The personal transformation project

I want to talk to you brothers about how to live powerful lives, lives that reflect the Grace of the Lord, that reflect the Power of Christ, that reflect the character of Jesus, that reflect that abundance to which Christ has come to give us.

You will remember I was talking about when one is going to change in life, when one is going to make those leaps to become what God wants us to be, they have to go through a series of processes, a series of transformations. There are a number of things that we have to assume and it is a long-term, long-term process. Last Sunday we talked about that long-term vision that we have to take on and forge for ourselves if we truly want to become all that the Lord wants us to be and that we have to be patient. There are a series of qualities that we require in order to be successful on the path of self-transformation.

And I think that several years ago I told some of them, we talked, for example, about what qualities of determination are required, for example, to stay glued to the goal. Energy because we have to be dynamic, we have to be entrepreneurs; if we are conservative people with our energies that we do not dare to invest or to look for new things.

For example, one of the things that I often see: a Church like ours offers a number of opportunities to grow, learn more about the Word of the Lord, learn about ourselves; we offer workshops for families, we have trainings for parents, things for kids on Fridays at I Wanna, retreats of all kinds, events like this one for women where you can spend a whole day meditating on the Word of the Lord, receiving inspiration, receiving vision for his life.

And unfortunately, many people who are sometimes the ones who need these nutrients the most for their personal growth do not take advantage of it and that is how it happens, I believe, throughout their lives. Many people that I believe could benefit from these teachings and from these experiences because when the time comes to go to one of these activities I always get: I'm not tired, I work very hard; I have to do this I have to do the other and in two days Monday is coming and this is the only day I have to rest.

So that lack of energy, that lack of business vision, what they call in English, entrepreneurial vision, makes us be conservative with our energies and we don't invest enough in our own growth, our own personal transformation, and then we always stay small.

I think of what the writer of Ecclesiastes says in chapter 11 who says: "Cast your bread into the waters." I think I alluded to that in one of the presentations, "cast your bread into the waters because after many days you will find it." He says: "Distribute to seven and eight" and goes on to talk about that vision of one continually planting in different places, going there, going there, reading here, meeting a person there, doing this errand because you don't know the day in which one of those investments is going to yield its dividends.

I believe that the life of a person who is in perpetual development is a life where there are always seeds that have been sown throughout life. That person every contact, every person that is presented to him, every opportunity, opportunity to serve others, to make himself known, to be in a position to hear something new or something different and that person who is in a perpetual state of growth sees all those investments, all those things as possible opportunities to receive something from life or from the Lord.

And it is incredible how throughout your life those investments that you make by faith in different areas continue to yield dividends, it is like an investor who diversifies his investments and who does not put all his investments in a single product but invests a little here in another little there because since economies are so unpredictable, one may fail you, but one of those others may yield everything you lost in the others.

That is why I say about energy that it is so important, right? because the Bible calls us to be energetic. The Lord says: "I have given you all the land that the soles of your feet tread on" but He says to Joshua and to us "but look, I command you to make an effort and be brave" God definitely rewards and rewards diligent people.

And I believe that one of the things in which we sometimes fail in the Christian life in receiving all that God has for us, all the benefits that God has for us, is because we do not understand what I am going to tell you now. : the authority that rests in us and the respect that God, so to speak, has for us. How important I am in the equation of growth and personal development and that God does not do everything.

I believe that sometimes we have a sense of the sovereignty and absolute character of God that is so great and it is true that we forget that God takes us very seriously, do you understand? I am going to take some time later to develop that idea more because it seems to me that it is one of the most powerful and most important ideas of personal development within the framework of the Christian life.

The fact that I count before God and that He treats me as a young person, as an adult, as an adult son; He does not treat me like a worm or a puppet that He manipulates. He has endowed me with dignity, he has endowed me with free will, he has endowed me with a freedom that He dare not violate and part of God's difficulties again using that expression in taking the world where He wants to take it which is to a full realization of His plans for life, love, peace, conflict resolution, God's challenge is how to bring creation to full regeneration without violating the freedom and dominion that He has given man over creation .

That is what I would call God's dilemma the fact that God is Almighty and ultimately all-powerful and powerful to do absolutely whatever He pleases but that He has limited himself to the framework of freedom that He has given us. I am always captivated by one of the Psalmist's Words, it says that: "God has made us a little less than the angels."

