Classic Sermon #6064: A Simple Faith

Colossians 2:1, says the word of the Lord, "... because I want you to know how great a fight I am for you and for those who are in the Odyssey and for all those who have never seen my face, so that their hearts may be comforted, united in love until reaching all the riches of full understanding in order to know the mystery of God, the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and I say this so that no one deceives you with persuasive words because although I am absent in body, nevertheless in spirit I am with you rejoicing and looking at your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

Therefore, in the way that you have received the Lord Jesus Christ, walk in him, rooted and built up in him and confirmed in the faith just as you have been taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See that no one deceives you through philosophies and hollow subtleties according to the traditions of men, according to the rudiments of the world and not according to Christ. For in him dwells bodily all the fullness of the deity. And you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the sinful body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ. Buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins, and in the circumcision of your flesh, he gave life together with him, forgiving you all your sins, annulling the handwriting of decrees that was against us that was contrary to us, removing it from the midst and nailing it to the cross and stripping principalities and powers, he publicly exhibited us by triumphing over them on the cross. Therefore let no one judge you in food or drink or in regards to feast days, new moons, or days of rest, all of which are a shadow of what is to come, but the body is Christ's..."

The Lord bless his word. Well brothers, last Sunday when we were talking about the Epistle to the Colossians we saw five attributes that the Apostle Paul, among many others, recognizes in Jesus Christ. We saw there in that chapter 1 beginning with verse 15 how Paul presents Jesus Christ as God himself, the image of the invisible God, as the Creator who created everything that exists, and for whom everything created was made. As the sustainer who keeps the universe running and who sustains it with his power and his presence. We saw him as the head of the church. Christ is the brain of the church, the thoughts, projects, and plans of the church come from Jesus Christ and are channeled through the people he chooses to direct his church. And finally Christ is the reconciler, the reconciler of all humanity and of all creation, he is the one who unites all parts, including our own mind, our own understanding, all parts of our being.

Every attribute we saw has a practical implication, it has something to do with the conduct of the church. Now Paul, in chapter 2, continues and it is interesting, I thought, in this epistle in one way or another the person of Jesus emerges, the work of Jesus, the figure of Jesus and how the Lord is the center of the whole life of church.

It has been said of Paul that his Gospel was a Christ-centered Gospel in which Christ occupied the first place. And I thought that this Christmas, precisely this time in December that we celebrate the advent of Jesus Christ and that we remember the coming of the Lord into the world, it is very important and very appropriate that we use this time to meditate on who this Jesus Christ is, on what his person represents for the life of the church. Some would find it so obvious that it doesn't even need to be talked about. But I think that many times in our work as a church, and in our programs and our activities and all the things that we get involved in, many times we can lose sight of the centrality of Jesus Christ and we can forget where our power comes from, where our energy, where the meaning of our faith comes from.

And for Paul the Lord Jesus Christ occupied an absolutely paramount place. And anything that threatened the position of Jesus Christ for Paul was something that had to be rejected and that had to be confronted, and that had to be denounced. Because Paul was a man who had experienced the transforming power of that Jesus Christ. Paul had had a crisis encounter with the person of Jesus on the way to Damascus and there the proud Pharisee with all his understanding and with all his energy, jealous of his religion, had a frontal encounter with the power of Jesus Christ and fell to the ground and his life never it was the same again.

And from then on his panorama, his horizon was occupied by that dominant figure of Jesus Christ and all of Paul's life and all of his service and all of his preaching revolved around the person of Jesus. And Paul was concerned when any doctrine or any individual in a direct or indirect way was taking away its central place, its primacy from the person of Jesus Christ and for him he writes this letter as we said, because at that time in this region of Colosse doctrines were circulating and teachings that appeared to be very sophisticated and very complex, very intellectual, or very deep, but which were deceitful and which were threatening to take their dear Colossians' minds off the central things of the Gospel among which foremost was the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

And so Paul here begins in chapter 2, he begins indirectly and he is gaining speed until he reaches the very center of his teaching and he begins chapter 2 speaking to the Colossians speaking to them of the great concern that he as an Apostle, who feels spiritually responsible for the spiritual welfare of these people, the great concern he feels. He says, I want you to know brothers, the great fight that I support for you. And that word that is translated into Spanish fight, if we go to the original Greek, is the word where we get agony, the great agony that I suffer for all of you, my sheep, although I have never seen you, but I feel great concern for you.

