God wastes nothing in your life

Acts 13, 1─3 of the word of the Lord, and take all this that you have received from the time of the prayers at the very beginning of the service and after the time of adoration, so beautiful, the ministration that we received here ahead, we brought our needs before God. Our meditation on the Lord's business and the daily life of the church that is given.

Just yesterday we were here, as Rosmar said, a lot of things are happening, there were workshops for hujieres, training for youth mentors whose lives are being transformed in many ways by the social ministries of the church. There were people studying the stewardship course, crown ministries, and having their financial lives transformed by it. There was a training for hujieres here where I was participating. Brother Jonathan was giving a presentation. A large number of the hujieres who minister every Sunday in the church receiving training, their lives being enriched by a practical word from the Lord.

Friday night it was a tremendous joy to be with the brothers who graduated from the discipleship classes. Glory to God. Give a round of applause to those brothers, different courses, different levels. Our brother Omar Soto, Pastor Omar Soto directing that ministry, we celebrate with all these people whose lives are being transformed.

A brother told me, I can't suppress this illustration. I met this man the first Sunday he came here for church. I greeted him for one of those things. I went to him, “Brother, I haven't seen him before. I bless you in the name of the Lord." He told me his name, it was the first time he had set foot in an evangelical church in his life. He was telling me how… and so I ask him, “What course are you graduating? First?" He tells me, "No, this is the third." One of the brothers that stood here, well built him, I can't remember his name right now. The thing is, he tells me, "No, I'm going to take the third one or I was finishing the third one." Time goes fast.

I see him from time to time, I greet him, I still remember the first day I saw him well. And he told me, “Look, pastor, when I arrived at the church my life was destroyed. My son had just been sentenced to life, life in prison for a crime he committed. My other suicidal son, he wanted to commit suicide, he wanted to take his own life, a drug addict, oppressed by drugs. I came here to church with my life in pieces and you remember the conversation we had."

I encouraged him to take the discipleship classes, actually, when I had that conversation with him. And he told me, “Look, today God has changed my life. I brought my son, the second son, I brought him here to the church. Today he is a supervisor of two businesses here in the City of Boston and he is coming to church. God is touching his life in a very powerful way and my life is being changed.” And I gave glory to the Lord.

I even wanted to, I was tempted to have him testify for a little while but he said, let me not complicate things further. But many things happen in the Kingdom of God. And many of them we do not realize. Because God is always moving in the midst of his people, doing beautiful things, transforming lives. And all this is possible because the people of God are faithful, in good times or in bad, there are many bombs or cymbals, many trumpets sound or there is stillness in the air, the people of God continue to serve the Lord, the people of God keeps coming to God's house, God's people keep giving to the Lord every day, faithfully, persistently we serve God. and whether angels sing or not, audibly, we continue to be faithful to the Lord and minister to God and the spirit of God moves in the midst of his people and does truly transforming things. And we give to the Lord for all his move.

And that's because you are faithful and this morning, we were doing all these things, announcements, tithes and offerings, the beautiful music that we hear here. all this is part of the word of God ministering to us in different ways. Glory to God because in all of this the spirit of the Lord is moving.

And we see here a vital church, the church of Antioch, Chapter 13, ver 1, says:

"... There were then in the church that was in Antioch prophets and teachers..."

There is so much already in that verse that we may not realize.

“…There were then in the church that was in Antioch prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simon, the one called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, the one who had been raised together with Herod, the tetrarch, and Saul, these ministering to the Lord..."

This couple… oh, it's Samuel and Miriam. come this way You can't see well there. I can't see Samuel. Samuel and Miriam that we love so much. God bless you. It's good to have you here. Welcome. Sit there so we can see each other better and you are an inspiration to me, apart from the Holy Spirit. Welcome. We love you. How is everything with you, my brothers? They look good. We enjoy having you here.

"... Together with Herod, the tetrarch, and Saul, these ministering to the Lord, these people ministering to the Lord, and fasting, said the Holy Spirit, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Then, having fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them away..."

