Living in God's blessing

Dr. Roberto Miranda

Author

Dr. Roberto Miranda

Summary: The psalmist expresses a sense of sufficiency in God and the blessings he has received in life. The challenge for believers is not to leave behind a current condition of failure, but to claim their true condition as blessed people, walking under the positive sign of divine approval and support. Believers live in a privileged land that has touched them through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and their destiny is one of blessing and prosperity. Through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, everyone who falls within the framework of the Kingdom of God is freed from the jurisdiction of the devil and comes under the administration of a new authority. Christ destroyed the inevitability of the diabolical power that delights in tormenting the children of God by pretending to erase the mark of divinity and greatness that every human being bears. By understanding that Christ has already transferred believers from darkness to light, they can claim their rights as children of God and walk with security. The world suffers because it is under the domination of evil, and man himself has given power to Satan. Taking refuge in God and the Gospel can make a difference in society.

The purpose of Satan is to prevent humans from becoming and fully reflecting the image of God in their lives. The forces of evil are determined to destroy the creative and benevolent potential in human beings. However, in the new economy that Christ has established, God ensures that every human being has the opportunity to achieve their potential. God levels the playing field and it is up to individuals to decide if they will take advantage of the resources made available through Jesus Christ. Success includes all dimensions of life, including personal formation, character, human relationships, and everyday habits. Christians have received special resources to fight their battles and must take captive every thought and attitude that opposes the values of the Kingdom of God.

We must take captive every negative and oppressive element in our lives that opposes the values of the Kingdom of God and replace them with excellence, truth, freedom, and harmony. We should not allow ourselves to be dominated or enslaved by anything that contradicts our holy nature in Christ. We must continuously examine ourselves, seek spiritual discernment, and reject anything that opposes the values of the Gospel. Our life program should be to reflect more and more the perfection and character of Christ over time. We should strive to live a life of moral, ethical, and spiritual excellence and contribute to the quality of this world. God has called us to walk free and aspire to great things, to live a hero's life each day conquering our land, each day paying the price, each day subjecting ourselves more to the excellence of God.

Today I have decided to take a reading of that book that I am writing, which has a lot to do with that idea of our life, a life of improvement, growth, spiritual development, overcoming all the problems and struggles that concern us in our life and how to live lives like that of our brother Miguel Prieto, lives that influence, that impact society, that are a credit to the Kingdom of God and when we reach the end of a part of our career, we can do it with all satisfaction knowing that we have been used by God, that our life has marked the world.

And how do we get to that life of influence, that life of sufficiency in the Lord, of overcoming more and more things every day? Well, it is meditating as we say, on those principles of the word of God that help us to overcome. This morning a sister came, I am going to allow myself freedom, she has also gone through her testing time, we know her, we love her very much, many years in our church, many, many years and she went through a very difficult time I know in his life, a time of great crisis and of… he entered the storm like a plane entering a very large storm front and he has been battling and mourning and he came this morning and came up to us to tell us that he already feels that he passed to the other side and who has that victory, has prevailed. And I was delighted to see his person actually reflecting that freedom. It's good when we go through tribulations, isn't it? Sometimes it is difficult, they are valleys of the shadow of death. That is the life of the children of God and of every human being on this earth, but the good thing is when we can hold on to the Lord.

The Bible says, when the bad day comes, be firm until it has passed and when the bad day is over, be still firm. Sometimes the only thing we can do when times of trial and difficulty come is to hold on to the Lord's arm and weather the storm with him, but never throw in the towel, and appropriate those principles of Scripture. And also when we are going through defects in our life. Each one of us has their areas of struggle, we have our ties, our difficulties and we would like, like Paul's sting, that God would free us from that sting, that struggle that we have. And we have to continue in that battle, appropriate the principles of the word of the Lord so that we can be more and more like Christ Jesus each day, healthier each day, each day freer, lighter, more stripped of all things that afflict us.

