A successful life means having mastery over our own inner being.

We have talked about how to live a successful life. As you know, for me the word "successful" is much more than that superficial interpretation that we often give to the word "prosperity" as well.

Many times when people hear about success in life they think of material success, they think of money, they think of influence, they think rather of things that are merely human, material, social and unfortunately, as I have said so many times, there are Pastors who lend themselves a lot. Sometimes that easy interpretation of what prosperity is and we believe that God is simply a cash machine, a spiritual ATM that is always there giving us money and that this is our right.

But remember that we've always said that the way we're framing this idea of a successful life is much broader and I think much more successful. It includes a creative life, a life of perpetual inner personal growth and development, an ever-increasing acquisition of self-control; control over our appetites, control over our intellectual and educational limitations.

Dominion over all those forces that often control us and prevent us from having that abundant life, that prosperous and fruitful life that Christ came to give us when he said: I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance, amen?

So when I talk about a successful life I'm talking more about an abundant life to use a more understandable language for us. And one of the things that the Lord put in my mind this morning because what I thought was going to be a single sermon has turned into several sermons around this subject and there are other things that I will deal with later but it is that when we began to touching these different points the associations come and then one listens I believe from the Lord and one then understands what God wants to say and sometimes we focus on one aspect of that sermon and that meditation.

So that's what I want to do this morning. I want to touch on the point of personal freedom. So I want to focus this morning that one of the areas that God wants us to cultivate and one of the aspects of a truly successful, powerful, influential life in the positive sense of the word is when we have control and I'm not even going to use that word. because it has compulsive associations; no, when we have mastery over our own inner being.

In English there is a precious expression that in Spanish is not the equivalent: self mastery, which could be translated: self-control but it does not arrive and one of the things that Christ came to give us is precisely control over our being, amen? control over our appetites, our weaknesses, our imperfections. Mastery not in the sense that I grit my teeth and keep in control every day those demons that want to possess and control me but rather little by little through a process that we call the process of sanctification and the process of perfection we go acquiring inner harmony.

And those things that before were dominating us, controlling us, determining our life in a compulsive way beyond our knowledge of them, those forces and our ability to subject them to a higher principle that is the principle of the Word of God.

When a man or a woman enters into the ways of the Lord and receives Christ as Lord and Savior, they enter a new dimension and, among other things, that dimension is the dimension of freedom. The Lord Jesus Christ said: "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free."

And what I want is that for a few minutes we focus on the Christian life as a process of personal emancipation. Perhaps you have never heard the word emancipation but it means: freedom from slavery. When a person is emancipated, emancipation means that they are freed from slavery and in a sense we are emancipated, we are liberated, we are redeemed; that is another very biblical word, redemption, redeemed means that we were bought by the blood of Christ Jesus from a slave owner who had us under his control and now interestingly the Word says that we pass under the control of another but it is a benevolent control and not a destructive control like that of the enemy of our souls, amen?

But we are free and the Gospel has to be conceived as a continuous personal liberation project. When we enter the paths of the Lord, Christ wants us to be free and we enter, as I was saying, in one of the two services that I don't even remember which of them, but we used the image of Lazarus.

When the Lord Jesus Christ communicates life to Lazarus and says: Lazarus come out, Lazarus is dead and Christ communicates life to him but when Lazarus comes out, how is he? he is tied with all the ligatures that were put on a dead man in those days to preserve his body. Then the Lord says: release it and for me and others who have seen that precious image it has always meant that.

When you enter the ways of the Lord, the spark of life of God is within you, you are now a potential new creature, God sees you as a new creature and sees you free, sees you powerful, sees you wise, sees you in control of his appetites, he sees him manifesting the fruit of the Holy Spirit: joy, peace, goodness, benignity, benevolence, generosity towards others; mastery of anger, mastery over anxiety, over fear, over depression and all those things that enslave us, the Lord wants us to be free from all those things. And it's about liberation from those areas of those things that grab onto ourselves. And we have to believe that, that God wants us to be free and that we be free from all those things.

