Surrender your boat to God to receive a great harvest

The passage known as The Miraculous Catch - Luke chapter 5 says: "It came to pass that while Jesus was by the lake of Gennesaret, the crowd pressed around him to hear the Word of God. And he saw two boats that were near the shore of the lake, and the fishermen having descended from them washed their nets.

And getting into one of those boats, which belonged to Simon, he begged him to move it a little from land, and sitting down, he taught the crowd from the boat. When he finished speaking, he said to Simon: launch out into the deep and cast your nets to catch a fish. Responding Simon said to him: Master, all night we have been working and we have not caught anything but in Your Word I will cast the net. And having done so, they caught a large number of fish and their net broke.

Then they signaled to their companions who were in the other boat to come help them, and they came and filled both boats so that they were sinking. Seeing this, Simon Peter fell on his knees before Jesus saying: Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man, because fear had seized him and all those who were with him because of the fishing they had done. And likewise of James and John sons of Cebedee who were Simon's companions.

But Jesus said to Simon: do not be afraid, from now on you will be a fisher of men. And when they brought the boats to land, leaving everything behind, they followed him." May the Lord bless His Word. Father, give us wisdom to expose Your message, Lord, tonight, and may it be a seed of life falling on the spirit of your sons and daughters, Father, we present to our Congregation the plans we have for this coming year, we place them before You and we ask that You send Your light Father, Your life-giving look on our vision that You have given us for this coming year and that you crown it with great success Father, a miraculous harvest Father as we see reflected here in this passage In the name of Jesus we ask amen and amen.

you know? The Lord has been working in my heart these past few weeks about what He has for us in this coming year and not just this coming year but years to come. Last year, as you will remember, God put a Word of definition in my heart and we used the passage from Elijah speaking to the people of Israel and calling the people to stop being between two thoughts, giving up and debating whether they served Jehovah or Baal, and the Lord called us in that Word to define ourselves as Church.

And this year we have spent reflecting and talking in different ways about how we as a Church should define ourselves and each one of us as individuals as well, God was calling us and is calling us to enter a deeper level of clarity, of definition in terms of who we are. The Christian life is a life of definition and clarity. A lot of people go to church and it's just a religious thing. Sometimes they believe that simply by fulfilling a ritualistic task of getting there to the temple and doing the things that the leaders tell them to do, it's like with that they punched out the card and they can go home, and they've complied with God and not they have to do nothing else.

But I always say that the Christian life is a deep life, it is a life of surrender, it is a life of personal commitment. We cannot depend on the Pastor or on the leaders, nor on my grandmother who was a Christian, but each one of us has to make a firm commitment to the Lord to serve the Lord, to give to the Lord, to bear fruit for the Lord, to die and be crucified in our inner being so that Christ can be formed within us, amen? It is a life of commitment and delivery.

And this year God has put it in my heart to go beyond that and see that delivery, that definition of ourselves as simply a prelude, a prelude to something deeper that God wants to do through us and that is to share the message of the Gospel with our community, evangelize our community. To become an Evangelistic Church, a Church that eats and lives every day the bread of the evangelization of souls, bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, can you catch that vision tonight? Can you receive it in your heart, can we receive it as a Church?

God wants that not only this coming year, but years to come, our Church is fully engaged in a search for how to learn to be effective in Evangelism. God has given us great opportunities and great ways for us to spread the Gospel. God has led us to grow a lot as a Congregation but this is just a beginning, we cannot stay there. I believe that the potential that God has placed in this Church is extraordinary, brothers.

I as a Pastor and we as leaders, one of the things that we have been doing is breaking our heads thinking about how we can take advantage of all the talent and all the gifts that God has placed with us, among you. Here there are people truly gifted in many ways for Christian service and it is a Congregation that God has been preparing, we have great caliber people here and it is a diverse Congregation, all the nationalities of Latin America and every day more and more from all the countries of the world. world are coming, and there is tremendous cultural, spiritual, intellectual potential there, in many ways.

