Know your identity and live according to it

Our church is called to strengthen and redouble its evangelistic efforts, I am preaching a series of sermons intended to, first, inform and educate us about the evangelistic call. Second, lead us to reflect on the biblical and theological content that exists about why we have to evangelize. Third, create a sense of urgency and commitment in the heart of each member of the Lion of Judah congregation, including their pastor as well, create a sense of urgency and also enthusiasm about the evangelistic call.

And that will be part of a whole series of interventions. A brother approached me last Sunday at the 12 o'clock service and said, "Pastor, it's great that we make people aware of the evangelistic call but they also need instruction and teaching," and I said, "Sure. that yes, brother, that is also in the program.” We are also going to be teaching and training about evangelism and we are going to be evangelizing as well, so you hear about the services that we are gearing toward evangelistic.

And by the way, I tell you that this is not about an evangelistic campaign, it is not that we are going to be there for two months and then business as usual, we return to normal life again. No. I have told you that during all these years we have been dedicating a quantity of our energies to the construction of buildings, renovation of the physical plant. God has allowed us to conclude these efforts, 20 years of construction. We have a beautiful physical plant, a very good infrastructure that God has allowed us to establish, and now, we want to invest those energies that have been released in becoming an evangelistic organism, a conquering organism for the glory of the name of Jesus in the city of Boston and in this region. How many can say amen even at 10 in the morning. Amen.

I want to put an evangelistic fire in you because this is not about a little while that later we are going to continue with everything else. No. I want our church to sort of now acquire a nature, a way of life, a governing vision regarding evangelism. We want to bring many souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We want to conquer this city. At least that the land that God has given us we can prepare for the Lord.

God has already allowed us to do many beautiful things in this area, but I know that there is still much more that we can do and so in the coming weeks we will be talking, training, preparing the people and raising awareness. If we understand the reason for being a believer and if we change the definitions and understand how scripture sees the evangelistic call and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ truly, authentically, what it means to be a disciple, what God expects of you. When you receive Christ as Lord and Savior, then what? Well, you punched your card, they stamped your passport, you're going to heaven, okay, but is that all? It is the Christian life only to come to church on Sundays and educate our children and the daily evangelical routine. There is something else. What is the true meaning of being a Christian?

When the Lord enters your life, when the Holy Spirit touches you, when you acquire that new identity as a woman, a born again man, what concrete changes are supposed to take place in your life? What do you live for from then on? What is the nature of your identity?

And we are going to talk a little about that because we are going to see in the scripture that the Lord at all times saw the Christian life from a very specific angle and when he wanted to illustrate what a child of God is, a follower of Jesus Christ, a disciple He used very concrete and very specific illustrations and expressions specifically oriented towards a type of activity and a type of movement within the land of each one of the believers and of the church mass.

So, let's look at some of these passages. We look at Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 to 16, it says:

“…You are – the ones who go to church every Sunday, the ones who read the Bible and memorize lots of verses, the ones who work in the ushering ministry, in the churches and the ones who are deacons and elders and all those kinds of things. Look what it says – …You are the salt of the earth. – tell yourself that right now in your spirit, I am salt of the earth. – But if the salt vanishes, what will it be salted with? – because it cannot be salty because it is already salt. If the salt loses its flavor, there is another expression – It is no longer good for anything…”

Understand this, if salt cannot give flavor, if for some reason it loses its ability to do what it is, which is to combine with different materials, vegetables, meats, all these kinds of things, and impart its salty nature to it, if you don't He does that… because one would think, perhaps he can do something else, he can make little dolls out of salt, he can make very pretty cloth bags with salt inside and sell it to people. But salt is not made for that, there are many other materials that can do all that. Salt, its function, its nature, its essence, its very identity, its reason for being, what justifies its existence on earth is to impart flavor and specifically a type of flavor to things. And if salt doesn't do that job, no matter what other job it does, it's not doing its job. You are not acting on your identity. And I believe that you are already beginning to see my purpose.

“…It is no longer good for anything…” If a church does not do what God has called it to be, it is good for nothing. It's just something else. It is an obstacle many times even.

“…It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trodden down by men…”

Wow! That terminology, cast out, is interesting because the Lord has used it for unfaithful servants thrown out of the house, and trampled on, to be trampled on by men. This is interesting, that if the church does not carry out its function, it knows that it becomes an object of attack and contempt and even of oppression and abuse on the part of men. And I believe that this is part of what is happening at this time in this nation and in other parts of the world, that the church has acquired a different identity, it is not doing its job, it is not living genuinely, authentically as what God has called her to be, what Christ came to declare her to be, and then God ignores her, she is not in direct contact with the benefits of the Kingdom of God and then she is simply trampled on, abused, trampled on, manipulated by the men.