Paul here has a very human moment where he talks about as a pastor in a sense of these people, that he feels responsible for the spiritual health of these people, the struggle that he feels there in his heart. Brothers, that is something that every person who has worked in the pastorate or who has some sense of responsibility for the care of souls, knows what that agony and that concern is that one feels for those that the Lord has entrusted in their hands. One is always thinking about so-and-so that I haven't seen him for days, in the other that I notice lately that he hadn't been seen at the beginning when he met the Lord, because of the one that one sees is over there playing double game with the Lord , for someone who is going through a difficult time, be it in their marriage, be it in their finances, be it a health problem, and one feels that burden and it is something, unless one has not been there struggling in that sense, one does not can understand what that sense of weight is, for well-being, for spiritual health, for the condition, the spiritual temperature of the people who are in charge of one.

That burden does not compare to any other burden or concern of Christian service. And that is why Paul spoke in another passage in Second Corinthians, chapter 11, 28 to 29, after speaking of all the sufferings that he as an Apostle had suffered, whipped, stoned, shipwrecked, he says, and besides other things, in Verse 28, “…what concern for all the churches overwhelms me every day. Who is sick and I am not sick, who is made to stumble and I am not indignant….”

Paul felt that in his heart and he was concerned and he was concerned from a distance because of what was happening there in Colossians that his beloved Colossians were experiencing the threat of certain winds of doctrine that were threatening the spiritual health of the Colossians and he felt that load and that's why he writes this letter.

And Paul says, I am here agonizing and struggling spiritually so that you maintain a healthy spiritual life. And the Holy Spirit points out to Paul some of those things that characterize a healthy faith as opposed to that heretical faith that is prowling around like a roaring lion wanting to devour the Colossians. And we are surprised to see the simple things for which Paul asks for his Colossians. And that is why I have titled this sermon "A Simple Faith", because Paul wants his brothers there in Colosse to maintain the fundamental things of the Christian life and of which the most fundamental of all is simply the person of Jesus, the loyalty and awareness of the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ.

And that is why Paul says, I fight so that their hearts may be consoled, united in love until reaching all the riches of full understanding in order to know the mystery of God, the Father and of Christ. That is what Paul asks for the Colossians. First, it says that your hearts be comforted, and the word consolation here seems to me not to be the most appropriate because the idea is that when you are suffering that your hearts are comforted and that when you are crying, that you feel the consolation of the Lord.

Again, the Greek word that Paul uses is the root of the word where paracletos comes from, the comforter, speaking of the Holy Spirit and we know that the Holy Spirit when speaking of the comforter is not the one who just passes his hand over it when you are crying. , but it is the strengthener. A better word would be perhaps the Holy Spirit is the encourager, he is the strengthener, he is the affirmer and that is what Paul is saying here. I want your hearts to be strengthened, your hearts to be affirmed in faith.

Paul wanted the Colossians to remain firm in that decision they have made to follow Jesus Christ. It also says that they be united in love, because brothers, the hallmark of a healthy church in my opinion will have to be primarily unity and harmony. Because that is what Paul said, if I speak human and angelic tongues and I do not have love, I come to be like resounding metal or a tinkling cymbal.

In a church there can be many gifts and many healings, and many great things like there were in Corinth, but if there is not the unity of the body, if there is not a sense of fellowship, if there is not a sense of identification with one another, well there is no spiritual health. And that is one of the most fundamental things of a healthy church and a spiritual church, a church where the person of Christ has truly incarnated, that there is harmony, that there is unity, that there is love between the brothers, that there is sincerity between the brothers. .

I was speaking two Saturdays ago with the group of leaders and I was speaking to them about the need for us as leaders to set an example to the congregation of unity and harmony and fellowship and spirit of sharing and de corps. Sometimes I agonize before the Lord asking that our congregation be a church that stands out for being a warm church, a church of love, that when people come to the congregation they are visitors, or that they are here for whatever time, that truly feel that there are people here who love, and that there are people who support you. The worst thing is a church where the people are sterile and arid and for any little thing at once they criticize and attack and walk away. Whereas when the love of Christ is moving in a congregation there is tolerance, there is patience, there is a sense of fellowship. When one suffers, all suffer. When one is falling spiritually, instead of coming the accusing finger and the judgment and wanting to get the person out, what there is is the restorative look and the hug that takes the weak and tries to attract him again to the Lord, and to support him.

