Year of consolidation (Part 2)

I want to tie in with the New Year's Eve sermon, that sermon what I was looking for was to provide a frame of reference for us for the coming year, for the things that the Lord has. I want to take a little more time because we started but many of you were not here and we want all of you to participate in this vision that God has for us.

I am going to reinforce a little what I said and I am also going to go forward, for some of you it will be a review and for others it will be something new. Genesis 13 from 1 to 4, Abram, he is not Abraham yet, he has not yet had a son that will broaden his name and his spiritual status. This passage, chapter 13 verses from 1 to 4 presents us with a moment in the life of Abraham, a moment of rededication, a moment of returning to the ancient places. Abraham returns from Egypt and returns to the place where he had been before and had erected an altar to the Lord.

It says here in verse 1: "So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife with all that he had and Lot with him. And Abram was very rich in cattle, silver and gold" and here is the key word , says: "And he returned on his journeys from the Negev to Bethel to the place where he had been before" mark the words there: he returned and the word before, where his tent had been between Bethel and Ai.

And the Lord says to him, well he says, "To the place of the altar which he had made there before and Abram called on the Name of Jehovah there." So mark that idea of a return to a place where you had been before as if to consecrate a moment, it is as if to resume something that was in progress and that had been interrupted in some way but now by coming to that same place and sacrificing there , worshiping the Lord in that same place is like: ok now we are going to continue with what we had started before this interruption.

But even that disruption in Egypt was part of God's plan because God wanted to build character in him, God wanted to take him through certain experiences, God wanted Abram through his moral failure there when he lies to the king of Egypt about his wife Sara and all this and failing the Lord is part of God's plan, and who knows what other experiences.

I spoke about consolidation on New Year's Eve, that was the word that God put in my spirit when I asked the Lord: give me something so that we can frame the experiences that You have for us, how do You want us to invest our experiences as Church in the coming months and what do you want us to do now that we are here in this new Shrine.

The word consolidation is a strange word that came to my mind, in reality it is not part of my vocabulary that much, I know that it is a word that is used a lot in the people of God, especially in Central America to talk about when people believe in the Lord and accept the Lord and then they are invited to a course where they are affirmed, rooted in the Word, indoctrinated and discipled.

I spoke with Meche on New Year's Day and she is in Puerto Rico as some know it was on New Year's Eve, she is visiting her parents and she is coming this week, but Meche told me: well, what did you preach about on the 31st? I had told him the previous afternoon while playing: hey, don't you have a message that you can suggest for the 31st? He told me: no, I don't have anything right now and he laughed with me so I know he was playing.

But the fact is that the 1st asks me: well, what did you preach about? and I tell him: regarding consolidation, the word that came to my mind was the same. Those are the mysteries of God, that is why I say that you have to speak, you have to say things even if you are not sure and believe in the Name of the Lord.

So I told him: I don't know why but in my mind I saw the word consolidation all in capital letters. She tells me: when you told me: I thought about consolidation, I saw the word in capital letters too. I believe that this is confirmation and I believe that the idea that they are capital letters is because the Word is firm, it is clear that this is what God wants.

So it is clear that this is the idea that God wants, consolidation because many times God wants that before continuing, go forward and look for the next stage and do this and do that God says: hey hold on for a while, return to the place Where were you a while ago? Strengthen, take root, process what I have given you, affirm what I have given you, work on what you have received and instead of being there just leaving things, wasting, affirm, strengthen and then move on.

It's been 20 years since we started building this building and setting it up and then the second building and now this one, a complete construction. Three and a half years, three years and nine months ago we started here and before that, a year and a half of arduous financial campaigning and before that a lot of negotiations with the neighborhood and with different city agencies and paperwork everywhere want and all that; It's been a busy time.

This has been like a time when many things have been on hold so that many things could be completed before moving on to the next stage of the task, it has been a time of many preliminary and formative experiences like Abram who was also formed in his journey both physical and spiritual, because God takes us through journeys that are physical but also journeys that are interior and spiritual.

God has been teaching us as a Congregation how to wait, how to be patient, how to persist, how to have faith, how to believe God for big things that seem impossible, how to overcome obstacles, how to stay in the battle and not take your hand off the plow until it is done. let us see the glory of the Lord established; all those things if you want brother receive them and accept them and believe them and let them penetrate your life.

So when I think of consolidation, I think of strengthening, strengthening something comes to mind, ensuring that we have achieved it. Consolidation means to stabilize, to stop in order to continue, to strengthen in order to continue.

When an army conquers territory it has to establish a fort, it has to establish a camp, it has to leave people established there to equip that land that has been conquered because if they simply go on conquering, conquering they are not strengthening, the effort is useless.