So one image that the Lord used for the church is salt, which imparts its flavor. Another image is next to it, in verse 14, it says:

“…You are the light of the world…” You have to say, I am light. Wherever the light goes, it clears the darkness and shines. That is its nature. You turn on a light bulb and no music comes out of the light bulb, no, what comes out is light, it clears the darkness. If there is darkness, the darkness disappears and the light prevails and imposes itself and is invasive. A light bulb is small but it throws light all around it, much bigger than the light bulb itself, the source of the light.

"…You are the light of the world. A city settled on a hill should not hide…” I remember years ago I was traveling with some friends through Mexico, we are talking more years than I want to remember, when I was in high school, imagine. We made a trip through Mexico when we finished the classes we were taking in Guanajuato, Mexico, and we came at night, we were going to go to Acapulco to preach the Gospel. It was night, the night was very dark, we were in a van and we had crossed a mountainous and dark area and at the moment we turned around and so in the distance we saw the lights of Acapulco, which was about a height where we were. And you could see all those bright lights, wonderful, beautiful, that gave us hope. We are already arriving, because it was late, the trip had been long. And we could see the lights of Acapulco from a distance because it was at a high point.

It says here that we are the light of the world and that a city settled on a mountain cannot possibly hide. His nature does not allow it. “…Neither do you turn on a light and put it under a bushel,” – that is, you don't put a light bulb and put it under the bed. I've never seen a connection except maybe in a neurotic's house, under a bed. The lights are put on the ceiling or they are put on the walls because that way they throw their light on the whole environment. They are put in clear places so that everyone can receive their benefit.

A light is not turned on and placed under a bushel, under a pillow, under a bed, “…but it is placed on the lampstand and so let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven…"

That is the call then. Men have to see our light and that light is manifested in many ways, it is manifested through our testimony, behavior, noble life, worthy of admiration and respect, our generosity and also our testimony, the change that Christ brings about in our lives. . When people see the life of the church, when they see their different way of living, people say, wow, I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I want to give my life to the Lord, I want what those people have. But we have to shine and we have to be salt.

Now we are going to another substance, to another essence that by its very nature has a specific behavior and a specific effect. Let's go to Luke, chapter 13, verse 18 to 21.

“…What is the Kingdom of God like and what shall I compare it to?” Let's see, brothers, what does the church of Jesus Christ look like? What is the Kingdom of God on earth like? What do Gospel values and economics look like?

“…It is similar to the mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a big tree – it is a bush, it is a plant that spreads widely. It starts with a tiny granite but over time it multiplies, grows and can become a huge vegetable. – It became a big tree and the birds of the sky nested in its branches…”

What a beautiful poetic image the Lord chooses of living beings who find nutrition, shelter, rest in that gigantic tree that is the mustard bush, which is born from something extremely small. If you think about the church of Jesus Christ with its millions of people throughout the world, which has been an intrusive and determining element in the history of humanity since the first century, it began in a small village, in Bethlehem, when that holy and wonderful that Jesus is, he continued with 12 poor, insignificant disciples, none of them highly educated or outstanding, a group of people around him, pious women who accompanied Jesus Christ without any power, no social voice, and from there, from that little and humble beginning, with a crucified martyr, it spread throughout the world until it became that powerful and determining force that is the church of Jesus Christ. Start small.

The Lord has always compared the Kingdom of God to something that starts very small and gets bigger and bigger, more and more powerful, more and more influential. And that is what God wants us to be wherever we go. That is what God wants this church, for the glory of the Lord, to be more and more, like the mustard seed, it starts small but it expands, growing until it becomes something extraordinarily invasive and powerful.

And in verse 20… then we have salt, light, tiny mustard seed that becomes something big and spreads out and we are going to see a fourth substance or entity that reminds us of the nature of the church. It says here, “…he said again, to what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is similar to the leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until everything – say everything – was fermented…”

How many make bread here ever? When you make bread, the first thing you take is a tiny packet of yeast, take the flour, a little warm water. Take the yeast, pour the flour into warm water so that yeast begins to dissolve. Do you know that these are organisms that begin to dissolve and begin to bubble and expand and then you take that yeast that you have dissolved in warm water and you put it in the flour, with a little bit of salt, and then you mix it and you have to mix it very well. , because if you just put it in a little bit of flour and take the flour and just move it around, but one of the things you have to make sure is that that leaven rises all over the dough, that it spreads all over the dough and then you take it, when you have mixed it well, kneaded it well, you hide it for a while.