The foundation is there for extraordinary work in this city of Boston and probably well beyond Boston. We also believe that God has made His Spirit dwell in very beautiful ways in this Congregation and I always hasten to say that it is not so that anyone feels proud of it in the flesh but so that we always give glory and honor to the Lord , and so that we feel tremendously committed to that God who has decided, as with Mary, a simple and humble woman, to make His Spirit descend upon us.

It is that God enjoys using the humble, the small, the insignificant of the world for Him to carry out His purposes and we have to see ourselves like this, that the life of God has descended upon us and is gestating and wants to give birth to something extraordinary, something transformative for the benefit and blessing of this city, and to use our Congregation. And I see everything that has been happening in these years as simply beginnings, preludes. God brought us from Cambridge seventeen years ago put us here in Boston, allowed us to start this building, completely transform it, then gave us the building next door, we were able to do the same thing and I always saw that transfer from Cambridge to Boston as a crossing the river and enter into our maturity as a Congregation, the call that God had.

Cambridge was preparation, it was the matrix that God used to raise up a Church and then bring us here to Boston and begin to use us. But I believe that now we are in another stage of crossing the river again and truly entering into what God has prepared for this Congregation. We are on the brink of something extraordinary. God is a God of processes, God takes time to prepare His leaders, to prepare His Congregations, to prepare His ministries. He is not in a hurry, He takes time to break us, break us, crucify us, humble us, prepare us, make His gifts continue to grow in us.

And there comes a time when He says what?: "Now you have been faithful in a little, I will put you in a lot." We have been faithful, we have served the Lord; we have not done it perfectly, we have made mistakes along the way but if we did not make them we would not be biblical because God always uses people after breaking them, after showing that they are incompetent and inadequate then He can use His people.

So I believe that we are in a very special moment where God wants to take us to another level and enter deeply into that Promised Land of effectiveness, of miracles, of using his Word in a powerful way, of bringing this community to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. God put this passage in my heart, I had many different passages that I could have chosen as the basis for this meditation that I want to give and this prophetic Word that I want to send over our spirits.

But we see Peter at a key moment in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus finds himself before a large crowd that is hungry, in need. They press on Him, they are desperate, they want to hear the Word that only the Lord can give them. And the Lord feels cornered by so many people, and in his human limitation that He himself had chosen, He does not find the way to project His voice to that crowd that is absolutely glued to Him.

And then He sees Peter's boat standing there and He sees Peter cleaning the nets of his boat. Later in the passage we see that Peter had been fishing at night, that previous night; he hadn't caught a single fish, he had missed, he had missed. And Pedro was in crisis I imagine in terms of his business as a fisherman. But this whole scenario was part of a drama that the Lord himself was coordinating and arranging, because God had a purpose with Peter and God had chosen that very moment when Peter had reached the limit of his human resources as a man and of his personal career. human as a fisherman to call him to another dimension, to another level of life with Him and to show him certain lessons and of course also by extension that today we read this passage.

Why did God put them there? because they are passages that will build us up and teach us spiritual principles that we can put into practice. Then the Word says that the Lord looking towards that crowd that is crowding, because brothers today there is a great need in this world. People need as in that time and they are desperate. The Word says that in the end times people will have itching ears. We are in times of crisis in humanity.

Right now, as brother Samuel said, in Washington they are dealing with very big financial issues. This nation is in financial peril, it is still not out of its crisis and let me tell you: many prophetic words and even secular economists say that this nation is still on the brink of a very serious financial cliff. The nations of Europe alike are in very, very difficult situations. Even countries like China that for a while were growing in amazing ways, their economies have slowed down quite a bit.

I believe that humanity is also reaching a point of great definition. The things that we have in these times here in this nation, tragedies like the one in Connecticut recently indicate that this nation is and that it has been a leader, a beacon for the world in terms of the Christian faith right now it is leaving more and more and more, moving away from the Word of God and God is sending His Judgment on this nation. That protective cover that this nation has always had has been taken away.