There is a psalm that I wanted to share with you, a few verses of it because it is long, it is Psalm 16 and there are some verses in 16:5 where it says:

“Jehovah is the portion of my inheritance and my cup, you uphold my luck, the ropes fell on me in delightful places and the inheritance that has touched me is beautiful. – verse 11 – You will show me the path of life, in your presence there is fullness of joy, delights at your right hand forever…”

How beautiful that psalm! I love that verse 5 that says "Jehovah is the portion of my inheritance and my cup, you sustain my luck...," that is, my destiny, path in life, the things that happen to me. Then he says, "... the ropes fell on me in delightful places and the inheritance that has given me everything is beautiful..."

The psalmist expresses a sense of sufficiency in God and the strings are like the measure of land they gave me. The Jews divided up the entire Promised Land according to families, tribes, and each one got a portion of land, and this person says, the portion of land that touched me, the ropes where they were drawn for me from my property, fell into delightful places, that is, in places where perhaps there was a river, there was water, there were leafy trees. He touched a very nice portion of land to that person.

And what a beautiful image of a believer blessed by God who says, wow, what I have been given is good in life. That's not to say there aren't difficulties and trials, but the net result is blessing.

And I want to talk about that, abiding in the blessing of God. More than failure in life, more than failure, the number 1 enemy of human potential is mediocrity of spirit, accommodation to circumstances, lack of vision and spiritual ambition. Thinking that we are merely destined to walk the earth, when in reality God has made us to soar through the air, to be cosmonauts of the spirit. That essential lack of aspiration in us, combined with the ignorance of the spiritual laws of success and self-improvement, constitute a deadly formula for the achievement of our dreams.

The great adventure of personal success begins when we realize that victory has already been declared over us and over our lives. Our inheritance, brothers, as the psalmist says in Psalm 16, our inheritance is already a reality of greatness. Jehovah is our inheritance, imagine, if the portion of our inheritance and our cup is Jehovah, what can we lack? Our true identity as children of God is realized beings, people who will have come to live a full life full of meaning and excellence, positive influence.

The challenge for believers, the children of God who want to succeed in life, does not consist so much in leaving behind a current condition of failure, as in escaping from this condition that we have of failure, but rather in claiming that our current state as children of God, what we already are, our true condition as blessed people, is that we already walk, we are already under God's blessing, under the positive sign of divine approval and support.

You don't have to be running away like, Lord, change me. No, I believe that part of the secret is to claim what you are in Christ Jesus, what God has declared about you, the way God sees you, the positive prophecies that God has said for your life. As he says, “because I know the thoughts, the intentions that I have for you…” You have to understand what you already are in Christ Jesus. The word says that we are seated together with Christ Jesus in heavenly places. We are already seated, he does not say, we are going to be, we are already. The problem is that we have not accessed that identity, we have not made it our own, and we are saying, "Lord, change me." Yes, in a sense we can say that but why not rather say, "Lord, help me to enter into who I am as your child."

Remember the story of the son who stayed at home, I always use him as an example. The son who stayed at home in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, did not make any mistakes or anything, always faithful, but when the prodigal son arrives he tells him, "Dad, this boy who has wasted all your possessions, your you take it and restore it and I can never enjoy even a little thing, a crumb of your goods.” And the father says, "But son, how is it possible that you think like that if everything I have is yours?" he couldn't see himself as heir to everything his father had. He wasn't enjoying it even though it was available to him, but he kind of never realized his position as his father's beloved son.

As the psalmist declares in the beautiful Psalm 16, as I have said here, "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance from my cup, the cords fell to me in pleasant places and the inheritance that he has touched me is beautiful."

The believer lives in a privileged land that has touched him through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, his destiny is one of blessing and why not tell him, of prosperity. "The good and mercy of the Lord will follow me all the days of my life," says the word of the Lord. The children of God shepherded through life by an almighty and fatherly shepherd are persecuted for good, guarded by a cloud of blessing that follows them generously through life.

Paul declares in Ephesians 2:16, he says, that "God - he says in the past tense - made us alive together with Christ and just with him he raised us up and likewise made us sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus."

What an amazing statement, that identification with Christ that the word of God establishes for every believer, assures us that the power of Christ, his triumph over the dark powers that try to rob us of a full and successful life will work in our favor in this world. Judicially we can say we are seated together with Jesus in heavenly places, places of authority and plenitude. From that infinitely high vantage point we can look confidently down the road ahead, we can partake of the power released by the resurrection.

