No matter how difficult your situation is, never give up!

The Apostle Paul says, Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 7: “…but we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the excellence of the power is from God and not from us. That we are troubled in everything but not anguished, in trouble but not desperate, persecuted but not helpless, knocked down but not destroyed, always carrying the death of Jesus everywhere in our bodies so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. Because we who live are always delivered to death because of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So that death acts in us and life in you, but having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed by which I spoke, we also believe by which we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus, we too will be raised with Jesus and presented together with you. For we suffer all these things out of love for you, so that grace may abound through many, thanksgiving may abound to the glory of God. Therefore, we do not faint, before although this our outer man is wearing away, the interior nevertheless is renewed from day to day. Because this slight momentary tribulation produces in us an ever more excellent and eternal weight of glory. We do not look at things that are seen but at things that are not seen, because things that are seen are temporary but those that are not seen are eternal..."

Amen. Glory to God. We go to verse 7 where the Apostle Paul says, 'but we have this treasure in earthen vessels'. That word 'but we have this treasure', that expression, tells us that he was thinking of something else. He's talking, he's referring to something that he's already mentioned before this moment. What is he referring to and why does he say, 'but do we have this treasure? And what is the treasure that the Apostle Paul is talking about?

That treasure, if you read the previous verses, refers to the Gospel, the announcement of the word of God, the sublime Gospel, the preaching of the word of the Lord. That Gospel that many do not understand because the devil has blinded their understanding, says the Apostle Paul, and that God has entrusted to us, the preaching of that Gospel, the proclamation of that word. Paul just talked about all the things that God has done for us to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

It is a sublime, wonderful, grandiose Gospel and of great value, of great price. And then Paul says, 'this great treasure that is the Gospel, everything that it has cost God to redeem the human race, the drama of the Gospel, the coming of Jesus, his incarnation, assuming a human body, divesting himself of his glory, coming the world, dying on a cross, all this, this marvelous treasure we have in clay vessels. It's as if we had millions of dollars in jewelry and... in the movies sometimes the pirate chests that you open are full of coins and jewelry and necklaces, so, Pablo says, that wonderful treasure instead of having it in a bronze chest, with a very thick knocker and a leather cover, and something very beautiful that is equal to the magnitude and sublime of this treasure, we have it in some clay jars, very rough, very rough, very fragile that can be broken and that would never indicate the wonder of its content.

If that is the treasure, if the treasure is the great Gospel that God has made possible through Jesus Christ, what is the clay vessel? We, who are brittle, fragile, prone to failing the Lord, limited in our knowledge, easily discouraged, often have little faith. What an incredible thing that God has entrusted the salvation of the human race to us, the church! He could have entrusted it to a few archangels who don't eat, don't have to sleep, don't have to rest, don't sin, don't make mistakes, are tremendously obedient.

Imagine if an angel stood up on 42nd Street in Times Square, New York, or in [inaudible] and announced, 'Believe in Jesus Christ,' everybody hit the ground at once, they're tremendous evangelists. However, we are the ones that God has entrusted to us with this wonderful treasure of the Gospel. We have it in clay glasses.

Because? Because God always wants... He says, 'so that the excellence of the power may be God's.' In other words, so that God may be the one to get the glory. Of course. When I think about who I am, how limited, how fragile, how brittle, how prone to failing God I am, and I think about what God has entrusted to me as a pastor, a preacher of the Gospel, I say, wow, Father, You have all glory and all honor is for you.

If you know yourself, you know that you have to give glory to God. right yes? If you are not a fool who thinks more of yourself than you should, as Paul says, 'no one should think more of himself than he should, but let him think sensibly.'

Every person who thinks of himself sanely has to say, You know what, Lord? Only by your mercy, only by your grace, you dare to entrust us, so to you the glory, the honor and the honor.

I am reminded of the words of the psalmist who says, 'so that it may be [inaudible] says against you, against you only have I sinned and done evil before you, so that you may be held pure in your judgment,' and the idea is for may the glory be to God. We sometimes sin and every time we sin and fail the Lord in some way or another it is evident that the glory belongs to God, not to us.

So, God never shares his glory with anyone. It's not that he's selfish or anything, it's just that no one can. All that we can do for God without God is by grace and mercy. He allows us to work for him. And it's important that we always recognize that.

One of the things that moves me a lot about the Apostle Paul is that he was a man who, despite the great revelations he received, despite all his studies as a Pharisee, before he had, Paul, Saul, who came to Being the Apostle Paul, he studied under Gamaliel, the foremost Jewish rabbi of his day. In other words, Saul attended the best seminary and the best university of his time. And he was a distinguished Pharisee and he left all that, he says he had it all for garbage, for the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

So, Paul despite all his greatness was a man well aware of his weakness. And you read the different letters of Paul and you always see a man very aware of what he was. He says, for example, that on one occasion a sting that God sent him so that he would not grow too big, a spiritual battle that he had and three times he went to the Lord, 'Lord, deliver me from this because it takes away my peace.' And the Lord said to him, “Paul, my grace is sufficient for you.” That is, be content with my mercy because my power is made perfect in weakness.