Another image came to my mind in terms of what he wants us to do, it's in Luke chapter 6 verse 38. It's a different thing but it's related to what I want to say where the Lord tells the people and tells us by the way. says to us: "Give and it will be given to you." Give and it will be given to you, but on this I want you to think: "Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be given into your lap." But what interests me in this idea of a measure that is squeezed, shaken, overflowing, and that is what God wants us to do with the blessings we receive: that we shake them, if the word is there, we squeeze them and then we make them overflow until that we can then extend it as a good merchant does with a product that he wants to give the precise measure, not being there with soft measures as we Caribbean people say, but solid measures.

And this is what God wants us to do, the things that He has done in our lives as a Church, as a Congregation; that we take those things that He has imparted to our life, those blessings, those deposits that He has been putting in these last years and that we squeeze them well, shake them up and add a little more to then use that to give.

What are some of those things that God has been imparting to us as a Church in our spiritual DNA? what are some of those themes? One of them, you've heard me talk a lot: supernatural mindset, a supernatural perspective; what we did this morning. Most of the churches are content to come just like we are this morning and twenty percent sing and eighty percent when they feel like it they stay there quietly and in the end everyone goes home, and in the end they don't we have felt nothing most of us and we leave as poor as we entered.

They are there in that lalalala that we were singing about this morning and it happens, and then we wait for the blessing to fall on us somehow and God doesn't want that. We still have a long way to go in that supernatural mentality. God wants a Church with a mentality, an attitude, a supernatural perspective.

God wants to heal, God wants to release, God wants to anoint, God wants to impart, God wants to do things in our services. So God wants the manifestation of His Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is there, there can be no effect, there can be no cause without effect, there can be no Spirit without miracles, there can be no Spirit of God present without manifestations, and God has called our Church to seek the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

That's why it's hard, it's not a matter of sitting there half asleep for twenty minutes and then God is going to do it. You have to stop, you have to jump. You have to jump, you have to sing, you have to raise your hands, you have to get out of your seat, you have to kneel, you have to dance; glory to the Lord everything is part of the manifestation of the Spirit, as long as it is done in a way that is between disordered and orderly.

Spirit has Its lovely way of doing things, but it doesn't bother me. On the contrary, I love when there is that release of the Spirit within a proper framework, but there has to be a manifestation of the power and gifts of the Spirit.

Another thing, a third thing that we have talked about is that God has spoken to us a lot about embodying the excellence and the prosperity of the Kingdom of God in our lives as an institution, as an organization, as a corporation. What we do has to be done well, we have to embody the excellence of the Kingdom of God.

That's why I tell them: if a person comes there with a glass of milk and a coffee and throws it away "oh okay, they're going to clean it up" that's bungling, that's not excellence brother, that's spiritual mediocrity and I I rebuke that spirit in the Name of the Lord.

That excellence, we in the evangelical Pentecostal world everyone talks about excellence but many do not know what excellence means. We already use the word because it is automatic but excellence has concrete, specific, everyday, daily implications; sometimes invisible but they are there, structure, all those things are part of the life that God wants for His people.

Another thing, God wants us as a Church to combine wisdom with science, the supernatural with the concrete and specific, the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain; If you don't study neurology, don't worry, that's separate. God wants us to maintain those two elements that the evangelical Pentecostal world does not know how to keep in balance, the concrete, specific, scientific, exact, detailed with the global, abstract, far-reaching; the vision of the mountain and the vision through a microscope, God wants us to unify those two things. There is a lot in there to unpack but at least I put it there.

The confused have more or less an idea of what I mean. Looks like I got them mixed up, don't worry, receive by faith what you can. There is a fifth thing: to be a prophetic presence in the city, Omar, you can sit over there if you want a little more, thank you, that is excellence too. I have told Omar: I want you to stop at the end of the service and sit there.

Ok, to be a prophetic presence in the city and in the region. We have to be a prophetic people that stands in the gap. While many people around and many churches are even falling apart in terms of their orthodoxy, their doctrine, their Biblical teaching and the values of the faith, there have to be people who stand in line and say: we are not going to abandon the Word of our Lord, we are going to stand firm in what God has declared and even though there is a storm around heresy and bad doctrine, we are going to be a prophetic sign so that people know where to go when the trumpet sounds, regroup and gather new strength to then ram into the enemy.

Churches are needed that are signs for that and God has always made us, like Judah, it was a leading tribe for the exclusive glory of the Lord because it is not for the glory of anyone, God wants this Church to be a tribe that leads and leads and that incarnate for His glory, not because we deserve it.

God says: "Lay down the foundations, put down deeper roots. Don't pull up the roots, put them down deeper. Don't abandon what I have declared to go with the new current, stay with the current even as we adjust our way of expressing the Gospel to the times in which we live."

Things have to be done the Lord's way and we have to stay. We can modify many formal, external things, but the content, the structure, the foundation, never ever.

God wants us to be agents of social, moral and spiritual transformation. We have already done many things in terms of social transformation but we still have a long way to go, God wants something greater, God wants our Church to truly arrive. I love it, for example, when homeless people come here, when they come here on Saturdays, they are coming directly here to León de Judá itself, I want God to help us work with these people. Help us work with the gangsters, with the people involved in violence, the drug addicts, the prostitutes.