The inertia of a fallen world no longer has ultimate power over us. On the cross Christ decisively triumphed over the principalities and powers that militate against the well-being of the human race, according to Colossians 2:15, it says that he exhibited them publicly and annulled the act of decrees that was contrary to us. No accusation of the devil can now prevail against us, because Christ put an X on every accusation of the devil.

The Apostle Paul says, "who will condemn if God is the one who justifies." Christ destroyed the inevitability of the diabolical power that delights in tormenting the children of God by pretending to erase the mark of divinity and greatness that every human being bears. Through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, everyone who falls within the framework of the Kingdom of God is freed from the jurisdiction of the devil and comes under the administration of a new authority, a benevolent and loving government whose only desire is to restore our communication with the Creator and reestablish the link with that source of divine energy that ensures us a life of plenitude, creativity and power.

Do you remember the words of Scripture that say that the Lord transferred us from darkness to his marvelous light. It is like when a person receives Christ, God sends a powerful angel to hell itself and says, "Look, give me the record of so-and-so, you no longer control it, now we are going to put it in the divine records." Now he is under the administration of heaven, he is no longer under the diabolical administration that wants to torture, kill, steal, destroy, and puts him under the admirable light of Christ Jesus.

That is what that idea means. That your life is no longer in the devil's control, now if you believe that it is in the devil's control, the devil is going to have no mercy on you. If you do not know that your life is already hidden in Christ Jesus, the enemy will continue to wreak havoc in your life. But if you understand that Christ has already transferred you from darkness to light, then you can now claim your right as a child of God, walk with that security. When trials come into your life, you can use the word of God, when the devil wants to whisper to you, you are a loser, a victim, an abused, a failure, you can shout at him, "The Lord has set me free, the Lord has good purpose for my life. I am a new creature in Christ Jesus. I have hope, I have power to overcome any situation. I don't have to always live under the shadow of the past and my character flaws.”

Christ has said in his word, "the thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy, I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full," that is what he has said. The thief is Satan who embodies the principle of evil that opposes everything that affirms light, life and love. God's purpose in sending Jesus as his exclusive ambassador to the world is to establish a kingdom of light and truth, a new government headed toward restoration due.

One of John's epistles says that Jesus came to undo the works of the devil, to dismantle the diabolical apparatus that ruled the world illegitimately. The world now suffers all the things it suffers because it is under the domination of evil, because man himself has given power to Satan. A nation like ours suffers so many things today because our children, our youth are not receiving the word of God, at least when a government does not recognize the lordship of God and the principles of the word of God, that illegitimate authority then it transfers to the nation and we see the crimes and we see all the things that are killing our society, our youth. Because then the devil has the right, although he does not have it in the last instance, if man took refuge in God, took refuge in God, things would be different.

We have to announce Christ for this, brothers, and tell the people, take refuge in the house of God, take refuge in the Gospel so that Christ can then cover you with his blood. Satan wants the original purposes that governed the creative work of Christ in the act of creation to be annulled and he will rule, take control of the nations.

Christ is constituted, brothers, in a transmitter of unlimited power, from the throne of God towards his creation. That benevolent power wants to give life to nations, to eradicate poverty, war, oppression, it wants to make possible all the reforms and transformations in the human sphere that the great idealists of all times have given their lives and talents to carry out. Christ is the only one who can make it real. Christ wants every man or woman to reach their full potential, to stop living broken lives, full of envy for the achievements of others, to living out our own heroic drama, climbing our own mountains, and fulfilling our own grand dreams. That is what Christ wants to do with us.

The purpose of Satan, the great destroyer of life, of potential, is that no human being becomes and fully reflects the image of God in his life. The incessant activity of the powers of evil that rule the world is consecrated to a single purpose, to prevent a child in a favela in Brazil, or a village in Africa, feeding dreams of greatness, while caring for his hungry little brothers, from getting educated or fed. enough to develop healthily and become a successful man and a blessing to his community.

