Do not reject the gift of God

Second Timothy chapter 1. The Lord already spoke to us about this verse in the prophetic time that we had here. And I feel that everything that we have heard in terms of the prophetic word is completely in union with the Word that God has given me to share. There in Second Timothy Chapter 1 verses 6 and 7. Famous, well-known verses.

'Therefore I advise you to fan the fire of the gift of God that is in you by the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind. I really wish I had more time than I have to develop the central thought that God has placed in my heart. In fact, when I was now in Puerto Rico preaching at a conference in the town of Arecibo, I used this same verse in another context to deal with what God gave me for that Congregation, on Friday night.

This morning, and since I came from Puerto Rico, I have been thinking about the issue including the prophetic word and the move of the Holy Spirit and why sometimes it becomes so difficult for Congregations and individuals to enter into the move of the Holy Spirit. And one of the reasons many times is because the gifts sometimes come packaged in very unattractive wrappings. Many times we see the movement of the church of Christ in the world and we see how contaminated the energy of God is when it incarnates in men and human institutions. From the moment the Holy Spirit leaves the perfect world of eternity and enters time in space, he has to be in contact with the flesh and the imperfections of human beings.

We saw that in the ministry of the Incarnation in which the entirety of God's deity has to be put inside a human body that is subject to temptations and that probably had all the processes that any human being manifested. We see it here in this Bible, which is the Word of God, too. It is a text that contains all kinds of complications and historical expressions, but we believe that it is the perfect revelation of God's will. We see that the heroes of the Bible that we see on the pages of the Bible were full of imperfections. I'm afraid that if we had the opportunity to have a cappuccino with Elías we would leave a little disappointed.

If we were shown a video of Jesus walking through the streets of Jerusalem we would be disappointed and perhaps say “Wow! That's all?". The prophet Isaiah says that the Messiah would be unattractive for us to desire. In other words, he was not going to be attractive but humble, simple. For that reason that the eternal revelation of God, the power of God sometimes manifests itself in very unattractive ways. Many times we feel compelled to reject the things that come from God.

I have had to learn that if I am going to take advantage of the power of God in my life I have to be very humble and learn to take things that sometimes come in very unattractive packages. That reminds me of one of the words of the Apostle Paul and I am going to tell you why this verse is related. For example, in Second Corinthians chapter 4 verse 7 the Apostle Paul says: "But we have this treasure." Say "honey" everyone. "In glasses - of what? - of clay". It's like taking a 3,000 carat diamond and putting it in an aluminum setting. 'We have this treasure in clay vessels'. Look at the contrast between treasure and clay vessels. One does not put a treasure in clay vessels.

The idea is to put a treasure in a container that is up to the treasure. And the Apostle Paul is speaking here of the Gospel, the maximum revelation of God to humanity. God has put it in 'clay vessels'. That is the context of this verse in chapter 4. And for what? It says “so that the excellence of the power may be from God and not from us”. When one looks at all the scandals and all the failures of the church of Jesus Christ, all the atrocities that have been committed throughout history, the imperfection of the universal church of Jesus and of the church in these same times, one wonders: How could it have occurred to God to put the sublime Gospel, the task of evangelizing the world in people like you and me? In institutions as imperfect as the Church?

If you have your gaze fixed on men, on institutions and that is what will convince you to seek God, forget that this is destined to fail. If you are only going to receive a prophetic word that comes from a person, from a perfect body, from a perfect personality emitted in a perfect way, forget about prophecy and don't look for God to speak to you through the Word. Many times the Word of God comes in clay vessels, in imperfect ways, in ways we don't expect. And one has to be willing to pay the price, to be humble, to be complex, and to understand that there is an interaction between the humanity of man and the deity of God, and that God has willed it to be so always in everything he gives to us.

None of the gifts that the Bible says that God has given to his church, I have seen expressed in perfect forms. I've always seen them in ways that at times, I've been tempted to dismiss them and say 'If that's what that gift is, I'm not interested.' But I have discovered that when I receive what God gives me and I receive that riddle, when I receive that strange thing that I feel tempted to reject in the flesh and I try to search and ask, what does God have for me there?' discern the divine content in that rare package, there is blessing. There is always blessing to my life, in some way that I cannot explain. When I question my mind, when I subject it to God's greater truth, this humiliation of my intellect always generates a blessing from God.