The Lord bless his word. Like who doesn't say much. Three pregnant verses each one of them. There is so much there that we can learn from this verse. Because it's the life of the church, it goes on. These first Christians continue their lives and their word introduces us to different aspects.

Why did the Holy Spirit choose these events from the many that I am sure occurred in the lives of God's people at that time? Each one of them has something to teach us, something to inspire us, something to enrich us and here we see this moment.

Chapter 13 in the book of Acts is a defining moment that defines many things in the life of the early church. It is a Chapter that marks a key moment in all these things that we have been studying from the book of Acts up to now. Because here we first see the beginning, not the beginning, I would say, but rather the formal sending and public acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit of the ministry of what would become the great Apostle Paul.

In this Chapter for the first time Saul, whose beginning in the pages of the Bible is not very promising, because the first time we see him, we see him picking up the clothes of those who were stoning the servant of God, Stephen, and Saul was a convinced Pharisee, hated the church, persecuted the church, wasted no opportunity to wreak havoc and breathe threats, as the Bible says, against the church. When the Lord calls him for the first time, he rides his furious horse with letters from the Sanhedrin and religious authorities to imprison any Christian he meets along the way. He was a passionate man and convinced of what he was doing, but terribly wrong.

And now we see it, after he has his great conversion, the Lord literally knocks him off his horse, takes him to be ministered to by a humble man, Ananias, do you remember? And he entrusts him and impregnates him with a vision. And God already had plans for Saul. When God speaks to Ananias he tells him, because Ananias says, “Lord, how do you send me this man? This is a cannibal, he wants to destroy the church, he hates. I can't go to that man." The Lord tells him, “Go, calm down, my son, you calm down, go because the chosen instrument is this man. And I am going to show him everything he must suffer for my name. I am going to take him before kings, I am going to take him to nations, because I have plans with those men.”

God's plans with Saul were from before the foundation of the world, let alone from his mother's womb. God had a plan with this man and had been taking him through a process. The Pharisaic study of Paul, because Paul was a Pharisee, he was spiritually nourished at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel, a rabbi that we see a moment of his life in the pages and we see that he was a wise, prudent man, he did not know Jesus, who knows if one got to know Jesus. But we see that although he did not know Jesus, he was a thinking man and he was a man who reasoned spiritually, that man was the one who prepared Paul in his first steps.

Because God is a systemic God, brothers. God is a God who has plans and your life has different facets and in everything God is watching over your life. And God is like those rockets, before, I don't know if they're not used anymore, I think that much, but the first rockets that went into space, you remember, they were these giant monsters and as they went up they released pieces of gasoline, because they had a quantity tremendous amount of fuel and when they went up to a certain height, they dropped one component, and they reached another height, they dropped another and then what was left was the small ship, the head of that great giant, because the other pieces were no longer necessary and they were built to fill their place and then when they fulfilled their mission, they were discarded to give way to the next stage.

And I believe that this is how God is in our lives. The events of your life, the things that happen in your life, are directed and coordinated by the Holy Spirit. God does not waste anything in your life, as he did not waste it in the life of Saul. Here we see the Holy Spirit saying, "Separate him and Barnabas for the work that I have prepared for them." But Saul already had a story, he had spent as I say, those years in his youth, a committed Pharisee. Because Jesus had not yet arrived, God allowed Saul to go… that his spiritual sensibility was prepared in the best possible way.

I believe that Gamaliel, from what I see in his performance in that intervention he makes before the other members of the Sanhedrin, was a spiritual man, he was a man with an honest heart, he was a man who understood God and God chose Gamaliel so that give Saul the best that could be given to a man who was going to serve the Lord in another capacity.

And the component of the rocket at that time was, educate yourself under the teaching of a godly man. It lacks important knowledge, but for now it is the best I have to offer you. Gamaliel was like the Harvard of his time, in terms of the education Saul could receive. And God used him, as he used Moses in his wisdom, and God ever since he called Abraham, 450 years before God's people left Egypt, God said to Abraham, "Go, mark for me the land that your people and your descendants who are going to be from your entrails, from your loins, are going to return one day, they are going to serve a strange king who is going to enslave them, but one day I am going to bring them and I am going to give them this land that now I am pleased that you walk through it, marking it and declaring to the universe, to the angels and to the demons that I have reserved this land for my people.

