Classic Sermon #6050: The Renewing of the Mind

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 17 onwards. And let us listen to the word of the Lord that speaks to you, it speaks to me that it can change my life if I open my heart to its regenerative effect. Says the word of the Lord: "This I say and require in the Lord that you no longer walk like the other Gentiles who walk in the vanity of their minds, having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because the hardness of their hearts, which after they lost all sensitivity they gave over to lasciviousness to greedily commit all kinds of impurity. But you have not learned Christ like this. Truly you have heard him and have been taught by him according to the truth that is in Jesus.”

And this is the passage that concerns us, these three verses today. It says: 'As for the past way of living, put off the old man that is vitiated according to deceitful desires and renew yourselves in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man created in one God in righteousness and holiness of truth. For this reason, discarding the lie, speak truth each one with his neighbor, that we are members one of the others. Get angry but do not sin, do not set the sun on your anger, do not give place to the devil.

Let him who stole steal no more, but rather work, doing with his hands what is good so that he may have to share with those in need. No corrupted word comes out of your mouth but the one that is good for necessary edification, in order to give grace to the listeners. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of Redemption. Take away from you all bitterness, anger, wrath, shouting and maleficence and all malice before be benign ones as with others. Merciful, forgiving one another as God also forgave you in Christ.

We are talking about holiness and we said that this passage lends itself very well because it describes several of the aspects that revolve around this topic. And to refresh your minds and mine we were talking about the fact that Paul begins by saying, 'This I say and I require,' meaning that holiness is not an option, it is not something that you can decide to have or not to have. It is not something that the Apostle Paul, that former Pharisee of the 1st century, came up with and is putting there to spoil the party of life.

Rather, it is something that tells you, it is required and it is not because of men's things but because the Lord demands it. The Lord wants his people to walk, not as the world walks, not as the other Gentiles walk, but as that new creation walks, which has been transformed and regenerated by the power of Jesus Christ.

The men out there walk according to the vanity of their mind, the men out there walk according to their philosophy, according to their ethical system, according to their moral inventions, according to their imagination, according to what seems convenient to them and well. And we said that the intellect can never generate the life that only God can, giving can never generate the holiness that can only be found when we are immersed in the life of God. And that is why the apostle says: "Those Gentiles who are in the world are alienated from the life of God."

When you are not in Christ, you are alienated from the life of God. When you do not have Christ as the center of your life; when you do not have the power, the blood of Christ running through your veins, you are alienated from the life of God. And that always sounds shocking to people who aren't used to this kind of imagery and biblical vocabulary. Because they say: "But if I go to Church, if I consider myself a Christian, if I fear God, I do no harm to anyone."

Brothers, the Bible tells me that only when you have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ is when you truly come into contact with the life of God. Meanwhile, no matter how good your intentions are and no matter how healthy your path may be according to men, according to the minds of men, you are still alienated from the life of God. You are in ignorance; You are there not because God has not spoken to you, nor because God has not wanted to reveal Himself to you, because He has already done so in thousands of ways, but because of the hardness of your heart. Because you didn't want to listen.

And the Lord calls every man, every creature to blend with his life, to blend with the blood of his son through that simple gesture of surrender to Him. And we talked about that degenerative process through which man passes , the woman when the enemy of her soul begins to set her up with all kinds of traps and little by little she is wearing down her moral sense and is taking away her taste for spiritual things and is transforming her sensibility and is filing and removing brick every day for brick that moral structure that God has placed us. Until a day comes when we lose sensitivity towards evil things.

Sin already scandalizes us and then we begin to greedily commit all kinds of impurity and one day we wake up and say: “Lord, where am I? I can't get out of these chains because the enemy has set a trap and little by little he has worn us down our spiritual power and we no longer find the way. And then the Apostle said: "But you Christians, you are here - Roberto Miranda who preaches - you have not learned Christ like that."

We have said many times that Jesus is the moral model par excellence and that you do not have to take your spiritual and moral dictates from the Pastor or from the leaders of the church, or from that little sister consecrated to the Lord that you admire. You take your directive from Christ Jesus. You take your model from the one that no one, through thousands of years of searching for you, has ever failed you with. And if your model is Jesus Christ, if you have truly learned from Jesus, you will begin to conform your life, your behavior, your way of speaking and thinking to life, to the truth that is in Christ Jesus.

