an overflowing faith

Let's go to the Word of the Lord, Ephesians 5:17 to 19. And I want to talk brothers about a life, an overflowing, superabundant faith. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 17 says, "Therefore do not be foolish." The word foolish has a very negative connotation in Spanish. In the original Greek the word is 'asofoi' which means 'not wise', in other words do not be ignorant. It is something that the Word of God is always calling us not to be ignorant of the things of the Spirit.

So let's not be ignorant, don't be clueless about spiritual things in other words. Therefore do not be foolish but understand. Do not be asofoi if you do not sofoi, be understood, be learned, learned and wise about what the Lord's Will is, what the Lord's Will is. In other words, the Lord does not want us to be children, says the Word, that we are led by doctrines of error from one place to another because we do not know the Word of the Lord. Let us know what the Will of God is for our lives, for our churches, for our ministry.

Then he says let us be understanding of what the Will of the Lord is. Look here: he makes a general call. So he says don't be ignorant, be understood. So people say: ok thank you but how can we then be understood? And he gives an example here and this is what we want to focus on, right? It says: "Do not get drunk with wine" because in wine there is disorder, there is dissolution, if not rather what? "Be filled with the Holy Spirit."

I always say: in the Word there is a connection between the filling of the Holy Spirit and a state that sometimes resembles drunkenness. That is why in the mind of the apostle Paul he arouses that illustration that, instead of getting drunk with wine and alcohol, look get drunk with the Holy Spirit is what he is saying, isn't it? Be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is something there truly that, the abundant spirituality that God wants for His people is a spirituality, it is a state of intoxication one can almost say. One feels so filled with the presence of God that one feels overwhelmed.

That is why the Bible talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is from the word baptism which means to immerse. The filling of the Holy Spirit is like a total immersion in a medium that is the medium of the Holy Spirit. So that's why Paul says: look, instead of filling yourself with things that lead you to incoherence in your life, like wine, alcohol, instead fill yourself with the Holy Spirit. That is where I want us to stay focused this afternoon. That God is calling each one of us as Church, as ministers, as lay people to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that is what I want to mark my brothers and sisters. Those of you who are new to the faith, who are even just visiting. There are many of you, for example, who have listened to the radio program and come because you have felt a healthy curiosity and desire to know more about the Word of God, you have come forward when we have made calls. And I want to invite you to enter into a Christian life, not by halves, not a religious life. It is a life of immersion, of an overflowing, plump, exuberant, effervescent spirituality. I don't know how to say it in another way.

There are many images that we could arouse, but it is a life of abundance, of enthusiasm, of passion, of fervor in the things of the Lord, and that is why Paul compares it to intoxication in that way. And then he in verse 19 proceeds to get even more specific on how we can get to that level of filling with the Holy Spirit. It says: "Speaking among yourselves with psalms, with hymns and spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in your hearts, always giving thanks for everything to God and the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ." That life filled with the Holy Spirit is a life where you are always talking. He says speaking among you. I was telling the brothers this morning that generally one can have clues to a certain point, I am not going to say knowing because we leave that to the Lord, but one knows when there is a person filled with the Holy Spirit. Because one of the things about people who are filled with the Holy Spirit is that they always like to be talking about the things of the Lord. His conversation is a conversation that is always surrounding the things of the Kingdom of God.

The children of God can talk about many things. I tell you I love the whole spectrum of knowledge. I read everything and I like to talk about politics, art, music, whatever, I like to read about those things. But my favorite topic is the things of the Lord and I love being with people who also have a favorite topic. He likes to talk about the mysteries of God, personal growth, the overcoming that God makes possible, the things of the Church, the growth of the Church, the nations and what God is doing in the world. That's the thing, we don't have time to be wasting time on other things frankly.

And whatever you read, discuss or talk about in one way or another should be geared towards strengthening your faith and blessing another person. And of course, we can also talk about other things, we are not monodirectional people, in only one direction, no. We have many things. But I believe that this idea that speaking among yourselves, be filled with the Holy Spirit. One of the things is that, isn't it? In a Church the Word of God is handled in different conversations. The conversations that take place in discipleship, the conversations that take place in the cells. The conversations that take place like right now, it is a conversation in a sense, you are conversing with me in your mind there, dialoguing at a level, in your house with your Christian friends when you meet.