I have always liked that poetic expression: "God has made us a little lower than the angels" alluding to the inherent dignity that exists in every human being and when you take yourself seriously as God takes you seriously then that means a couple of things: that you have the power to hurt yourself and that sometimes God will want to protect you from certain things but can't. Not because He can't in absolute terms but because He doesn't allow it because you are free, you know? and He has to respect that freedom that He declared over his life.

And so you also have the power to cooperate with God in the purposes that He has for you and in quotes "help" him to bless you, because you know that God may want to bless you but you don't let God bless you, yes or no ? There are people who say: no, if God wants to bless you, He is going to bless you, you have nothing to do about it, it is not true. The Bible is full and I don't have time to prove it, but you know what I mean about people who lost the destiny that God had for their lives because they didn't know how to make a decision at the right time.

And let me tell you: I know that this is a little scandalous thought so let me, a very easy example. Joash, King Joash, do you remember the story of Joash? When Elisha is already dying on his death bed and King Joash comes to pay his respects to this great national prophet, he approaches Elisha and Elisha in one of his impulses of power and prophetic action tells him: take some arrows in your hand and King Joash takes a handful of arrows in his hand and Elisha tells him: now he strikes the earth, he does not tell him how many times he simply says: he strikes the earth with the arrows.

And Joash, who was a spiritually mediocre man there, was neither very bad nor very good, nor did he have much spiritual understanding, he hits saying: well let me please this man who is already dying and perhaps who knows if he is delusional, and he hits the earth three times with the arrows and Elisha tells him: "If you had" I think with annoyance "if you had hit four or five times you would have totally destroyed the Syrians until you made them disappear."

The Syrians were the most powerful and oppressive nation over the Israelite people. "If you had hit four or five times you would have completely destroyed them but now you will only defeat them three times. In other words, you will have a certain number of victories but you will not be able to get rid of them.

What does this tell us? God wanted this man who has come there before His Presence, Joash was at a defining moment in his life where he wanted to do something revolutionary in his reign but there was a part he had to play, he had to discern the exceptional of that moment and he had to see that God was giving him an opportunity for something and what did it cost him? if the prophet tells you: hit the earth, hit it four, five or six times because in that hit there must be something of God but since he only hit it three times, his freedom, see? he had the capacity at that moment to decide.

God wanted to give him total victory but he, in his indifference and in his spiritual mediocrity, only received a limited power and a limited blessing. That is why I believe that we can determine the level of blessing that we receive. I believe that salvation is free but God's blessing for your life depends a lot on you too. Do you understand what I want to tell you?

And so over and over again the Bible always calls us over and over again to invest, to be generous, to be dynamic, to give more because many times you don't know when God is going to intervene in your life and if you are mediocre and comfortable and conservative and you don't discern that your life is continually in the eyes of God, God is always working with you, talking to you, testing you.

Do you remember what I said last Sunday that God takes us through a journey to form us and take us where He wants to take us and that part of life and success is to grow and develop and know yourself and your limitations to make a true and honest diagnosis of where we are and what we need to achieve and grow and then start from there towards the process of self-transformation?

So for me it has been a great help throughout my life to understand that I cannot take anything for granted, I have to live an alert life fully committed to the process of my transformation and that I live a serious life before God and before of men and that God takes me seriously, and that I can even affect God's dealings in my life.

Human beings, humanity has more power than you think. I believe that many of the foolish things that we commit in life and many of the times that we get dirty with improper actions is because we do not understand the power that we have before God. Our self-esteem is low in a sense because when a man or a woman feels important before God, not in the sense that they are proud or vain or better than anyone, but rather they know that they have an inherent dignity in God's eyes, that makes us walk with a certain authority, a certain deliberation, a certain intentionality because we know that we are very important in the eyes of God, do you understand?

I believe that part of life is understanding, there is a tension that one must continually maintain between knowing that in the eyes of God I look: compared to the greatness of God I am nothing, compared to His holiness and His Power. However, from the eyes of God I am very important and part of life is to have a healthy self-esteem and a healthy sense of what we are worth and are and the dignity we have and also to know that we are instruments in the Hands of God and that He is sovereign and He is absolute and that there are hundreds and thousands of people better than us and more accomplished than us and more powerful than us and that keeps us humble too, see? and that we know that we are sinful people and that only by the Grace and mercy of God, but there has to be that balance.