The river of darkness exists and moves only to steal, kill and destroy, as Jesus Christ says. The dark powers that illegitimately rule this fallen world identify very early each human being who has the potential to develop and bless humanity with their gifts. These demonic powers do everything in their power to shatter our dreams and to trip up those people who have potential in their efforts for self-realization.

We are always at war with the powers of evil, although our struggles seem very daily and very small, there are powers dedicated to trying to destroy the dreams in us and when we are standing up, the force of evil tries to make us stumble continuously. . We are constantly fighting. The Apostle Paul says that our fight is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers that are always trying to cut short human life.

In the Christmas story, for example, we see that King Herod, who is a type of Satan, tries to kill the baby Jesus before he achieves his destiny, because he knows that his purposes of illegitimate power, Satan, will be frustrated if the wonderful child will come to realize his divine potential. And for this reason he orders to kill all the newborns in Israel, trying to make sure that the envoy of God does not prosper and establish his kingdom of light and goodness.

This is an archetype that is repeated throughout Scripture and throughout all of history. In the book of Exodus, for example, the story of Moses born to free God's people from slavery is told, and what happens? Before the birth of the child, Pharaoh issues an order that all Jewish male children be thrown into the river and drowned at birth. Today it is easier, today they abort them before they are born. Today there is more technology than before. Before they had to wait for the child to be born and then they killed it, today they kill it in its mother's womb. What's more, they kill him when he's half born to fulfill a cursed law of judicial accuracy, diabolical.

But do you know how many millions of children have been aborted in this nation? Tens of millions, a holocaust that screams before the eyes of God, all those lives. Engineers, poets, scientists, teachers, pastors, evangelists, worshipers died there, and everything is the devil cutting life apart. That is your business. That's what he does and he specializes in killing life before it comes to light.

Pharaoh was afraid of the prosperity of the Jews, a nation that was going to be a blessing to the human race, of their rapid numerical growth and wanted to neutralize their progress. Satan fears a humanity blessed by God, brothers, free to choose its own destiny and prosper under the benevolent gaze of its Creator. But God helps the child and makes it possible for him to grow and mature in the very bowels of Pharaoh's royal palace, thus achieving his liberating destiny.

That is the archetypal pattern of human history, the forces of evil are determined to destroy the creative and benevolent potential in human beings. They seek to prematurely destroy a man or woman destined to achieve great things in order to perpetuate their reign of evil and destruction of life.

But in the new economy that Christ has established, God ensures that every human being has the opportunity to achieve their potential. God levels the playing field and then it is up to us to decide freely if we are going to take advantage of the resources that he has made available through his son Jesus Christ. What makes the difference between a successful, powerful, influential Christian who benefits from God and one who remains stagnant, is not that God has given more to one or the other, it is the individual's ability to take advantage of the resources he has in your hands.

The Lord distributes a gift to each servant in the parable of the servants and one gives it to 30, others to 60, others to 100, and one hides it under the pillow and when the time comes to say, okay, what did you do with your talents? Look, I was afraid and I put it under my pillow because I was afraid that if I invested it, it would be lost. The others took their talent, surrendered. I see every day in León de Judá brothers and sisters who start their career perfectly ordinary and sometimes in a few months, and in a few years, I see them prosper, do great things, overcoming their struggles, blessing their congregation, doing heroic acts, teaching kids, teaching discipleship, people you wouldn't expect. Because? Because they tried hard, because they took God's blessing, they took God's endowment seriously and they began to use their talent and God then blesses them.

What are you doing with the divine endowment? Because God wants to use you. God wants to do great things through your life. Don't get stuck in images of defeat, stagnation, victimization. You are not a victim. In Christ you are free to pursue your destiny and to become all that God wants you to be. Blessings are for all your children. God gives equally to all.

We have to be prepared, brothers, to discern the true nature of those contrary forces that attack us daily. We have to denounce its true satanic origin and continue with our personal liberation efforts anyway. Through the understanding that comes from knowing the principles of the spirit, which I am sharing with you through these teachings, we will be prepared to interpret our experience spiritually.

