Reaching that for which Christ reached me

A month ago, I shared a message that obviously if you look for it on the internet you will not see it because that day the cameras were not there so it was not recorded. What date was it? Four Wednesdays ago, four weeks ago, Wednesday, August 31, was that. And it was a message that I was basing it on the book of Philippians chapter 3, Philippians chapter 3, verse 12 onwards, very well you have the note there, very well.

And today I would like to try to connect the dots, because I know that there were several things that were left in the air that day, at least those who were here and who are remembered, there were several things that I left in the air for reasons that I believe that God was still dealing with me at that moment, but today I want to try to connect the dots and I don't think I'm going to summarize everything, but I'm going to be spinning fine lines in some parts. And I have titled this part like this: "Achieving what Christ reached me for."

Reaching that for which Christ reached me. And in the Bible, if we go again, I just want to review those verses from Philippians chapter 3, Philippians chapter 3 verses from 12, from 12 to 14. It says: Not that I have already reached it, nor that it is already perfect, but that I continue to see if I can grasp or reach that for which I was also reached by Christ Jesus.

My brothers and sisters, I myself do not claim to have reached it, but one thing I do do, certainly forgetting what lies behind and reaching out to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, Amen. How beautiful that word is, how many can say it, how beautiful that word.

I continue towards the goal, while I meditated again on this passage and that at least I listened to what I recorded myself, I escaped from the cameras and recorded myself, I put my recorder there and I meditated on what I I said and said: Wow! Lord and now how do I do it, but one thing I could remember, and it is the mere fact that Paul was exhorting us to act intentionally on not allowing the memories of the past to rob us of the energy that we need to be able to reach, the things that Christ has already established for us, you can say Amen to that. We cannot let the memories of the past steal our energy, so that we can reach those things, for which Jesus reached us.

Now maybe you remember yourselves, at least those who were here, those who don't, well I'm telling you now that forgetting that concept of forgetting what is left behind does not mean completely erasing those memories because that is impossible, you cannot erase completely your memories of the past unless you suffer or suffer from some type of amnesia. This morning I got scared, because while I was preparing breakfast for my children, I thought that I had to look for butter in the fridge and I am in a corner of the kitchen and when I turn around to go to the fridge I remembered that I had something in the microwave, and when I went back to the microwave I'm talking to you this was a matter of 30 seconds, I looked back, I said to myself: “what was I going to look for”.

Brothers, I literally had a lapse where my memory completely disappeared, I don't know if it was that my head was still half asleep or something, but the thing was that I forgot what I was looking for, I had to go back back to the place where I was preparing the sandwich and then ah! Butter. Unless you don't suffer from amnesia, those memories of the past are not going to be forgotten, or you are not going to be able to erase them completely, now, but what we did mention was that there is a very big difference between trying to erase those memories and not Cause those memories to steal your energy. And that is what I understand that Paul is meaning with that text, not to let those memories of the past rob you of all those, those forces that God puts in you for you to truly reach what is ahead.

I thought about the approach of an athlete, because that is one of the things that Pablo mentions here, I really like to run, that is part of me, I love to exercise.

And one of the things that every runner can say to you, someone who is in some kind of competition and this is something that is proven, if that person spends their energy thinking about what they didn't do and what they could have done , his execution in the race will be affected, because psychologically his energies will be stealing energy from his body to `be able to concentrate on the race ahead.

That's why you see athletes, particularly athletes who go to the Olympics and things like that, one of the things that they incorporate into their training is a session with a sports psychologist, because that sports psychologist helps this guy or this girl that she can keep her mind, her head, her five senses focused on the event she has to do, that sports psychologist is the one who talks to that person about her past traumas, her nervousness, her fears, her anxieties He talks to him about all these things and he even does visualization exercises and how he can focus so that nothing distracts him, something that when he is there at the starting line and he hears the shot, that person when he looks forward will to be so focused that even if a truck passes over you, you will not see it from the front because you are focused on the goal, that is the type of training they give these people.

And that's the kind of approach that Paul is talking about here, of not letting those things from the past get so distracting that you can't then run in the way that God has determined for you through the person of Christ. Jesus, of course, I know that what is said sounds easier than what is done, from saying to doing there is a long way, I know that it is difficult for my brothers to be able to do this, I myself told you a month ago from my own experience and my own testimony, that is, I know that I, in my childhood I came out of a trauma in my childhood that affected in one way or another what I thought was me, my sexual identity and I began to develop some habits that were of sort of compulsive and as I started to grow through my teenage years, like I went into puberty and all my hormones were, ugh, a million and I started to see all these patterns in me, and I tell you, I was already a Christian, I had already accepted Christ at that time.

