they do not do the same things that we do, because they do not practice things exactly as we do them. .

The son of God is a person full of grace, he is known for his sympathy, for his benevolent smile, for his reconciling character, for his love for others, not for simply being, you are this, you are the other, I am this, I am the other. I can quickly tell when a person has the life of the spirit by that benevolent attitude, that merciful attitude, that reconciling attitude in his heart. The person who has the spirit of Christ has that same benevolent spirit, he is not continually establishing differences. There is an aridity in sterile religion that is quickly identified and we have to look for that breath of God's love in our lives. If we do not have the fruit of the Holy Spirit we are well, well lost.

The spiritual Christian life is a life of reconciliation and love and forgiveness, and mercy, although it also has its aspect of justice and holiness. I don't know if I'm explaining myself. They can say amen, are they still there? Or they all fell asleep.

I'm closing now, brothers. This is important. What I'm trying to do is help them and myself to identify where I am, the reference points of my life.

Another thing also, spiritual religion and external religion, sterile religion, in sterile religion there are continuous ties in the life of the person. External religion has no power to liberate man from his ties, that's why he needs to be constantly going to be forgiven and he is constantly with rituals and things because he feels dirty, he feels tied.

How many people are tied up in evangelical churches? How many people who have a lot of things that we can't break, we are neurotic, tied up, we are with ties of all kinds and we have them and we say, well, I'm going to die like this because I can't break this, I can't break that.

Brothers, I believe that in the vital religion of Christ Jesus there is power to break anything that is binding you, be it depression, anxiety, resentment, low self-esteem, past wounds, dependence on some drug or alcohol or pornography or whatever, the Lord Jesus Christ came to break the bonds of death. And if we live tied to these things then we are wasting the water of life that can break these things. Do not submit to anything, as the Apostle Paul says, I will not submit to anything except Jesus Christ.

But don't let anything enslave you or keep you bound in your mind. Anything that contradicts the peace of God and the purpose of God in your life, designated, name it and tell him, I am going to cut off your head even if it is within a year or two years, or whatever, but I am going that address. Because the Christian life is a life of continuous restoration, continuous transformation, continuous renewal. We are renewing ourselves day by day, says the word of the Lord, looking face to face at the face of the Lord we are becoming more and more like him every day.

So, as long as you are growing, you are progressing, the devil's grip is loosening in your life, there is progress, there is growth, you can say, I am where I belong. Because many times the transformation does not happen overnight, but we have to go towards it.

Many Christians are skidding in the same quagmire all their lives without progressing an inch. The son of God has to continually go forward if he is in the life of the spirit.

How do I see here? This woman was tied, her religion could not untie her from her immoral life, 5 men before with whom she had lived and now the sixth, who was not even her husband. A bound woman. Some say that's why she came at that time of day to be alone because the other women might not want to deal with her. The Lord always had mercy on those people and that is why he tells them, 'Look, I have water that will cleanse you, it will heal you, it will break those bonds'.

The Bible says that the anointing rots the yoke, says the word of the Lord. That rotting water, that rope that is tying you up and brings liberation to your life. Seek liberation in your life, no matter what area of your life you have, if Christ is with you you can break all ties in all these things, says the Apostle Paul, we are more than victorious. Amen.

Brothers, let this serve to instruct you and me. Let's not settle for saying, oh, I go to a Pentecostal church, but is the Holy Spirit within you? That is the question rather, is the Holy Spirit jumping into you? There is life of the spirit, there is joy, there is discernment of God's will in your life, there are good relationships between you and others, there is evidence of the sense that God is with me and that I have a relationship with him, there is a sense of independence from men and from the church and from pastors Because you know that you have a personal relationship with Christ and that wherever you are, he is there to solve your needs and your problems. That is the life of the spirit to which I want to call you this morning. Amen.

Receive it in the name of Jesus. Say, Lord, I want that for my life. I want to live in the life of the spirit, Lord. And hopefully this church will always be a church where the presence of the Holy Spirit is felt, where many people who are warm in spirit are here. That this is not a church where the program prevails, where formality prevails. We have to break that, brethren, in the name of the Lord, and we have to let the spirit breathe into our lives.

You see, we have to stop... I understand that more and more and I ask the Lord to help me more and more to be more and more free in spirit. Yesterday I was officiating at a wedding in North Boston, very well educated people, very proper, a very formal church and when we were going to start I felt tense. And you know how weddings are sometimes that people are like a little tense if everything is going to go well and God moved me to do something that I have never done before in my life.

Imagine an environment like this very formal, and I said, Can I hear a praise the Lord. And people stayed like that for the moment. That was before the ceremony began because I felt like the spirit was breaking the tension that existed and then the people kind of woke up and praised the Lord. And they woke up a little bit.

So I said, look, a wedding is a time to rejoice and celebrate. It's just that sometimes we have to break the cold. You know when you put a bottle of something in the freezer, after a while there is like a little layer that gets on top, that everything is starting to freeze, but that little layer prevents upward movement and that sometimes happens with religion .

Religion if you don't take care of yourself, people come to church Sunday after Sunday and it's the formal, the program, always the same. We sit in the same place, we worship in the same way, the same choirs, the same movement, everything always the same and we have to change the program, brothers, we have to come to church to make a little mess from time to time. when. Amen. And let the Lord move as he wants in our lives and tell him, Lord, help us to live one more life in the spirit. Amen.

Get up, we're going to make a little mess this morning, amen. Praise the Lord and glorify. Come forward here for a moment, we are going to adore the Lord. Come two or three here, come over here, get off your bench and make a little mess and let's move around a little bit and come up here and thank Him and say, Lord, I want to be a man, a woman of the spirit. Tell the spirit something good, invite the Lord to move into your life right now.

Stop by and worship the Lord. Take a moment to pray and give him... come forward, come, if you're going to come, come forward here. Amen. And give glory to the Lord for a moment, even if it is symbolically, we are going to break the order of service and tell someone something, say hello to someone, come this way, come... fill this place.

Brothers, that's what you have to do. This is the spirituality that God wants. It is a living spirituality in the name of Jesus. Break the religious spirit in the name of Christ this morning. Hallelujah!