And then comes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph in Egypt, the people of God arrive there as a family of 70 people, years go by, literally centuries and finally God prepares Moses, puts him in the very house of Pharaoh, gives him the best possible education a man could receive, as a prince, as a statesman, as a warrior, as an academic. He says that Moses was powerful in works and in word. The time came when God then gave him another component for his life, he first put him in the heat of Egypt to educate him, prepare his mind, his heart, his body, his attitude as a leader, but he needed other components, then he needed the character formation, because he was a fiery, violent, impulsive man, he killed the Egyptian. Then God puts him to cool off for 40 years in the desert. And there he puts it with the goats and the silence of the desert, and the starry nights of the desert, to silence, to think.

You know, if you want to form yourself as a person deep in the Lord, love silence. Love the stillness. He loves secluded places, because that is where God forms a man into a deep, thinking woman. The person who turns on the radio and television as soon as he gets up and opens the windows to let in the noise from the street, and is always listening, is not going to be educated. The man of God, the woman of God is formed by listening to God, getting inside and receiving word with the word of the Lord, adoration, seeking the Lord, receiving from God. And so God brought in Moses.

And then at 80 years of age, because God is not in a hurry, we are the ones who are in a hurry. Perhaps you think, when God goes… how many times do I ask myself, “Lord, when are you going to give me the next stage of the call?” One gets impatient, doubts, fears, sometimes curses, because one wants things...

God is sitting there cooling off on his throne. He is not in a hurry. He knows what he knows and he knows when he's going to give things up. We are fearing and trembling and sometimes we even want to rush things and set a date for God. It has to be May 21, otherwise I give up on this. And we want to force.

Brothers, how many ministries start prematurely because they don't wait for God's moment? How many times do we rush, put pressure on the pastor, subtly nudge him? If you don't put me in that position, I'll leave the church because I need to do something, we spiritualize it, but it's a lie. That is just meat, wanting to do things in our time instead of waiting for God's time.

Lord help me to bide your time. Help me move in my life in your time. Take two aspirin when I want to shoot myself and get things done. Say, no, Lord, have I truly heard from you? What is it that you want? There is a tension because we cannot... there are times when you have to throw yourself in the name of the Lord because God has already given you everything he is going to give you and then you have to throw yourself in faith and say, amen, if I perish, let me perish but I go forward in the name of the Lord. I already meditated, prayed, asked for advice, read the Bible, listened to the evangelist on the radio, I already did everything. Now in the name of the Lord, you know that you have to take the step of faith. Amen. Launch yourself in the name of Jesus and believe, believe that God is with you and rain, shine or wind, God has called me, keep going.

But there are also times when discerning the moment of God and God is working in your life. God is speaking to you. There are things that God has placed in your heart, in your life, concerns, impulses, things that you want to do for the Lord and for the Kingdom of God, let them incubate there. Pray over them, put water and nutrition and food from the word into them. Worship, minister, seek God, serve the Lord and always keep your vision before you and bring it to the Lord. And don't get impatient, don't throw in the towel. Put all the firewood you can so that when the fire comes, it will be a big and consuming fire for your life. Study the word, everything you can do, do what comes to hand, always, but believe in the vision that God has put in your guts and wait for God to consume it.

And so it happened with Moses, so it happened with those great men of God, Gideon, Elisha, Joseph, they had to wait. Some did not even know that God had called them and are surprised when the word of God finds them and touches them and tells them, "I have a purpose for your life." But God is a systems thinker, God is preparing our lives, and we have to believe that there is something that God has there for us.

Here we see Saul. Saul has served. As I say, God put Gamaliel to train this man that God had purposes with him. He gave him the best he had at the time, but it wasn't enough. Then comes the time. Christ has come, the church has risen. Now this type, you have to shape it a little more, you have to take a machete and cut two or three pieces of it so that it fits into the format that I want.