I began to have this fight, this battle inside me and I said to myself:

"Lord, how do you want to do something with me, when I see all this inconsistency in me".

Everything, throughout my adolescence I struggled with that question, in my church there in Puerto Rico I was a leader, the youth president, they invited me to preach here and there, I participated singing in different places, I went and with everything and those When my brothers arrived at my house, they would say to me: Lord, but how do you want to use me, I have all this shrew, as it were, locked up in my head.

Throughout my university years it was the same, I, there was a part of me that wanted to continue growing, give myself to the Lord, already at that time I had that call to be a Pastor and even more it was still the weight inside me because I He said: Lord, but all these memories of my past that I have, like, how you are going to use me to be a Pastor, you made a mistake, you have the wrong Omar Lord, find someone else because it's not me.

And you know what I did when I finished my four years of college?

I made that call to the Lord, I made him poof, I'm going to study something else, that's why I came here to the United States, because I came here applying to a university to follow the professional career that I had chosen there in Puerto Rico, in that Physical Rehabilitation exercise area, things like that, I came here applying for that. And when I got here I ran into my Pastor, who was my first Pastor there in Puerto Rico, I remember that I had a meeting with him, he received me at his house, he invited me to dinner, we were talking and he knows part of me. history too and when I sit with him, he comes out and tells me, Omar look, you are going to have to make a decision, because the call of God is upon you and that is evident, but you are fleeing from that call due to insecurities that you have in you And I do, but Pastor, I began to try to justify myself, try to make many excuses, no, but I want to continue this profession, things like that, and of course, my experience is very particular, I am not saying that it will be the same with everyone, but it is a particular experience that something can be taken from this.

The only thing I did was look, I'm going to apply to this university and at the same time I applied to the seminary to enter my pastoral studies and I said to myself, Lord, if they don't accept me on this side, then I'm going to understand that You want me to go here.

Come on, that's what happened, I mean, I had all my credentials to be able to study, but they didn't accept me at the university I applied for, a week later the seminary called me, we accepted you, you have a scholarship you can start within a month, I wow within a month, only in a month I saw myself leaving Puerto Rico arriving here and starting a new life. And there my brothers went, I arrived at a bedroom in this seminary, it was a little match box, a 10 by 10 room with two tiny windows and there in that little room was where God began to deal with me, in the first snowfall that I I saw here, oh, I enjoyed the first snowfall like everyone else does, that one throws himself headlong into the snow, eats it, opens his mouth like that to let it fall, the first snowfall was fine, and the second, the third time I was depressed, what am I doing here, what am I doing here, I'm going to leave all this, I'm going to Puerto Rico again, I have my family over there, I had my girlfriend who was my wife right now and I, who I do it here, I have everything over there in Puerto Rico.

And God caught me in that little room and told me, there is nothing I have to do with you, this is where you are going to start leaving all those things from the past and you are going to start adopting everything that I have done to reach you. you, this is how God dealt with me my brothers and God continues to deal with me, because I say this my brothers, because when God sets his eyes on you, when God sets his eyes on you, when he looks at you like that, as we were singing a few minutes ago, when he looks at you like that with intention, with a meaning, with a direction and he says:

"You have value for me, there is something that I have with you, you are not a little thing out there, you are not a mistake of nature or of your parents, you have intention, you have purpose, you make sense and there is something I want to do with you, I have put you in a race and in that race you have to run”.

All of us my brothers, all of us have memories with which we struggled, all of us have memories of a failure we had in life, all of us have memories of a decision that dashed the hopes one had for the future, all of us come from such Perhaps expectations that were placed on you and that you could not fulfill and precisely because you could not fulfill that, you grew up then perhaps with a sense of insufficiency, with the inability to see yourself as something less, little, and that kind of The thought of feeling creates stagnation in the inner being and many times that stagnation is reflected through habits of conduct in life that are not very healthy, which we incorporate and get so used to, but we do not realize that these habits are what What they are doing is numbing a real pain that is inside, a real lack that is inside.

If I start to mention what some of these habits would be, hey, there are some people whose habit is to feel like the victim everywhere they go, I am the victim, everyone has it with me, that one looked at me badly, no He likes me, that one said something to me, I already messed with this person, that one stepped on his shoe, forget that he doesn't stop next to me again and I am the victim, I am the victim, I am the victim, oh poor me oh poor me, Fanny pray for me, you have more anointing than me, put your hand on my head please, I am the victim.