Talking among yourselves, and also the life of worship, to surrender to the Lord. When we gather like today, for example, to exalt the name of Christ, to adore him, to declare his dominion over the nations, to invoke the Presence of God, that is a type of adoration and also of conversation. So in that way one is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Because there are two things, right?, that we need to understand. There is an impartation of the Holy Spirit that comes as a result that comes directly from God. And we like to look for that moment when God himself from heaven sends down an energy that gives us power, gives us authority, gives us spiritual energy. And we have to ask the Lord over and over again to give us that power. There is something that God has that only He can bring to us and we have to look for that.

And that is called many times in the Word being filled or being baptized with the Holy Ghost. And there is an impartation of power and authority that comes into our lives as a result of asking the Lord to give us and the Lord then descends upon us and empowers us, strengthens us. That is why you will remember last Sunday, we talked about when the Lord sent his disciples on that first missionary trip, he says that he gathered them together, if you look for it in Luke or Matthew chapter 6, it is in 3 different Books of the Gospel, it says that the he gathered and gave them power and authority, dunamis - exusia.

Power and authority he gave them, he imparted to them. It was like he made an impartation of power and authority come out of him because those two things are important. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit have an authority that is like a weight, an aplomb that they have when they testify of the Lord, when they move in the Christian life, when they minister, when they do anything. That is what is called authority. You know that there are people who may not have much education but when they speak of Christ they speak with authority.

Someone told me my mom is one of those people. Sister Maribel, Sister Maribel's mother is not a very educated woman, but she is one of those Pentecostal old ladies who decapitates demons. He has never been to a seminary, he has never preached a sermon but he has a conviction that one wants to sit at his feet and know about his experiences in the Gospel. No teacher and sometimes a number of pastors or theology teachers can sometimes compare to a person who has had experiences with Christ Jesus and his power.

There is nothing like when one talks about what one knows. What one has experienced, what one has lived in the Power of God. And that's what gives us that authority, that when we talk to people about Christ, people listen because they know we're talking about personal experience, and there's a voice within us that comes through us that it is the Holy Spirit. And we have to look for that. We have to look for that authority, that watermark, that watermark that is on our lives that when we speak, there is an invisible presence of the Holy Spirit, that is what is called exusia, authority.

And it's also like credentials. It is the support that you have to open and close here on Earth and that God opens and closes there in heaven. It's like national currencies. Every currency, nowadays in the United States no longer follows, and it's one of their problems I think, but there was a time when money had to be backed by gold and the amount of money that was printed had to be linked to the amount of gold held.

The United States abandoned that a long time ago, but I like that idea that a currency is backed by a specific, material, physical asset, instead of simply printing paper, paper, paper and giving cards at the collective national level, which is which sometimes leads to the destruction of nations. There comes a time when there is an inflation of money, it is like you live, have a very large house, two cars in the awning, travel to all parts of the world based on credits and cards and refinance the house. And there comes a time when you are here up to your elbows, up to your neck in debt, and you realize that your wealth is artificial, there is no salary that is supporting that, there is no savings account, everything is artificial.

And so it happens many times in the Gospel. It is an artificial life. Many declarations of victory, going to church, a lot of religious apparatus, but there is no authority that comes from God, do you understand? And that is only truly found by having head-on encounters with the Holy Spirit. That is what the Bible calls being filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is having authority before God and before men, and before the devil too, you know? Because when the devil comes to confront your life and enter your house, you know how to stop him, how to stop him, how to tell him that you don't come through here, you won't come through my children, you won't come through my marriage, It's more because of my neighborhood, you're not going to pass.