We will be able to use the full armor of God to achieve our dreams. We must wear the armor of God because the enemy does not want us to access greatness. Through a close union with the power that is in Jesus we are prepared to break the force of malevolent gravity that wants to drag us and keep us on the ground.

Strengthened in the Lord and in the power of his strength we obtain the authority we need. We can win the arduous struggles that we will inevitably face on the path to personal greatness. As we set out to conquer our true destiny, we hear the loving words of Jesus, “Abide in me and I in you. I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in him, he who bears much fruit.

Christ wants you to bear much fruit. Remain in him and in his principles and you will reach the goal. Up to this point I have talked a lot about success, about self-improvement, about achieving our dreams, about living fulfilling and creative lives, we have talked about conceiving bold visions and going after our dreams, but what do we really mean by of these expressions? What specific dimensions of life are we referring to? In what areas of our lives is God willing to intervene in response to our prayers and efforts?

It is possible that when you hear the word success you immediately think that we are referring mainly to making money, acquiring material possessions, or scaling professional heights, and certainly much of what is written about success today, even in religious circles. , suggests this kind of limited interpretation: a lot of money, a big house, two cars in the driveway, a promotion at work.

Expanding this concept of success a little more, we could think about the improvement of our social relationships, the acquisition of prestige and social status, that of how to win friends and influence people, according to the title of the famous book by Dale Carnegie, and we could to think perhaps that our visionary efforts should be limited to matters of great importance, excluding the most mundane and common topics of daily life.

And the truth is that although the intention of this meditation is to help us achieve success in all these dimensions, also the material, the financial aspects of life, our scope, my vision of what success is extends far beyond that relatively limited of material prosperity. It includes, brothers, the most everyday aspects of life, as well as the most sublime.

Maybe some sister here wants to be a better cook, for example. Well, God can teach you how to do it, how not to burn food or how to put that special seasoning on it so that people admire you. Or perhaps you want to learn to paint, you have wanted to develop yourself in painting, for example, and you have never been able to do it. God can give you that dimension too. Maybe you can just be… learn to speak better in public, many ways, if you are a teacher, if you are a person who has to give instructions to employees and all these kinds of things, God can help you in very simple things in life. It also includes family and intimate matters.

It can involve something as big as your plans to affect the course of your nation or the community where you live. It involves the formation of your personality, the process of personal development, through which we eliminate the rough edges and imperfections of our character and replace it with qualities that reflect the character of Christ.

I believe that many of us evangelicals limit ourselves only to very large and very external achievements. But God is also very interested in our personal formation, our character, human relationships, the way we treat others, all those things that are often the contaminants that create setbacks and difficulties in our lives.

Or it could be a goal as relatively simple and everyday as improving your eating habits and losing weight. The important thing is that you understand that God has given you all the land that the soles of your feet tread upon, all the land, all the things that make up your land, God has given it to you. The only thing he expects of you is that you make an effort and be brave, he tells Josué, that you do your part and that you assume the responsibility that falls to you in the process of transforming your life.

God wants you to live an intentional life, taking control of your land, living according to specific goals that you continually set for yourself, which have to do with all aspects of your person. Remember that he has talked about vision, setting specific goals, deciding what I want in my life, what are the areas of my life that I want to master and overcome, setting specific goals and aligning time, how you you invest, align it with your visions.

Because if you want to be a great man of God and you want to be a well-rounded human being, but you spend your life watching television, don't expect that you'll get there. No, you have to read good books, you have to exercise discipline in your life, you have to listen to good music, you have to surround yourself with people who enrich and bless you. You have to discipline your habits so that your life is aligned with your goals of greatness. You can't live like a jerk and want to be a spiritual genius. You have to align the two things in life. There is a price to pay for greatness.

God wants you to name your challenges, that you daily recognize the tasks ahead of you. Wherever something rears its head that contradicts the all-encompassing blessing and prosperity God has for you, that must immediately be identified as a giant that has to be brought under the lordship of Christ. We all have a list of things, identify them, name them and put enmity between you and that character.