The Lord says: "Do not conform to them, conform them to you" says the Lord and to these people, we have to find the formula to transform their lives, touch them with the Spirit, but for that we need a Church that we are not yet. We are very far from it and that applies to you, it applies to me too.

I'm going to finish a little bit of that, the problem is that I always think that I don't have enough material and then when I find myself up here what I lack is a lot of time.

We have to embody the harmony in diversity that only God makes possible. Another of the things that God wants is for us to be a diverse Church, we already have been, this is one of the most diverse churches, I believe, in the nation of the United States, but God wants us to learn to be a truly ethnically diverse Church, as I was saying. Gregory in last Sunday's sermon.

In a city that is so ethnically divided, where there is so much division, so much racism, so much discrimination, so much injustice that there is a place where the Spirit of God can unify the races, the poor, the rich, the man, the woman, the young , the adult, the old man; the person who is homeless, the person who has a mansion, the person who has a doctorate, the person who is illiterate, the Asian, the Black, the White, the Caribbean, the Central American, all come together in one place and may worship the Lord and proclaim the Lordship of Christ to America.

The Lord wants that, that our Church be a truly multi-ethnic Church with different languages: Asian, European, Indian, Romance, Germanic languages, that this be a language here that resembles the day of Pentecost, glory to the Name of the Lord.

Two more things, one penultimate: the development of people radically committed to the Kingdom of God, that is in our vision. People radically committed to the Kingdom of God, that means people who know that their money does not belong to them, their money belongs to God, their time does not belong to them, their time belongs to God, their profession does not belong to them, their profession belongs to God, your wife, your husband, your children do not belong to you, they belong to God; Your house does not belong to you, your practice does not belong to you, it belongs to God. How many can say amen to that?

May our life be a radical cry: Lord, do what you want with me, do what you want with my life! make me a man, a woman, an instrument in Your Hands, an instrument of Your Power, of Your Grace, a channel for Your Glory to run through me and manifest. Wherever you want me, if you want me serving you 24 hours a day I will serve you, if you want me to give up my profession I will give it up, if you want me to give you my money I will give it to you but I will serve you because everything What I have is Yours, because I am a product of Your Spirit in my life, amen?

Don't say amen unless you don't feel it and are willing to pay the price, you know? let your cells shout the Name of the Lord, the molecules that make up your cells shout the Name of the Lord, your brain, the neurons of your brain, the connections, your biology, your neurology shout the Name of the Lord; Until Christ enters that level of your life, the Spirit cannot say that you are a man or a woman radically committed to the Kingdom of God.

Did you know? unless you are committed to the Kingdom of God, God vomits you out of His mouth, you are lukewarm and not pleased with you. God says: "I will vomit you out of My mouth because you are neither cold nor hot, you are lukewarm" you make me nauseated is what the Lord says. The Lord wants you to be looking, longing.

Effective and powerful evangelism, thank you. You know, we have made advances in Evangelism, our Church has grown, hundreds of people have given their lives to the Lord this year, we have kept statistics. Not all of them have stayed, they go to other churches. Part of what we have to understand is that people come to the front, that's why sometimes I don't like to make so many calls, because many people believe that coming here is punching the card and that's it, I'm going to heaven; you know it's not that easy like that, right?

Many times people come by here in front and think that just come here and raise your hand, that's all and I'll go to sleep and come back because someone told me. If you receive Christ, know that you are receiving a new life, a new lifestyle, you are committing yourself to something and you have to be serious.

When you receive the Lord it is something serious, it is a change of life, a change of style. We have to believe and if you get closer to the Lord He will get closer to you and He will do great things in your life, but we have to learn more and more. We have made advances in Evangelism but more is needed. We have to do effective Evangelism too.

All those are some of the things, God tells us as to Abram: Go back to those things. The Lord tells us: Reconsecrate yourself after this time to these things of which I have spoken to you and affirm them in your life.

Let's stand up for a moment, take what you can. Tell the Lord: Lord I receive this, supernatural mentality, power and gifts of the Spirit, excellence and prosperity of the Kingdom of God. Combining wisdom and science, revelation with knowledge, being a prophetic presence wherever I go in my life, being an agent of moral and spiritual transformation, being an agent of harmony and being radically committed to the Kingdom of God and being an evangelistic person. .

We ask these things for this Father Church. This morning possess us Lord with Your Spirit. I want you to be there right now in agony, not thinking to the side, thinking: now what am I going to do, how am I going to go first and be the first to take his car and be able to get out without having to wait for the others in the parking lot?

Start with me Lord. We love you, we adore you, we bless you. We are not happy with what we are Lord, we need more; forgive us, we want more of You, we want more of You Lord. Thank you Lord Jesus.