And you pray for your neighborhood, pray for your street. And he says: Lord, here is a detachment of Yours on this street, therefore may this street be blessed, may there be no shootings or crimes, no riots or riots on this street, because there is a man, a woman, a family here who she loves You. And that declares Your Lordship. Where the people of God are, there are detachments of the Kingdom of God. And we have to learn to pray for our cities, pray for our streets, pray for our neighborhoods, that God's order be established in those places and that we can pray with authority, because we have been at the feet of the Lord. And when we leave our feet, our face reflects that we have been in the Presence of God.

Do you remember the story of Moses? And the Bible says that when he was there for forty days before the Presence of the Lord his face shone, because when you are before the Presence of the Lord something good sticks to you and you can reflect something in a minimal way of the Glory of the Lord. The apostle Paul said that we are being renewed day by day, reflecting more and more the Glory of God. That is called authority. The Lord gave authority to the disciples.

And from that authority then comes power. Because authority then gives you power over disease, power over demons, power over poverty, power over the ties of your mind and the habits that destroy your life, power to bless others, power to evangelize and witness. But it has to be born of that visitation, of that impartation of power of the Holy Spirit. And in the Bible, in the New Testament, especially in the Book of Acts where at least we have examples of what the specific priorities of the Church were.

Every time the Church was looking for people for something, they looked for people who had that quality. Look, for example, now chapter 6 of Acts comes to mind, from that state of fullness. Acts chapter 6 verse 3, when they were going to choose the deacons. This was supposedly to distribute the food on the tables, imagine. That was for when there are meals here for when people, look what they had to have. Verse 3 says: "Seek then, brothers among yourselves, seven men of good testimony" full of what? "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom." Because even to distribute the food they needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

If you look in chapter 11, well right there before we get away from there, look further down in verse 8 Stephen, the great Stephen who died a martyr, it says here, "Stephen, full of grace and power." That is a filling of the Holy Spirit, he does not say it in those words but he was a man who was full of grace and power and did great wonders and signs among the people. Let's also come to Acts chapter 11:24, Acts 11:24. He says speaking of Barnabas: "Because he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and faith."

When they wanted to assign someone to go to a place where revival was taking place, they looked for a man filled with the Holy Spirit. Our churches must first of all, before assigning people to perform different positions in the Church, be it from the smallest things to the most complicated things, one of the things that one should always try to put people who are filled with the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to develop that a little more in a moment.

But what I want to tell you, brothers, is that the Lord is calling us to that. A week ago I chose this topic because I wanted to conclude the week of fasting and prayer that we have had. A few weeks ago the Lord in a staff meeting, pastoral staff of the Church said to the Lord: we are going to declare this week as a week to seek the face of God in a deeper way because we felt that there was a need in us as a Church . Where there are great demands, there must be a great search for the Lord, and our Church is in a beautiful period where God is doing beautiful things in our midst, but we are also carrying out a demanding construction and the people are being asked to give, and that they believe and have faith and that they exercise faith in the Lord.

And that is why we want to renew you and ourselves as well. One also gets tired, exhausted with walking and doing the Christian life. And there have to be moments in which one kind of plugs back into the source of power and energy that is God, and that we renew our vision and fall in love with the Lord again and always remember that it is not with a program and with titles and With administration, feats are carried out in the Kingdom of God, it is in the Power of the Holy Spirit, the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

And we've seen this week, we've seen the blessing of God move in our midst and we feel that freshness, that cool breeze that's blowing over us. I believe that such exalted moments of praise as we had a moment ago come as a result. You have to pay the price, you know? You have to pay the price of receiving that anointing. And you also have to be continually looking for that filling of the Spirit, at home, when you go to work. You are a Spirit Olympian.

You don't live just by coming to a service. You have to pay the price. The Bible calls us to intense faith. Not merely institutional, religious but a heartfelt, passionate life that governs all aspects of our life. The spirituality that God wants from you is an overabundant spirituality that spreads out. When I say fervent spirituality, I see a liquid that is poured and it is effervescent and the foam overflows, and it goes to the sides. It is as the Psalm says, I think 127 or 125: look how good and how delicious it is to see brothers living together. He says that it is like the oil that runs down Aaron's beard and down to the hem of his garments.