Second Corinthians 10:4 and 5, says that the weapons of our militia are not carnal, but powerful in God for the destruction of strongholds. He says, tearing down arguments and all haughtiness that rises against the knowledge of God and taking captive every thought to the obedience of Christ.

That means that the children of God have received special resources to fight our battles. The weapons of our militia are not carnal, they are powerful in God to undertake the long pilgrimage of personal fulfillment. These resources come from the realm of the spirit and not only from the world or matter. With these powerful weapons we can undertake the conquest of everything that oppresses or limits us, everything that opposes God's good purpose for our lives.

Every area of negativity and oppression in our lives, every thought, every system, every circumstance or attitude that opposes the excellent spirit of Jesus in us, must be taken captive to the obedience of Christ. That is, it must be replaced by a new element that is in line with the values of the Kingdom of God, values of excellence, truth, freedom, harmony.

Identify everything that is contrary to the values of the Kingdom of God in your life and establish a plan of war against them. Do not accommodate yourself to anything that contradicts the excellence of God in you, be it depression, anxiety, resentment, past hurts, defeatism, laziness, letting yourself be easily discouraged in life, or sadness for something that happened to you in the past, be it a sense of loss, the death of a loved one, financial failure, career stagnation. Do not accommodate yourself to anything that contradicts the fact that Christ has come to give you life and abundant life, so that you may have victory in everything you undertake, so that you can get ahead, so that you reflect excellence, greatness, sufficiency, power of Christ Jesus. Anything that prevents you from becoming great and great like Christ, wage war against it and every day take up your sword again and start cutting that weeds down, every day.

Those negative and rebellious elements to the lordship of Christ may be negatively affecting our community, the environment where we work, our nation, or our church, or they may be affecting our interior life, our character, our marital relationships, our finances, or our health. Whatever that factor, if its nature is contrary to order, beauty, grace, which characterizes the Kingdom of God and its values, if it is a thought or principle that opposes the truth of God and wants to flourish in your life or in your circumstances, then it is necessary to recognize it, name it, confront it and subject it to the authority of Jesus Christ.

I am going to skip an example that I have here to finish off. One of my favorite verses is found in First Corinthians 6:12 where Paul states:

“…All things are lawful for me, but I will not let myself be dominated by any.”

It's interesting, if something that you do in your life you do compulsively, because you have no choice, that's probably bad. We must always be governed morally and ethically by freedom, because we have chosen the good. Sometimes there are things that are not bad but you do them for the wrong reasons and then you also have to identify that. There are many things that do not offend anyone, they are not against God but they are harmful to your well-being, so do not let yourself be defeated or dominated by anything in your life, nothing. Don't be enslaved by anything in the world.

The Apostle has just mentioned, in the verses before this verse, a whole list of sins, ties and immoral practices that afflict those who do not know God. And it clarifies that despite the children of God we have great freedom in Christ, not all the things we can practice are good for our physical, moral or spiritual health. There are habits and attitudes that we sometimes allow to enter our life and enslave us and make us addicted. There are practices that start as occasional fun and then become an inner strength that governs our lives and allows the empire of evil to take hold in our being.

The consequences of this condition are terrible, as we lose our freedom and become slaves to what began as a free practice. In that verse Paul declares one of the essential values of his life, that he will not be dominated or enslaved by anything in this world, he will not submit his freedom to any practice, circumstance, relationship, attitude or character trait that contradicts his holy nature. , free and beautiful of Christ Jesus.

In this case, it is a declaration of emancipation, total liberation, the essential freedom of every believer, his right to rebel against everything that denies the values of the Kingdom of God within him or her. The children of God have been made free, brothers. Christ has declared that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. That means that we always have to retain our essential freedom to examine the things that determine our existence and determine whether or not we will allow them to govern our decisions.

No element of this world should deprive us of our free will. We cannot proceed in life acting compulsively, under the influence of dark, unrecognized forces that move below the radar of our consciousness. We have to examine all the factors that govern our decisions and behavior and determine if they reflect the values of God's word or not, if they are contrary to the values of the Gospel, even if they have the appearance of goodness and holiness, even if they are socially acceptable. In any case, they will need to be rejected and submitted to the lordship of Christ.