He puts a cloth over it, puts it aside and leaves it for an hour or two and what happens in that time? That yeast is growing inside the dough. They are little air bubbles that are pushing the dough. The amount of flour is the same, but the bubbles are expanding and then you return a couple of hours later and you will see that if the yeast was good, that dough that was like a little ball like that, has doubled and maybe sometimes even more if you leave it longer, because it has expanded. It's all over the dough and it makes it so much bigger. And now these tiny substances have dominated, they have taken control of the dough and that is what allows the bread to not be a cookie, to make the bubbles, the air, so you take that bread... sometimes what one It does is that it crushes it again and again it returns and rises, like the church of Jesus Christ.

You can squash it and chase it but again it comes back and expands. Then, it comes back again because it takes on the flavor of the fermentation and with the flour and all that, and finally you have a dough that can make a delicious bread. I'm already hungry. Because yeast that is its function is to expand, that is its nature, that is what is written in its DNA.

So, salt, light, mustard grain, yeast. Understand that in us the nature, the identity of the church, the DNA is to expand, it is to exert influence, it is to conquer everything that is around it, it is to manifest its nature and impose that nature on everything that is around it.

What is our flour in the city of Boston? The city of Boston and each one of you is a grain of yeast, at work, at school, at the university, in the neighborhood, in your building, in your club of whatever, on the train, a grain enters of yeast, wherever a believer goes, a grain of yeast enters, a light bulb of the Kingdom of God enters, it enters a mustard seed that has to expand. That is nature. And when a church, when a Christian community is functioning according to its nature, it is supposed to grow, it is supposed to expand, because the life of God is within it.

Do you know what is abnormal in a church? Let it not grow Do you know what is against nature, what is a disturbance of nature? It is that a church always stays the same size, tiny or that it decreases and dies. Because the very nature of a Christian community is to expand, grow, be influential, and bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. That is what you have inside of you.

And that is why churches die, because they stop growing, they stop expanding, they repress their true identity. That is what has always worried me to grow and progress. You see that the nature of the kingdom is to advance, everything alive moves, brothers. Right now the blood inside you is running continuously, if it has stopped, it is because you are already on your way to the cemetery. Your heart is always beating. The cells in your body are always being replaced, they die and are continually replaced. Your skin cells are shed and new cells grow to cover your skin. The world is dynamic. Atoms do not rest for a single minute. That firm chair on which you are sitting is a universe that if you saw it you would be scared of how dynamic it is, it is made of atoms and subatomic particles that explode and collide with each other and recreate themselves at a frenetic speed.

The planets never stop moving around their stars, around their suns. Galaxies are always expanding and moving. The universe that God created is a dynamic, expansive universe and everything that stagnates dies or smells bad, and the church likewise, if the church does not move... that is why you see me always forging new ideas. Okay, some new screens, not because I just like activity by activity, but I… one always has to be thinking about new things.

The church of Christ has to be improving, perfecting itself, polishing itself, acquiring new skills, learning to be the church of Jesus Christ. You as a Christian have to grow, you have to develop, you have to learn new things, you have to be more like Christ every day. The Christian life is a dynamic life. You have to be growing, learning. How many take what I'm saying? How many dare to live a dynamic, expansive life in the name of the Lord?

Because that's how it has to be. And don't stay where you are ever. Do not stay with your defects and your depressions and your limitations, say, well, God already made me like that, I have tried. No, in the name of the Lord go to the new level, because God made you an expansive spirit and the church of Jesus Christ has to be like that. Glory to the Lord that we have come here to Boston, God has blessed us greatly, from when we arrived here a group of 200 people more or less, and God has blessed us in many ways, but it has been by his grace and because I believe that the nature of a people is to improve every day, to grow every day.

The nature of the people of God, our DNA, our internal constitution as children of God, the identity that God has imparted to us, even if we do not recognize it, and even if we do not see it, is an identity of conquest, of triumph, of impact, of influence. God has made you by nature influential, he has made you great and excellent.