It is that image of anointing, oil that overflows. That runs so much that it goes from the head, the beard and goes to the feet because there is an abundance of anointing. Because there Jehovah sends blessing and eternal life where the filling of the Holy Spirit is, where there is a Church that is militantly, fervently asking for the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Do you know that you have to fight the anointing of the Holy Spirit? It doesn't come that way by osmosis. That does not come by inertia, it is something that you have to claim, look for, live, understand that you need to have it. Look at another passage in Romans chapter 12 verse 11 that I like in that sense. It says here, this chapter 12 of Romans is a chapter dedicated to illustrating an abundant life, a healthy life in the Spirit.

And among the things that the apostle Paul points out here he says: "In what requires diligence: not slothful, fervent in spirit serving the Lord." The word fervent that is translated from Greek into Spanish is the word feontes which means: fervent, militant. It is the word boiling in the spirit, where the word fever comes from, feverish, we are like with a fever of the Spirit. It is not the normal temperature 98.6, if it is not the temperature of 102, 104, we are burning in the Spirit, burning in the Spirit would be the translation, burning in spirit, fervent in the Spirit.

And I'm intrigued by what it says, it says in what requires diligence: don't be lazy. He knows that there are things in the Christian life that require diligence for them to happen and one of them is the life filled with the Holy Spirit. That doesn't happen just by coming to church like that. Since there are so many people who believe that it's just fine if I go, I stamp the card and they give me the stamp that I went to Church on Sunday and the devil is going to leave me alone for at least a week.

Know what? It is not like this. For you to live a truly impactful and healthy life in the Spirit you have to be diligent, you have to pay the price. You have to pray, you have to cry. Many times I have to drag myself to pray because I don't want to, my flesh doesn't want to, I'm tired or there are other things that I would like to do, or there are ten pressures that I have from other things that I have to do in the Church but I have to do it because I know that's where power is cooked. I can't give if I don't have. I cannot share if I have not first paid the price. You can't bless your family if you don't have a spirituality. You cannot transfer the life of the Lord to your children unless there is an overabundance in you.

I always say that we minister from the superabundance, from the excess of power that is in us. Because we require power for ourselves first, and after excess we can give to others. And many people do not have enough power for themselves, but they can give it to others. That is why we have to be diligent, permanently seeking the face of the Lord. A Church does not remain powerful and does great things and feats unless it is seeking the face of the Lord with meetings like the ones we have had this week. There is time that you have to put your batteries back on and get on the treadmill and sweat a little again and then, filled with the Spirit, return to the charge. You have to do that continuously.

That is why Paul says, in what requires diligence let us not be lazy. Live fervent in the Spirit. So we see that in the lives of the disciples, that the Lord told them: do not leave Jerusalem until you have been endowed with power from on high. Do not go out to do the tasks, the things of the Gospel until you have received an impartation of power and authority, and then you are going to serve me as witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and in all the earth. Until there is that power we cannot have that kind of abundant and powerful spirituality that God wants for us.

Now what happened to those disciples? Once they received the endowment of power then they began to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit. There are two things that happen in the Christian life: one is when you look for that impartation of power that comes from the hands of Jesus, and you dedicate yourself to the disciplines of faith that the apostle Paul says, praying, singing, talking about of faith in your life. And comes that endowment of power. Now that you have that endowment of power then you live a life that reflects that filling of the Holy Spirit as the disciples did.

Look here at verse 42 of chapter 3 of the Book of Acts. When the disciples received that filling of the Holy Spirit, when they received the Word of God and the impartation of power, it says that they persevered in the apostles' doctrine, in fellowship with one another, impartation of bread, in prayers. Verse 43 says that: "Then fear came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles."

Brother, when you receive the filling, the visitation of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you are supposed to live a life of continuous surrender to the Lord doing these things that the disciples did, congregating with the brothers, reading the Word, praying. And then God begins to do things in the life of your community. Today we live in a time when society is deteriorating more and more, in this country and in other parts of the world. This nation is going more and more in spiritual deterioration every day, and the whole structure of this nation is moving away from the things of God starting from the White House downwards and there is no fear of God, because there is a weak Church I believe.

