Sometimes we have too big an ego

I am hungry for the spirit of God to manifest in our midst, brothers. I am willing to make a fool of myself if I have to for the Lord to manifest himself in this place. I want to make myself very poor and very weak so that the Lord does what he wants to do in our midst. And sometimes through those humiliations and discomforts, through the breaks in our ego, the Lord then has the opportunity to manifest himself. Sometimes we have too big an ego and we protect it too much and the Lord says, well, I'm going to make it your ego that is maintained and not my ego, which is the Holy Spirit that I want to manifest.

So, stammering and doing clumsy things, the Lord glorifies himself through the gestures that we make. And it is because we want the spirit of the Lord to have control of our congregation. I believe that the Lord is already tired of the same old thing. I am tired. I have been pastoring for 30 or so years and God has blessed my ministry and has blessed this church but I feel that God has something else, God has another mountain to climb, God has another stage, because the Kingdom of God is always a process, to go further and further and further, not content with what we have.

I could say, well, I'm going to retire and in a few years I'm going over there to a little house we have in Maine, to grow vegetables and live with the bears. But I have no plans for that, I plan to give the Lord the last drop of life and energy that I have until the last moment of my life and I want more of the Lord and I want more for this church. We cannot rest on our laurels and sometimes to enter the next stage that God wants of us we have to leave the comfortable, the predictable and throw ourselves into that new land that the Lord has to teach us as we walk on it.

The Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians, chapter 2, “So, brothers, speaking to the Corinthians, to that church that was in the city of Corinth, and the Apostle Paul is speaking of a trip that he gave to that city previously and he's explaining to them why he behaved the way he did when he went on that trip, and we have to do the same. As spiritual leaders we have to explain to people why we do what we do, what is behind the things we do.

For example, this week why we have done what we have done. It is important that we know why else we are doing things mechanically simply because the pastor said to pray this week and that's it. If we don't understand why we are doing things then we can't do it as fully as we have to.

Then, the Apostle Paul says, "So, brothers, when I came to you - on that previous trip - to announce to you the testimony of God - that is, to preach, to teach you - I did not go with excellence of words or wisdom, for I I proposed – that word is very important – not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was among you with weakness and much fear and trembling and neither my word nor my preaching was with persuasive words of human wisdom but with demonstration of the spirit and power so that your faith is not founded on the wisdom of men but on the power of God."

Amen. So Paul is explaining to them why he behaved as he behaved on that previous trip that he had made to the city of Corinth. And in other passages of scripture he develops a little more what he here only presents in a very tight and very embryonic form. The Corinthians, like all the cities that had developed in the Greco-Roman culture, were used to hearing these preachers who came with great grandeur, who trained in professional declamation places.

In the Greco-Roman world there were schools where people were taught how to speak in public, how to express themselves in a way that people would be impressed, how to use tone of voice, hand gestures, body gestures, phrases impressive and bombastic so that people would be impressed with the way they teach or declaim or give a lecture or preaching.

And many of the itinerant preachers that were running around the church as it developed further, especially in the Greco-Roman world, many of those preachers used these methods to impress people with their very strong, very fiery way of preaching to that people were impressed, as sometimes happens today in congregations, that we pastors feel like we have to continually manipulate people and yell and pressure people with our physical gestures and our eloquence to get them to impress and receive what we are teaching.

And Paul says, when I went to you to announce the testimony of God, when I went to teach you, when I went to preach, I did not go with excellence of words or wisdom. In other words, I did not go to you with great theological terms or great complicated expressions or complex and obscure things so that you would think that I am a great preacher, a great teacher of the word, a great Apostle.

In other passages he actually talks about it. he says that people see him as an insignificant person, some say that Paul was very small in stature. Others say that he was even a little hunchbacked, others have said that he gagged a little, we don't know. And there are expressions in his writings that make us think that some of these things were true. And when he appeared before these congregations that had already heard of the great Paul, of the great Apostle Paul, and he appeared perhaps with a not so impressive appearance and with such a natural preaching and of a teacher, not of a great preacher, the people said , but this is not Pablo, this is Pablito rather. We thought that he was going to be someone very impressive in stature and way of expressing himself and that he was going to delight us with a very poetic and very eloquent sermon and he is teaching us in a natural and simple way.