I remember when Nehemiah one of the great heroes of the faith that I later want to talk about Nehemiah as an illustration of these principles that we are talking about, Nehemiah if you read the Scripture is a man who is humble, he is simple, he is tender before the eyes of God but he is also a man who takes himself seriously.

Once there is a story about Nehemiah when his enemies are threatening to kill him and someone comes to scare Nehemiah and tells him: look, they are going to kill you, they are looking for you; take refuge in the temple and hold on to the horns of the altar because there was a law, like an understanding that a man could not be killed if he took refuge in the temple, a sacred and holy place. If he held on to the horns of the altar, it was like you couldn't get inside.

And then these people who wanted to instill fear in this man so that he would stop building the walls of his country and his city tell him: take refuge. And Nehemiah's words always impact me, he says: "Should a man like me take refuge at the altar? Never." Wow says: "A man like me." There are no overtones of low self-esteem, right? Nor an inferiority complex. A man like me? and I believe that you should tell yourself that and I continually in our life.

Is a man like me or a woman like me going to insert a syringe to insert drugs or to commit a morally low act or to harm him? we have to ask him: Lord: Lord help us to understand that we are living life before You every day, we have to make an effort brothers because we count before the Presence of God, we can affect the heart of God and that should help and encourage us to move forward in the life.

But I'm not really interested in that aspect as much as, again. The idea that we must live life with that continuous investment of energy, persistence, discipline, the ability to think systemically, seeking allies in our struggles to mentor and advise us, an analytical capacity. These are some of the qualities that are required in self-perfection, mastery over ourselves and personal development, personal transcendence we could call it.

Now I am not telling you this so that you get frustrated and you say: wow these things, when in life? I don't have any of them but it's okay, there's hope for you, don't throw in the towel yet, don't hang your head in defeat. What I want to say is that it is important that we understand that we have to acquire these qualities on the path to self-improvement, growth, and that is why we have to make life a project of continuous growth and continuous improvement.

Perhaps you will remember that at some point I told you that one of the reasons why many self-improvement and motivational talks do not have as much product and influence on us, is because the people who specialize in giving motivational and self-improvement talks they are already successful that is why they are giving these talks. And then these talks are limited to telling us: ok what you have to do is this, what you have to do is the other, you have to do this and that.

But it is as if David Ortiz, for example, stood before a young man who is aspiring to be a home runner and told him: don't worry, look: all you have to do is take the bat like this, stand like that and when the ball comes you hit it and it flies and jumps on the other side but behind that swing that David Ortiz has there are many other things; there is personal talent, there is physical equipment, there is a series of experiences, there are continuous practices, there is physical therapy that is given to him, there are trainers that minusculely measure all his movements and have taught him how to coordinate his body, 20,000 different pieces that make up the marvel of this man who stands up and hits a home run and puts 5 people on base or 4 or whatever.

Again I believe that what we often have to do is disassemble self-improvement projects into their component parts and understand, there are many intermediary pieces that we have to acquire to get to where we need to be to be a powerful person who can then benefit from of these self-improvement teachings and some of those things are there.

So many people do not have these qualities because their training has not instilled it in them, perhaps you grew up in a home that did not help you, you did not receive that advice. Many of us grew up in very basic, very humble homes and so we haven't acquired this experience, right? and despite wanting to progress, they do not have these necessary personal skills, so many times, despite taking seminars, we do not manage to get out of the quagmire.

How to develop those skills? It is the question that I have just pointed out there, it is a part where I want us to concentrate this Sunday and perhaps the next. How to develop these skills, how to become fertile soil for the seeds of motivation and healthy ambition and God's good purpose in our lives?

Well, I think the key is that we must clearly conceive the project of personal transformation. I invite you this morning to say to yourself: ok, where am I, where am I at this moment in my life? and I promise myself or myself and I promise myself to make my life a project of personal improvement and growth, development.