The image in English literature comes to my mind. I think it's Gulliver. How many have heard of this character? Gulliver I think that's how it is said in Spanish. Gulliver is a man who magically in the literature of this book is transported to a place where only very small people exist and in that place where Gulliver comes to be transported he is a giant and for some reason he falls asleep and when he wakes up he finds that he is tied all over with little threads that he cannot break.

These dwarfs relatively speaking have tied him with ropes because he is a giant and they are afraid of him and at the moment Gulliver wakes up in this land that he does not know but discovers that he cannot move because he is completely tied by all parts of his body with threads, for him threads that prevent him from moving.

And I suggest that that is an image of our life. When we enter the ways of God like Gulliver all of us, when we wake up to that new land, that new territory that is before us we discover that oh! At the moment we realize that we are bound and limited everywhere with invisible but very strong limitations. Anger, anger, past hurts, terrors, appetites, mental, emotional, and sometimes addictions to drugs and other things, a number of things.

We are eminently imperfect, eminently limited beings and then the liberation process begins because when human beings live a life without God, without an absolute point of reference, true, which is Christ Jesus and the values of the Kingdom of God, one thinks that he is free. , because a slave who was born into slavery and who knows nothing but slavery and has never been able to compare his state with a totally free person because somehow he has always remained within the scope of slavery does not know that he is a slave .

He believes that he is a normal person but when one day he discovers that there are people who can decide when they go out and when they come in, when they eat, what they eat, when they dress, what they say: wow what a difference I want that, but then they discover that there are ties that limit them and many human beings are like that. They do not understand that there is a spiritual dimension called the Kingdom of God.

And the Church is supposed to be that. The Church is a presence, a sign in the middle of the world that allows people to see that there is something different and then when these people enter that area that represents the area of the Church of Jesus Christ, then a process begins as it began in each one of us starting to see life in a totally different and new way, now they are different values.

What we thought was red now turns out to be blue, what we thought was good now turns out to be bad, what we thought was bad now turns out to be good, what we thought was slavery is now eminent and imminent freedom and is begins a process of self-liberation, awareness, renewal of the mind. That is why the Word says: "Transform yourselves through the revelation of your understanding."

When we enter the ways of the Lord we enter into a redemption project, an improvement project, a gradual liberation project, a gradual emancipation project until we become conformed to the image of Christ Jesus, that is successful life . We can see part of the successful life as a project of liberation from all those things that bind us and that limit our personal growth.

So I want to get to a point where we talk about how the brain can be reconfigured and transformed through this process of continuous liberation, right? We talk about how sometimes there are skills in us that we want to develop but we can't because we haven't been taught how to develop them.

So all these things right? what we need to change: honesty, humility, lucidity, good reading, good conversations, stimulating environments, all these things take time to develop, but we have to understand that it is possible to develop them, it is possible to achieve all these things and that we have to align our life according to all those things that are spread out before us.

But let me focus again on this matter of personal liberation for a moment. If we go to Proverbs chapter 16 verse 32 it says there: "Better is he who is slow to anger than the strong" and here is the key it says: "And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." Better is the one who masters his spirit than the one who takes a complete city, that is, the person who gains mastery of his inner being is more powerful than he gains mastery of a city or a nation.

Sometimes people think that the powerful person is the conqueror who comes in with his military forces and establishes his rule, but a physical conqueror may be under the power and domination of a number of inner demons and forces over which he has no control. . And when that man takes off his glorious uniform in the night and undoes his sword and puts it aside, his revolver or whatever it is, he is a mere man who is struggling with terrors and with difficult situations, perhaps he has a broken marriage, perhaps children who do not love him and who he has lost a long time ago, perhaps he does not have the appreciation of those who are surrounded by him but they want his power, his influence or what he can do for them.

But that being that has control of a city or a nation is a mere human being. However, the Word says that stronger and better is that person who has dominion over his inner being, that does require a lot of strength and power. The person who has gained control of his inner being and we cannot do that, we have the power of the Holy Spirit, the Grace of God who wants to free us.