Always God searching, he is the one who has to take the glory and we always have to recognize that. I believe that every servant, every servant of God, you, me, always have to be as if consumed by this awareness that God is everything and we without him are absolutely nothing.

And in that fragility there is paradoxically great strength. The greatest defense that we have is that, it is that idea that... you are aware that being a brittle vessel gives you incredible power and strength. By saying, we have this treasure so that the excellence of the power is from God and not from us.

So, something very interesting says here that is like the heart, it says, 'we are troubled in everything but not anguished, in trouble but not desperate, persecuted but not helpless, knocked down but not destroyed.'

You must learn that, memorize that verse because it is like an x-ray of the situations in which we can sometimes find ourselves as human beings still serving the Lord. You know I like this verse because it exemplifies the kind of teaching that I want our church to always uphold, in terms of its position regarding faith and power and prosperity and the gifts and the victory of the believer.

There are churches, there are like extremes of a range of possibilities, there are churches that are at an extreme that never speak of the power of God, they speak rather of suffering and gritting their teeth, holding on until the Lord takes us out of this cruel world. And everything is Lord, help me to go through this valley of the shadow of death and hold on and resign myself. If I have this sickness, well, Lord just help me get through it and they don't dare confess healing and seek God's power and ask the Lord to work and they don't stock up, they don't teach people about the power, the promises of God.

That word of Paul, for example, I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me, or before in all these things we are more than conquerors. Etc. but there is a church like everything is simply a lot of doctrine, a lot of teaching, a lot of gritting the teeth and suffering and enduring until the Lord takes us out of here. Be faithful in the midst of problems.

At the other extreme are the churches that are all about victory, victory, victory, prosperity, success and like they don't dare talk about suffering, about the cross, about the trials that come to life, because they believe that if they do that they are dishonoring the Lord. So, all the sermons are about prosperity and success and healing. It's like there really isn't the reality of life, that people get sick, die, have accidents, lose our house, take our driving test and fail the first or both times, even though we pray and fast. And they are at the other extreme and there are many churches today that are at that extreme of prosperity, everything is prosperity and people go there to have the pastor sanctify their greed with a sermon.

And to me those are two simplistic extremes. I have always wanted our church to stay in the tension between the two. And that is what I see the Apostle Paul doing. Paul was a man who knew the power of God. The Bible says that he was taken to the third heaven and saw and heard things so sublime that God did not even give him permission to share them with anyone in the world.

There are passages where Paul says that there were incredible healings that he did, a man who prophesied and God heard his prayer. Paul knew the power of God. Paul knew the revelation. Paul knew the gifts. There you have in First Corinthians 12, 13 and 14, precious passages about the power of God and the balance that must be taken.

But Paul also knew about suffering. Paul knew about suffering for the churches, the anxiety of having the burden of a congregation on top of many congregations. Paul was whipped, he was stoned, he was shipwrecked.

There is a passage where he recounts all the sufferings and all the sufferings that he had in life and there is a moving passage towards the end of one of his epistles where he speaks, I think to Timothy, who says, 'Look, have a drink. little wine because of your many illnesses, from your stomach.' Don't go taking this too seriously either, you know, I know them already, they're plotting there.

He says, it was because of your stomach and the many diseases. The fact is that here we have Paul as acknowledging that sometimes we can go through trials and tribulations in life, as we said last Sunday, but the thing is that the believer, the son of God, never throws away the gloves. Even though the child of God is going through trials and tribulations, he always knows that there is a way out and there is hope and he does not despair.

So we have to know that trials can come, difficulties can come, problems can come, but we always have to go to the Father and not give up and despair and hang up the towel, throw in the towel, hang up the gloves. And that is why Paul says – and he does it through a series of paradoxes, a play on words, − And in fact, in the original Greek, it feels much more… the antithesis of one thing and the other is clearer .

“We are troubled but not distressed,” kind of doesn't express itself so well in the Spanish translation. In the original Greek the idea is a physical image, where it says, we are kind of cramped, we're like between two very narrow walls but we're not strangled either that we can't move and we can't get ahead. That is to say, in English it says, we are in dire straights, it means that we are in a very narrow strait but we can still get ahead. That is the idea of the original Greek.

Sometimes there are situations in life, brothers, in which we can be like this, for example, what came to mind is how appropriate for this time, that we are tight. They remember the prophetic image of the ship passing... there it is. But the boat can go through, it won't get stuck, maybe the skin will be scratched a little, but it will come out.