I want to go from this moment where I am in my personality and my development and my relationship with God and my usefulness for the Kingdom of God and my ability to benefit from the nutrients of the Kingdom of God and go from where I am to arrive to be a powerful woman or man, successful in my life in control of my appetites, my emotions, my wounds, my defects, continually growing through the Word of God known by God and knowing God and the intimacies of the Kingdom of God and be a person that I will take advantage of every day to get rid of my defects and my ties and my limitations with the help of the Holy Spirit; Every day, every day I am going to improve, improving for the glory of God and in the Power of the Holy Spirit until I become a man, a woman conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.

Can you say amen to that? give the Lord a round of applause believe in it, receive it now because that is what we have to do, we have to make a project out of life, do you remember what I said? Do we have to go from a vision to a project and from a project to a design and then take the design and break it down into its constituent parts and then proceed to execute it one by one by one?

That's what we have to do because most people live life haphazardly. Live life, life is a flow without parts, it is simply a process, it does not have labels, it does not have component parts, it is simply a shapeless mass and the person who grows is the person who can stop that process or slow it down in order to study it or stop it from time to time, study that phase of the process and follow the other phase until you reach the goal.

So that's what we have to do, right? we have to conceive the project of personal transformation clearly as a well-defined thing. And another very important thing, and this is like a mantra for me, a very big truth is that we have to believe that the human brain, my brain, my mind, my neurological system will reconfigure over time if I submit it to the exercises and correct efforts.

Read that while I'm talking about it and fix it in your mind. Do you know that God has made the human brain something tremendously plastic, malleable and flexible? there is no machine, there is no organism more incredibly alive than the human brain. No machine in this universe will ever compare to complexity; today scientists and neurologists are developing all kinds of knowledge of the human brain but it is plastic, it is flexible and when we think we have exhausted it there is much more.

Nobody knows what the human brain is, this question of whether it is mind, whether it is brain, whether it is what, is too complex. There are some physicists who speak of the quantum brain, the brain that is like one, is that subatomic particles have such and such great plasticity, neurons and the way in which the brain is configured that it is capable of continuously changing, changing, changing and process.

So if you understand that, then you will never say: no, I'm too old to change or: no, I no longer have the temperament or I can't, I've been like this for too long, I'm too poor, too educated, or whatever. . You can change, tell yourself: I can change.

And when you understand that you can affect, you can affect the development of your brain. A lot of the stuff, you know what? sometimes by force of habits and practices the brain changes its wiring so to speak. What begins as an isolated practice can become a habit and what becomes a habit over time establishes neurological connections, synapses that are configured in a certain way and as you continuously reinforce a practice through life and the brain begins to establish grooves.

What happens when the same people walk a lot through a corridor, what happens in the field for example? a path is created, right? that ground is trodden so much that a path is opened. Nobody built it, it was built by thousands of people passing through it and there they kill all the seeds, they kill everything that can grow, the earth flattens out and does not let anything rise and a practically permanent path is created. That's how it happens, I think, in the practices of life.

When we start a practice, a habit little by little becomes biology and even then it becomes a constituent part of our being because the human brain is like that and then we can affect our brain and restore things that were there before. It takes time.

Look: it takes time to undo and then it takes a long time perhaps for things to remain neutral and it takes a long time to put other new things back there, to substitute. So many times we have to undo and disassemble to then build and replace, do you understand? and that takes time.

If you are used to it, for example, if you are tied to some practice, whatever it is, give it the name you want; if you are angry, if you are depressed, if you have a spirit of rejection that you feel that the whole world is against you and that they do not understand you, if you live a life of fear and shyness, if you have low self-esteem, if you are addicted to cigarettes, if you're addicted to food, if you're addicted to pornography, if you're whatever, if you're too conservative in your stuff and feel like you have to go a little further, if you spend too much money and don't know how use it in a way.

Put any name you want to any area you want and many of us could apply two or three of those things that I have said. The question is: how can I with the help of the Holy Spirit and in the Power of God and with the resources that I have received from the Kingdom of God how can I take authority over those things and then launch myself energized, trained and empowered by the Holy Spirit to conquer my land? to uproot all that bad grass and make a path, a new furrow that reflects the glory and excellence of the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God.