I was reading, I remembered something, this very morning the story of some Vietnamese children, 4 of them, Vietnamese mothers, their mothers were prostitutes, women who worked in hotels fixing sheets and beds and all that, and there was an American millionaire, his name Larry Hillblom and this man, this American millionaire traveled to South Vietnam and the Philippines and had relationships with several women while he went to develop his hotels and golf courses. The case was that several of these women conceived children of this billionaire and over time these women combined several of them and sued Larry Hillblom, who was already here in the United States, for paternity. Several women, there were about 10 or more, and only 4 of them were able to prove that yes, that their children were the children of Larry Hillblom and each of these children that now their mothers and themselves perhaps understood their true nature, what they had for inside, each of them inherited a fortune of $90 million dollars for being the children of Larry Hillblom.

Because? Because they had this man's DNA, they were not destined for poverty, they did not carry within them the DNA of a miserable and poor Filipino or South Vietnamese, but the DNA of a billionaire, and their lives were transformed because they, too, became They found out his identity. Their mothers realized the identity and the identity they carried inside was updated and that became a fortune and a transformed life for them.

And so I think the world is full of children, not of Larry Hillblom, but of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The Lord has imparted to us a new nature, we are born again, we are new creatures, old things have passed away and here everything is made new. God has truly made us in his image now. It has given us the identity of winners, winners, conquerors, people of influence. God has placed in us a multi-billion dollar endowment of power. What happens is that the majority of Christians live the Christian life and die without updating and sometimes without realizing the true identity that they carry inside, they do not update it, they do not put it into practice, they do not begin to exercise it, they do not leaven the dough They don't take that dough that has the divine leaven and begin to move and knead it so that it begins to expand. They just leave it there.

I believe that when the church of Jesus Christ realizes its true calling and the endowment that it has within it, what each Christian, each believer has within it. If the Lion of Judah realizes that God has made us, this is an atomic bomb, brothers. Imagine if with… thank God we have done it, it is not that we are throwing dirt on our heads either, God has allowed us to do many things in this city precisely for that reason, because nature… but imagine if we now put ourselves predominantly to evangelize and expand and grow and attract lives.

That is what really scares me when I think about this project, because what I have in mind is something big and transformative for us. And it scares me because that means that there are so many changes that we have to make and that this is as if I decided to go live in China now and I forgot about living in the United States and to return to the United States and I had to make my life in another country, with an almost brand new identity and what it means to change the course of a congregation. This scares me almost as much as when we left Cambridge to come to Boston, the fear that one felt of... this was already like Cortés leaving Spain for Mexico and cutting the bridges behind him when he entered Mexico City, because there was no turn back now I had to keep going.

Because this is going to mean a radical change in our life, in our experiences, in our activities. And I am announcing this so much that how does one back down after tying themselves up in such a big and publicly compromising way. Because what we're talking about is something great. I believe that if we have been able to do the things that we have been able to do moderately evangelistic, what could we not do if we dedicated ourselves to that. and I am testing here the validity and the authenticity and the legitimacy of the Gospel by declaring this.

Because if we don't grow and we don't see a change, I would consider it a failure. But I believe that we are not going to fail but that we are going to prosper in the name of the Lord. Because God has made us of that nature. The Father has inseminated us, like Larry Hillblom, with a new inner life, a new power.

The Lord told His disciples before going up to heaven, "Go and make disciples of all nations." And as you remember that I told you last Sunday, first he said, all power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Why did he say that? because he was extending that power to the church as well. He was saying, that power that is in me, I give it to you and that is why I tell you, go and make disciples of all nations. And at the end he said, "And behold, I am with you always until the end of the world."

In other words, don't be afraid, I'm going with you and that's certainly what happened. This little group of Christians with the power of the Holy Spirit began to change all of history and a couple of centuries later the greatest power in all of history, Rome, fell at the feet of the Gospel. And the same Emperor Constantine converted to the Gospel. Because the church is powerful, the church… there are fights, there are battles, yes, there are fights that have to be fought, there is opposition from the devil, there may be some falls and some defeats from one battle or another but the war is ours, victory is definitely unavoidable.

That is the calling of the church. It is being salt, being yeast, being a mustard seed in the world. The salt preserves. Why did the Lord choose these images? Well, salt salts, it imparts a flavor, but another thing that salt does is preserve food. It was used in those days, when there were no refrigerators, salt was used to salt meat on those great sea voyages. Free things from deterioration and corruption. You also know that the church, as the salt of the earth, is a preserver of society. The salt allows... where the church is, brethren, there is supposed to be an element of progress, blessing, for the city, for the neighborhoods where the church is.