Because when you have that mastery of yourself, then that mastery of anger, for example, as it says here in Proverbs 16, mastery over offensive words, mastery over impulsiveness, mastery over rancor, mastery over inferiority complexes. or shyness or low self-esteem, the dominance that the opinion of others has over your life, the dominance be pornography, be it any other sexual deviation that there are so many; lust, manipulating others, materialism. All these are things, they are threads that prevent us from mobilizing in the power that God has declared over our lives.

We have to tame all these things one by one and that is allowed by the Power and Grace of God in us. So when a person acquires with the help of the Holy Spirit and gains dominion over his land and uses that image in a very deliberate way, over his land, he gains dominion over all areas of his life; all those things that he or she identifies as areas that need to be conquered, right?

So with the passage of time that individual becomes a true giant, a person of power and that person who is a brother who has wisdom, who has grace from God, who has love, who is generous towards others, who is capable of forgiving. , who is generous, who knows that God is his provider, his helper, his representative, that person who is sure of himself because he is planted in God and does not need the praise of others or the adoration of others to know that he is worth because she knows that the Eyes of her heavenly Father value her when they look upon her.

How cute is that for example right? when a person knows: I am worth not because someone assigns value to me but because the greatest witness of all my God looks at me with approval from His Throne and says: I love you, you are worth, I created you in My image and My likeness and I am with you through all the steps of life; I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, I will always be with you with the Power of My right hand as the Word says.

When a woman or a man walks sure that no one can rob me from the Hands of God, that even if I fail, even if I fail, even if I offend him, the love of God covers me with His mercy if I repent and recognize that I I need Your Grace.

Listen to me, a person who is like this with that security, imagine what kind of spiritual giant he is. That person is going to be successful in life. That person is going to be happy, that person is going to have influence, people are going to see the luminosity of God in him or her and they are going to want to get closer to them.

That is why I say that many times we put the cart before the horse, so people kill themselves for: I want influence, I want friends, I want money, I want comfort but they do not understand that before acquiring those objects and those concrete things there are qualities that must be acquired first that then enable the person to obtain those things as part of an organic process. Do you understand what I mean?

The problem with many people is that they get material things and they get disfigured and deformed trying to acquire something. A political position, a fortune, the main position in a corporation, the partnership in a law firm when the Word of the Lord says: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you" and that is part of running the career legitimately as we said before.

God is not interested in simply giving you things, God does not want to give you a sweet as hard as sometimes we want: no Lord, I want a little piece and that is all, God tells you: I am not going to give you sweet, I am going to give you process, I am going to give you sanctification, I am going to prepare you so that when you arrive at what you want, you are prepared to handle it.

God is a systemic God, He is an organic God, He works from the inside out, He takes His time and we have to understand this: that God wants above all that we acquire the qualities of Christ Jesus, the character of Christ. That character is powerful, that character is sublime, that character is capable of bringing true happiness to a person because what good is it for you to have so many things and lose your soul as the Bible says? The Bible says, "What good is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

And I believe that we as Christians have to change our values and say: Lord, yes, I want this, I want the other, of course, it is legitimate, but I want it Your way, in Your time, and You take me through a process until I arrive. . And part of that process, as I say, is then that self-control, that control of the areas of our life that prevent us from being happy because many times when we get to those things that we want and we are not prepared, what will happen is that the compulsiveness within of us will undo and destroy everything we want.

That's why so many people win the lottery and since they haven't gotten there through an organic and coherent process many times the money they get destroys them, studies have been done on that, most of these people after a few years have lost all their fortune and are worse than when they acquired it; I know that you will say: well, I would like to try and see what happens with me.

But the truth is that we have to be wiser than the world and the Church has to be teaching people: look at God, what he wants above all is for you to acquire control and dominion and lordship, mastery over your inner area. The interior of a man, a woman is vaster than any physical territory, it is the microcosm of the mind, of the spirit; it is a land that has no dimensions.

