God has a better destiny for your life

I want to start by reading First Chronicles chapter 4 verses 9 and 10, the Word of the Lord says like this: "And Jabez" notice that "and", "And Jabez was more illustrious" that word captivated me when I read that sentence for the first time , I went and looked it up in the original Hebrew, “And Jabez was more illustrious than his brothers, whom his mother called Jabez” he had other brothers but it says that Jabes was more illustrious than them; His mother named him Jabes, why did he name that? "because I gave birth to him in pain" pain, another key word to understand this story.

Verse 10 then says: "And Jabez called upon the God of Israel saying: oh if you would give me a blessing and enlarge my territory, and if your hand were with me and delivered me from evil so that it does not harm me" and how nice in the end that last one little note that says: "and God granted him what he asked for" it's good to have that little note there, right? because we know that that prayer that Jabes presented before the Lord was successful.

And one of the reasons I was telling the group in English this morning that I chose this passage is because it goes so well with what I preached last Sunday on Isaiah 54, some of you will remember because I know you remember everything that I preach and what I preach up here, that in Isaiah 54 there is a call from God to Israel in the form of a barren woman who has never borne children and who is overwhelmed by her sense of loss and barrenness, and God tells her to that barren woman to sing, to raise a song, as if to celebrate preventively for the advance of the blessing that comes to her life, and she says: praise, sing, celebrate, say because the children of the barren woman are more than those of the married woman , and then God says to that woman: widen the site of your tent, lengthen your curtains, spread your curtains and lengthen the ropes of your tent, a tent is what he is saying, right? pick a wider place, put up a bigger tent there with wider curtains and then get wider ropes for those bigger curtains and also stronger stakes, bigger for that tent you're going to need.

And I spoke then, right? to broaden our capacity to believe that God is going to do great things in our life to take action and put curtains on that new space of faith that God gives us and to believe that God has something, a destiny. How many believe that God has a better destiny for your life, amen? your life is not over yet.

I was talking to someone this morning, oh yes with a man for whom I prayed this morning and I had a brief conversation with him, and he told me about, you can see in his face and in his manner the ravages of a life that has been struck by the world and by tragedy. People that I see all the time when I walk by on Olvan Street and Massachusetts Avenue in these faces of individuals who are imprisoned by drugs, homeless, homeless, poor, so many terrible things, and I saw their face and I went to pray for him although I had asked someone else to pray for him, and he told me about his struggles, his tribulations in life, the demons say that they are biting my heel continuously, they are persecuting me and Pastor told me pray for me that, and my struggles.

And I began to speak to him, I began to tell him about God's good purpose for his life and I said to him: but how old are you? and he told me: 45 years old, well, look, you are only halfway through your life at the most, you still have a life ahead of you and God can do great things for you in the time that remains ahead of you, believe that God has good purposes for you

And God in that passage from Isaiah 54 is saying to this woman: hey, widen the space of your tent, believe for great things, begin to undertake great things because you will spread out to the right and to the left and your children will inherit the nations , and they will raise the destroyed cities, that is what God has for your life, but there are principles that have to be put into practice and Jabez is another symbol. What I want is to reinforce these truths that I shared with you a couple of Sundays ago with another passage that shows this same dynamic in a different way and by doing this I want to strengthen your awareness of these principles so that you can live a fruitful life. a life that goes from growth to growth, from better to better, from blessing to blessing, our young people who are here some of them who are just beginning their professional life or who have not yet married but are thinking of getting married at some point or who are in the university, in school and other of you sisters who have not been able to study because they have never had the opportunity, men who have had negative experiences in their lives and have not been able to reach where God is.

You know that God wants to take you and God wants you to extend the space of your tent and lengthen your curtains, and that you use the principles of the Kingdom of God so that you can reach those levels of greatness to which God wants to take you, and Jabez illustrates all these truths, which is why I want to discuss them with all of you.

One of the things that strikes me about Jabez is that the beginning of his life is tremendously negative. Jabes is born under a sign of pain and suffering, his birth itself, his biological birth was accompanied by trauma, his mother had him in pain. I don't know if any sister here has had a dangerous birth.

You know our daughter had a premature birth a year and a half ago and for a woman it is very threatening. I imagine a birth where the baby is born by caesarean section or there are different difficulties, the case was that Jabez seems that her mother almost died at birth, It was very painful, very traumatizing, he was born with a negative signal about his life and then his mother, impressed with this traumatic birth, wanted to commemorate his suffering and named it pain.