There are others who demonstrate it through compulsive attitudes, it's like everything is, everything has to be done their way and they have to dominate, it's like they have, it's a need to dominate over others, like your trauma maybe what it meant was that someone dominated over you, you felt like you couldn't do what you had to do, well now that you're big and you can dress yourself, by yourself, well now your habit is behave in a way where you want to dominate above all others. And maybe you don't realize it but that's your habit, you have to dominate what your wife or what your husband does, says, thinks or doesn't think, you have to dominate over your children and maybe you are losing your children, but Because of that habit of yours of wanting to control everything, you think that by believing that you control, what you are doing is losing them even more.

At work, your work colleagues, I'm not the best, I'm the one who has the best thin tie, the best shoes and I have to project this, I am who I am.

Some develop addictions of different types, I can mention many, but you can imagine them too, I liked what Sister Olguita said two Sundays to three ago, the addiction of, as she said, the addiction of being validated , the addiction that they validate me, that others are always as they say; Ah Omar this, Omar that, Omar that.

Almost always one thinks of addiction, oh, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, all those ugly pod things, but we don't think of addiction that no, I need other people to be affirming me all the time, if you don't tell me that's fine You look, I don't feel affirmed, if you don't compliment me I don't feel affirmed and we need that, it's like, the moment I don't receive that, it's like I already get anxious.

And look at another habit that I can mention are people who project their own trauma onto you, which is well connected to being a victim but it is another type of habit that they also develop, they have a person, it is a person who is suffering from seeing demons for many sides and then he says to you look, a demon is following you, not me, it is the one that is following you.

Hey, you've gained a couple of pounds, I haven't, you're increasing the pounds, it's like everything is projected to you, everything is projected to you, aah, something happened in a ministry, that wasn't it Omar, he was the one who did it, I can keep mentioning a list of things but time moves on, look my brothers, the important thing in all this is that we can do as, as the writer of Hebrews says.

Hebrews chapter 12, a verse that we also know, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 says:

Therefore we too, having around us a great cloud of witnesses, let us shed all the weight and sin that plagues us and patiently run the race that lies ahead of us, with our eyes set on whom? In Lucy? Nooo. Lucy is good people, but I'm not going to set my eyes on Lucy, I'm going to set my eyes on Medrad, Medrad is a good person too, but I'm not going to set my eyes on him. Put your eyes where you have to put them, put your eyes on Jesus.

And look my brothers, I tell you, this is an act that requires intentionality, it requires intentionality on the part of you, your friend, your friend is not going to do it for you, your mom, your dad is not going to do it for you, you You cannot wait for the Pastor to come with the blessed cuchi cuchi, we are going to help you, no, the Pastor is not going to do it for you, you have to do this with God, you are in a race, I cannot pull you to run, you have to run, you have to stop there and not let those memories of the past keep robbing you of the energy that God has put in you now, but that you can then be there and run, patiently, persistently, with all strength, with all intentionality, thinking, Jesus, there is something for which You reached me, if You gave me salvation, if You gave me a new life, if You gave me a new meaning, a new purpose, a new reason for being, a new approach to the existence of life, for something it was, therefore it is or for which You reached me, that will be my goal, that will be my focus.

I'm not going to let these other things steal my energy, look my brothers, that's how God confronted me, that's how God confronted me in that tiny room, everything there, like a raisin in a corner crying like a little boy, I was already 23 years old, because they won't say, but he was still a little boy but, I didn't see him like that, at that age, I looked at myself in that little room, me there crying, cleaning my nostrils to say nothing else, I told myself; No Sir, I'm going to the office tomorrow, I'm going to withdraw from these studies, I can't handle this anymore, that has been one of the few things where I have felt that God speaks to me so directly and tells me no , I did not give up on you, do not give up on you either, look there something began to happen in my mind my brothers, God, God had to start causing in me a new way of thinking and it is a new way of thinking that still the I'm still working on it today.

I'm still working on it today, look at the end of this, Philippians chapter 4, look at how verse 8 says, I ask you, what are you thinking right now?, what are you thinking right now?, are you thinking like me? in the ice cream that you are going to eat right now, I always take out the ice cream ah, what is the other word for… ice cream just in case those who don't know, what are you thinking right now?, ask the person who is next to you next to you, tell him what you're thinking, obviously he won't tell you, it's more like that skipping if I asked you, if I asked you to do an analysis, a recount in your mind of what are the things that occupy your mind during the day, what things do you think about, oh, what things do you think about during the day, are you in the office at work, are you at home, are you on the bus, are you wherever, what do you think about, that maybe It is another message but, a "preview" for now, what do you think? How many think of your family? How many think in their children? How many think of leaving here?

And return to, not from here to the church, I mean leave here and go back to your country or something like that. How many think they are overweight? How many think they are very skinny? Again, there are so many things that we think about, look, it's funny to me, I came across a magazine the other days that says that men think about sex about a thousand two hundred times a day and I said to myself, wow. , that's the man, the woman is like a hundred points less than that, or more? Oh my God, that's another message, write it down.