Now the Apostle Paul continues, until now we have a negative image. There has been a comparison of what the world is and how the world is caught in this trap that the enemy of his soul, that the prince has hatched around him and now the Apostle Paul gives us sound advice and tells us: ' As for the past way of living - how interesting, we could stop there for a moment - it says "as for the past way of living" and it is interesting that the Apostle Paul always assumes that we have already transcended those limitations and that sinfulness. of the world.

God assumes that if you enter into the divine economy, into the world of the spirit, you will immediately engage in a new way of living. To the government that verse says: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." Old things have passed away, behold, all things are made new.

And what a disgrace, however, that there are so many people in the church of Jesus Christ, to whom those words do not apply "as regards the past way of life." It could rather be said 'as regards the present way of living'. We still understand that the word of the Lord, the intention of the Lord, the vision that the Lord has had since the day he gave us new life through Jesus Christ, has not yet been fully fulfilled within us.

And that word has not yet been fulfilled in my life "regarding the past way of living" because I am still involved in the traps of the enemy. I still give it course in my life, I still give it room to come in and out of my life, I still give it a real place in my existence. And the Bible says "as for the past way of living."

The Lord assumes that you and I, brother, sister, are involved in a process of struggle and that past things are precisely past things. Now we are in this divine economy that assumes that we are already participating directly in the life of God. This is what the Apostle Paul says in Colossians, also, he says: 'Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you -and then he speaks of some of those things and says- in which you also walked in another time when you lived in it.'

My request before the Lord is every day: “Lord, that this word of yours, that this assumption of yours, that what you assume is a fact in my life becomes real. What when you speak of all those things that characterize the world that does not know you, that I can feel: "Yes, Father, truly You are speaking to a person who can speak of the past, who can speak of what is now in Christ Jesus"

And that must be our longing, brothers, that must be my prayer, that must be my agony day after day. Lord, may that word of yours, that intention of yours, that your vision for my life become a reality and that one day I can fully say: “that past way of living is crucified. It has been thrown out, it has been left behind.”

And the apostle Paul says: "Put off the old man." As for that way of living, brothers, put off the old man. God's creative life often begins with the negative. God is the architect par excellence, God is the engineer par excellence.

And you know that when men go to build a tall and big and strong structure, what do they do first? They dig a big hole, they remove the dirt, they remove the stone, they remove the superficial and then after they make a big space and spend a long time building a foundation, then they can put in the real thing, then they can put in the durable. And the powerful Christian life, the life that God blesses, the ministry that God uses always has to begin in a destructive way.

And listen to what I want to tell you. It always has to start in a negative way with digging, with stripping, with taking off, with undressing. If I truly want God to use me, for God to glorify himself in my life and for God to use my ministry, I have to recognize that God is going to have to undress me and strip me of many things that are pleasing to me and that are attractive to me. and that the world loves to see them. And that they are what often gives popularity and greatness and charisma to the men out there.

And what are those things? What is this 'old man' thing? Obviously it does not refer to the human aspect. Many of us wish if we could get rid of that old physical man. It does not refer to that aspect. The Bible speaks of that outer man, that carnal man, that superficial man. That being that is in you and that is in me that has been strengthening and has been growing through the years: since I was born and the life that I spent without Christ, subjected to the desires and values of the world and to the teachings and the mentality of the world. An external scab has formed in me, an animal that lives inside of me that the Bible calls 'the old man'.

That being is penetrated by sin. That being has gotten used to doing what he likes, that being is selfish. That being cannot conceive the things of God because the things of God are on another plane to which he has no access; That being has been forming through each moment of sensuality, anger, surrender to the world, friendship with the world, and little by little it has strengthened within me and has tied powerful chains around me and I am enslaved. him. That being God cannot use it, God has to discard it.

That is the old life that will have to stay here on this earth and that will never be able to have access to the kingdom of heaven. That is the being that begins to -excuse the expression- rot from the moment you take your last breath and that being remains. He has no entrance into the heavenly kingdom.