There is a Church that is not seeking the filling of the Holy Spirit. There is a Church of conventional people that allows itself to be affected by every wind of doctrine and by the intimidation of the devil that inspires fear in us. There are people who are afraid to testify of Christ, there are many people who do not want to testify of Christ, they are afraid to testify. When I visit, sometimes I go to hospitals or schools, or even to the government house. There are many people there who consider themselves Christians. And when they can say it quietly: yes I am a Christian, they say it.

In immigration there are Christians. In the government house there are Christians. If you ask the governor, he would tell you I am a Christian. The President of the United States would tell you I am a Christian. But I wonder where is the Christian influence? Where are these undercover Christians? You ask me, hey, but why don't you testify of your faith? My wife recently found out that a co-worker she has known for years is a believer, she is a Christian. Amen, I know it must be a woman who loves God but wow, where are we?

The devil has intimidated us. If you ask these people, well, why don't you let your faith manifest itself in your practice, in your profession? And they are going to tell you: I have been taught that there has to be a separation of church and state. I cannot let my faith manifest itself in my profession. There are politicians who tell him: no, I am a Christian but in my role as a senator, as a congressman I have to be something else. At that moment I put my faith aside and I am simply a public official. It is a lie from the devil. That lie that they have sold us intimidates us brothers.

There are many people who do not have that overflowing spirituality. Look, the person who is there in the Holy Spirit can't keep quiet even if he wants to, he can't keep quiet. You will always find ways to testify of Christ. Even if it is while he is giving the patient an injection in the name of Jesus Christ, he does something, gives himself away in some way. Because of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

When you love the Lord and are filled with the Holy Spirit, you want others to have what you have and to know the one you know too. I believe that more Christians filled with the Holy Spirit would translate into more Christians with a witness in the community. More presence of God and then more fear of people. As we see here that those Christians filled with the Holy Spirit there was fear in the town, because they were seeing signs and wonders and great things, there was a sense that wow, God is visiting the earth.

When a Church is filled with the Holy Spirit, people are going to take notice of the Gospel out there. The problem of nations is that there are Christians who are intimidated, frightened, indoctrinated by the world instead of indoctrinated by the Word of the Lord. When the believer knows that in Christ there is power, there is militancy, there is influence, the Christian does not keep quiet, does not allow himself to be gagged, testifies about Christ Jesus even if he is crucified. And then the devil starts to back off.

The devil fills in the spaces that the Church lets him fill. The gaps that the Church opens are the ones that the devil fills. When the Church is present in something, the devil cannot fill that space because there is the presence of God in it. We have to fill our cities, our jobs. Now, doing it properly. There are people who leave work to testify and then they are stealing from the boss, they are stripping one saint to cover another. No. You have to do it in a way too, there are opportunities, there are ways to do it in an appropriate and adequate way, understand what I'm saying.

But you can testify about Christ and you can establish the name of God. We have to be praying for our societies, our cities, our schools, the hospitals, the government house. We have to be imparting the presence of God in those places. The Our Father says: Your Kingdom come and Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That must be the prayer of the Church continuously. Lord let Your Kingdom come in the 21st century to Boston, let Your Kingdom come to New England. May Your Kingdom come to America, may Your Kingdom come to the White House.

And we have to cry out, brothers, God wants to visit the earth again, but a people is needed to give permission, so to speak, to the Father to come, intervene in history again. And that will be done by men and women filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. It says again in Acts chapter 2 that fear came upon every person. That people who congregated, who had fellowship with one another, prayed together, broke bread together, says that many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

All those who had believed were together, they had all things in common. They sold their properties and goods and distributed them to all according to the need of each one, and they persevered with one accord every day in the temple, breaking bread in the houses, eating together with joy and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. town. It says that the Lord added to the Church every day those who were to be saved. The Lord added them. You didn't have to be around with multi-million dollar campaigns to get people to come, you didn't have to beg people to accept Christ. The Lord added them each day.