And that is why Paul asks that this unity characterize. Brothers, as a congregation let us make a pact in the name of the Lord to love each other in the Lord, that if you know that someone belongs to your congregation and it is not that we only love those at home. No, but if we can't love those here, how can we say that we love those outside. May we identify with one another and support one another, and have each other's backs, instead of whipping each other as can sometimes be done in church life. And that we know that there is a loyalty that unites us, that is beyond any possible division, that the devil or circumstances can bring to our relationships. We are united as brothers in the flesh, we are united by something even more solid which is the blood of Jesus Christ and then we have to love each other and we have to be united. And for me that will be one of the basic things of the Christian life. We cannot go much further until we have really perfected or at least sufficiently developed that art of love.

That there is strength in the faith and a certainty of what we have believed, what we confess, that there is unity in the body, and also Paul speaks of until all reach the riches of full understanding so that they can know the mystery of God, the Father. I see here a request that the church have doctrinal solidity, that there be solid teaching, that there be a spirit of learning and studying. That is why I defend the importance of programs like Vida Abundante, because one cannot grow in faith unless one is instructed in the knowledge of the word, and in the truths of the Gospel that allow us to know that mystery, that thing so complex that is the person of Jesus Christ. And for that we need to study the word, we need to be instructed in the things of the Lord, we need to reach a solid doctrinal, a solid instruction and a knowledge of the fundamental truths of the Gospel to have a spiritual understanding of the truth to which we serve.

There are three very basic things that Paul desires for the hearts of his brothers: a firmness of faith, a harmony between them and a solid knowledge about the person of Jesus Christ. And so he is putting that as a background because he is saying this because there is a concern, as I was saying, in his mind. And so now he begins to warm up in verse 4, he says:

“….And this, this that I tell you, this fight that I support, and these things that I want you to receive, I say this for the following reason: so that nobody comes to you with stories out there, with persuasive words, don't anybody come around with pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-sophisticated doctrines that have a lot of appearance and are very impressive and very dazzling but when you dig deep, they have no substance, no spiritual value, no food, no they promote a healthy faith, a simple faith, a powerful faith.

He is warning you, do not be fooled, do not be dazzled by things that sound very grand but do not have that healthy quality that distinguishes the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Do not be deceived by teachings that sound convincing but behind them are the cold of the serpent and of death. Do not be fooled by those teachings that divert your gaze from what truly matters, which is the person of Jesus Christ, who is the foundation of all things. Because that heresy that was running around Colosse, one of the things it did was tell people about gods and demi-gods that were supposed to be between the main God and men and that you had to worship those gods, and that there were You had to know them and that you had to use them as intermediaries to be able to ascend to a higher plane of existence and that you had to appease those gods, and that you had to study some very complicated doctrines over there, which were only given to those who meddled very carefully. background in these teachings. And Paul says, that's not the simple faith that I've learned. The simple faith that transforms the heart, the simple faith that promotes a healthy spirituality, a solid spirituality, a knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ and I want that to be the teaching that distinguishes you, my brothers, and that this be the teaching that feeds you. Teaching that promotes the person of Jesus Christ.

Paul is aware of the spiritual solidity of these people, he knows that they are people who love the Lord, he knows that they are people who are quite well founded and that is why he says in verse 5, “…for though I am absent in body, nevertheless in spirit I am with you rejoicing and looking in the spirit, imagining your good order and the firmness of your faith in Jesus Christ….”

Then Paul says, you are calm, you are fine and I do not want anything to come to undermine and destroy that good spiritual life that you have. Do not be fooled, do not be dazzled by things that are going to take you out of that spiritual tranquility and prosperity in which you find yourself.