That is why Christ said “unless we are like children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. Many times our intellect and our aesthetic values of how things have to be done make us stumble and prevent us from coming into contact with the mysterious energy of God. Many times the greatest blessings that I have received in my life have come from people that I would not invite to eat at my house. People with a bad smell in their mouths, poorly dressed, spit on you when they give you the prophecy, sometimes people who are not the most spiritually developed, have obvious character defects. How many times have the people who have blessed me the most in this very church are people that I have had to fight with for other reasons than that? They are always fighting with me and I with them. But don't worry, that's not you. In the second service. It's true.

But where does all this come from? And I'm sharing with you. Where does it come from? It's that someone gave me to watch a video of a preacher who has a certain popularity. A charismatic preacher, ultra Pentecostal, and the person who gave it to me feels that what this man exemplifies is not from God. And perhaps you hope that in light of what I am saying, I will say to you that 'No, I felt that this man really has a biblical ministry.' But it was the opposite, I agree that this person did not resonate in my spirit. His way of ministering did not resonate with my spirit, I do not feel that this is what God wants for the manifestation of gifts.

A false mysticism, emotionalism, lack of Biblical foundation, expressions of lack of character of the servant of God. At least from what I can judge roughly and simply harshly. I even saw things dangerous to the health of the church. There's a whole branch of Pentecostalism that's growing today that kind of is just like, 'Go experiment, get drunk and do the Spirit drug and forget about the Word and doctrine and theology and just enjoy the move. of the Spirit'. Stories of chubby angels that appear to you and give you messages. Weird things.

Things, really, it's like I think it's dangerous because you got drunk and experienced something and that already validates that it's God, truly. But precisely when I see these things I enter into a fight. Because I don't say 'Lord, I don't want to reject something simply because it's not what I think should be the way you manifest yourself'. And that makes me wonder, “Well, why has God made it so difficult? Why don't you manifest your gifts in a perfect way? that one can definitely say that it is and there is no doubt about that. Why do we always have to be exercising judgment and judging in the light of the Word and asking ourselves is this from the Lord or not? Why doesn't God just manifest the perfect pure things and 'we'll solve the problem'?

And yet we see in the Bible that it is so. Because if you read First Corinthians chapter 14, the Apostle Paul is struggling there with false manifestations even in the midst of the Congregation when the spirit manifests itself. In fact, First Corinthians 14 is written to correct some of the excesses that were occurring in the midst of that Pentecostal Congregation. And the Apostle Paul wrote to correct and to establish a biblical order, consistent with the principles of the Word of God. And that is why in chapter 14 verse 27 he says "Let everything be done for edification". Many times I wonder when I see so many manifestations and so many things in a service or in some ministries said “Well, what a building there is; what is left?; How are people being strengthened, advanced, transformed in their lives? What of value is left after the dust has settled and everything is back to normal?

Where is the permanent sediment of the ministry? In verse 27 he says: "If he speaks a strange language, let it be for two or at most three and in turn." In verse 27 it says: "If anyone speaks a foreign language, let it be for two or at most three and in turn and one interpreter." In verse 29 it says “In the same way the prophets speak two or three and the rest judge. This judging means, as it says there in the English translation, carefully measure what that person has said. The idea is not to so indiscriminately do everything you hear just because it seems attractive or interesting or impressive. The devil works miracles. The devil speaks in tongues. The devil heals, of course he heals to make you sicker, because he doesn't know how to do it.

We can't just go along with the demonstrations. But on the other hand, because something is ugly, imperfect or unattractive, because it is not what you expect or because it is not within the definitions that you want it to be, that does not mean that it is not from God. What's more, I believe that this is why many people, as many times, the gifts of God are manifested through unattractive forms and ordinary people with their imperfections, reject and do not enter into the life of the Spirit because they do not conform to what they expect it to be great and perfect. There has to be a balance, in other words. Just because it's ugly doesn't mean it's not from God and just because it's pretty doesn't mean it's from God.

Just because the prophet is 6 foot 8 and has blue eyes does not mean he is from God. Or because I'm 4'3 and wrinkled doesn't mean I'm not from God. God uses what he wants, when he wants, how he wants and we have to discern things in the Spirit. There is a part that God wants us to do and when we enter into any encounter with the manifestation of the gifts we have to ask the Lord to give us that capacity to judge, not according to the eyes and the flesh, but according to the word and the spirit.

But certainly the emphasis of this sermon is this: "Do not reject the gift of God because it manifests itself in unattractive ways." That is the emphasis that I want to leave on this day. The other is very true and that is why I point it out. But my part is, let us not reject the gift of God because it comes in a garment, a humble, simple and imperfect garment. What connection does this have with what Paul tells Timothy? Because Paul tells him "Timothy fan into fire the gift of God that is in you." In other words, there was an active part that Timothy had to play in order for God's gift to manifest in his life. God did not do everything, simply for him.

