What does success depend on?

I want to invite you to open your Bible to the book of Job, chapter 22. I am going to take some points, a series of sermons that I had in our church, today I do not intend to do a sequence, rather I want to invite you to have a time of meditation and to put our hearts in the presence of the Lord, and let Him minister to us, that He can speak to us about our spiritual situation.

How many have heard the word success, yes? The word is attractive success, everyone seeks to succeed in some way, or seeks to achieve something to feel successful, not only in the world, right? Worldly people always say, it is something that in the church there are also people who are after success, right? sometimes family, competitive, educational formation takes us, and when we arrive at church we are also driven by that, pastors are also sometimes obsessed with ideas of success when we watch television and see those great churches, we consider and I am often successful, we consider successful when there is a pastor who can travel all over the world, I don't know if it would be such a success to be tired on a plane for so many hours, not being able to see the family, not being able to see the children.

Sometimes one has that concept. But when one is on the path of God one has to have a basic and simple concept. The success in life of the child of God knows what it depends on?, to show Christ in every area of our life. When we seek success in the way of the Lord, let us not forget that it is Christ who has to be glorified through our way of thinking, through our way of acting, through our way of being. Christ is glorified through us, we can consider ourselves successful people, even if we don't have yachts, even if we don't have planes, even if we don't have megachurches, but when I am in the presence of the Lord, I feel the most successful for having shown the name of Christ to another. So let's not get carried away by a certain show of successes, success in Christ is more complete, and there is no discussion about that.

I want to invite you to read a biblical passage that probably brings a contradiction because it is about a man who was not a very good friend of Job, but there is something interesting in the teaching of the discussion that Eliphaz has with Job. Job chapter 22 verses 21 onwards. I am going to present some six principles that we must consider in order to walk on the path of success in the way of the Lord. Job chapter 22 verse 21 onwards. "Return now in friendship with Him and you will have peace, and for this it will be good for you. Take now the law from his mouth and put his words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty you will be edified, you will remove affliction from your tent, you will have more gold than earth, and like stones in a stream gold of odium. The Almighty will be your defense and you will have silver in abundance, for then you will delight yourself in the Almighty, and you will lift up your face to God. You will pray to Him and He will hear you, and you will pay your votes". We thank you for your word, we thank you for the opportunity you give us to open our hearts and our understanding to wise advice for our journey. Lord, I ask that this word bless the heart of each one of my brothers, and that each one may take for himself the anointing that You have prepared, from your very presence, amen, and amen.

Reading some material during the year I came across this portion within some readings and I found it interesting when I began to analyze it, I read it for a long time, it is the material of a book and in some way it was helping to understand how each one of us You can have a light to be able to walk on paths of success, on paths of security, on paths of tranquility, and I want to present to you the first principle that we could call this, in verse 21 of this passage it says, return now in friendship with Him. The Lord's church today represented by each one of us, we all know that the Lord's church is not represented by the number of buildings that are used in the city, but that you and I represent that church of the Lord that is scattered, that is walking, which is distributed in different areas of the city. And the first principle that Eliphaz maintains in this conversation with Job is that in order to have peace of mind, to have security, to walk the path of success in life, we must once again have intimacy with the Lord, and that word friendship that he uses in the Verse 21 speaks of a close relationship with the Lord, with the one who gave us salvation, with the one who gave us his only begotten Son to die on the cross of Calvary, to have friendship with Him again is to have intimacy again, it is to know what He is trying to tell us what He is trying to say in his word, whenever we can have time in daily prayer. The Lord's church in these times is often worried about how many activities we can do to be able to complete the calendar, and we have somewhat forgotten to walk in intimacy, in friendship with the Lord.

For those who are just beginning in the ways of the Lord, those who are taking their step of faith, of baptism, do not forget that your best friend is the Lord. Someone has a good friend here in life, someone has a good friend who tells them everything, who takes them out to eat, a good friend must be taken out to eat, he never pays but he is a good friend. Where you can mourn him, where you can call him and sit with him for a few hours, enjoy lunch, breakfast. You know, when we understand that our intimacy must be related to friendship with the Lord, we begin to listen to the one who begins to advise us on what we should do. The Lord says that anyone who wants to have friendship with the world, becomes an enemy of God. Therefore, to have friendship with the Lord again is to have intimacy again, it is to have that close encounter every day without losing it, in our devotional, in our reading, in our walk. So, in order to walk on the path of tranquility, of security, of the success that you are looking for, do not forget to have the Lord as your best friend.