And Paul used there two words of a military nature, he says, your good order and firmness, your firmness. The firmness of your faith. These are two words that in the original Greek tell us about a Roman-type military squad in which all the soldiers got together and put up their shields and made an impassable wall with their shields and then advanced against the enemy. And Paul says, this is how I see you, that good order that you have, that solidity in your corporeal life, that firmness in your faith, that simple life, that solid faith that you have, I see that and I don't want you to nothing of this world comes to take away from you and to entertain you and to disturb you and make you think that what you are living is not enough and that there has to be something else, and that you then throw yourself away and leave this thing so beautiful and so solid that you have here among you

These people were firm, they were relatively well in their spiritual and congregational life but it seems that they were beginning to be disturbed by these people who came and offered them something more sophisticated, broader, deeper experiences. It was as if they were saying, oh, look, what you are experiencing there in your church, well, that's good, that's nice, but no, come on, I'm going to truly teach you what it is to know God. You have not yet experienced who God is. And then of course, people kind of get a little suspicious and say, hmm, wait, really maybe there's something else. They begin to doubt, they begin to look in another direction, and many times they abandon what is solid and go after a mirage and then they discover that they are left, as we say, without a whistle and without a flute. They get there and they get into these doctrines and these teachings and they find out it was all a mirage but it's too late and they've already strayed from their original faith.

And that word of Paul, brothers, and this passage has made me think these days about the care that we have to have, you and I, in the solidity of our faith and that we are sure of who we have believed in, and that we as a church, and you as individuals, we as individual Christians stand firm and know what we believe, why we believe it, who we have believed in, where the strength of our faith truly lies, what truly matters in the Christian life, so that we don't walk around looking for something new to decorate our faith and our doctrine, so that we are sober people, secure people.

Paul fought again and again against this phenomenon, there we see in the epistle to the Galatians, Paul writes to them and says, I am surprised that so soon you have departed from the faith that you acquired through my teaching, because you had Jewish teachers came around, Christians who taught Christians that not only Christ, but also had to be circumcised to be saved, and then faith was already being undermined by that. In Corinth there were teachers who came with their intellectual sophistication and their oratorical arts and they also came to tell the Corinthians, uh, that Pablo, he's a tiny little man over there, not very attractive who writes some letters that sound very strong but that his appearance body is not impressive, that is nothing, we have the truth. And then they came to declaim their teachings and their things and that is why Paul writes in First Corinthians, he says, when I came to you I did not go with greatness of word, nor of doctrine, he says, but I went with fear and trembling and I decided to knowing nothing but Christ and Christ crucified.

And brothers, if anyone had the right to be intellectually pretentious it was Pablo. Because Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, as he says. Paul had studied with Gamaliele, one of the greatest Jewish teachers of the time, he had gone, we could say, to one of the highest universities of his time and Paul had a PhD in theology and a lot of knowledge, and if he had wanted to go around bragging about his knowledge, he could have done it. But Paul had fallen in love with Jesus Christ and Paul had said, I have had everything for garbage, for the love of the one who rescued me and who changed me, the vilest of sinners. And Paul was so in love with Jesus Christ that he didn't have much room in his emotions to put his love into anything other than Jesus Christ. In addition, he had realized that only the spirit of Christ working in the hearts and in the sensibilities of the people, and in the mind of the person that is what changes people. It is not a lot of intellectual teaching, it is not a lot of theological redundancy, and a lot of human pretension. It is not the much intellectual adornment, it is the basic doctrine that transforms hearts. Everything else is very important, I believe a lot in theological instruction, I believe a lot in knowledge, I am constantly reading and instructing myself as much as I can, but I have discovered, brothers, that truly what changes people is a humble heart, delivered to Jesus Christ. And delivered to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

What truly makes a Christian strong, powerful and full of anointing is not all the titles he has stuck on his wall, but having had a frontal encounter with the person of Christ Jesus. And that, brothers, is what we have to cultivate in our life. Everything else is nice, precious, beautiful, but it must be the cream that is on the cake. The basic, the fundamental is a life that is continually receiving sap directly from the Lord.

Christ says, I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me bears much fruit, the one who remains attached to the person of Jesus, the one who remains close to the healthy word, to seek those moments in which the reality of Christ penetrates us. And that is what really matters.

And that is why Paul tells the Colossians, Gentlemen, do not stand around with your eyes as if looking to see what you lack, as if you were not complete, looking for each wind of doctrine that comes, each new teacher that comes, letting yourself be drawn of his stillness and his sufficiency in the person of Jesus.