Today physicists know that the sense of space and time and distance is entirely relative. The interior of a human being can be vaster than the entire world and the entire universe in a certain sense and therefore that interior of ours is a land that must be conquered and the life of each believer must be a project of personal conquest of everything. what God has placed before us and the Christian journey must be a search for liberation from everything that oppresses us and that makes us less than what God wants us to be.

I want that when death finds me, I find myself with sword in hand fighting with one of the giants against whom I continually battle within myself. I want my life to be a perpetual journey toward personal emancipation, personal liberation, and that gives my life tremendous interest and passion and adventure; The one who gets bored in the Gospel is because of his bad head because the Gospel is the most beautiful and adventurous thing in the world, it is not boring at all.

Friedrich Nietzsche the great philosopher, great in a German sense, said that Christianity was a religion for slaves, that is the most demonic lie in the world; Christianity is a religion for powerful beings because Christianity demands it is the hardest thing in the world and it is the domain of a being that is exactly like you and knows your every thought and can anticipate every move you are going to make because He knows you perfectly, you are yourself.

Imagine an opponent who knows exactly what you are going to do and where you want to strike before you even think about hitting him, that is your life, that is your fight. He who defeats an opponent equal to him is perfectly powerful. And that is why I say that Christianity, if it is understood correctly as a project of liberation and of acquiring dominion over all the areas of our lives that previously enslaved us in the world, it is taken for granted that it is something that only a very powerful person can, what happens is that we have impoverished Christianity.

What Nietzsche saw was a formal, social Church that existed, as he says: "That spoke of piety but denied its power" the Church of his time and of his culture but a Church lived heroically in the values of the Kingdom of God, authentically conforming to the principles of the Gospel, men and women perpetually crucifying themselves bleeding all the way through their lives and continually fighting against giants like knights-errant and ladies-errant of old that Church is eminently beautiful, heroic, powerful, enviable, glorious, what the Bible calls a Church without spot and without wrinkle.

Then remember that passage: "Better is he who is slow to anger than the strong, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." Another passage that I want to point out, let's go to First Corinthians chapter 6. The apostle Paul continually spoke of the freedom we have in Christ, that was one of the mottos: we have been made free and part of your successful life project will be to identify , make an honest, lucid diagnosis of those areas of your life that have to be conquered by the power of God in you and that have to be reconfigured and reconformed to the image of Christ Jesus and according to the values of the Kingdom of God.

And when you identify those things, you write them down, you recognize them, you stop projecting: oh the problem is my wife, the woman you gave me as Adam said to God: the woman you gave me made me sin, right? Oh if God had given me such a woman I would be a great spiritual giant, she says the same about him. Oh if I hadn't been born in such a country or in that little country village in such a country I would be something different. Oh if there weren't so many bad people in the world.

So we live projecting instead of saying: you know what? I am responsible before God for my own personal land and there are areas of my life that I am going to name and I am not going to be ashamed to say: yes I am impulsive, yes I am angry, yes I am tied to such and such and the rest of my life I am going to invest a good part in gaining mastery of each one of these dimensions of my being.

Because sometimes we are too spiritual, we talk about sin and we have already spiritualized "sin" so much that we do not understand that this means all those behaviors, those things that are the ones that cause stumbling in life and prevent you from becoming happy in life and let me take a little detour but it's not a detour it's an illustration.

I think that is why it is so difficult many times when one preaches and I get rid of sometimes for being very specific in the things that I preach and being concrete and not going around with spiritualities but I discover that many times because I listen to the anecdotes of the things what happens when people leave the Church and I discover that many times just after I have preached a sermon that I say: Father wow I was too clear, you know what? someone walks out of here and does the exact opposite of what I immediately preached not having left the Church.

I recently preached a sermon on love and anger and other things on a Wednesday night, a short meditation, then I found out that two people, one of those people approached another person with whom he had a controversy from many years ago and right then and there it started to insult this person and to speak ill of him, is that the Church is not made of perfect people, you know that, the Church is a hospital and sometimes it is an asylum. It is so, the Church is not; Those who are scandalized because there are sinful people should go to Mars or Pluto or something like that because that is the Church.