The name of Jabez, it is suggested to us, is related to the word oseb and it is like an inversion of the word in the original Hebrew but all the students of Scripture know and the same Scripture here tells us that his name was related to the word pain, that's why his mother says: "because I gave him in pain I'm going to call him Jabez", it was a play on words but incorporated into his name was the word pain.

So he's sort of overwhelmed in a sense and a 40-pound block is strapped around his neck that he has to carry every day, and every time people call him Jabez they're reminding him of his painful and tragic nature, and this woman doesn't He understood because he had no spiritual understanding. The Hebrews and other religions know that sometimes the names we give our children are intentional, thinking well and the labels we put on our children are very important.

And even the implicit names that we adopt about ourselves. How do you see yourself? because sometimes we give ourselves names without giving ourselves a specific name but we kind of give ourselves an identity and it's like we are assuming: no, I was born to suffer, the world is tragic, I don't expect anything good.

Many times without realizing it and sometimes because we have had traumatic experiences, I have spoken with people at the counseling site about how an event, a rape for example at the age of 7, 8, 9 sexually marked the mark, so from there From then on, her life bears the sign of this rape and then sometimes she starts to hate men or adopts an identity: no, I'm a lesbian, for example, because there was a rape in the past and I'm not talking about theory. Brothers, I am talking about real things that I experience in the counseling place many times; an abusive father or a mother who left home, or who died prematurely but the little son identified it as an abandonment and then later adopts a negative attitude towards the world: I am worthless, I am not loved and that follows you in a sense, you adopt an attitude, a disposition and that follows you every day of your life.

And one of the things that we have to do as believers continually is to examine the programming that is within us, to examine the way we perceive ourselves and the names that we have assigned to ourselves, and also the words that we give them. we tell our children brothers, let us speak good things to them, let us tell them that they were born to be successful, let us sing around them, dedicate time and love to them, and quality time, let us sit down with them to read them good books because we believe that they are going to be intellectuals and people educated, and let us value them because by saying these things we are saying a blessing on them, let us tell them that we love them and that they are loved, and that God has good purposes for them because that is going to be a positive programming that is going to prepare them to believe that God has good intentions for them.

This woman in her ignorance gives her son a name that is painful and that follows him for the rest of his life. And it seems that this name led Jabez to a series of painful experiences, what I intersect in this passage is that the negative prophecy of this mother did come to determine the type of life that this young man or this man had lived, and then comes a moment in which Jabez, fed up with this situation, utters a prayer that we are going to analyze in a moment.

But there is something that I want to do before that so that you also see the interplay between suffering, pain, negative life experiences and how we can use that as a springboard, as a starting point for better things. .

The story of Jabez begins by saying something very interesting, it says: "And Jabez was more illustrious than his brothers" and I told him that that "and" that is there, because the Bible has intentionality in everything, that and implies something and it is what next: if you read, these two verses are inserted in one of the most boring passages in the entire Bible, you are in the middle of a number of lists that so-and-so, you know how the story goes, so-and-so fathered sultan, and so-and-so fathered to so-and-so and to sultano, and this one fathered the others, it is like simply a very boring periodical story with different genealogies, it is like a list of birth certificates.

And in that list, as well as mechanics, this story that personifies and isolates for our consideration one of those characters breaks out. Jabez could have simply been one of the others, “Azur, father of Tecoa, had two wives: Hela and Naara. Naara gave birth to Ajuzam, Hefer, Temeni and Ajastari. These were the children of Naara. The sons of Hela were: Zeret, Zojar and Etnan, and Jabes could have been one like that, he fathered Jabes and he goes on but no, the Holy Spirit stopped when he reached Jabes because Jabes had been the subject of something very particular and very spiritual, and God wanted us to know what had happened there, there was something in Jabes that took him out of the pile and isolated him, and he says that Jabes was more illustrious than his brothers whom his mother called Jabes.

I was impressed by the word illustrious and I looked for it in the original Hebrew, and in the original Hebrew it is the word cabad, that is, Jabes was more cabad than his other brothers, and the word cabad in the original Hebrew suggests substance and weight, weight above all. You can see how weight can lead to illustrious.

It says that there was something in Jabez, Jabez was something special. Jabes was more substantial than his brothers, Jabes had something special that set him apart from the crowd and that I think was what led him to utter this prayer so blessed and so full of meaning that helped him get out of his terrible destiny in which He lived.