He knocks that proud, intellectual off his horse, sends a worker smelling of truck grease, to anoint him and minister to him. That is the Miranda version of the Bible, but he ministers to this man. Why didn't he choose a converted Pharisee, a high priest? No, he chose a humble man, Ananias, to minister to him, because he was telling him, "This is it again, this is... I turn everything upside down." And he anoints him, he imparts the Holy Spirit and then Saul disappears from the map. It is not known how many years Saul was around unknown. When he arrives in Jerusalem, everyone is afraid of him because they think he is the same one, the one who persecuted the church. It is clearly known that Saul spent many years. He says that several years later I went to the Jerusalem church because God was training him, he was dealing with him, he had a plan.

Saul had to go through a few stages. We saw in Chapter 11, I think it is, that there was a church that was formed in Antioquia, a church of different nationalities, like ours, in an urban and very multiracial and multinational city. In that swarm of nationalities and cultures, because God had a plan for all humanity, it is no coincidence that it is in Antioch where the Gentiles begin to emerge as God has plans for them, because it was a city like Boston. God thinks systematically. The Gospel spread in the big cities first, because it is the cities that exert influence, they are the ones that form the nations.

So God chose a man who was an American citizen, no, he was a Roman citizen, but he had citizenship like the Americans at that time, he could travel, he had certain rights, he had a certain education, he had a warrior's heart. He humiliated him, put him to serve quietly, cooked him over a slow fire, humiliated him and when the church sprouted in Antioch, Barnabas, another humble servant of God, but with a good heart. He says he was a good man, with a good heart.

How interesting, God chooses Saul, a brave, sincere, passionate heart towards God. I had no reserves for God, everything was from God. Just as he served the devil, so now he served the risen Christ, who knocked him off his horse. He was a man devoted to the Lord, sincere to the utmost. It seems that Barnabas was a tender man, he was a good and generous and kind man, and that is why when Barnabas finds himself in the center of the revival in Antioch, where God is doing great things, he calls Saul, because he knows that Saul is a good man. man.

No one wanted to get close to Saulo but Barnabas says that he had a good heart, he invites Saulo to come help him because he is seeing that this is a sincere man. He is ministering, he is fighting the Jews, he is testifying about Jesus Christ. He says, this man is good and maybe he can complement my generous and calm and gentle heart. I need the fire of a Saulo that comes. The complementarity of the ministries, teamwork, affinity. There was an affinity between Saul and Barnabas.

And then Saul comes and pays the price. Because Saulo comes to be a teacher, to disciple, to teach crown ministries classes, and all that kind of thing and there he goes learning how to do the ministry, quietly. And I also thought about this, about Barnabas, calling Saul, a guy that people did not trust because of how bad he had been, and I thought, how good it is to give people a chance, how good it is , when nobody wants to believe in someone, that you believe in someone, and you give them a chance, that you call someone, "Look, there is a space for you, we are going to give you a chance because who knows what God can do to through you."

That we can read the hearts of people, read God's endowment in them, read the call that God has in their life, beyond all the stinking scab that the world and life, and the circumstances, and the mistakes of the past they throw at them, and that you can pierce with eyes illuminated by the Holy Spirit and love of God, and you can see a person and say, You know what? That drug addict, that guy who is drinking wine on the corner, God has a purpose for him and I am going to love him, I am going to bring him to church and I am going to give him an opportunity to meet the Lord and start.

Because one never knows what spiritual genius can come out of a box where it seems that there is a dead person. That's life, brothers. You need people to give you opportunities. We have to be generous with each other and give each other opportunities to go into ministry, minister and mentor each other as well.

So I think all of this is involved here. God has been working, he has been preparing these men, he is preparing a city, he is preparing a powerful movement of his spirit throughout the history of the earth and he is putting components into the rocket, he is assembling it. And Saul has paid the price and has been working quietly, doing what he has to do. Because that is what we have to do, while God's greater call comes to our life, we have to do everything we can, we have to be faithful in the place where God puts us. Amen.