Because you will have peace, because you will have peace. And that concept of peace, that concept of Shalom, which is not just peace without conflict, but a totality of benefits that we have for having the Lord as a friend. You want well-being, you want justice, mercy, salvation, forgiveness, you want peace, prosperity, abundance, do not walk away from having friendship with the Lord again, because that is where you should be. That Shalom that comes into our lives as a result of recognizing that we need Him brings us the benefits that we are looking for, and for that reason it will be good for you. Who doesn't use an addition from the Lord, we always walk behind the addition of the Lord, it's okay, if the Lord promised it. There are more than thirty-seven thousand promises in the Bible, if we occupy two or three with that we are happy. The Lord in his friendship is calling us to know him because he has many things for us. Let's stop walking with a defeated face if we have a friend who wins everything, let's stop walking with sad faces if we have a friend who has done everything.

Let's stop questioning God because there is no way to question the one who made it all. There's no way, look for the question you want, ask me, who created God, and I'm going to tell you, that doesn't matter to you. Maybe a philosopher will appear on the internet and will write me some recommendations. But that doesn't matter to him and that doesn't matter to me, as long as I receive those benefits from the Lord in our life, I don't care who created God, He is my friend and I want to be intimate with Him. Verse 22, "If you become to the Almighty you will be built." Sorry, that is 22. "Take the law now from his mouth, and put his words in your heart", to have security, to have peace of mind, to be successful in life, begin to look at what the Lord says, begin to internalize yourself in the secrets of the Lord through his word. Having intimacy with the Lord is reading the scriptures, in Deuteronomy the fundamental principle of Christian education, repetition. I love that chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, read it at home, if it hasn't crossed your mind, there it will come across you and you will know that it is good when we can enter into communion through the word of the Lord. Many manuals can be made, I know brothers who read a number of books, I'm not going to say the authors because otherwise I'm going to get in trouble, but they buy the last book that came out of this one and they already read it before They came out, I think they bought half pirated.

They had already read it, hey look, the last book by this pastor came out, oh yes I already read it, no one sees it in the store but they have already read it, and they have read his concept of leadership, and they have read this man's advice about marriage, and it's okay to educate ourselves, it's okay to read thoughts, it's okay to be able to internalize what others are thinking, but let's not change secular readings for what is really important, the word of the Lord in our lives brings peace, the The word of the Lord is our guide, our light, the word says your word is a light, and a guide for my path. Let us not change, let us not change the essence of faith, the word of the Lord. He says that faith comes from what, and hearing what?, gossip. I love that text because it is specific. Do not read the author here or the author there because he has a tremendous church, you have to read it out of obligation, read The One Who Created the Heavens and the Earth, teach your children who created the heavens and the earth, teach your children who made pass the people of Israel through the middle of the dry sea, teach your children who was the one who brought down the giant there when he went out to insult the people of the Lord, teach your children how Daniel rejoiced there in the middle of the den of lions , or Daniel's friends in the oven, that was like a sauna for them, they were happy, no, we taught them things about what this one writes, what the other writes, we have forgotten to bring our children closer, to bring to our family, to get closer to the word of the Lord.

You know, we don't need to go to university for these things. We do not need to have great studies, we need to have a heart sensitive to the Lord's proposal. Men and women are established on these bases, he says to the vilest in the world, the world's despised came the Lord, he knows why, to show them his secrets, his mysteries, his glory, what a privilege, not everyone has that privilege, and You know, how many brought their Bibles today, to all this, preaching the word of the Lord, you can raise your Bible, you can't, don't worry. So as a second principle, we now have 10 minutes left to give the other 10 principles, as a second principle, urgency, the need to be attentive to the word of the Lord, to be attentive to what He teaches. He says the first two sentences says "Take now is today the urgent need, today is the urgency of the time to get closer to the word of the Lord and not leave it for tomorrow" verse 22. You know we are used to leaving things for tomorrow. They taught us not to be competitive, they taught us to say well tomorrow we'll see if we do it. Many of us were taught to say we can't, let's see tomorrow and we stay in time, and we stay in one idea, after all the urgency of time for many of us we have had to learn it through the word of the Lord, through obedience to the word of the Lord, through the experience that the Lord wants each one of us to live.

So it is time now to memorize the word of the Lord, it is time now to speak to our children, to speak to our family, to meditate when we are on the bus, do not forget to speak to others, do not forget to give glory to the Lord, because there is your brother, do not start talking only about the soap opera, about the baseball game, start glorifying the greatest, the king of kings and lord of lords, because his wonders are still valid today. Being in force today He glorifies himself through our lives. Verse 23, "If you return to the Almighty you will be built up." The need also to have peace of mind, security and success in our life is that we recognize that we need to repent before the Lord. Turning to the Lord every day is the best attitude that each of us can begin to practice. We are not free, every day we are exposed to being contaminated, to being attacked by the enemy, many times we sin, and we humbly need to go and return before the Lord. So a successful man and woman is not afraid of constant repentance before the Lord, they are not afraid of that attitude of humility of saying Lord, I need you, my weakness needs to be covered by the power of the Holy Spirit. My need, what does it say?, you will be built. This speaks of a need to rebuild, to redo. This means that every time we humbly go before the Lord, acknowledging our failures, our faults, our weaknesses, He is there to rebuild us, to build us up, not to punish us, but to raise us up again. You know how that moves me, knowing that the Lord's mercy is so broad, knowing that human pride does not let us see that His forgiveness and mercy are there, within reach, we can kneel down, take our biblical portion, scrutinize it and we can realize that repenting daily is a good habit for our lives. Every day, coming into the presence of the Lord is turning to Him, the need for repentance, the need to depend on Him.