Christ made the Church a hospital, a refuge, a place of healing and here we are all half crazy including the main psychiatrist. And I wonder: how could that person after that? I got rid of myself trying to preach something very concrete, how could that person listen to all that, submit to that teaching and then go out and a couple of minutes later do the exact opposite of what I preached? Not me, I hope it was the Holy Ghost.

And it is knowing why it is, it is because people have not learned to lower the Gospel to its concrete, individual, circumstantial manifestations and to name things in their lives. We have a psychological filter that prevents us from understanding that what is being said is for me because we have developed terrible defenses and then we hear something but it is as if they were speaking to us in an Italian language because there is a part that we do not understand or Portuguese. And so the message is garbled into a mess by the enemy and by our own mind and the defenses we have and the games we play with ourselves.

I invite you in the Name of Jesus to ask the Lord for introspection, self-knowledge. Ask the Holy Spirit to continually enlighten you and show you what areas of your life need to be addressed. Do not be afraid on the contrary, when you discover that you have an area of your life that needs, say: glory to God how good I identified you and now I am going to defeat you in the Name of Jesus. I, amen. I rejoice every time I discover a new area that needs to be conquered not because I am a masochist but because I say: wow a new aspect of the personal liberation project that I am going to achieve with the Power of Christ Jesus in me and I am going to be better as a result. of that experience.

So, the passage of First Corinthians 6:12 I'm finishing now, don't worry, I'm wrapping up all this, today all the things we had, well, they've taken a little bit of time, but well, all this is glory and wisdom. Look at what Paul says in First Corinthians 6:12 and I tell you that if you learn to see the Christian life and the Christian project as a perpetual project of personal liberation and see it in terms of freedom/bondage and introspection and personal knowledge which then allows us to be like Christ you, there are a number of passages that are going to be viewed in a very different way.

Look at what Paul says in First Corinthians 6:12: "All things are lawful for me but not all are convenient" all things are lawful for me and here is the key "but I will not let myself be dominated by any" but I am not I will let no one dominate. That has been like a mantra for me, a motto of my life. My motto is that God has set me free and that I have within me the image of the living God, I have Christ Jesus within me; I have the sublime, noble, holy, beautiful values of the Kingdom of God within me and that being that I am in Christ Jesus must not be enslaved or dominated by anything in this world.

I will never say: you know what? I cannot free myself from this, what I am going to say is that: I am going to be fighting until the last breath of my life and if I do not completely overcome it when Christ frees me from this body I will be totally free but in the meantime I will never say : no, that's how they made me, I can't free myself from this, I'm like that now, period or my genetics or whatever, I'm going to say: no, even if I don't understand all the mysteries, but I'm going to pay the price and I am going to be involved in a process of self-emancipation until the last day of my life.

Put the name you want to that project but I will not let myself be dominated by any. And that passage is long and deep because it says: all things are lawful to me. Know what? there are things that perhaps are not bad in themselves in an absolute sense of the word but are not necessarily convenient for my well-being or for the well-being of those around me and in that case I have to put them aside for the sake of a greater well-being.

And I can't say: it's not just that I am like that, I have to be thinking about what is best for the totality of the context that I inhabit. That's why many people don't understand this part, they say: no, it's okay to be like that, you have to live as you want, you have to be free, but the thing is that you don't live on an island, we only live in a context. There is a saying that says: "no man is an island we are part of a continent" we are involved and immersed in a reality much larger than ourselves and what I do affects my contextual reality, it affects my family, it affects my wife.

There are many things in marriage, for example, that one has to leave, not because they are bad in themselves but because they are not suitable for living with another person, say amen if you agree, right? There are many things in marriage that I sometimes meet with couples to give counseling and I have discovered that if I get lost in her or his accusations I am going to get entangled and I am not going to find what I have to do. Because many times she comes and tells me a number of things about him and I say: poor woman, we have to sanctify her, we have to canonize her now. You deserve a four-bedroom condo in the sky.