Just as there is a part that we have to judge so that the gifts are manifested in our means, in our lives. Sometimes God wants us to be alert and judging as we interact with the gift that we are watching and living with the gift of God. And it is a part that touches us. Sometimes when you feel less available and less willing to manifest the gift of God, perhaps that is the moment in which by faith, you are going to have to go into praying for someone or give a prophetic word or start to stir up the movement of God in any environment in which you find yourself.

Sometimes in a moment when everything seems calm in the service and there is nothing that promises that God is going to move, you by faith begin to do your part, be it the Pastor or whoever it is and you begin to process the energy of God and that then makes the Spirit begin to manifest and move. It is like this time that we had here, where the Lord manifested himself so beautifully, it is a process. That goes little by little and there is a moment when someone does something and one sees something or feels something and then one takes by faith that this is God and everything starts from there. From there another does something else, then one declares something and then God begins to move and one enters to move in the power of God.

The move of God is like a locomotive and you have to break the inertia of that great mass that you have to start moving. The more it moves, the more momentum it gains until it is already a machine that is irresistible, moving forward. And do you know what happens? Many times what prevents many people from moving the Holy Spirit in their lives is that they do not understand that they have a very important part to play. And also that the gift of God, especially at the beginning, is going to manifest itself in very small, humble and simple ways and what they have to do is insist and persist exercising the gift by faith until that gift begins to collect heat and then manifest itself in all its power and in all its perfection.

Many times, there are people who are looking for 'Lord, baptize me with your Spirit, fill me with your Spirit' and God is up there saying: But I already gave it to you a long time ago, boy. Just wear it and move in it. 'Lord, I want the gift of tongues'. Open your mouth and speak. There are times when people believe that in order to speak in tongues, two little angels have to come and begin to move one's tongue. He thinks he has to enter a mystical state and fall to the ground gently and gracefully and then start talking.

If you have a gift, if you know a language, you just open your mouth and speak. I don't have to feel emotional or romantic to speak French. And so it is with the gift. I believe that every believer can speak in tongues. Every person baptized in the Holy Ghost, but sometimes they refuse to open their mouths and say that weird, silly word that's going to come out the first time when they speak in tongues. And because of that, it's not that God doesn't want it, it's that we say 'No, man, I expected something much more beautiful than this. I expected a thunderous voice to come out of my mouth. And what comes out are two or three humble words or perhaps a strange noise. But God says 'dare and when you have processed that I am going to give you more'.

And when you then, in your prayer time, when no one is listening to you, you open your mouth and speak to the Lord, you exercise your gift. In times of praise when you feel that the Lord is moving your spirit, you open your mouth and begin to verbalize what God puts in your spirit. So it is that you are exercising the gift and your tongue is released and you enter into the full manifestation of the language that God has given you. But a lot of people want as soon as they open their mouths for the first time, to start speaking a language totally and perfectly; with all the syntax and all the grammar and all the utterances of a language. How did you learn to speak a language you did not know? How did you start speaking your own language? Did you start by speaking perfect sentences? No.

It happens with the gift of prophecy. A person who you know is somewhat neurotic and having difficulties in their marriage comes and gives you a word from the Lord and you say 'No, how can that person speak God's prophecy if I know who he is and how imperfect he is? If you reject that word, be careful that perhaps you are saddening the Holy Spirit. That is why God says 'My treasure is in clay pots. So that no one boasts." If God were looking for someone perfect on Earth to give His Word to, no one would qualify. I believe that precisely what is glorious is when we learn to receive and respect what God gives. And say: 'Father, even though I don't understand the jar, what I'm hearing makes sense in the light of the Word and my life. So I receive it and the rest I leave to You.'

That can happen, for example, with the gift of healing. God tells you: 'Look - and you feel in your spirit - I have put in you a gift of praying for the sick so that they heal'. And maybe the first time you pray for a person with a cold they catch pneumonia and die. And you think that you are not going any further. Or maybe a person has that same cold and they are sneezing and tears are coming down their eyes and you pray for them and they just stop sneezing but they still have tears in their eyes. It is a partial healing. And you say 'Oh no! If it had been God that person would have been healed immediately, resoundingly and perfectly. So it can't be from God.

But I have discovered that many times healing is from God, due to mysteries that only God knows, sometimes they are partial and only with the use of time like a doctor using his gift they become more and more solid, more and more perfect, more and more obvious. Sometimes we pray for a person and we believe that as soon as we pray for that person, they have to be healed. But I have seen many times that healing is from God, that we are imperfect means, it can be gradual - little by little - and as long as we persist in praying for that person and that person also prays, fighting for their own healing, God can bring that healing. long-term.