And when we enter the kingdom of God, you and I are supposed to understand that there are things in me, in my character, in my mind that God has to remove, God has to remove them. I have to get rid of them and leave them like I leave an old dress. Like a snake sheds her old skin and has a new skin. I have to get rid of everything that does not glorify God in my life. Those things that are sometimes attractive to me, extremely delightful to my human heart but that God cannot deal with.

And that temperament that puts up with me and makes me commit foolish things and say bad things and that dishonor the Lord, even though it gives me joy when I give it free rein. I have to understand that God cannot fully glorify himself in me while I live enslaved to him. I have to leave it. And that sensual mind that continually takes me from one place to another to places that I know hurt me and that absorb my spiritual vitality, I have to crucify it by the presence of Christ in my life.

I have to recognize that if I truly want to fully enter the mind of God for myself I have to get rid of that too. And those fears and these attitudes and those idle words and that vocabulary that does not glorify God, I have to leave it in the name of the Lord and ask the Lord: "Lord, deliver me every day from him."

And brothers, that is the hardest thing: that process of dispossession. And that's why in church many times they don't talk about it because it's threatening. It is threatening to the speaker. Sometimes the brothers tell me: "Brother, thank you, that sermon was good for me", I tell him: "Amen, brother, it was good for me too". Sometimes I'm the one who preaches the sermons to himself.

And all of us have to go through a process of dispossession, of letting go of that old creature that is very in tune with the signals that the enemy sends him and that I have to get him out of my life, get rid of him. The natural man, the carnal man, the man who does not have the life of Christ within him, lives according to the dictates of the flesh and the world.

The enemy has set up a conspiracy so that your old man's transistor only receives the instructions that come from Satan. And the hierarchy that God had in his mind when he created man has been reversed and then that old man lives obeying the dictates of the flesh, the dictates of this world. His kingdom is here in this world, his destiny is here in this world, his glory is in this world. His satisfaction is in the things of the world and he is alienated from the life of God.

And the Bible says to you: “You have to put off that old man. You have to shed your past." I tell you that that is the most agonizing thing that you truly enter into a pact with the Lord and you ask him: "Lord, deal with me."

Because there are Christians who remain as spiritual children, as the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians: "I would like to speak to you about profound things, but I cannot, I have to speak to you with spiritual milk because you are not capable - and should be - of digest solid food, strong food.”

Brothers, the misfortune is that in the life of the church there are so many Christians that the years come and the years go and the years come in and the years go out and we remain the same because we are still in love with that “old man”. He doesn't go easily, you know? He holds on tooth and nail and when you try to pull him out he kicks and protests and whines and he's there holding on.

But the Bible says, “Lay off. Get out of him because he has no entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Because that man is flawed – that is a very strong word – he is rotten, he is penetrated by evil. His very nature is pierced by evil.

It is flawed according to deceitful desires. This expression is interesting: "deceitful desires", that is to say, it is flawed and damaged according to the passions, to the deep, deceptive feelings - that is an interesting word too - because the enemy, brothers, when he wants to tie up a person, first presents him with all kinds of nice scenarios: 'If you do this, look, I'll give you that'. ‘If you get drunk, you will feel good, you will be a super man. You will be able to make your girlfriend fall in love that not even Shakespeare the poet would do it so well'. "You are going to stand in a bar that if they look at you badly you are going to eat the children raw."

But the next day when there's the black eyes and the headache and the shocked friends and the natural depression that comes from all drunkenness, you truly feel like you've been cheated. They have sold him a pig in a poke, as they say out there.

This week I was speaking at Norfolk Prison and I was seeing these young men some of them handsome. It's something that always strikes me: the fact that there are so many tall, strong, attractive men in prisons and he's the pride of life, you know? God sometimes gives men many talents and many good things and then that pride they have becomes so great and they become easy prey for the enemy.

But I spoke to young people and adults and I told them: I often compare Satan to an extremely skillful hunter in human hunting. Because he is an extremely developed psychologist who has had thousands of years to study the human race and he can set all kinds of traps for him. And as Satan is inventing thoughts and desires in our hearts and ambitions that one day we wake up and have brought tragedy to our lives.