So that's Paul's idea. And so the child of God, brothers, no matter what your situation, always remember that, there is no situation that God cannot get you out of. Never give up, never stop crying out to the Lord, never stop praying, never stop hoping that morning comes after night. Remember that always. I ask this in the name of Jesus.

No matter how difficult your situation is, know that after the storm comes the calm. Never give up. No matter what is going on in your life, your marriage, finances, whatever, the position of the son of God is a position that I will get ahead, even if I fall seven times, I get up seven times.

That is our position. We do not deny the problems, but we do not give supremacy to the problems either. We can go through different situations. So he says, we're tight but not strangled, would be the idea. We are in more than desperate trouble. In other words, you can sometimes find yourself with the Indians surrounding you but at some point the cavalry of God will come and take you out. We are in trouble but not desperate.

In life there can be difficult situations, that's why the Lord Jesus Christ recognizes the problem. He says, in the world you will find affliction, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Paul says that before in all these things, not outside of them, not avoiding them, it is in the midst of the fight we are more than winners.

The son of God does not deny difficult situations, he does not deny that we are in a fallen world, with demons that want to destroy us, but what we recognize is that despite whatever situation we find ourselves in, the children of God have a God almighty in our favor and that the Lord is powerful to bring us forward.

I believe that, brothers, we have to ask the Lord, 'Father, help me to cultivate that positive attitude in my life, that hopeful attitude.'

I have seen the Lord, brothers, so many times get us out of situations worse than this. Do you know how many years we have been building? Since 1994, 20 years, without stopping. When we finished this building the other one became available, we had to get into our eleven-yard shirt to simply buy it. And then we abandoned ourselves to do the work and there were days like this one too, when I didn't know where I was going to come from, I had to sit down with Joxmar, 'how much do we have today? How can we move money from one place to another?' and pray to God that the checks weren't cashed all at once. Sincerely.

Let me tell you a story, because I have lived a life of miracles, brothers. I know what the provider God is, the God who gets us so many ways. Listen to one of many. That is why if one sometimes starts bragging about all the things that God does...

There was a time when we were here in this building, I was still green in this type of thing, but we had to pay more than 30 thousand dollars in just about 4 or 5 days for the elevator that was already installed and we had to give that people that money. And the money was nowhere to be found and we didn't have the resources or the congregation that we have now, the size of people and a number of other things. And that money was nowhere. And I, really, I didn't want to go to those people and tell them, look, the money isn't there, because they had been generous with us, they had installed the elevator and they trusted that we had the money.

And it was nowhere. I remember that I was coming to bring my daughter from school, Sonia or Abigail, I don't remember, they were around [inaudible] and I was coming on Route 93 going towards Boston, before arriving in Summerville, a little before Summerville, and I saw the buildings of Boston and the open sky in front of me and I was praying because I had the weight, I had been seeing the writing on the wall for two or three days, and with that weight, 'Lord, what will happen to this? ? What are we going to do?'

And I cried out to him, crying out to the Lord, when I looked up I felt like God told me, 'Now the solution, your prayer has arrived.' I can't explain how but I felt peace in my heart. I felt that something was going to happen. I remained calm, but always my soul was still vigilant, as the Scripture says. The other day or a couple of days later, I went to a meeting at the home of our brother Sergio Pérez, of pastors, at that time Copani, which is the Confraternity of Hispanic Pastors, was just beginning and it was a tiny group, 4, 5 or 6 shepherds.

I remember that Sergio invited us to his house and he made us a meal and we were praying, getting to know each other. First we ate and then we were together praying and we were praying for needs and I said, 'Brothers, I have a request. Right now we are in a situation of great financial straits in our church, and we need money and the truth is that I don't know where it will come from, so I would like you to pray for me.'

There was brother David Marrero, who some of you know. I didn't know him that well at the time. So where I was, David told me, 'And how much do you need?' I told him, 'We need about 30 thousand dollars.' 'Well, I'll get it for you tomorrow, you'll have it tomorrow.' And David, I told him, ' Obviously very grateful' and I told him 'whatever you want to fill, I know we can get it in a while and we'll sign papers, whatever.' “Nothing, you don't have to sign anything, just your word and that's all .'

I will always thank my brother David Marrero for that. And right there, the next day I had 30 thousand dollars. We paid for the elevator, I didn't have to come up with a sad story to those people, or be embarrassed or anything, and a short time later, a few weeks later we met at a conference where I was preaching and he was preaching, in Chicago, and For the glory of the Lord, I didn't know that, but at that moment he had a predicament that needed that money and I was able to at that time… because I had that sacred debt, and that night I repaid him $30,000, I wrote him a check for 30 thousand dollars from the church and I gave him his money back. And he told me, 'You don't know that this is the precise moment that I was needing that money.' We were able to fully refund it because it was already a matter of the flow...