And one begins to think, what was it that made Jabez more illustrious that gave him that ability to utter that prayer? I think that paradoxically it was the pain in which he had lived. Those sad and negative experiences that he had had enabled him to have unique access to spiritual principles and to pray to the Lord in that way.

And why do I say this, brothers? it is because, brothers: many of us have experienced pain in our lives and I believe that many times God uses pain, and pain all depends on how you relate to the tragedies of your life and the pains in your life, if you Do you think that your pain that you went through in your past, whatever it was: sexual abuse, a relationship that led you to an abortion, a love that was unrequited and that marked you, the lack of love from a mother, everyone, we all have pain of different types, all, all, and it depends on you how you relate to that pain.

Pain can do two things: destroy you, deform you, turn you into a tragic and resentful figure, make you become a victim simply by processing and repeating the resentment of that moment and those events in your life, and then what it can do it is that it neutralizes you, it serves as a stumbling block that you are going to drag all your life and you can live regretting and rehearsing, and reliving that pain including the guilt of things that you did in the past that were wrong but that at some point you will have to process them and leave them behind, and move forward, and embrace the future, pain can victimize or destroy you or you can decide in the Name of the Lord to turn it into an ally to move forward and to grow spiritually, it all depends on the narrative you adopt about that pain in your life.

If you as a child of God believe that in the world there are no coincidences for those who love God, the Bible says that for the children of God all things work together for good, everything, all tragedies, and if you decide to believe that God it had a purpose; God was not sleeping when those things happened to you and then He kind of woke up when you accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, He knew from eternity where you were going to be, that is to say that the Lord has allowed many things in our lives to mysteriously bless us.

Do you know that the pain of your suffering, of your suffering, can make you a more generous person, for example? I have learned that when one has gone through certain pains one has more compassion towards those who hurt, when one has failed at times in life in certain things, when one has made certain mistakes one has more compassion.

A person who was addicted to drugs, for example, and God took him out of there knows what a person addicted to drugs suffers, right? A person whom God has taken out, let's say, of homosexuality and still sometimes struggles with certain tendencies understands what others are going through instead of saying: no, these are perverted, no, they are sexual, and no, right? No; many times when we go through these situations it enables us to condole with others and even breaks us to be more humble before God.

The Apostle Paul, for example, had a stinger that he does not identify, he says it was a messenger of the devil who continually slapped him, and he says that he came before the Father three times: Lord deliver me from this, and three times the Lord said to him: My Grace is enough for you. , because the Power of God is made perfect in weakness. And God wanted Paul to fight that demon in his life so that the great revelations that God had given him would not make him proud and arrogant.

Many times when we have had a perfectly good life, all good, all successful, we become hard people and have no compassion for others, and we say: well I did it, why can't he do it too? and I believe that sometimes God allows trials in our lives to make us more like Christ, you know? I always see that all the things that the world shoots at us we can turn into gold.

Of course, I am going to continue asking: God deliver me, provide me, bless me, but when evil comes into my life I am going to turn it into an ally and I am going to say: Lord, what are you teaching me through this and how Can I use that pain to move on and to be better?

And I believe that paradoxically, the suffering that Jabez suffered as a child made him a deeper, more thoughtful man, appreciative of spiritual things, and I believe that this was what led him to be more distinguished than his brothers and that attracted the attention of God, and prepared him to say that great and beautiful prayer that we have here.

So he was more illustrious, deeper, more substantial than his brothers and despite that sad and painful sign that followed him all his life, he had a moment of great revelation and released his bitterness in an instant, I believe that Jabez's prayer It must have been something that lasted an instant, I think it was like an outbreak from within, and I want to examine those elements that make up that sentence that he gave because there are also some very important principles here.

The Bible says that: "Jabes called on the God of Israel saying" and here we see four things that I want to point out quickly, four elements I would say of a successful life and that we always have to keep in mind when we pray to the Lord and we have to put in practice always, he says: "Oh" there are actually 5 because the "oh" is like a separate element, he says: "oh, if you would give me a blessing" he asked for a blessing and we are going to talk a little about that, "if you would widen my territory" is the third, blessing and expansion of its territory, "if Your hand" I see here in "Your hand" a fourth element, "were with me", and then the fifth element "and you will deliver me from evil so that I do not hurt” those five things I will try to summarize quickly.