I would say to them: how many of us have fallen in love with these images that Satan has placed in our lives of wealth, of glory? 'I'm going to sell drugs.' 'I'm going to do this.' 'I'm going to look over there. I'm going to get involved in this plot to get money." "I'm going to rob So-and-so." "I'm going to do this and I'm going to get rich and I'm going to have money and then I'm going to retire to Florida with a yacht and with lots of women and a big house.'

And he fills your mind with great images and you go after them like the hare to the slaughterhouse and he deceives you. And one day you wake up to find that instead of the pink house somewhere in Florida you have prison cells surrounding you. And you wake up and say, 'what happened?'

Hello. God bless you, Pastor Roberto Miranda speaks to you. Thank you for listening to our messages and it gives us great joy to know that this program is being a blessing to your life. I want to leave you with the blessing words of Moses to the people of Israel: “Jehovah bless you and keep you. Jehovah make his face shine upon you and have mercy on you. Jehovah lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace". It is a privilege for me to be a part of your life. I hope you stay tuned to our program: An appointment with Christ. I bless you in Jesus name.

And the years go by and you go from one problem to another, from one stumbling block to another and one day you look at yourself old and failed and defeated and thanks to the movements of men in the place where they have you and you ask yourself: "What have I have I made of my life? You let yourself be governed by deceitful desires. And how many men are there who indulge in vice and pleasure!

And they are young and they still have a lot of energy, they have a great capital of vital energy that life has given them and Satan tells them -as the rich and foolish one said-: “My soul, enjoy. Try everything, delight yourself, because you have many things for many years. That source of strength that you have is never going to run out," and Satan promises you great joys, great victories and great pleasures and you begin to pour out your masculine vitality on the earth and you begin to damage your body and you begin to fill your body with impurity. mind. And Satan keeps giving you rope and rope and rope and he tells you: “Don't worry, the night is long. You can enjoy."

And one day you find yourself old and alone and worn out and without strength and you say to yourself: “What happened to my life? Where did the strength that I had go? The enemy of your soul, poured it out on the ground. You let yourself be dominated by deceitful desires. You gave the Devil your vitality.

Brothers, God has put in us a mechanism that works more precisely than any deep mechanism, than any computer, than any Swiss watch.

And when you violate the functioning of that mechanism that God has determined, all that remains is degeneration, destruction, weakness, tragedy, repentance, the dark night, the fear of death at the end of your days.

And we cannot allow that 'old man' corrupted according to the desires of the world to control us. We have to denounce the ruse of Satan calling him by name "you are a liar" and the only thing he produces is deceit but thank the Lord, that the word of God does not remain in negative dictates, in sad verdicts. And the Apostle gives us a healthy alternative of life, of power and says: "Renew yourselves in the spirit of your mind".

Brother, the alternative to letting that 'old man' grow older and more decrepit every day of your life is renewal. The life of God running within you and each day giving new life. The arrest of this destructive process and the initiation of a process of rejuvenation, of power, of victory, of growth glory through the life of Jesus Christ, renewing you within you. Because ultimately the life of the Christian has to be that. It has to be a going from glory to glory, from growth to growth, from blessing to blessing.

I love those words from the Old Testament that say: "For the path of the just is like the light of the dawn, which increases until the day is perfect." And we, brothers, have to be like that, we have to be like that light of dawn that begins dark, that begins plunged into darkness and that gradually struggles with the darkness and clears it away and one begins to see a hint of light and it grows at nine in the morning and already at twelve on a sunny day it is a total plenitude. And so is the Christian.

It is another passage that says: “Young people get tired and tired. The young falter and fall, but those who wait for the Lord will lift up wings like eagles.” The psalmist also says: "Even in old age it will bear fruit, they will be vigorous and green to announce that Jehovah, my strength, is upright and that in Him there is no injustice."

To the man who is following according to the deceitful desires of the world, to the woman who gives herself over to passions and sensuality and the things of this world -let me make a parenthesis here because I am only talking about sensuality and things- brothers, everything that is of this world is destroyed. Not only the sensual, although I get involved in something very exalted, if my life is only reduced to things of the intellect and if mine is only writing books and making fame and making a name according to men, if I am a great philanthropist and I give money and my life is reduced to that alone, or if I am a great artist and I make works that everyone admires that adorn the culture in which I live and that is all I have to offer, I am also dominated by the passions and desires of man.