One of the most important things that we, as people who want to improve ourselves, have to do is to know ourselves, to examine ourselves continuously, to know where the things I do come from, why I do this, why I do what another, where are the things from my past and my training that lead me to have problems with my co-workers, with my wife, that at the moment depression takes hold of me and I don't know where it came from. There is a reason, know yourself. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you spiritual discernment, to help you to know the internal, secret springs of your being. Take time to meditate, to be silent, to search within yourself in spirit. Take time to be quiet and to listen from God because that will help you master the areas of your life that need to be released.

The son of God is a knight-errant, with sword always in hand, perpetually vigilant, conquering and retaining the inheritance that God has declared over his life, defending it from everything that threatens to plunge it into moral mediocrity or conformism.

The man or woman of God who has decided to live a life of excellence has an arduous task ahead of them, they will have to adopt the lifestyle of a hero, I believe that, brothers. You will have to undergo many privations and surgical operations throughout your career on earth. He will have to refrain from many pleasures and liberties that may be allowed to others, but not to him or her. Your pleasure and your joy will come from each day becoming more like Christ, from watching your inner inheritance prosper, and each day become more beautiful.

Your sense of fulfillment will come from knowing that you are living on the edge of the sword, every day, in the perfect will of the Father and that you are bringing glory to God with your personal improvement and sanctification project. The excellence of his life will then grace the world, inspire others and for an instant illuminate the darkness of this fallen world, leave a trail of good deeds, impacted lives, uplifting words and actions, disciples who continue the mission after his departure.

Our life program should be to reflect more and more the perfection and character of Christ over time. By fully understanding the fact that God is glorified not so much by what we do as by who we are, we will be motivated to make our journey on earth a sweet-smelling holocaust to the glory of God. Our living will be governed by the idea that much more important than living superficially respectable lives, going to church, giving money to the poor, outwardly respecting the laws of society, we are supposed to reflect excellent character, ethical and moral greatness. of Christ Jesus.

That is why the believer who has penetrated the essential feeling of Scripture does not allow himself to be deceived by the false idea of the Christian life as a basic project of superficial reform of behavior. The mature servant clearly understands that the way to please God involves continual death and resurrection, total surrender of self, nothing short of radical treatment by the divine surgeon until the image of Christ is formed in us. May God bless you, brothers.

God encourage us to live our life as a transformation project, a Christian change project. God has not called you to mediocrity, God has not called you to conformism, God has not called you to get used to your chains, God has not called you to accommodate yourself to that 8 by 8 cell in which you live. God has called you to walk free and aspire to great things and to live a hero's life each day conquering your land, each day paying the price, each day subjecting yourself more to the excellence of God.

We have to find the pleasure of living as soldiers who every day want to be better in Christ Jesus and adorn the world in that way. I think that our brother Miguel has been able to do in his career as a teacher, is to impact lives and become something great. He comes from a humble background and all of us can do the same, brothers. He is not gifted, I am not gifted, it is simply the grace of God in us. But go for it.

I want this church more and more to be made up of men and women who come here and if they are going to stay here, it is for each one of us to conquer the land that God has given us, to build an excellent community, an exemplary community. , a community for the world to see and say, wow, what are these people consuming? Get to overcome yourself in Christ Jesus and fight your battles. Join up.

God is speaking to me about this, about evangelism and one of the things that I believe we have to say to this community out there, look, come and take refuge in the Gospel because the Lord is going to free you from your chains. The Lord will help you achieve your dream. The Lord is going to help you so that the devil does not have power over your children, over your marriage. Enter into the excellence of the Kingdom of God and enter to conquer its giants, because that is what the Gospel offers, a life of excellence and greatness.

I encourage you, together we go in that direction every day, brothers. Father, in the name of Jesus have these words dwell in us as seeds of life, Father. We want to be great in Christ and bring credit to the Kingdom of God with a life of moral, ethical and spiritual excellence, and we want to contribute to the quality of this world. Help us to be like Christ Jesus.

Bless my brothers on this day in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. May the grace of the Lord be with you, my brothers.