But then he comes, the monster, the ogre and he presents me with a totally different image and I say: oh but this man is a holy man, this man is going to go to heaven with everything and shoes, poor thing I did not understand forgive me for having judged you evil. And then rather what I have chosen to do is present to them the alternative of the Kingdom of God. How does a healthy, healthy couple live and what are the values that should be practiced? because many times everyone has their version of the matter and says: it's not that I'm fine and maybe I am.

But the thing is that for that collective being that you two are, that two-headed being that is the man and the woman in marriage now needs other things so that this new system called marriage can function. So many times we have to leave things that are not lawful, yes in an absolute sense of the word it is fine, in another universe it might not be a problem but in this world in which we live, time and social, cultural space have to be seen things from a collective perspective whether one wants to or not.

Today that is emphasized almost exclusively on the freedom of man, autonomy, individualism, the personal diversity of each one, the value, but what about the community? Because we live in a world and a society and we have to think about that too, you can go from one extreme to the other. I don't want to get lost in that anyway.

The important thing is what Pablo says "I am not going to let myself be dominated by anything". When you identify something in your life that is contrary to the Word of the Lord, deliver it. And one last text Galatians 5, just reading it Galatians 5 excuse me, Galatians 5 from 16 to 24 Paul talks about freedom in clear terms, the law, religiousness, ritualism, legalism all these things but there is a dimension there of the one he speaks because he speaks for example of the flesh and the spirit and all this and I'll leave you with this now.

And remember: the core of my presentation is this and put it in the context of all the other presentations I have done that if you want to live a successful life you have to see your life as a process of perpetual self-deliverance in the Power of the Holy Spirit and with the resources of heaven of all those specific things that prevent you from being like Christ, there it is in summary that is the goal of my preaching.

Then Paul, Galatians 5:16 says: "I say then: walk in the Spirit and do not fulfill the desires of the flesh because the desire of the flesh is against the spirit and that of the spirit is against the flesh and these are opposed to each other for don't do what you want." Do you see the struggle of the human being there? We are at the mercy of forces, conflicting kingdoms and there is a carnal, animal, diabolical, earthly part of us as Santiago says that opposes the values of freedom, blessing, nobility, justice, love , of generosity and then it sometimes takes us captive to do what we don't want. We know we shouldn't but we do it anyway.

Then Paul offers an alternative and then he says: "But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law" in other words you are not under slavery and then he says: "And manifest are the works of the flesh" that is why I say that the Gospel it is always specific, the Gospel is not a matter of vague and abstract spiritualities; you have to name the demons and the dwarfs those who control us.

The works of the flesh, which is what the Bible identifies as negative, are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, lawsuits, jealousy, anger, contention, dissensions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, orgies, and Just in case something escaped, it says: "And things similar to these" then name everything else that you missed, then say: oh thank you Lord but there is something that touches you and those are the works of the flesh within you name them

"About which I admonish you as I have already said before that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God." Those who practice, those who submit to it, those whose life exemplifies and is characterized by those things that have made these sins something systemic that governs them, controls them, owns them, dominates them, determines their actions, their image that person .

Now the person who is struggling and who is in the process if God finds you in the middle of your struggle still fighting and battling with many of these things but you are a person who has said: Father I struggled with these things I recognize that I am sinner, I recognize that these things are negative, that they are contrary to Your Kingdom and I have sworn enmity against all of them and I am in the process of sanctifying myself even if life finds you, even if death finds you in the midst of your fight you are calm; God adopts you as His son, God will never be ashamed of you, He will never reject you because you are in the process, you are struggling.

The problem is when you are not in the process, when you have submitted to slavery, when you have adopted certain things and have simply said: I am going to let them dominate and control me because I am like that and that's the way I am. Woe to him who glorifies his sins, woe to him who celebrates them and calls them by another name; God does have enmity against that person, it must be said, but the person who humbles himself before God and says: Father, I recognize that I am a sinner, I recognize that I am involved in a process, a project of personal emancipation and I know what the values are. of Your Kingdom and I recognize that this giant against whom I fight is not of You and I will be at enmity against him all the days of my life.