I believe that since 2001, when 9/11 happened, it was like a cover of protection and grace was removed from this nation. Even Pearl Harbor in the 1940s took place outside of the Mainland, off the mainland of the United States, which is when the Japanese attacked that small area and destroyed many American ships, but that was off of the United States itself.

But today that sea of terrorism has already entered this nation. This nation has also experienced major weather events, and many things are happening right now. And I believe that we also see a terrible crisis in the youth, the schools do not know what to do with their young people, there is a crisis in the family, there is a crisis in many parts of this nation right now, terrible crises. And I believe that this is part of a shaking of the very matrix of humanity, nature itself, humanity is in shock. Nature itself too and it will get worse as time goes by.

I do not consider myself a prophet of doom as they say, of cataclysms and destruction, but I feel in my spirit that it is time to sound the trumpet and to prepare the people of God for the things that are to come. We have to understand that humanity needs a Word that only Christ has, that only the Gospel has. This nation and so many other nations have reached the end point of their capabilities. They have great technological, scientific, and intellectual capacities, but they do not have the capacity to heal the heart of man, the spirit of man, because only God heals that.

Man can manipulate technology, he can manipulate machines, many comforts can be provided, but what he cannot do is intervene in the spirit, intervene in the soul, only God can do that, Jesus Christ can do it. And I believe that God is calling us His Church in this key time for humanity to assume a position of urgency. Humanity needs the Gospel. The crowds are looking for something.

And today there is more spiritual hunger than ever, the statistics, the surveys that are carried out today, say. There is hunger, there is spiritual need, what happens is that many people do not want the structures that the Christian faith provides. They want an ethereal, generic, general spirituality that doesn't hinder them in terms of their behavior, their preferences, their appetites. They do not want to submit to the authority of the Church, they do not want to submit to the authority of an institution, of men and women that God has chosen imperfect as they are, but they do not want to submit to the structure of the Gospel.

They want the beauty of faith but they don't want the duties, the responsibilities, the limitations that faith imposes. But the Church of Jesus Christ has to tell them: they don't have to eat everything. They have to look for life but they also have to look for the structure that the Gospel provides. So God is looking for a Church that announces the Gospel in a creative way. May he invite people to enter into the ways of God.

And one of the things that I believe that we have to speak to people in this next time, God has put in my heart that when we announce the Gospel, we call people to come to Jesus Christ, we do it in terms of that urgency that humanity is living. May they seek refuge in Jesus Christ. That they see Christ not only as a general Savior but as that castle in which one takes refuge when the enemy is chasing one and one enters a place and locks oneself in, the enemy cannot penetrate.

That they see the Gospel as a healing thing, as a medicine for the ills that afflict humanity at this time. May we announce the Gospel as a medicine, as a healing, as a refuge, as a hope for our children, for our families, for how we live life, for our communities, for our neighborhoods. For the African-American community, the Latino community that the devil is eating our children, our youth, our families with a number of things that are destroying them.

And that we say look: come to Christ, come to the Gospel, look in the words of the Gospel for the healing that you need. So we have to introduce that city out there, these neighborhoods to Christ as salvation in a time of crisis. The health that our people need. We have to invite them to take refuge in the Word of the Lord. And those people are going to listen because when God gives an anointing He gives, when a people finds grace and God gives a call, when that people sounds the trumpet the people hear.

So I believe that if God has called us and has given us an Evangelistic Word, He is going to honor that Word. If we cast the net in the name of Jesus the fish will come. That is what we see in this passage, right? There is a great need. God has a man named Peter but Peter is simply a symbol of many people that He has wanted to use through the centuries. And He says to Peter: Peter, lend me your boat so I can get on it, separate myself from the crowd and announce the Gospel.

And I think the same thing happens with us. Right now there is a great crowd out there that is waiting for us to preach the Gospel to them, to announce the Word of the Lord to them. And the Lord is telling us to the León de Judá Congregation, I am going to speak about my Church because perhaps He is telling other churches as well, other congregations. Let's talk about us.