I have always isolated that “oh” quickly, I see passion in this oh and I also see visualization. When you say "oh" it's like an "oh" of imagination, it's visualizing something, it's dreaming of something, right? It is like you are seeing yourself at a very beautiful beach there or in a resting place, he is looking at his situation but he is contemplating a new and different territory, he is taking time to see something and the Bible often points out that see.

For example, you read in the Book of Hebrews in chapter 11 the great indication of men and women of faith, and it says that some of them sustained themselves as if they were seeing an invisible city, they were hallucinating, and they lived life here on Earth as pilgrims and foreigners, they were sawn, crucified, but as if they could see and in a passage it says: “seeing her and greeting her” because they saw her so clearly.

It says that Jesus by the blessing set before Him suffered a lot of sufferings because He could see all the salvation that was to come through His cross, He saw millions of lives, an entire universe restored and restored by His shed blood on the cross and that is why he submitted to all these sufferings.

Many times it is seeing the good destiny that God has before us that allows us. What keeps a four year college student from studying exams and bad nights? it's the idea of receiving that blessed final diploma when you go there with your grad gown, your notebook and whatever and they say: congratulations, you have your doctorate, your degree or whatever, that's what keeps us many times, it is being able to see things and Jabes visualized: Lord if You gave me this and that.

So I encourage everyone first to dream and believe in great things and see them, take time to visualize God's blessings in your life, have pregnant dreams, think about what you want and visualize it. If you want to learn an instrument, if you want to graduate from university, if you want to buy a house, if you want to have blessed children, visualize them in the spirit. When you pray describe them to the Lord in great detail, see that blessing and ask God to allow you to almost taste it, exercise your creative capacity to see the blessings of the Lord and then put gasoline in it, believe them with power, be passionate about your requests.

Do not say to the Lord: oh Lord, bless me, do this and that. I believe that sometimes the Lord does not bless us because we are not passionate and courageous enough in our requests and God sometimes waits for us to reach that boiling point, red hot.

When you ask God it's like Ana who wanted a child and embittered went to the altar there in the temple, and she was so involved in her prayer that the priest thought she was drunk, I imagine how she was perhaps gesticulating in a low voice and he saw her from afar and said: this woman is drunk in the sanctuary, he approached her and said: woman, digest your wine, as if to say: do not come here to the house of God drunk and drink.

I believe that this is how we have to desire things and we have to ask the Lord: Lord, give me passion. I was telling the brothers this morning that many times in my prayer life I have been asking the Lord for things, and you know what? If God does not answer you the first time, keep asking, keep asking, and keep on like the widow before the unjust judge, keep presenting your requests like when you brush your teeth every day, tell him: Lord, I remind you of this, I remind you of the other.

There are prayers that I bring to the Lord week after week, day after day for years, right now, for example, there are requests that are before God for our family and other things, and I say to him every day: Lord, surprise us with Your blessing. And every time I pray it's like I add a pebble to a heap until the Lord tells me: yes, I'm going to answer this man, yes, you have fed me (laughs).

And it is like this, in our prayer life we have to be bringing our requests and increasing the passion inside, increasing the urgency, and one day the Lord will say: Okay, now.

I told them that there have been times in my prayer life that I have known that I have known that my prayer has reached the temple of God, that that cup has reached its moment when it will overflow because you reached that point of definition, and that “oh” that fact always captivates me, it reminds me of that, right? let's see our requests, present them carefully before the Lord and cultivate a sense of urgency and need, God loves desperate people.

Bartimaeus, at the risk of getting stuck on just one thing, Bartimaeus: "Jesus son of David have mercy on me" and the people: no Bartimaeus, shut up the Lord is busy, Jesus son of David have mercy on me over and over again, The Lord does not answer him the first time, the second time and at one point he stops and says: Bring me here, and he says: What do you want? Lord I want to see, so be it according to your need, Bartimaeus left there carrying his bed.

God likes desperate people: the woman with the issue of blood, the men who broke the roof and lowered the paralyzed man in the middle of a teaching session from the Lord, can you imagine that? the Lord there teaching and at the moment straws begin to fall from the ceiling and a hole opens and the sun enters, and two men there: grab it that is going down, do not let it fall, and the Lord says that seeing their faith He moved and healed him not seeing the faith of the man, poor man, he did not have much to do except to get him down, they asked him for permission to do it, but the Lord saw their desperate faith and said: I have to answer them.