Do not think that it is only those obviously destructive things. Everything that remains within the dimension of this world, of history, all of that is the old man. And we have to go giving a new nuance to all those things.

Because some of them are good but we have to be subjecting them then to what the word of God says.

The fact is that we said that when man dedicates himself to the things of the world, what awaits him is decay, what awaits him is growing weakness as time progresses. But when man has sought his glory in God and has plugged into the divine energy and established his contact with the life of God, that life is continually being renewed within him and although the body is decaying and although less physically attractive, but his spirit begins to shine more and more brightly.

And as that person grows it becomes easier to be with her; you have more blessing in talking with that person; good advice comes out of his mouth; his very presence inspires confidence, people look to him in their moment of anguish because they feel that there is a rock that does not move easily.

And that person is gaining glory and glory and although he is old and - would say - physically finished, but his spirit is shining with more beauty every day.

Brothers, I would like to be like that and even if I am dragging myself through life with a cane, but that my spirit shines in such a way that you have to close your eyes for the glory of God. And we have to want that and the young people who are here have to want that. They have to set their sights on the things above, they have to stop looking so much at the things of this flesh.

Sometimes we live so enslaved to fashion and to what they will say and to the body and to exercise and to this and to the other. Total things that dissipate in a moment and that disappear over time. The Bible says: "Those who are of the spirit think about the things of the spirit." My prerogatives and my priorities are in the heavenly homeland. Because I am not a citizen of this world.

My search has to be the search for the glory of God in my life more and more each day. And there are my interests, there is my time, there is my thought, there are my energies and God is in charge of giving me more and more every day as I release more and more to Him. For this reason I thank the Lord, that at some time in my own life, I was able to understand that although I was enjoying a lot carnally, but that my life was precisely leaving the earth, it was spreading. And thank God that He had mercy and called me on time.

And young people have to be looking for their body to be that temple of the Holy Spirit where God can dwell and be filled with glory within us.

The Apostle Paul said in Second Corinthians, he says: "Therefore we do not faint," that is, we do not lose heart. Before, although this our outer man, our flesh wears out, the interior -that is, the spirit, however- is renewed from day to day. Because this slight momentary tribulation produces in us an ever more excellent and eternal weight of Glory.

Brothers, the tribulations of life in the hands of the Christian, in the sensitivity of a being that has been regenerated by the word of Christ, what it does is that they produce glory. When life's tragedies come, I receive them, deal with them, neutralize them and use them to be stronger in the Lord. But if I do not have the peace of Jesus Christ, if I do not have the mind of Christ in my life, the tragedies of life will seem to me the opposite: they will be signs of futility, of the vain character of existence, the injustice of the universe, of the lack of God in the world. But the Christian is the opposite. The Christian is renewed through all the experiences of life, positive or negative.

The Christian is renewed in the spirit of his mind, not in his mind but in the spirit, in the inner part in the essence of his being. Because men want to renew themselves and what's more, men renew themselves periodically. But what they manage to do is simply collect the dust, as one sometimes does in houses, close the windows; The world is like that when men want to reform it and want to transform it.

But what they have done is that they have closed the windows so that the glory of God does not enter, the word of God does not enter their lives and they have begun to sweep and they collect the dust and throw it from one corner to the other corner and they kick up a lot of dust and say, “See? We are sweeping, we are changing, we are cleaning.” But when the dust already does this and is lowered, there is the same amount of dirt and dust inside the space that there was at the beginning. So they're happy because see? "We already renew ourselves, we already change."

How many discussions did I not have when I was at university with my Marxist friends and full of fire to transform society and fight for the new man, etc., etc.? And I told them: "Lord, give these things time." When they told me, for example: Cuba, the great experiment. And no nobler experiment has humanity made to transform itself and there was talk of the new Marxist man. Today they have as many scandals and as many needs and as many problems as any other country.

And I see the politicians there trying to find hidden ways to destroy and dismantle this great and monstrous mechanism of communism, but to remain as quiet as possible without losing much of their face because they have been humiliated by history. And I wonder seeing that wall, iron curtain, fall on a day that not even the deepest political experts could have predicted that and see what is happening in Russia.