And certainly for the glory of the Lord and by testimony even from legislators from the city of Boston recognize that our coming here to this neighborhood has been for the blessing and preservation of life. God has allowed this church... I remember, this place where we are perched right now, where this building is, was a den of thieves, this was horrible. Here drugs were thrown, here prostitutes practiced their work, here in this holy space now where we are praising and glorifying the name of the Lord. Here they were killing people in that corridor between the two buildings on Harrison and North Hamptom, they killed two prostitutes just before we arrived in the first building.

And it was a seedy place literally, this whole area around here. I always tell the brothers that one of the first things, when we started... maybe you know the story, when we first opened the building that we started working in it, we started with church volunteers and one day, like the first two or three days after we started working here, the brothers were working, it was a Saturday morning or something like that, and they were starting to break walls in the first building, someone knocked on the door, which was a small door, the one with First glass here on North Hampton Street, there is a knock on the door and I go all dusty and I open the door and there was a man who was knocking on the door with blood running from his head all over his face. And he tells me, "Look, I just got hit with a bottle, some men grabbed me." Evidently he was also a drug addict, he was a drug addict, you could see… it seems that he got into a fight with them and they broke a bottle over his head and he was spewing blood.

To my shame, I confess it, brothers, do you know the first thing I thought? I didn't think about the man, I thought, “I hope these people inside don't see this man because they're going to freak out and think where Pastor Miranda has gotten us. Look at the neighborhood where this man brought us.”

And I'm looking back and listening to him, so I opened the door, closed it and talked to him outside the door and we called the police and the man was fine. But it was a very gloomy image, that was the neighborhood where we arrived here, less than 20 years ago. And the Lord has blessed this place in great ways.

I always tell people that a studio off North Hampton Street is worth twice what the entire building cost us with the 10,000 square feet that this building is in as well. Because no one wanted to live in this area at that time, but God has regenerated… this area is an area now that everyone wants to live in and condominiums are being built everywhere.

Because I believe that when the church… we are not the only show, I understand that here. God has used other things, and other giants have also come to earth, but this place has been transformed in a beautiful way. And wherever one goes one has to believe that God goes, where a child of God goes the power of God goes, the salt of the kingdom goes, the leaven of the Kingdom of God goes, the influence goes and whatever neighborhood you are in... when you are in your neighborhood believe that the Lord is with you, the Lord is with you.

I remember Sommerville where we moved 30 years ago, it was a decrepit area, it was never a bad neighborhood but they did have nothing to recommend it, just an ordinary place. I believe that because God's children are there, including us, that area has been greatly blessed, because when one goes to a place one believes that God is going with one. God bless the neighborhoods. The glory of God is with you.

If you live in Dorchester, if you live in Mattapan, there's drugs there, there's violence, there's gangs, put up a Kingdom of God banner and say, here's the Kingdom of God. Begin to rebuke the devil in that area where you are. Pray for your block. Pray for the immediate neighborhood where you are. Pray for the building, that God will either convert the vermin or take them away, but that there will be a change. You enter with the banner of the Kingdom of God. Do not go in to suffer and suffer and endure, go in to conquer, go in to change the configuration of where you are, because God goes with you.

The Kingdom of God advances, he says, it does so with force, the Kingdom of God advances with violence. The Kingdom of God destroys all that is ahead and conquers it for the Kingdom of God. Every thought… says Paul that every thought lowering it to the domain of Jesus Christ, everything that stands up against the name of Christ we are supposed to have war against them and change it.

But I believe that a strong attitude is needed, that's why I want these sermons to infect my brothers with that attitude that you are not a madman, an insect under the forces of the devil and the enemy. You are a power broker. You are in control, because you are a child of God, you have the DNA of the Son of God within you and where the church enters is to conquer, because if we simply believe that this world is lost and people are hard and is resistant and does not want to hear the Gospel then we will not have the strength we need.

You have to believe that you have power and that if this congregation is truly dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel and looking for ways, God will not fail us and we will see the glory of God established.