The Lord loves people like that, the woman with the issue of blood, the Cyrophoenician, you name them they are all over the place, desperate people who reached a point of boiling and passion. Jabez was fed up with his life and said, "Oh Lord." Passion, visualization, insistence are very important.

And then he asked the Lord for four more things. The first thing he asked: "if you would give me a blessing" the word blessing was like a summary of everything he wanted, oh Lord if You would give me a Word that would cover my life, if Your blessing were with me, if Your good word of shalom, of peace fell on my life and persecuted me.

And I think that brothers, I think for example in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist says: "Surely the good and mercy of Jehovah will follow me all the days of my life" that good and that mercy of Jehovah that follows you is the blessing that Jabez asked the Lord, and he knows that we have to understand that, that if we are in the Will of God, God's blessing must be with us, brothers.

I want you to visualize your life as a life that God is pleased to bless, if you believe that God has called you a blessing, you are going to live in a blessing. Perhaps you will have problems and difficulties but in the end God will always give you victory and you will come out better, and stronger from all the situations that you face in your life because everything will turn out for the best, you will go through a difficult time but God will it will turn into gold and you will come out stronger, and times of refreshment and rest will also come in your life.

But remember that the blessing of God is the inheritance of the children of God, and I see for example in Psalm 3, because many of us cannot believe these things: ah! This is prosperity preaching and once and for all we close our minds to it, right? Psalm 1 as the Psalms begin: "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of evil nor has he been in the way of sinners, nor has he sat in the seat of mockers, but in the law of the Lord is his delight and in his law he meditates day and night" is the description of a man or a woman who walks in the ways of the Lord, because that is something else: if you are living as a lost person, a pervert, a scoundrel, do not expect God's blessing, right? ? oh! I'm Christian.

Christianity is not a talisman that you put on, no, you have to live in your identity as a believer. Now when you love God, when you are illustrious like Jabez who had a heart, a character formed by the crucible of God's formation in his life, you can go before God and ask him for great things, and God grants you because you walk.

It says: "It will be like a tree planted next to streams of water that bears its fruit in due time, its leaf does not fall and everything it does will prosper" I am not saying that trying to get money from you, that is what the Lord says, "and everything you do will prosper.” I don't know about you brothers but everything I do blesses me, prospers me and takes more time than I want but I can say it in my life and I say it with fear and trembling, and with gratitude before the Lord, I don't believe that I have been defeated in only one great thing that the Lord gave me for His glory, God has been fabulously generous with me since my childhood in Alma Rosa over there in the Dominican Republic and I have lived like a king not because of myself, but because of mercy and the goodness of God to His children.

And that is why when I speak to you about the God who raises up His children, I speak of a deep conviction because I have lived that and I have seen it in so many of my brothers as well, the blessing when you please, when your heart is pleasing to God God never tires of blessing you, that is on every page of the Bible. Everything he does will prosper and that was the blessing that Jabez asked the Lord for.

In Deuteronomy 28 God tells His people that if they walk in His ways, look for it there for a little while, this is gold that I am giving you so don't look at my watch, this is important because if you go with it and you can live in this truth I assure you that you will live like a king, says in Deuteronomy 28: "It will come to pass that if you listen attentively to the voice of Jehovah your God to keep and do all His commandments that I prescribe you today also Jehovah your God will exalt you above all the nations of the earth” is saying that to Israel, and to us, “and all these blessings will come upon you, and they will overtake you.”

Do you know that the blessings of God follow you like a bloodhound when you are in the ways of the Lord? where is so-and-so? and there go the blessings of God, certainly good and mercy will follow me, it is that they follow you, they persecute you, you want to escape from them but they look for you and they find you and God blesses you even if you don't want to, they will reach you if you hear the voice, "blessed will you be in the city, blessed in the field, blessed will be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, your beasts, your cows" there he put everything that occurred to him, "blessed will be your basket, your kneading trough” your atm, your computer, “blessed will you be when you come in and when you come out”.

Read Deuteronomy 28 and mark it, that is your inheritance, that is the inheritance of the children of the Lord, and there is also one there for the nations that do not walk with Him. Why is this world the way it is today? because the nations have forgotten the Lord more than ever, they have turned away from God, it is sad to say it but it is so. But when a nation, a people, a Church, a man, a woman, a couple, a home are dedicated to blessing the Lord, serving Him, honoring His commandments, God's blessing persecutes them, expect that blessing.