And brothers, I say there are many Christians, we are in a time of great spiritual unrest and where I know that there is a lot of false doctrine in even evangelical churches, and that there are many churches today that are in crisis, and that there is a lot of teaching bad, that is coming out of the pulpits, and God save me, God have mercy on me that I am not part of that, and I always ask him to preserve us. And that is why we have to be well educated, you, to know how to discern when man is the one who is speaking and when God through man. Because not everything that comes out of the mouth of man necessarily comes from the mouth of God. But an educated people can discern one thing and the other.

But the truth is that there is a lot of bad doctrine and there are a lot of restless people, a lot of dissatisfied people, there are a lot of people who are in the churches and say, Lord, I need something more. I believe that they have the right to search until they find what their soul needs, having said that, I also believe that there are many brothers in all the churches who sometimes have what they need, the basics, so they live like jumping from church to church and looking from place to place, like looking for something, something else. There is like a restlessness in the air looking for deeper experiences, looking for the evangelist, so-and-so, who has tremendous fire and who does this and that. And then we live restless and we live disturbed and we live in a state of restlessness, and I see that there is a kind of theological promiscuity, I call it that. the man who is too much in love, who lives like a hummingbird, from woman to woman. Likewise, sometimes we can run the risk of going from church to church, or from leader to leader, or from phenomenon to phenomenon, or from television program to television program, as if looking for something. Understands?

I believe that if you are sincerely seeking strength from the Lord and blessing from the Lord and you know what you have believed in. Glory to God! I think that this is good, but there is also danger, brothers, everything is in the mood that drives our actions, everything is in the way and why we do things. That's what matters. But truly that we know in whom I have believed, and that there is a certain loyalty towards certain basic things of the Christian life because many times what happens, brothers, is that when we live like this with that restlessness that is not satisfied with anything and that we always live looking for new experiences and new phenomena and new strange things, that we are easy prey for deception and error and so we often live discouraged because we go from place to place and it is like everywhere, brothers, when you have time to discover that sometimes brothers come to visit our church, praise God for that, but I tell you don't come here to this church looking for the perfect church because unfortunately this church is not. I don't know if there will be any perfect church in Boston, praise God if there is, but I assure you that this is not it, and this pastor is not perfect either. And if you come running from an imperfect church looking for this perfect church, I'm afraid you're going to be discouraged and disappointed. Now, come share and grow and seek God and teach me how to be taught and then together we can grow.

But the perfect church doesn't exist and we can't live with a restlessness like wanting to look for that pastor so that I can truly see that halo up there. Unfortunately I do not have it, I ask the Lord to give it to me with the passage of time but I am not perfect, nor is the church perfect. And we have to come with the spirit of seeking the Lord together and learning together and giving time for the voice of the Lord to speak to us about what God wants of us in this place. We cannot be jumping from place to place, nor from doctrine to doctrine, we have to be based on Christ and what we have believed, what we have experienced, and the rest, glory to God, it is good, it is beautiful but not to me They are going to add nothing to my faith because I know who I have believed in.

What I can do is simply decorate a little and help a little here or there, a little more salt, a little more seasoning here, but the foundation of my faith is already laid and that is Jesus Christ. And we have to understand that so as not to fall.

Look how Paul speaks in Second Timothy, chapter 3, verses 5 to 7. He talks about people out there who live preaching strange doctrine, he says, they will have an appearance of godliness but they will deny its efficacy, and he says, this is avoided because of these are the ones who break into the house and here Paul speaks of little women but I think this can be applied to every fickle Christian, he says, these are the ones who break into the houses and take captive little women loaded with sins , carried away by various concupiscences, he says, these are always learning and can never come to the knowledge of the truth.

There are people like this who are always restless, looking for something more, something more, and they never find it because peace and rest is found in the person of Jesus Christ, it is not in doctrine, it is not in pastor, it is not in church, it is not in man, is a direct, real, personal, detailed relationship with the person of Jesus. And the person who is founded on Jesus Christ is then a stable person and moves, moves with aplomb because he knows the way he is doing it.

And we have to be based on that individual called Christ Jesus. Paul, in Ephesians 4:14 says, “…so that we are no longer fluctuating children, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the stratagem of men who cunningly use the tricks of error to deceive….”