Rest in the grace and mercy of your God because God is with you. Then it says 22 and I promise I'll finish here, it says: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" against such things as there are things similar to these in In the world of the flesh there are things similar to these in the world of the spirit as well. There are so many beautiful values that we have to make them the agenda of our life and pursue them with passion and make our life a perpetual search as a collector of sublime works of art, we have to be collecting virtues all our lives, not collecting them but integrating them. to our life, right?

How beautiful: the fruit of the Spirit. Let me tell you that every day I am very clear about one thing and that is that the formation of Christian character is not preached enough in the Church of Christ, that is why there are so many carnal churches, that is why through the centuries the Church has perpetrated so many atrocities and people would come out of a temple to whip slaves in the south or they would come out of another temple to kill Jews in concentration camps or they would come out of another temple to kill their brothers in a religious war in the 16th, 17th century or burned them in the name of Jesus Christ.

Do you know why people and the Church have committed all these atrocities and continue to do so? It is because the pulpits do not give enough importance to the formation of the image of Christ in us.

If you leave here today with something, it's that. The Christian life is a perpetual process of sanctification, of becoming more like Christ, of freeing ourselves from all those forces that enslave us, deform us. There is the true frontier, it is not that you give a lot of money to the Church, although if you want to give it, amen, it is not that you give ten hours a day to Christian service, no; It is not that you jump and jump and your bow falls out here in worship, it is not that you speak in tongues and then speak bad language about people out there, it is that you let the character of Jesus and the fruit of the Spirit be formed within of you.

If you do not have the attributes of Christ, which are those meek, generous, kind, loving attributes, you have a long way to go, you are not going to bribe God with money, you know? nor are you going to bribe him with time in the Church and with good works. God is appeased with a heart that worships him in spirit and in truth according to the heart of Christ. If you want, we are going to do the hard work of personal sanctification.

That is the border, that is the struggle, that is the north, that is the goal to incorporate into us those values that will set us free to be what Christ wants us to be. 24 says: "But those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" okay? I leave you there my brothers.

I hope that the nucleus of the teachings remains engraved in your heart this morning. Lower your head for a moment as I am going to do in my spirit and we are going to ask the Lord in this improvement project, in this journey towards a successful life in Christ Jesus to free us from everything that prevents us from being like our Master, our Lord.

Father: right now I identify so many serious things in my character, so many attributes that dishonor you and deny everything I have preached, I am so aware of it, Lord, but I will not shy away from my duty and my privilege to recognize them and know first that you You love just the way I am but you also call me to be more and more like Christ Jesus, that I am not alone, we are not alone in this fight.

We have Your excellent Spirit, generous, compassionate, tender, powerful and strong, constant, loyal until the last moment. Your commitment to us, Father, is unbreakable and thank you that you have not left us alone, you have provided Your Holy Spirit, the Great Comforter, the Paracletos who stands by our side to accompany us in that battle, in that fight, that adventure of self-improvement. We want to be free in Christ Jesus.

We remember the words of the Lord: If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free. Free us Lord so that we can live joyful, full, abundant lives. Thank you for Your Word that energizes us, trains us and gives us hope Lord. I bless my brothers and my sisters this morning and I declare Your peace over them, that no one leaves here dying, Lord, because they only see a God of judgment and control and criticism or condemnation, but rather see that incorruptible, just Father, compassionate who wants us to win the race and who has committed himself to us to the point of sending His Son to die on a cross and fall back to Earth through His Holy Spirit to accompany us until the final day.

We thank you Lord and we give this time to You. Thank you for all that we have heard, experienced, lived and done in Your Name. We leave here full of hope for the future in the mighty Name of Jesus the people of God say: amen, God bless you my brothers, the Grace of the Lord be with you. Free in Christ Jesus.