If you are in Christ, if you are doing the work of God, if you are walking, you are purifying yourself, you are organizing your paths even if they are not perfect, the blessing of the Lord will be with you no matter if you are a single mother, a student just beginning life , an undocumented immigrant God blesses His children even though Pharaoh does not want to bless them, God blesses them, prospers them, opens paths for them.

The children of God walk with that blessing and that is what Jabez asked him: Lord, if Your blessing were with me, make sure that you are a magnet for the Lord's blessing. The second thing is that he tells them: if you widen my territory, then the word widen means to expand. What the Lord says to this barren woman in Isaiah 54: Enlarge the site of your tent because you will spread out to the right and to the left, and you will conquer nations, and your children will restore the destroyed and desolate cities, The slogan for the children of God is enlargement, it is growth, it is expansion.

When Jabez asks the Lord for this, he is saying: Lord, prosper me, widen my space, I want to have more influence in the world, I want to have more territory in which to move, increase my gifts, increase my reputation, promote me for greater things . Brother: are you asking the Lord to promote you, to take you to a higher place? I believe that many Christians are not blessed anymore because we do not aspire more in the Lord.

Ah, I have rented my little apartment here and it's very nice, well, what, wouldn't you like God to give you a house for example? why not? amen it's fine if you want to live in an apartment, okay you graduated from high school but wouldn't you like to maybe have a college degree, would you? Okay, your children graduated from high school and they're good kids, but wouldn't you like them to study and go further?

The idea is: brothers, we are going to ask the Lord to expand our territory, believe that God can take them to another level. Men who never studied, I was telling a brother this morning that I applaud him and he knows who he is, he has just completed 40 days of prayer and he told me in a very appropriate context because he brought me a word that blessed me and I this man Just as I love seeing those men with their hair on their chests seeking God who sometimes believe that the Church is only for effeminates, I love seeing masculine men in love with Christ and seeking to sacrifice themselves, and grow in the ways of the Lord, and I see it and I say: this man wants an inheritance in the ways of God, he is not content with simply coming to warm up a bank, he wants business with God, he wants revelation, he wants authority in the Kingdom of God, there is nothing of bad with that you know? of course if you want to use it for the glory of God.

You have to be ambitious in the Lord. I told them about all these passages in Scripture that teach us that we must believe in God for greater things, we must dare to ask for blessings, believe that there are ambitions that God is going to promote and live as if God has greater things, prepare to reign in other words.

If you knew that one day you were going to be given authority over a nation, wouldn't you be educating yourself and preparing yourself, and acquiring knowledge and authority, and character to be a statesman, a stateswoman? of course. If you knew that God has great things, wouldn't you be studying, reading, making an effort, preparing yourself, putting fuel on that fire so that God puts on a big fire?

Here I am studying languages, I am studying music, I am reading everything that comes to my hand, I invest all my time in enriching myself because I want God to have more to do more through me. Live your life with purpose, broaden the territory of your life, live like God has great things and ambitions, live like a person who is to be promoted to greater levels of influence; if you widen my territory, widen the site of my tent, the curtains of my tent are extended, lengthen the curtains of your tent. Live that way and believe that God has great promotion for your life.

Widen my territory, bless me, and third: "May Your hand be with me" if Your Hand would walk with me. What does the Hand of God mean? for me the Hand of God is the Power of God. When I see a hand in my mind I see the powerful Hand of God intervening and that is how the Scriptures see it.

When God takes the Hebrews out of Egypt after that great fight with Pharaoh, how did he get them out? with a strong hand and outstretched arm, that is, the Power of God, if Your Hand were with me to fight with me and intervene in my favor, it refers to the Power, to the anointing of God that we require to undertake things, the support and divine authority , we need God to accompany us in our companies and projects, that His Power be with us in everything.

The children of God have to be people with an appetite for power, that is what I believe characterizes the Pentecostal mentality, it is the Power of God, the visitation of the Power of God. The person with a Pentecostal attitude knows that he needs the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he needs the anointing of the Holy Spirit, he needs the baptism of the Holy Spirit because it is not with the sword or with armies but with the Holy Spirit of God, we need dunamis, we need exusia, Power of God, authority of God, supernatural power, divine wisdom, revelation, authority when we speak.

Paul prayed to his people and said: pray so that I can speak the Word of God with power, with boldness and you have to ask the Lord: Lord, put the engine of a war tank inside me, take away that little Volkswagen engine and put a war tank engine inside me so that we can move with that Power of God, and that power comes through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, prayer, sanctification, service to the Lord, the attitude of war, you have the power of God with you. If you are a child of God, power goes with you, undertake things believing that power goes with you.