And I say to myself: “Wow! If men could understand that outside of God there is nothing”. Outside of God there is no hope. And one laments how many millions of Russian peasants had to die at the hands of Stalin and his followers - more than 6 million, it is estimated that perhaps 13 or 14 million - so that these transformations, in quotes, of the Russian society. And today millions of lives later and twenty thousand tragedies later are saying: "We were wrong, we are going to start again."

And when communism has been completely discredited, another idealist will come over there, come out of some cave to present another model to humanity, another hope of renewal and men will return to kill each other; and men will fall in love with those idols again, and they will shed their blood and vitality again. And years later they will be disillusioned again and the process will be repeated and the hunter of humanity will be there offering men renewal and what he is offering is gradual death, gradual death and humanity needs to hear that only in Christ is there renewal.

Only in Jesus there is hope, only Jesus can give us a spiritual renewal from within because until man is transformed in his very foundation, in the root of his being, there is no hope for him. What there is is death, what there is is deceit, what there is is disappointment and discouragement when we discover that our great inventions and our great idols that we build turn out to be hollow and turn out to simply enclose snakes inside them.

That is why the Apostle also speaks to Titus –chapter 3, verse 5- he says: “Christ saved us, not by works of Justice that we would have done without his mercy. For the praise of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.

The work that Christ has done in my life and in your life, if you are in it, it is not because of anything you can do. It is not by any effort that you can generate in your mind, but by regeneration and renewal in the holy spirit. By washing your life in the blood of the lamb in the water of the word of God.

And it's not for anything you can make up or anything you can do on your own. That is why when Nicodemus came before Jesus, full of words and intellect and told him "Master, we know that you have to come from God because no one does the things that you do if you do not come from God" and Jesus said to him -he stopped him dead and said to him: "Unless he is born again he will not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." He stopped the horse, cut off the conversation.

Nicodemus perhaps had this idea to come and sit down and have coffee with this new rabbi who appeared on the Jewish scene and talk to him about theology and religion and this and that. And he started with a compliment and Christ said, “I don't have time for that nonsense, Nicodemus. You need to be born again. You need to be renewed by my spirit. You need to receive life through the true word of God and the blood that I am going to shed on the Cross of Calvary.”

“Unless one is born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Nicodemus, what meat does, meat is; what the spirit does, spirit is.”

"If you really want to come into contact with the life of God, you have to do it through the regeneration of the spirit, through my life entering yours."

Men try to do twenty thousand faces, movements and things to escape the fact that everything begins when we are renewed and transformed by Christ's water; when we let the Lord do his complete work within us. Otherwise there is no hope. "Do not lie to one another, having stripped off the old man with his deeds and put on a new one, which according to the image that created it, is renewed until full knowledge."

Brothers, this is a process that begins when I receive Christ in my life, the Lord begins to work in me and as I give him parts of my being, God purifies my mind. God is taking that corrupt mind of the past in that body pierced by passions and little by little, gradually renewing a new life in us, until one day we wake up and we are new.

The Apostle Paul also says it in Romans, he says: "Do not be conformed to this century but be transformed." Because? "By the renewing of your understanding."

My mind needs to be renewed, your mind needs to be renewed every day. I need to submit the parts of my life so that the Lord puts new parts. The Lord does not want to "riverdear" do you know that word? My body or my mind. He wants to give me a new mind, a new sensitivity. He is the quintessential mechanic who says: 'I cannot renew what you have nor can I give you a used part.' I want to give you something different, something new, something created especially for you and me.

As the prophet says: "I will give -speaking of the word of the Lord- I will take that heart of stone that you have there and that has calcified through life through life and I am going to give you a heart of flesh . I am going to remove all that is flawed and I am going to put new parts within you and throughout life as you abandon yourself to me, I will remove old parts and put new parts. I will remove destructive thoughts and put new thoughts. I will remove fear and put power and self-control. I will remove anger and put meekness, I will remove pride and put humility. I will remove stubbornness and glorify yourself and I will look and seek the glory of God in your life.

And so it is that the Lord is renewing us. And that process, brother, can never be fulfilled in your life until God passes you through the cross. I explained that to those men there in the prison. The weapon that God uses to transform and renew us is the cross of Christ made real in our lives.