I think that is why there are so many people out there and even evangelicals who see that the manifestations of God's gifts are so imperfect and that they require effort, process, time, and that they are manifested through imperfection, that is why they reject them and keep out of the move of God. I know Pastors and Congregations that want to see the movement of the spirit in their congregational life. But since God's move when incarnated in human lives is so imperfect and they don't want to deal with disorder and imperfection. They simply remain as thirsty people but do not throw themselves into the waters. And they are always celebrating the theory and theology of the moving of the Spirit but they need to get into the practice. But as I say all practice is problematic and difficult many times.

Let me ask you something: If you were in a desert dying of thirst, your mouth is completely dry and your lips are chapped from the great thirst you have. You know you have only a few hours to live if you don't drink water. And at the moment you find a canteen, a vessel with water. But there is a problem, there are about three flies above the water there. What are you going to do? Are you going to say 'Ah! That nasty water, those flies? I am going to wait to find water that has a fridge, tightly covered with a plastic and very pure to drink. Would you continue on the way and leave that water there without drinking it? Look, I think you swallow the glass of water and everything you can. The flies also eat them. A fly would never have tasted as good to him in his life as that fly.

And so are we. We are thirsty, we are thirsty, we need the Spirit. And because the Spirit has its imperfections we will not stop looking for it and processing it and working with it. Because that is the reality of the Spirit, that is what I have seen in 25 years of Pastoral practice and what we have all seen through the centuries. There is always imperfection mixed with the manifestation of the gift of God. Brothers, we cannot let the fear of missing the mark and getting into something that is not of God prevent us from entering and starting to move on the path to which God calls us. We cannot allow that because the manifestation of the gift is not perfect we reject it and say 'I don't want it because it is not what I expected'. Don't let fear and complexity keep you from interacting with God's gift.

Do you see why this verse? Because God has not given us a spirit of fear. Even if you don't have all the answers and everything is explained and justified, don't wait to get into God's water. Even if the manifestation of the gifts that you see is not perfectly and completely as you think it should be, do not reject it, enter and as you enter ask questions. It will be from God, but it interacts. Let it take you, when you can't find something else, you get attached, but use what little you can get from the experience. I wish I had more time to explain all this. I know that we have exceeded ourselves but again the gifts are difficult. Sometimes we want God's blessing but we don't want to pay the price.

God has told us many times that the services were going to start at nine, one service was going to get into the other and I don't know, but many times you have to... That's one of the reasons why many churches don't get into the manifestation of the power of God. They tell God: 'We want you to demonstrate but it must be between 9 and 11. Already at 11 and one we go home.' And 'Pastor we want you to prophesy but it has to be in 15 minutes because after 15 minutes I have to have lunch. I have an appointment there at the restaurant. I think that's it, I don't think we've wasted time.

But, look, one thing here. I'm done with this. I was thinking of Naaman. Later when you can read the story found in Second Kings Chapter 5. Naaman has leprosy that is taking him who brought him. [Laughter] And they tell him that there is a prophet in Israel who can heal his leprosy. And Naaman, who is a second general of the King, practically has a whole scenario of how things are going to happen when he arrives in Israel. He is hoping that when he gets there the prophet is going to be waiting for him with a whole retinue of the King behind him.

There are going to be people with trumpets and guns waiting to give a big welcome to the Syrian general. And the prophet, dressed in his flowing priestly robes, is going to say to him, 'Oh great Naaman! Welcome, God is waiting for you to heal you. And the prophet with a great liturgy and many bombastic things is going to impose his hands on him and oil is going to flow from his fingers and Naaman will be healed immediately. But when he gets there not even the prophet shows up. And the prophet's house is a dilapidated little house over there on a street that doesn't even have a name. The prophet's servant receives him and tells him 'Naaman says the prophet to go to the Jordan River and dive 7 times and that with that you will be healed'.

It says here that: "When Naaman heard this, he left upset and wincing and complaining everywhere" because it was not what he expected from that moment. Says 5:11 "and Naaman left angry saying 'Behold, I said to myself, he will come out soon and standing up, he will call on the name of Jehovah his God and will raise his hand and touch the place and heal the leprosy.' And to top things off, the river into which he sends Naaman to dive is a river that is dirty and it is a tiny river and there are better rivers there in his country. Naaman asks Abana and Farfan, is the river of Damascus not better than all the waters of Israel? If I wash in them, will I not also be clean? And he went home. But what did God want to do? God didn't just want to heal Naaman.