Let's not be children, let's not be carried with a blade of the wind of each new theological fashion that arises out there. Let's be sober. He says, “…but that by following the truth in love we grow in everything in him who is the head, who is he? this is christ

That is faith, brothers, that is the foundation of faith, it is that. And God calls us today to cultivate that sound faith, that sound doctrine, that simple faith, that faith that is the foundation of everything else. Let us clarify, brothers, here Paul is speaking against heresies, false doctrines and of course, there still are, the Jehovah's Witnesses say that Christ is not God, that Christ is a creature, simply that God created. And I believe that it is a doctrine that Paul would have strongly condemned. The New Age speaks of gods and demi-gods and mystical figures. There is spiritualism out there that uses saints and all these things to promote diabolical practices and against all these things we have to be very careful and we have to be well warned.

But I believe that the Lord is also speaking to us today, not only about those totally false doctrines, but about that inconstancy that exists today in the modern church and in many Christians that leads them to have no loyalty to anything or anyone.

Brothers, I believe that the life of a congregation is very similar to the married life. If you are looking for a perfect spouse, I don't think you will find it either. Ask my wife, at least. And if from the first moment you discern the first defect in your spouse, you are going to stick out, you will never stay long in any marital relationship, because we are all imperfect, we all have defects, we all have problems.

And God has designed marriage so that in some way marriage serves to promote patience, love, tolerance, forgiveness, loving that being with their defects and to polish ourselves spiritually. And that takes time for it to happen, it takes a lifetime for that relationship to perfect and establish itself. But if you break free and run, as the Mexicans say, you immediately split that they had the first fight or the second or the third, as it is today, divorce is everywhere. Today more than half of the couples who marry before the age of 5 have already divorced. The first marriage today is a rehearsal, that is what it is for many people and many people get married like they change their clothes and when they get tired of one, well, we simply go to seek a divorce and go to another. And they never grow, they never mature. There is a promiscuity in that kind of attitude.

And I think the same thing sometimes happens in churches. One cannot grow in a church unless one does not make a commitment, since the church began to have its little problems or difficulties, or since the pastor made a mistake, or since a little brother stepped on his key or said something to him. bad because he got up on the wrong side of the bed on that day, refused to greet you, or whatever, if that's why you poisoned yourself and lost your love for the church and you're already falling in love with someone else who is watching on television or who saw an ad or heard the pastor on the radio, you are never going to grow spiritually because spiritual relationships also take time and require the Lord to speak and the Lord to polish, and the Lord to work and through that experience one grows and one becomes strong and one discovers that there is a reason to stay, not to be, as I say, looking like a hummingbird from one side to the other.

Spiritual growth comes as a result of stable relationships, of submitting to an authority or a teaching over the long term, of the frictions and tensions that result from that congregational relationship. If we continually change, and continually jump, and are continually hearing today a preaching there, and another preaching here, we never know who we are going to believe, we will be confused. The so-and-so pastor says one thing and the other says another and which of the two is right. And many times then we do not have a solid doctrinal foundation that strengthens us. And here Paul tells them, see that no one deceives you through philosophies and hollow subtleties, according to the traditions of men according to the rudiments of the world and not according to Christ.

Let no one deceive you with persuasive words, you Colossians, I see your good spirits, I see your firmness, I see your spiritual solidity, do not let yourself be moved by that. Set your eyes on Christ Jesus. Look at the one who has transformed you as he says here, he has circumcised you, not with that symbolic circumcision that the Jews make of cutting off the child's foreskin, but he cut off the sinful flesh that you had, because the The only person who changes sin in man is Jesus Christ, the spirit of God. The only one that transforms minds is the spirit of Jesus Christ. The only one who changes our bad habits and restores us and makes us new creatures is Jesus Christ. It is not the church, it is not the pastor, it is not the teachers, it is not the deacons, it is not the elders, it is the person who works in you through Christ Jesus.

Everything else is very nice, brothers, very nice, the preaching is good. If I didn't believe I wouldn't be here preaching. The choirs are nice, the social gatherings are nice, but in the long run what matters is that you know that the power of Jesus Christ is running through your life and that you have a personal and vital relationship with the person of Jesus. I want to ask you if you are sure today that Christ is truly your Lord and that you converted, not to Roberto Miranda, but to Jesus Christ. And if you have doubts about that, I invite you today to take a step of faith and put your life in the hands of that Jesus Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.