Our problem is not so much the money, it is the flow of cash, that is what happens in these situations, that we have some expenses that are coming in soon, because as one finishes they come in, but the money... now the bank no longer pays us give a penny, the bank has finished giving us.

One of the problems is that the bank has already given everything it was going to give and for several weeks now, we are the ones who have to pay for everything and even then the loan is now complete. We have to pay it all off and part of it is short term, a very aggressive payment until we refinance, which I want to do once we finish the building. But we have to finish it first, and that's going to give us an incredible breather.

In this case, one of the problems is simply the cash flow. The fact is that I was able to repay him, thank you Lord, very well, we had the breather we needed and we were able to move on.

This is how God works and this is how God has always worked, that is why I can tell you, brothers, over and over again, in my life when I tell you, please believe me, that this is the position of the Children of God, we can be distressed, troubled, but not distressed. That is, in straits, but not strangled, in trouble but not...

Never lose your head. Do you remember last Sunday what the Lord said to the disciples, 'why are you in a panic?' Why are you behaving so cowardly, was what he wanted to say to them, because they came before him shouting, 'Lord, don't you see? we are perishing, you don't care about us.” They were screaming at the top of their lungs and I always tell them, brothers, when the child of God suffers, don't suffer like someone who has no hope.

If you are going to mourn a loved one who died, look, cry hard, but cry... don't throw yourself on the ground like we cry in the Caribbean, they throw themselves on the ground and have a fit. Those are the unbelievers. The son of God cries, but he cries manfully, even if he is a woman. Shed all the tears you want but don't cry like the santeros, cry like a Christian.

We can cry but... I like that, when I'm at a funeral for Christian people and mature people because it's a cry, but it's a restrained cry, it's a soft cry. The crying of those who cry but not like they have no hope, they are not full of panic, they are not ashamed of themselves, crying as if there is no hope.

Death has already lost its sting. What has some little baby teeth, that's all. But we are persecuted, but not helpless. God never leaves us. The demons are running after you but you are not helpless. Don't worry, the Lord is with you.

And we are knocked down but not destroyed. You fall but you get up again with your gloves throwing left and right, hitting punches and hits or more not being able to. Knocked down yes, because the Christian can be knocked down at some point, but what he cannot do is stay on the ground. If you went through a situation, something happened to you in your life, you fell, look, get up, wipe your knees and move on. Never stay on the floor or turn your back on the devil, the devil can strike you, but you push forward. And believe in an almighty God who is not going to abandon you at any time.

I'm going to leave it there, but I want to encourage you in the name of Jesus Christ. Let us adopt that position that Paul has, which is a realistic position but at the same time full of faith and hope. Trials come, difficulties come, but our God will always be with us.

As it says, at night the crying comes, but in the morning the singing comes, the joy comes, the celebration comes. That is the word of God for our lives. Amen. Receive it in the name of Jesus tonight.

Stand up. We are going to trust our Lord, we are going to lay down our lives. If you're going through a test tonight, something in your life, right now believe in this moment, say, 'Lord, I will rise up. Lord, I'm going to get ahead. Now maybe I'm tight, financially maybe I'm tight, maybe my marriage is a little tight, maybe my relationship with my daughter or my son is a little tight, but, Father, you're going to widen the walls a little bit so there's breathing room. I'm going to get ahead. I will have the victory. I'm not going to stay on the ground, I'm not going to stay down. I am going to have a break, I am going to be able to praise you with joy.’

Times of rejoicing, of celebration are coming in my life. You are my almighty God. I am going to live a joyful life in the name of the Lord despite the trials, the difficulties that may come, you, my God, will not leave me or forsake me because you are a faithful God.'

Hallelujah!. We receive, Lord, your invitation to a life of power, a life with struggles and trials, but a life with victories and triumphs, growing more and more, reflecting Christ Jesus more and more, knowing him in his sufferings but also in his resurrection. and in his power and his victory. Make us brave men and women, experienced in brokenness, but also celebrating the victories of a warrior and our medals on our chest, acknowledging that you have given us victory and have never failed us, Lord.

Thank you, Father, on this night fill your people with faith. Make this church a strong church, a powerful church, a church filled with the Holy Spirit, a church that never flees from the enemy or turns its back on him. On the contrary, Father, everything that the enemy throws at us, we hit it home run and we use it to grow and to be stronger in Christ Jesus.

Tonight I bless any brother or sister who is going through tribulations or trials or difficulties. I ask you to open their eyes so they can see you in all your glory, Lord, in all your faithfulness, in all your power. We praise you, we bless you. Thank you, Lord, because the excellence of power will always be for you and the glory and honor will be only for you, Father. Thank you in the name of Jesus. The people of God say amen, amen. Thank my Lord.