The Lord is telling us: Congregation León de Judá, is saying to you, you have your job, your family, your profession, different things in which you are also involved as Peter was in his industry, in his profession as a fisherman, is telling you: lend me your life, lend me your resources, lend me your gifts, lend me your energy, lend me your money, lend me your commitment and let me enter you as I wanted to enter that boat because the boat is a symbol of gifts, property , the resources that a person has and the Lord says: let me enter your boat, let me enter you and let me use you as a platform to announce My Gospel.

And we have to ask ourselves: am I willing to listen to this message from the Lord? Am I willing to tell him: ok Lord, take my boat, take my life and use me for Your Glory? I think this is also part of the definition because we have to define who we live for and what we are. We do not live for this world. We do not live to make money and achieve personal greatness, we live to serve the Kingdom of God, to serve the Lord. We want God to use us.

The great meaning of a man, a woman comes from being used by God, you know? That is the only thing that gives meaning to life; You can achieve all the things in the world that you want, but if you are not used as an instrument for the glory of God, your life is useless, because this world will end in a dead end. Everything will be destroyed, everything will burn and the only thing that will remain is what we invest for the Kingdom of God. And we have to decide if we are going to give our lives to the Lord so that He can use us.

I have had to make that decision in my life. Many of us who serve the Lord full time have had to decide: am I going to go after my own appetites and desires for personal glory and personal achievement, money, two cars, a Mercedes, a big house, adulation of the people or am I going to invest my life in serving the Lord and give the Lord my resources and my life?

Peter had that moment of crisis. Should I lend my boat to the Lord or not? God is telling us, do you want to dedicate yourself to preaching my Word? Do you really want to become a Congregation radically committed to the Kingdom of God as our mission/vision says? Do you want to become a man, a woman who says to him: Lord, all that I have, all that I am, all that I can, all that I can become, I place at Your feet and I dedicate it to Your Glory use me to bring lives to the knowledge of Jesus, to facilitate that You can project Your message to this world that needs it so much.

And Peter said to him: yes, Lord, take my boat. The Lord got on the boat, preached His message to the crowd, and then called Peter and said to him: Peter, now launch out into the deep and cast your nets for a catch. And Peter says: but Lord if we have been fishing all night and we have not gotten a single fish in optimal conditions, how now do you ask me to cast the net? But if You say so in Your Word, in Your name I am going to cast the net. And when Pedro cast the net, he says you already know the story, he caught a multitude of fish, so much so that he had to call other fishermen to come and share with him.

And God one day is going to give us so many fish that we are going to have to call other Churches, other workers to come and share with us. God will use us to bless other Congregations, inspire other Congregations, train other Pastors so that they too can be part of that great miraculous catch that God wants to bring.

And that's the difference. When the anointing of God is upon a people, when the Holy Spirit is moving among us, we will give the Word and that Word that in other circumstances has not borne fruit when many fish are released in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. they will come to the knowledge of the Lord. We have to believe that. And we have to say: Lord, if we perish, let us perish, but we are going to do what You tell us to do.

I am trembling like any of you right now with this commitment that I am making before the Lord and before you to become a truly Evangelistic Church, a Church that eats and drinks, and dreams Evangelism and bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus in times of crisis and need, we are going to see the glory of God. We are going to see miracles, we are going to see signs, we are going to see the prophetic Word of God descending on us, but we have to commit ourselves, amen?

We are going to tell him: Father, visit us with Your anointing. Come down on us. We are going to stand up and we are going to take two or three minutes to cry out to the Lord, let all voices be raised right now. Ask God to bring down his anointing on us, an Evangelistic anointing. Let's fill that sanctuary until there's not a soul in it, not just once but several times a week in Jesus' name. This stage is going to be crowded too. These buildings are not going to be enough to contain the harvest of souls that God is going to give us, amen?