And so when you determine and when you name your giants, there is a principle: name your giants, most people do not name the things they are facing in their lives. I have a life too long for me to share it with you of all the giants that I fight, the little demons that I am continually fighting in my life, the agenda that I have of personal struggle continually. But I have decided to name them, recognize them and look into their eyes like David when he was approaching Goliath: "You come against me with a sword and javelin but I come against you in the Name of the Holy Spirit" and I am going to knock you down and I will to cut off your head and I'm going to put you as food for the birds.

Do you think David didn't know who he was dealing with? Do you think he didn't know that this man was seven foot tall and an experienced soldier and that he was a mere young man with no martial experience? but he also knew what was inside him right? So any area of your life, any aspiration because it is not just killing giants incidentally but also advancing in your land because perhaps your project is: how to buy a house in five years, how to have a fruitful, communicative, intimate and blessed marriage.

How to produce children who are a blessing to the culture and society in which I live, how to graduate from college in four years or get a graduate degree or whatever, there are projects that are positive, not just defensive and negative. But then you have to name the project with a first and last name, give it a name, make a list of all the things that you want to achieve in your life. All the defects and ties that are within you write them down, visualize them, detail them, disassemble them into their constituent parts and then insert and bathe that with the light of the Holy Spirit day by day.

Pray about it, fast about it, make small efforts each day to develop it and think that as you do that your brain, your mind, your neurological wiring is going to reconfigure itself because there is a biological equivalent to spiritual goals because we are biological, you know? In case you didn't know, you have a body and a mind and a neurological system and wiring.

Sometimes we are too spiritual and all that: oh Jehovah help me, hallelujah and we forget; remember the other concept: God takes you seriously but He doesn't do everything for you. He doesn't take a magic wand and open the lid of your brain and boom! You are already a paragon of virtues. God rejoices in the process, rejoices in the journey, rejoices in the effort, rejoices in the falls and getting up, rejoices in the wounds, rejoices in the sweat, rejoices in the cry, rejoices in the blood , rejoices in the dirty warrior who gets up again and continues: in the Name of the Lord I am going to continue pursuing until I win the victory and the Lord glorifies himself in that.

For Him there is no fun in simply saying: ok, you're here. God is an actor and His delight is to step inside His creation and behold these creatures that He has endowed with awesome power and greatness and beauty and see them using the skills and resources that He infused into them when He created them in the Garden of Eden and say: I created that. That man who fell and gets up and keeps going in my Name and learns certain things and keeps going and it's better I created that.

That woman who was sexually abused as a child and now in the Spirit says: you know what? I get rid of that wound, I am new in Christ Jesus, I am renewed and now I am going to use that wound and that damage to bless a young woman who is going through the same thing and I am going to be a counselor, a spiritual mother; I created that, you see? So God rejoices in the drama that we live, God delights in not giving you things immediately but, as I said last Sunday, putting you on the trip and through the trip you learn many things.

You learn to know yourself, you learn your limitations, you learn to love God more, you learn to be more tender, more compassionate, more humble, more generous, more like Christ, and then you become that powerful creature that God wants you to be. you are and God delights in that, that is why he is not going to give it to you that simply, you have to do your part and you have to work and make an effort. Therefore again: "Look, I command you to make an effort and be brave because I am with you wherever you go."

Believe then that your brain, your sensitivity will reconfigure over time if you subject it to the correct exercises day by day, a little bit at a time, one simple thing at a time, but what you have to do is practice it, practicing it continuously because the day you stop doing it, you already lost a small opportunity to in a milligram, a thousandth I don't know what to call it from that formative process you lost an opportunity to reinforce it a little more, to remove a little plant or a weed from that pathway that you want to build in your brain that reflects that particular habit. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Do you want to learn a language? well dedicate yourself every day then. "Oh I want to learn English" but you know what? When they get home and turn on the TV, what do they watch? all the soap operas, all the programs in Spanish, in Spanish. They never watch an English programme, they never read an English newspaper. They never take an opportunity to speak to their children in English or to their wife or whatever. At the factory they sometimes have the opportunity to try three or four little phrases but they are ashamed: oh I don't dare because they are going to laugh at me or whatever.