There are people who want, “No, Lord, I want you to take me to Africa so they can eat me alive there. I want to surrender to the crocodiles in the Amazon, in Brazil. Oh, Lord, may my body be a holocaust to you." But the time comes to give an offering and their pants get tight and the bills don't want to come out of their pocket and their fist gets stuck in their hand and they start thinking, this and that, and they get into a world of trouble. But they want God to burn them as a holocaust to the nations.

I say, you have to be faithful where God puts you. In the little you have been faithful, in the much God will put you. Give the Lord the best where God has placed you. Be faithful. Be consistent.

As I told the hujieres yesterday, we want to be great evangelists, to cross the nations. How beautiful is the ministry of the one who serves a glass of water to a prophet, the one who gives a little piece of bread to a person in need. When God puts opportunities in your life, do it as for the Lord, says the word. Whatever we do, whether in word or deed, let us do it as for the Lord.

If the big call comes, glory to God. if it doesn't come, you did your part. you were faithful You held your position. That is what God wants from the children of God, let us be faithful where God puts us. If you are now teaching a discipleship class, make sure neither Billy Graham nor Max Lucado does as good a job as you. At least prepare yourself, maybe you won't be like them, but at least prepare yourself, and give those students everything you can.

Those children up there, don't look at them like four or five year old tadpoles, no, I would like to be ministering in the Congregation on Sunday. That child may be an evangelist one day, that child may be a prophet of God. That girl can be a poet for the Kingdom of God. That other can be saved from death or from killing someone, and you are doing the work of the Lord, make sure you minister to them faithfully. You are doing it for the Lord and who knows if God is preparing you so that one day then you will go to the nations, but you have to go through the process.

The rocket has to get to a certain height and then drop its component in order to get to the moon or Mars or wherever. We do not think like God. First you have to go through the small and then comes the big, then come moments like these where the Holy Spirit speaks and declares, “This is the time, set them apart for me for the work that I have determined for them. I've been training them, I've been mentoring them, I've been putting them through the fire, through the water, and through the oil and now it's time to go. Set them aside for me, because they were faithful.”

And you know what, my brother? There is so much material, I believe that you have received... go with it. Let's… there is much more, but leave it there, you have received much. I believe that God is telling you, be faithful in the place where I have placed you. And give me the best at that time. Make sure that you walk with my character, make sure that you reflect the best values of the Kingdom of God. Make sure that you walk as if my eye was looking only at you. Make sure that your holocaust that you offer me is the best, pure smoke that smells of perfume that reaches my place of residence and that I can inhale the perfume of your life and feel flattered, because you are serving me.

My brother, my sister, when we get to the Kingdom of God up there, there will be many evangelists, there will be many great men and women of God who are going to have to take the line because little old women, all they did was intercede for their children. of God, crying out, creating a child with all the love they could, those are the people who are going to go before us, the supposedly great men and women of God. Because what God looks at is the heart. God what he looks at is the work that you give him. What God looks at is fidelity, because everything else he can do if he wants to, but what he cannot do is offer himself a holocaust of integrity, love, passion and dedication. You have to do that for him.

And whatever God puts you to do, if your function is simply to be a good husband, make sure that when you die your wife says, I will never find a man like that. If your calling is to be a parent, look, make sure you do the best job possible for your children. Give them the best as for the Lord. And you know what? Many times God will prefer that you take a moment and dedicate it to your son and that you go out with him and take him to eat some hamburgers together and sit at a table, and you can open your heart and he to you, and that maybe that day you will stop doing something in church.

Look at what I am telling you, the one who calls you to serve the Lord many times your holocaust to the Lord will be, to do something that no one else is going to realize that it is a spiritual act. I have sometimes done that, Lord, what you want me to do at this moment is something... and I leave supposedly spiritual things, and do something completely material, daily, but I offer it to the Lord, because I know that it glorifies Him him.