I could spend a long time here talking about this subject, brothers, but I believe that the core, the center of this sermon is that God has placed you in order to grow. God has put you to conquer. There are people in your neighborhood, in your work, that with the help of the Lord you are going to use the power of God in you to bring them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

One last biblical image comes to mind of when the Jews, the Israelites were about to enter the promised land of Canaan after 40 years in the desert and God told Moses to send spies to see the land where he has called. And he sent 10 spies including Joshua and Caleb, you remember the story. And those 2 spies entered the earth, examined it and there were two elements, an element of darkness and an element of light. A positive element and a negative element. And these men examined the land and when they returned to Moses to give him the report after spying out and exploring the land, they said to Moses, “Moses, indeed this land where God has sent us is a land that, as God said, flows with milk. and honey, it is fertile, there are entire cities that could suit us very well if we conquered them, there are very great riches, but there is a problem, it says that there are giants in that land, the people are great, the people are strong, they are brave, they have bronze for spears and chariots and we have none of those things. Yes, it is true there is a lot of promise but we cannot. The obstacles are too great. ”

The Bible says that Joshua and Caleb in whom God had put another spirit, although I believe that they all had the same spirit, but some recognized it and others did not, they said, my brothers, we do not agree with that negative report that you do. If God is with us, he says, we are going to eat those people like bread. We are going to conquer that land, because God is with us.

The 10 spies had a mentality that only focused on the negative, in their minds the negative elements prevailed over the positive ones, they were much older and they allowed themselves to be intimidated. When I think of this city I see all the obstacles that exist and it would seem like everything is closed, that it is really difficult to have an overwhelming and conquering evangelism. Those are the giants, the youth is violent, the world is secularized, people think the church is hypocritical, the devil has hardened people's hearts, culture is too powerful, people don't have time for the gospel. All these things are offered, but I also see the power of God in us. I see the promise of God, I see that God has created us powerful, I see that we have an inevitable word of victory in our hearts and in our lives.

And like Joshua and Caleb we have to say, no, we are not going to dishonor our God, we are going to possess that land in the name of the Lord. And so God blessed Joshua and Caleb. The Hebrews entered the promised land, fought many battles, and finally conquered it. And wherever there was a king who believed the Lord, Israel was great and powerful and prosperous, where there were kings who did not believe him, there was misfortune and disaster. And when the people did what they had to do, God always prospered them and always blessed them.

So, I encourage you in the name of the Lord, I believe that the center of this message is to know your nature and live according to it. Know God's endowment to evangelize, to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, to bless families, to be salt in this city, to let you feel the wonderful flavor of the Kingdom of God, in all dimensions of this city, in all aspects of the life of this city, to be leaven that leavens the whole dough, to illuminate the darkness of crime, perversion, secularism, the rejection of God. We are going to illuminate, we are going to give flavor to this city, that the people know that there is a town that believes that their God.

Lower your head in the name of the Lord or raise your eyes to heaven and I encourage you in the name of Jesus Christ, take off the wet, cold, poor attire of a mere conventional evangelical, and dress yourself in the armor of the Kingdom of God, dress up in the attire of a priestess. Dress yourself in the crown of a king that God has placed you to rule.

The Bible says that God has made us a people of kings and priests, a holy nation, a people that has been brought out of darkness into the light so that we may announce the virtues of him who called us out of darkness into his admirable light. That is what we have been called for. We have not been called for anything else, you exist to be salt, to be yeast, to be light, to be mustard grain.

In the name of the Lord you are going to evangelize your family, many are going to come to know Jesus Christ. Believe it right now and receive authority in the name of the Lord to conquer that harsh land. Your marriage, your children, do not give them to the devil. You have spiritual authority, your neighborhood is blessed and sanctified, your marriage, says the Apostle Paul, is holy because you are, whether you are a woman or a man, you sanctify your marriage in the name of the Lord.

Where a child of God is, the kingdom of heaven prevails. Arm yourself with that identity, change your programming right now in the name of Jesus. Say, get rid of the idea that I am a victim, get rid of the idea that I depend on the government or the people to preach the Gospel and be a light and a good influence in the world. Between the identity of a warrior, a son of God, a powerful spiritual giant used by God for great things in the name of Jesus.

Father, we change the identity of this congregation, in the name of Christ, in the name of Jesus, Lord, we thank you for all the things we have been able to do in your name. Souls that have come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ through us, but Father, we clearly understand that we have not even scratched the surface, that you have something greater, more powerful and now, Father, we adopt a conquest mentality in the name of the Lord with everything that accompanies it, Father, with strength and holiness and aggressiveness. We live, we will live in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will conquer our land.

You have put us here in Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, Sound End, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, Sommerville, Cambridge, Revere, Wayland. You have put us in these places, Father, with a purpose, Quincy, a purpose, Lord, and in the name of Jesus we embrace our identity as believers, as children of God. And Father, we will not die but we will live and prosper.

Thank you Lord, we believe that this message is embedded, injected into the identity of this people, Father, and we will see your glory, Lord, and we will consider this the beginning of something extraordinary and transformative for the glory of your name. Thank you Lord in Jesus name. And the people of God say, amen.