When there is a Church filled with the Holy Spirit, people come, brothers. People feel hungry. The power of God draws people. The men out there see the vitality of a community full of faith and power and say I want that. I don't know what those crazy people have but I want it. They have a healthy envy. It is easy to evangelize. God himself brings about the conditions. What happens is that we are in a time when the Church has allowed the earth to be filled with vermin and weeds.

You know that the Church is called to be the gardener of the world. That image has never been offered to me, but we are the gardeners of the earth, and we have to be alert. All it takes is a single generation that does not receive the impartation of the doctrine and the Word of God to start again from scratch. And in this nation, for thirty, forty years, there has been a feeble Church that has gone to sleep, and then our young people have been filled with sensuality and false doctrines. The institutions have been filled with weeds and insects and vermin and vermin of all kinds.

The structures of the nation have been penetrating by a secular, rational, humanist, arrogant attitude against God and we have lost the preponderance. And now the Church is on the defensive, now they have put us in a corner and if we want to testify of Christ at work they say: shut the fuck up, this is a secular place here. If we want to support the values of the Kingdom of God: oh, you are prejudiced, a fanatic, insensitive to the needs of minorities. Because the world has been filled with erroneous doctrines, because the Church abandoned its calling and then became a respectable, conventional Church. We come on Sundays and have a service there that has passed through the water, then we go home and we believe that we have already done what we had to do, we punched out the card.

But a militant spirituality is required, brothers. The Lord is calling our Church to be like this. To be a fervent Church in the Spirit. I just wanted to confirm what we have been doing this week. You have to make an effort. Look on Friday I told the brothers at nine. On Friday we came to a service that I thought was at ten and everyone went home at the latest. You know that at ten o'clock it was still burning here and we went on and on.

And there came a time around twelve, twelve and something, I felt in my spirit that God was calling us to stay until two in the morning. I felt God telling me: keep pushing, keep prevailing. It came to my mind, I did not share it with the brothers who were here, an image from the Old Testament came to mind that has marked me a lot through the years in my ministry. It is when Elisha, the prophet, is on his deathbed and says that the King of Israel came to visit him as if to say goodbye to him, who was a man who had a mediocre spirituality.

He believed in God and was not a wicked man like other kings of Israel, but he was not a man fervent in the Spirit. He was not a man like say Jehoshaphad, Hezekiah or other kings full of God's favor and militantly in favor of the Kingdom of God. And this King approaches the bed of the prophet Elisha who still has fire left even though he is dying there.

Because the children of God even on their deathbeds still have a battery left and they bless. By the way, Elisha's bones say that one day he fell, there were some men fleeing from something, and they threw a dead man in the place where Elisha's bones were and he says that the man revived, he says that he was resurrected, imagine if there was power. Wouldn't you like to have that kind of power, that one day someone would walk by your grave and be healed, or start speaking in tongues there because there's a deposit of God still in your bones? What a blessing, right?

The fact is that this King approaches Elisha and Elisha, in a final moment of prophetic energy tells him: take your arrows and your bow. He takes the arrows with his hands and says: hit the earth. And this man, since he was a medium man in his faith, not understood in spiritual things, well he says: perhaps the poor man is a little delirious here, I am going to please him. And it hits the ground like three times. And the prophet filled with the Holy Spirit stands up and says: fool, if you had given four or five blows you would have destroyed the Syrians until they were completely finished.

The Syrians were the national plague, the enemy army that kept Israel oppressed. They were the national enemy number one. They were the super power that kept Israel under its boot. Israel had always been at war with the Syrians, they had not been able to destroy them. And Elisha says: if you had taken advantage of God's moment and persisted a little more, and instead of giving three blows you would have given four or five. Because then this King understood that what Elisha was calling him was to do a prophetic action, that every time he struck it was going to be a blow at the level of the Spirit against that enemy army, and the number of blows he gave was important. .

Do you know that in things of the Spirit it is important how many blows you give many times, brother? God is a precise God. We are used to thinking that God does everything, no, there are things that God expects you to do, and if you don't do them, He won't do them. That's why the Bible says in what requires diligence, not slothful. How many times have we stopped praying and crying out precisely at the moment before God did what He wanted to do and we lost the opportunity? Do you know that that can happen?