Many times a conversation with someone who needs a word, that is your holocaust to the Lord, that is your adoration to the Lord. That word that I don't have time to minister to the Lord, liturgy, leutorgea is the word. The liturgy that he offers them is service to the Lord. Your life is a service to the Lord, a holocaust to the Lord, it is a ministration to the Lord. Everything you do is ministering.

That is why I said this morning, everything that we have been doing here is service to the Lord. People stand up, this, that, this is worship, this is not worship, those announcements are not worship. The question of money is not worship, worship is when we sing to it. Look, everything is adoration to the Lord, you know?

If you blessed someone on the road because they passed by you and God said, "Bless this person, because you will never see them but declare a blessing on their life." Do it in the name of the Lord. Do it as for the Lord. Minister to the Lord. All your life you are serving God. God has purposes with you, but you have to burn stages, you have to give the Lord the best where you are. Make sure that what you do for the Lord is of the quality that he deserves, because God looks at the inside and the outside. Don't be so worried about the outside. God looks at the quality of your heart, your purity, your humility, his simplicity, the passion that you have for him, that every day you live like a holocaust burning before God, 24 hours a day. Everything you do make sure, look inside, it pleases the Lord. God would receive it at this moment, that thought, that action, that word, that conversation, that reading if it would please God is part of my worship of the Lord.

Can I say, is this worship and service to the Lord? That is what God is looking for from us, brothers. God is speaking to us about the quality of our life, our service because he has plans but you don't know when those great plans are going to happen or if they are going to happen. Meanwhile stay in the place where God put you and do the best you can with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Stand up. Let's dedicate our lives to the Lord again. Let's become aware that everything we do is done in the presence of God. and I rededicate my life to the Lord at this time, and I say to him, Father, give me the wisdom to discern your presence in all things. I don't know when you are going to make the next call or you are going to move us to the next stage of the mission, or if you are going to do it, but I am sure that I want to be faithful to you now. It is today, now, at this moment, you call me to preach your word, I want to do it with passion, with dedication, discerning your spirit and the rest, and you will know if you give it or not or when you give it.

Serve God with purity and surrender where you are, in the little and in the big, in the everyday and in the sublime, in the spiritual and the apparently non-spiritual. Everything you do, do it for the Lord. Review your life in the light of the Holy Spirit, examine yourself, examine where you are and ask yourself, "What I did two minutes ago and what I am going to do in three minutes, honor the Lord, it is my liturgy before God, it's my adoration? Am I really ready for the next stage? If God calls me at this moment, have I burned the stages that I had to burn? Have I gone through the process? Have I gone step by step? Have I run the race of faith legitimately? Have I fulfilled my calling? Have I completed the task? Have I fought the good fight? The Christian life is a life step by step, day by day, consuming ourselves before God, giving our best to the Lord.

Father, today we consecrate ourselves anew to you, help us to be faithful to you, because, Father, serving you is a totally undeserved privilege. We serve that thrice holy God, sublime as we cannot conceive. Help this church, help me, help us, Lord, to offer you a pleasing sacrifice and hold on to our post, do our best, give our best to the teacher every day, serve you with humility, faithfulness, persistence, zeal, vision to long term, integrity, honesty. We want to be pleasant to you, Lord, we want to offer you a good offering.

And if you call us to greater things, we will delight in giving you more. If you give us a microphone, glory to God, we will speak of your greatness, Lord. If you give us a finger to point towards the Son of God and lift him up before the crowd so that they may believe in him and be saved, glory to God. But, where you have placed us, help us to be faithful to you, adore you, minister to you so that your call may come, your blessing may come, in your moment, Father.

Consecrate yourself to the Lord, my brother, my sister, if you feel for God, do not do it out of routine, but understand what God is saying to you and hit one more nail there, to your call and tell him, Father, I promise to do your work today and do it better than yesterday, more than ever, offer you a holocaust that is pleasing to you.

Thanks, Dad. Thank you for your word that you have given us. We bless you, Lord. We adore you. Exalted be your name.