The cross of Christ is not only something historical that happened two thousand years ago, but it is a process through which God has to put you and me in order for us to access the full life of Jesus Christ. And what is that cross? That cross is not something poetic, that cross is a reality: the pains of life, the sufferings of life, the troubles, the illnesses, the struggles, the disappointments. All these things are undermining our love and our attachment to the things of the world and are giving us a new vision, a new attachment, a new loyalty to the things of God.

Many of us don't want God to do that work, we stand tall. We do not want God to give us that medicine that can transform us. And when God wants to give it and when God wants to place the cross on our backs we get upset and throw it off our backs and God does not stop its process.

God wants to renew us and He comes day after day and tells you “My son, let me put the cross on you and carry that cross every day. Let the experiences of life calm you down and sweeten you and do not get attached to things _____ because I am not going to give up working with you, because my purpose is for you to reach the fullness of Christ Jesus in your life.”

So, brothers, let us renew ourselves, let us seek ourselves more and more in this new understanding of existence in Christ Jesus. The result of all this, we have already said, brothers, with this I conclude: "Put on a new man."

That new man is precisely those fruits of justice, those fruits of love, goodness, meekness, patience, kindness, kindness, and faith that God wants to instill in our lives. God wants to give us a new way of thinking and speaking and being. God is not interested in the external things that I can do.

Do you think that going to church on Sundays and once in a while making a promise or doing this or doing that, or bringing people to church or tithing that is going to please God?

Brothers, what God needs your heart, what God needs is your life, what God needs is that you give him the essence of your being because when he has that, he will have everything else. And a lot of us want to blackmail God and we give him money and we give him visitors to come to church and we give him seats on Sunday in church and all these things and God says, “I don't care about any of these things. I'm interested in your heart, I'm interested in your life, I'm interested in you letting me work in you. I want obedience and not sacrifice," says the Lord.

The Lord wants you to obey his word, the Lord wants you to submit to him and to put on the new man in Christ Jesus. The Apostle says it in Galatians: "Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world." Because in Christ Jesus neither circumcision is worth anything nor uncircumcision but… what? A new creation. A new man.

Christ is not interested in our religiosity, Christ is not interested in the religious clothing with which we dress, Christ is not interested in all the dissimulations and fictions that we set up to deceive Him and make Him believe that we have arrived spiritually. The Lord knows where you are, He knows where I am and the Lord simply wants a new creation in me. The Lord wants a new character, a new life, a new way of behaving.

When the world sees me say: “There goes one of those Christians who has been touched by the spirit of Christ. There goes a real man that communists and everyone else looking for new creations can say, 'Hey! That specimen that is walking around, that can be a good model for the new society' We are continually falling short of that ideal, the Lord wants us to clothe ourselves with that new man in Christ Jesus, created not according to the designs of men , but according to God in the justice and holiness of the truth.

Brother, when you and I have made that man's home perfect, our lives will change. We will have joy, we have the peace that we are looking for, we will have the rest for our souls that sometimes we lack despite all the things with which we adorn our lives.

Do you want true peace in your life? Do you want true beauty and joy and inner tranquility? Why don't you let the architect par excellence, the divine coach take over your life? You tell the Lord, “Lord, I want to get rid of that old man and I can't do it on my own. I want to get rid of sensitivity and this way of thinking that I know does not glorify you and I want to abandon myself to you so that you wash me with your water, you renew me with your spirit."

Brothers, who doesn't want that? A fool would spurn the chance to truly be that creature that God can say he approves of. Because God is the highest quality control, the expert par excellence. He does know your problems. But I do renew that challenge that I said at the beginning: the only hope is in Christ Jesus, the only hope of true change in your life is in Christ Jesus, in the blood that Christ has shed for you on the cross of Calvary.

The Lord says: “Come to me, you who are labored, loaded. I will make you rest”.

If you want to be a new creature you have to start by giving your life to Christ Jesus.

And how simple God has made that plan! He says: "Because God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son for everyone who believes in him." Believing is all you need. Believing that what I am saying through the word of God is true and has application to your life and that God can initiate a purpose, a different realm within you.