Seek the filling of the Holy Spirit, consecrate your life and move in that supernatural authority, in that expectation. It is not only with good intentions to come to Church on Sundays, there is a little thing to go through water, two minutes there and you are already tired, no, live a life of a warrior, live a life of seeking that filling of the Holy Spirit because you need the Power of God, the Hand of God in everything you undertake, do not go outside without counting on that Power of God, right? don't apply for a job, don't start a school year, don't take an exam without first saying: Lord give me Your wisdom, give me Your fulfillment, give me Your authority, we have to live that way.

And the last thing, and I'm going to ask Omar to come by here for a little while, the last thing Jabes asks of him, then in that: “Oh”, passion, creativity, the hand of the Lord, the expansion of your territory, and the last thing that He says: Oh Lord, wow, if You delivered me from evil in addition to all these things that I am asking of you.

Look how specific Jabez was, he asked for things at first that were very positive, very beautiful but then he also thought of something: my life has been marked by pain, suffering, attacks by the devil, negativity, tragedy, depression, oh Lord if You delivered me from evil so that it doesn't hurt me.

And I was saying that the last time we talked about Isaiah 54 I was talking about the stakes that are like defense elements, and I told them that many times God's blessings come but sometimes when our life is widened, when we reach more space, when God blesses us, for example, with a better job or with children, what happens? the demands are greater on our life and the dangers too.

How many churches after reaching a certain size, a certain prominence fall apart because of a scandal, a terrible situation, something that happened, a split, with the blessings comes too. I was telling you last Sunday that, for example, in this ministry in English that we are starting, people with certain statuses and a certain education are going to come and are beginning to come. We Latinos have our malignancy, understand me well.

One of the things: I already feel very comfortable preaching among my Hispanic brothers because we are Hispanic, we know each other and it's good, now when things get wider and other cultures come, and people of a certain educational level come and I have to choose my words very carefully here with what I am saying, it is a mined road, but when the life of a Church becomes more complex because God has blessed it and has given it a more encompassing voice, elements of more care also come, people come who So you have to talk to them with more respect and care because they feel that they are stronger and more authoritative, they have a greater critical capacity, they are used to exercising authority in the world and when a little Latino pastor comes here to talk to them about things, they feel offended. sometimes I am speaking to you here with my soul in hand.

I told them that this can happen in a Church when God blesses it, it needs to strengthen stakes. I told the Lord: Lord, strengthen my heart and make it like the heart of a lion so that I do not let myself be intimidated by anyone who passes through that door, and I consider that pulpit an embassy of the Kingdom of God.

Do you know that embassies are a territory? it is inviolable. The US embassy in Russia is US territory. To me this pulpit has nothing to do with the 21st century or with the culture of Boston, this illustrious and intellectually developed city has nothing to do with the advances or all the sophistication of modern culture, this pulpit is rough as It belongs to the first century, even before, to the antiquity of the Old Testament, and no influence from this world.

I have to strengthen my heart so as not to become a politically correct person who only says those things that people out there give me permission to say, not even you brothers, you know? I am going to speak to you in ways that many of you will leave here swearing at me and annoying but I hope that the Lord blesses you in the end and bow your head. The role of a Pastor is to preach the Truth of God as best he can and not to be thinking about who is sitting where, but if it is the Word of the Lord, he has to announce it with Power.

I believe that many times as Pastors when God blesses us and promotes us, and gives us a much more select audience, we begin to cut a number of things that do not sound good to that select audience and then the curse begins to manifest itself, and that is the danger, that is the demonic seduction that enters a Church and says: you know what? I can give you more people like that, I could give you a Church of people who give $10,000 a week in tithes, praise God if they want to come, amen, yes I can give you people who are university professors and people, but the message turn it down a bit, don't be so rough, don't be so abrupt.

It's like Satan said to Jesus: I can give you this world if you prostrate yourself and adore me and that seduction comes, it will come into your life in different ways. God will give you a promotion at work, the boss will tell you: look now you are the manager of this entire company or of this group of 100 people but you have to work for me on Sundays, at night, there are no hours, your soul belongs to me , I am going to pay you $150,000 a year but your family and all that in second place, and you are going to have to decide if you are going to sell your soul to the devil for that $150,000 or if there are other more important things, if you want to have time with his children, with his wife, with the Word of God, rest a little, have a time of refreshment.