Because many times what we want is for God to give us what I want and not work on my character, on my mind, on the things that I assume. In my intellectual and academic premises. We simply want God to give me the quick thing and the rest is His business. What I want is what I need at this moment. And I see many times that in this struggle that we have with the way in which the gifts are manifested, how difficult it is to discern the intention and the presence of God, there is a process of spiritual and personal growth that God wants us to go through in order to get to know him better.

Many times we learn faith, humility, patience, tolerance, looking at ourselves, believing by faith and not by sight. Many other things that God wants us to learn and that is why he sends his treasure in a clay pot. Thank God there was a little man there who surely couldn't read or write who was Naaman's servant and said to him 'But father if he had asked you for a big and difficult thing you would have done it. He is asking you for something simple. Do it and try. Yes, because God uses little things, humble people. It was not an angel that spoke to Naaman. It wasn't a university professor, it was a servant who said to him 'Why don't you do?' and he had perfect logic in the situation.

Thank God that Naaman humbled himself and threw himself into that dirty river without having spoken directly to the prophet. Even though he did have to remove a little bit of dirty stuff in the river and find a little spot there that looked more or less clean, looking all over the place – 'I hope YouTube doesn't catch me here on this and they take a picture of me and that my wife sees me there'. He says the Word that "descended" and that is what we have to do, we have to descend from our expectations, our intellect, our reasonable doubts, our understandable fears. It says that he “dived seven times”.

Watch plunge into the waters of the Spirit 7 times until your spirit is filled. If it doesn't work the first time, dive in again, if it doesn't work the second time, there's a third time, if it doesn't work a fourth time the third time, it was the seventh time that the miracle was done. We have all spent years getting into the Spirit, trying and striving and it is still not perfect but we continue to seek the perfect manifestation of God's gift in our lives. He says that he did it according to the word of the Man of God. That man who did not receive it who gave him an imperfect recipe, but says that his meat became like the meat of a child and he became clean. Not even Ivory soap does as clean a job as that dirty Jordan river did.

Brethren, let us not let the imperfection of the manifestation of the gift prevent us from entering the waters and beginning the process of healing and growth in our lives. I'm not telling you to stop judging and comparing with the word. I'm not telling you to accept everything that comes along and just… I'm not saying that because it's weird and wild it's from God. What I'm saying is that just because it's a little imperfect and weird, don't reject it. Get in there and let the Lord lead you and get started. Make yourself like a child, simple, exercise the gift. Don't let fear or complexity keep you from the Lord. Start with what you have on hand. If God gave you a little word of tongues, use that little word and more will come later. If God gave you just one thought, a piece of prophetic thought obey and thank Him for that little piece and God will give you more next time. If God partially healed your headache and you had to take Ephedrine as well, then thank God for the part that healed you and continue praying for the next part. Perhaps the second will be healed only with prayer.

Tell the Lord 'perfect my anointing, Father. I am going to continue exercising the gift, exercising it until it becomes perfect. Until I see the full manifestation of your gift. Use the gift humbly and receive the gift humbly. Glory to God. Amen, amen. Let's stand up and thank the Lord. I hope I didn't ruin your lunch date this morning. But I believe that the word of God is more nutritious than any food. Don't reject the gift. If you want a title for this sermon, it is this: 'Do not reject the gift'. Exercise it, do not let the spirit of cowardice prevent you from entering into the use of the gift. Hallelujah. Thank my Lord. We adore you. We receive your word, Father, all that You have given this morning we thank you. We bless and adore you. Forgive our pride and sometimes forgive the demands we put on you, Lord.

Help us to be humble like children. Receive what You give us and use the gift that You have humbly provided, exercise it until it manifests itself with more power. Oh we adore you! Thank you for your gifts Lord. Forgive us for not being more suitable vessels. We declare that your gifts are perfect and we humble ourselves before the mystery that you have chosen. That You have chosen imperfect vessels but so that we give You the Glory and Honor, Lord. Lord, we want to be a Church that uses your gifts and moves in your gifts. Teach us how to use the gifts. We adore you and we bless you, Lord. Hallelujah. Thank the Lord. Get to work on the gift, get to process the gift, live in the gift. Don't reject the gift. Fan the fire of the gift that is the gift that is in you and tell me I have it! I am going to exercise it, I am going to enliven it until it manifests itself perfectly in my life.

Hallelujah. Give the Lord a big round of applause. Thanks God. Hallelujah hallelujah.