Another message, we are going to put a check on that there, soon very soon in a pulpit near you, but what are you thinking, look at what Philippians chapter 4 says, verse 8 says:

For the rest my brothers everything true, everything honest, everything just, everything pure, everything kind, everything that is of good name, if there is any virtue, if there is something worthy of praise in that, think about it think.

That is where the battle of each one of us is often won or lost during the day, in how we are thinking, the way you think my brothers, the way you think of your past, how you think of yourself. present and how you are thinking about your future that will determine, or you better be setting the guidelines of how you want God to work in your life, but God has things far beyond what you can think, to You can understand how God wants to work in your life, you have to think this way, you have to think about everything that is true, why start there? God is true, what is true is something firm, it is something that cannot be done, how do you say it? That you can't, well! In other words, it cannot be folded, it cannot be changed because it is something true, I tell you, look, this is a black bag, if someone tells me that this is a green bag, we are going to have a problem, because this is a bag, black bag, ok ?

This is true, it is absolute, thank you, it is a firm word and we can continue talking about it, these are the things we have to think about, if you are thinking, oh, I don't want to go home because I don't want to see you the face to so-and-so, so-and-so or so-and-so and you are not thinking according to what this text says.

Tomorrow I am going to get to work and I am going to continue living that miserable life that I have. Is that something good, is that something pure, is that something fair? Oh, when I'm on my way home, I'm going to stop by that liquor store, where they sell that delicious rum. Is that something pure, is that something dignified?

You arrive there at the office, oh that secretary, if you are going to think like that, are you thinking of something pure? I'm talking real my brothers, you know that I like to talk real like that, we have to focus on the race ahead of us, there is something for which Christ reached you, that has to be your north, that has to be your focus, that it is what has to fill our minds in order for us to truly reach those things for which He reached us first.

Yes, but Pastor Omar these other problems in life, look, problems will come and go, problems come and go, problems do not determine your direction, on the contrary, through problems you continue to discover your direction, which is focused on Christ Jesus and that's the direction you're going, get rid of your problems, get rid of your problems, throw them to the side like this, hold your nose just in case, get rid of them and you keep running in the direction you want. you have to run, keep going in the direction that God is calling you to go, that's where we all have to go, amen? Amen, amen? Amen, amen? Amen.

I am going to put on my shoes that are already fainting here in front, let's stand up my brothers and let's pray. This story will continue, thank you Lord.

Listen, my brothers, look at a parenthesis, a parenthesis please, just to, to educate them a little, a little more, so that they see me well, don't think that I'm a "Bambalan" when I talk about my testimony, okay, it's clear , I know where God has taken me from, I know where He has taken me from, I know where I am and I know the direction in which I am going, I know what are the challenges and obstacles that can be presented to me life and since I am very aware of it, every day, I dress myself with the armor of God and I say; "Lord I face this day in your name help me stay awake to know how to defend myself."

God has helped me with that and I have managed to cover my mind like that, each one of us has to do the same, each one of us has to do the same, never think that you are little, because in God you are great, you are someone of great value and you find that value in Him, Amen.

Father, I thank you tonight, because your word once again proves its effectiveness, your word once again makes us understand, Lord, that you are real and that you are in action in the midst of our lives.

Lord, thank you for each one of my brothers and sisters, Lord, who have heard this word, and I declare that this word bears fruit in each of their hearts. Lord, I ask you, my God, that tonight at the moment that we all leave here Lord, that we can leave here confirmed and affirmed in you, in your purposes, Lord in that call to which You are inviting us to be able to achieve those things for which You reached us Lord, because that is where we find our true our reason for being, our true meaning and direction Lord.

Father help us wherever we find ourselves in our walk of Faith, that we can forget what is left behind and be able to reach out towards what You are calling us to Lord Jesus, Father I declare that to my brothers and sisters You are going to give the strength they need to get rid of all those things that prevent them from running freely in the direction in which You call them Lord and I declare Father that the thoughts that will abound in our heads, in our minds, in our heart are your thoughts Lord.

Everything pure, everything true, everything real, Lord, everything that is just, everything that is worthy of a good name, Lord, in that You are going to cause us to think that the next time, Lord, a negative thought comes to us. our mind Lord, that we take it captive to Your obedience Lord and that You move us to think in the way that You want us to think.

Bless each one of my brothers and sisters Lord tonight, give each one of us Your peace, take us with goodness and protection to our homes and Father that tomorrow if You allow it, we can get up with new strength and energy, to lend a hand to what tomorrow brings.

Bless Your people I declare it so in the name of Jesus, amen and amen. Brothers, sisters God bless you, God keep you.