In other words, that is the protection that one needs, the stakes, the spiritual warfare. If God blesses you with His Hand with an enlarged territory, with His blessing persecuting you, also ask Him to cover your back and to free you from the attacks of the enemy that will come, that is called spiritual warfare; Oh Lord if you free me from evil so that it doesn't hurt me.

In the original Hebrew the idea is pain, read the English translation for example, if you free me from pain, in other words Jabez was reminding himself of the pain of his life. Look Lord: if You already took this monkey off my back that has been attacking me so that it does not hurt me anymore, but the Scripture puts it in terms of evil.

We are in a time in history when evil like never before has been unleashed on humanity, evil in many different forms: experimentation of all kinds, genetic stuff, wars, terrorism, divisions, intellectual seduction, pornography, and a host of other things. , the internet with all its great things and all its horrible dangers, rebellion of children against parents, divorces, drug addiction, violence in the streets, human disorientation, all these things are viruses that have been unleashed on man in the 21st century as never before in the history of humanity and on nations as well.

Who would have thought: those people who were murdered in France, these people are walking through those streets celebrating July 14, a great holiday for the French nation, I imagine they were walking with their picnic basket anticipating a precious time at the beach , in that beautiful city and a 20-ton truck, a mechanical monster full of refrigeration machinery to make it heavier and more harmful gets up on the sidewalk and begins to simply overwhelm, to destroy, rolls on meat like pieces of meat and flies the bodies everywhere: little children, the elderly, men, very elegant women, the evil, blind, the evil overflowing with death and destruction, the neutral evil without hate, simply, that truck doesn't hate, the one inside hated but the evil, evil is blind, evil can visit you at any time. I believe that as never before in history, the children of God have to cover ourselves with the blood of the Son of God every time we go out into the street.

Brother: these are times to exercise spiritual warfare in our lives like never before, pray desperately for our children, now our children are going to school and you don't know what crap those teachers are going to program them with. Those educational systems today unfortunately do a lot of good, I'm not speaking in general but wow, with how much malice they are programming our children and they don't even let us know what they are going to educate our children with, one as a parent is going to the school and they say: we are very sorry, you are fired; They don't even say we're sorry, they say: get out of here, you're the pervert for not wanting to be taught perversion, imagine the world we live in, and we have to cover our children with the blood of Jesus like never before.

Our marriages: you open the internet today and you don't know if you're going to see a photo of a naked woman there or a perverse act that is going to grab you and make you addicted to pornography as has happened to you to so many people, you breathe the air and you don't know what you are ingesting brother. We walk in a damaged world and since we never have to ask him: Lord, deliver me from evil so that it does not hurt me.

These are times in which we have to live the Christian life with extreme seriousness, I believe that the time to play Church has passed, brother, you either declare yourself a servant, a servant of God or better stay at home because the dangers are too big, we are at war, these are times for consecration, these are times to ask him: Lord have mercy on me, purify me, sanctify me so that evil has nowhere to enter my life and do harm, keep us from violence.

Terrorism will be worse each time brothers, I do not want to scare you, but every time you go to Boylston Street or Boston Common or to a public meeting you do not know what can happen, make sure you are well with Christ. If you leave at that moment, do you go to heaven? Have you left an inheritance in your children, the Word of God embedded in them?

It is time to walk seriously now, times are bad, clear people are needed. That is why the role of Pastors is to give people a sense of urgency, they are living like innocent guinea pigs walking in a jungle of wild beasts wanting to destroy, people come to life without the protection they need for themselves or the power that only Christ can bring to the lives of men and women, deliver us from evil Lord, save us, help us to live in the Power of Your Spirit and learn how to make war against the demons that want to do harm, that want to wreak havoc in our lives.

Jabez asked for good things and God granted them. God told him: Jabez, your heart pleases me, your attitude pleases me, your prayer pleases me, let it be done as you asked me, Jabez's destiny was completely changed. I imagine it, right? I would have liked to see the rest of the story, one day I am going to ask the Lord for the video of Jabez, I will have many years to see it all, and I believe that Jabez changed, his destiny was little by little channeled and directed, and everything he asked of the Lord, blessing, expansion of territory, the powerful Hand of God defending and guiding him, and protection from evil, everything was granted, I believe that this is the drama of your life too, of my life , that is the inheritance of the children of God.