The person who wants to develop that skill says: no, I can do everything in Christ who strengthens me, the power of God is in me I am not going to fail, I know that one day I am going to speak English better than anyone else because God is with me and so every day you dedicate yourself to that and instead of watching a program in Spanish, watch a program in English for 15 minutes, accustom your brain, your ear to listen. Use two or three sentences with your children, ask them: how do you say this, how do you say that? read a magazine in english when you are driving down the road what does it say there? Ah, why do you say it that way and not another? in an ad.

So you have a project and you know that with the help of the Lord you are going to complete it and it is going to take three to five years but you are going to get there and who knows if instead of three years it will take a year depending on how deliberate and diligent you are but you know that you can get to it incrementally little by little, right? So there is this idea that there are things that we have to do in our lives, right? the brain will reconfigure itself as we subject it to these things, okay?

Well then I'm almost done but let me add a few more things because I see that I still have two or three left, no, I don't have something very important and I don't want to tire you out, I think they have enough material there. Well let's leave it there, again brothers: if the Lord has told us something through this moment it is this idea: I count, tell yourself now there in your spirit: I count, I am important in the eyes of God.

I have what they call in English agency, agency. I have capacity, I am an active agent, I am not a mere object of God's blessing, I am an interactor. Hey God takes me seriously, I have power to subvert God's plans in my life or to advance and reinforce them. I have to name the areas of my life that I need to improve and acquire with a name and surname in detail. I must write my projects because by writing I am reinforcing them and breaking them into their constituent parts.

I must believe that if God is with me I will never fail in anything that I undertake in the Name of the Lord and if I do not reach the precise goal that I set for myself, I will reach a fairly close one or even better because the Lord is with me. okay? and I'm going to believe that God has made me flexible and capable of changing or whatever. I am not condemned to remain where I was born or the culture I come from or my sexual gender or my habits or my defects, I can change, amen?

And my goal is to align myself according to the values of the Kingdom of God and I am going to say that with fear and trembling because there is a lot of cloth to cut there and I do not want to get involved but my standard is Christ, my standard is the values of the Kingdom of God, my standard is the Word of God. Everything that is not aligned and in consonance with the values of the Kingdom of God is an enemy for me, this is a giant that I am going to name and I am going to knock it down and I am going to eliminate it from my life in the Power of the Holy Spirit and with the help of God because I can change.

I cannot say: I am a victim of my biology or my culture or my past distortions; In Christ Jesus I can do everything, I can do everything in Christ who strengthens me says the Word of the Lord and if you say it, you better believe it and practice it then. That I can do everything does not admit doubts and questions and asterisks, I can do everything in Christ who strengthens me.

So I tell you: do not waste the gifts, do not waste the nutrients, do not waste the weapons that God has placed in your hands. The Bible says that the weapons of our militia are not carnal but powerful in God for the destruction of fortresses and strength is everything that constitutes a refuge from the enemy in your life. The weapons that God has given you are for destruction and to tear down everything that does not resemble the image of Christ Jesus, therefore launch yourself in the Name of Christ to build that man and that woman who is fertile ground for the blessings that God wants to put in your life.

Receive right now: Father in the Name of Jesus, open your heart, open your mind. Say to yourself: Lord, I receive Your Grace. Thank you for making me strong, thank you for making me fertile, thank you for making me receptive, receptive to Your Grace and Your goodness, thank you because there are no limits for me if I undertake things in Your Name Lord and this morning I renounce fatalism, I renounce determinism of the world. I will not let anything enslave me tell the Lord.

I will not allow anything in this world to dominate me because God has made me free and has made me powerful through the excellent spirit that dwells within me the Spirit of Christ Jesus and God has made me to soar through the air like an eagle, to acquire great things and reach great heights for the glory of the Name of Jesus whom I serve and therefore I am going to launch myself to live a life of excellence and greatness and I will not fear on the way because the Lord is with me.

So Father: thank you, thank you for Your Words, we receive them, Lord, that seed goes deep into our land. It is Your Word, it is Your Word that is life, it is Your Word that is potentiality and I receive it. Not the word of man, the Word of God that is alive and effective and that fulfills everything for which it was sent and I enter it into my heart this morning and launch myself into the project of my life, thank you for making my life a powerful adventure and thank you for making me a knight errant, a lady of honor and power and I am going to live my life with excellence honoring the excellent God who has created me and I receive that seed of life in my heart now.

Thank you Lord in the Name of Jesus we say: amen.