Repentance removes the affliction from our house. It begins to remove the curse that the devil has wanted to establish around us. Here it says, if you return to the Almighty you will be edified and you will remove all affliction from you, verse 24 also says: "you will have more gold than land". You understand that, don't you? That principle goes together, "You will have more gold than land, and ofium gold like stones from a stream." Ofio was a land at that time where it was characterized by having large amounts of gold. Gold represents power in the biblical culture and in Latin American cultures, many times it implies resources, riches, therefore each one of us when we repent before the Lord every day we move away those fiery darts from the enemy, but also, we that we are going to expose others, it is going to be wealth, through our experience, through our relationship with God, it has happened to you that you are in a house that you are talking about the Lord and people begin to be interested in what are you saying?.

I know some who begin to speak of the Lord and everyone starts, nobody wants to see them, because there is no life, there is nothing that can flow from them, but when we walk on the path of success, the path of the Lord, when we are sure that we have a good intimacy with him, when we are sure that we do not waste time when we want to reach his presence through his word, when every day our hearts grieve in his presence for having failed, for having failed, there there is the mercy of the Lord to give us and so that we can deliver to others. The church needs to repent every day to have a genuine approach to the Lord. Not only listen to the songs in church that make them cry, but every day put yourself before the Lord there in the secret of his room, and the Lord who listens to you in his room will listen to you, he will make your life begin. to give grace everywhere.

Verses 25 and 26, invites us: "The Almighty will be your defense, and you will have silver in abundance, and you will delight yourself in the Almighty and you will lift up your face to God." This speaks of a man, a woman of God, who wants to walk for security and success, must have faith, without faith it is impossible to please God. So we can walk the path of faith and we can be sure that the Lord will be our answer at the right time, at the right time. We can keep talking, a lot, but I want to leave these thoughts there, verse 27, the last two principles say that we must return to institute a time of communion with God, not that rushed prayer in the morning, which many times the sisters finish paint in the car and they are praying to the Lord, that the paint looks good on me, or I don't know about the brothers, they forgot to brush their teeth, that they don't have to talk to anyone, with my boss closely, to have an institution again in our home, in our life prayer, look if there were no prayer services I would say that many don't even pray anymore, it is true, that is a reality of the churches, and the prayer services are the least crowded, but it is here where we it is convenient to be, on our knees, prostrate before the Lord as his church, and we must fulfill our obligations with God and with our neighbor. When we pay, and the Lord says in the Bible pays your votes, we are leaving the door open for our responsibility to his church and to the world that surrounds us. So the walk of the Lord can be a beautiful walk of tranquility, of security. We are the only ones who rejoice in the midst of the test, there is no other religion in the world that tells you the same. There is no other divine teaching from any other God that tells you that you can rejoice in affliction. There are others who tell you that you can separate yourself a little from the world by doing some strange meditations, but after all you have to go back, you can't spend all day with your legs crossed.

But while we can pray, we can read the word, we can have intimacy with the Lord, while we are working, while we are doing our daily chores, when they gave us the worst news in our health, in our finances, everything is in the hand of the Lord , that is not a problem for us, the most we can do is lock ourselves in our body and cry a little in our human emotions but after all it is the Lord who is going to give you the way out. He knows that there are fewer and fewer successful Christians because they have forgotten the face of Christ, which has to flow through their lives. They seek success in other things, today we need to show the world that my Christ really is more than anything else, he says that with Him we are more than winners, with Him we have won, close your eyes, don't worry.

And in my pastoral work, many times one has to work from the point of view of the misunderstanding of others, when one sees people taking a step of faith, and one sees many people in this place who are going to take this step. of faith, baptism and your commitment to the Lord, makes me tell you, you know what to pay attention to this word, put what you have heard today into action, because this will sustain you over time, and it will teach you not to there is something more important than really being focused on prayer, on reading the word, He will always be there to defend you, he is your help, he is your strong tower, he is the one who gave his life for you, he is the one who loves you, is the one who forgives you. Thank you Lord Jesus. I thank you, because I know that from the bottom of your heart is the desire for a successful church through you, and here we are part of your church, and those who are on the internet watching from anywhere in the world, who can be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit, Lord teach us to walk.