Do you know that there are things that God would like to do in your life and perhaps due to neglect, due to lack of seeking the face of God, due to lack of prayer and fasting, you are not receiving what God wants you to receive? That is biblical. The biblical Pentecostal mentality indicates to me over and over again, what I see in the Bible is that, that God is going to work with you and that there are things that you have to do, you have to become a conduit of power, the grace, divine energy for God to do things. You have to fight for your salvation and the salvation of your loved ones. The Church has to fight for its anointing and for the gifts that God wants to pour out on it.

So that night on Friday as I was there praying it was like God was saying no, hit the ground some more, don't go yet. And I feel that the Lord is going to honor what we did to stay until two in the morning. Those who stayed saw the Glory of God manifested. There was a time of holy silence between us when there was no need for words or prayers, God simply wanted stillness and silence.

And I remembered that verse that says that Jehovah is in His Sanctuary, let all the earth be silent before Him. Do you know that there are times when the power of God manifests itself in silence instead of speaking a lot or doing a lot? There are times when stillness is the most powerful manifestation of God's anointing. The gentle wind that Elijah experienced when he was in the Presence of God. Not in the fire, not in the wind that destroyed the rocks. There are times when the presence of God is so powerful that it is the reverse of action, it is stillness, rest in the Lord and letting the Lord be who He is and do what He wants.

And I felt that at that time God did something special. God likes when His people take time to be in His Presence. So what, we feel a little tired on the weekend, but glory to God here we are, full of the grace of God and enthusiastic and knowing that we have done things, we have done feats, and that this time that we invest in the Lord God he will pay it back more than anything, with a blessing. That is what we need brothers, you have to pay the price, you have to seek the filling of the Holy Spirit, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You have to both receive power from above and process power from above to maintain it. And when the batteries run out, it comes back again, looking for more power because it is a life that wears you out and you have to go back to look for the fullness again. And until you die that cycle will have to be like this. You ask for anointing, you receive anointing, you process anointing, you spend anointing, and you ask for anointing again, and you go back to receive it and process it and spend it and ask for it and receive it and process it and spend it and receive it, until you die. When you get to heaven you will no longer need that because the Presence will be so strong with you that you will have it without having to ask for it, but in the meantime you have to fight Church of Christ.

I want our Church to learn to live that Pentecostal life, to seek that filling of the Holy Spirit. Every time you come here for a service, don't just come there, your worship matters, your cry matters, your vitality matters, your absence matters, your presence matters. Understand that you are part of a movement of God, God wants a Church fervent in the Spirit, men and women of God that each one of us is committed to God, committed to God, how many say amen to that? Amen!.

Let's stand up for a moment. Be filled with the Spirit. Ask the Father right now to fill you with a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, your home, our Church. Lord we want more of You. We want Your Glory to fill us, visit Your Town, begin with me Lord, continue with the other pastors, continue with the ministry of praise, continue with the deacons of the Church, continue with the leaders of the cells and the disciples.

Continue with the children's teachers, continue with those who lead I wanna and teach children at different levels, with our young people filled with the Holy Spirit, with the women and men of the congregation, the finances of the Church, the physical plant May the very walls of these places, Lord, be saturated with the ointment of Your Presence. Let oil overflow Father in this Church, overflow Your Presence. That we do not settle for a mediocre, conventional spirituality Father. We are not satisfied with a Sunday Gospel, we want to be martyrs, we want to be witnesses, we want to be Your servants, we want to be instruments in Your hands.

We want to be mainstays in this community, in this city. So visit us Lord, visit us and renew us and put aside everything that is not of You Lord. Every structure, every custom, every practice, every thought, every value, every conversation that is not Yours, Lord, we submit to You. This Church is committed, Lord, to seek more of You every day to be the men and women that You want us to be, Lord. We adore you and we bless you, thank you, thank you Father, amen and amen. Thank you Lord, amen.