Paul could do that if he wanted to, by the way, Paul had been trained at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most distinguished teachers, rabbis, of his time. And we know that Paul lacked none of these things. Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament, he was an incredible theologian. The church today, two thousand years after his life, is nourished by the teachings of the Apostle Paul. He was a man who did not lack intellectual, academic, rational training. He was a man of great fiery too, a persecutor of the church, a man of incredible physical courage. He was a man who had received extraordinary revelations from God, visions so profound, so supernatural that God Himself had forbidden him to share them with most people because apparently they were not for general consumption, they were privileged things that God had communicated to him. .

He had had so many supernatural experiences and to such an extent that God had to give him an embarrassing spiritual suffering to keep him humble. Imagine that. I think it's in Second Corinthians, chapter 12 where he talks about a sting that God gave him so that the greatness of the revelation he had received would not exaggerate him, he says, excessively. God gave me a messenger from the devil, he says, a goad to slap me around and keep me humble. And it was something that embarrassed Paul so much that 3 times he came before God and said, Lord, deliver me from this. And 3 times God told him, my grace is enough for you because my power is perfected in weakness.

That is why Paul then learned to expressly cultivate weakness, humility, simplicity so that God could then magnify himself more through him. He knows that God likes humble and simple people. If you come from a simple family, if you didn't have a great education, if you spent a good part of your life doing little shame and then repented and are now in the ways of the Lord, you are right in the middle of the love of God, because God loves the humble. God loves repentant sinners. God loves those who have disqualified themselves. God loves those who do not deserve any of his grace and have humbled themselves and have asked the Lord for the crumbs that fall from the table, like the Syro-Phoenician woman.

Do not feel ashamed that you have not gone to a seminary, do not feel ashamed that you do not have your documents, God loves the simple and the humble of heart. And God loves to work through humble and simple people. Cultivate humility, cultivate simplicity because then the power of God will be able to manifest itself greatly through you.

I love having simple, humble people in my congregation. And I want you to know that this will never be a church for the aristocracy or for people of high lineage exclusively, here we all have to enter this church through the same very short door and humble ourselves so that when we enter the church we are all on the same page. size, brothers. That is the primary value of this congregation. Listen to him because I always want that to be clear in your minds, never listen to anyone who tells you that this church is only for professionals. Those are lies from the devil. This church is for everyone, the one with education and the one without education, the one with documents and the one without documents, the Dominican and the Salvadoran, the Guatemalan and the Chilean, the Mexican and the Colombian, they are all one here in Christ Jesus. All the little ones on earth take place because it is a question of the Holy Spirit being the one who manifests his power, not the strength of man, not the intelligence of man, not the money of man, not the aristocratic past of man or woman , but what you are in God and in the spirit of God at this time.

It is a time when God wants to use the little ones of the earth, the humble, the governments today look for highly intellectual people or people with money, as we see in the last governments we have had in this nation. Either we worship intellect and reason and rational sophistication, or we worship people who are loud-mouthed, tall, and have a lot of money, and the Lord laughs at them both. The virgin of Israel shakes her head in front of you, because the spirit of the devil manifests itself through high intellectualism as well as a lot of money and great statures.

And the people of God who discern the Holy Spirit will always cultivate weakness in the spirit, or rather weakness in the flesh so that the power of the spirit can manifest through us. That's why this church can never boast of anything. Many people love this church and admire it from outside and see this church as an exemplary church.

Brethren, I hear those compliments and those blessings from people. I thank God because we can be people who are an example and an inspiration to many, but I immediately convey that praise to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who is the only one who deserves it. The name of the Lion of Judah congregation never resounds in this church with carnal pride, brothers.

The Bible says that if anyone boasts, glory in the Lord. Never praise this church too much. Not in the community out there, not anywhere. Never say, oh, I'm going to the Lion of Judah congregation as a big deal. This is a church like any other, in need of the Lord's grace. And I who direct them spiritually am a man like any other, in need of the grace and compassion of the Lord. Never praise a man, never look at a man, look at Christ. The greatest harm that you can do to a pastor like me is to praise me more than necessary or believe that I am more than necessary. Pray for me, pray for your pastors, and ask the Lord to keep me and have mercy on me, rather, never present myself as an example as much as possible, to anyone, brothers. And never point it out to me because that's the biggest damage you can do to me.

Thanks to the fact that they respect me. I feel happy with the love of my people, but know that rather what I need is that your prayers are always rising before God for me, and that this church always looks like a tiny church in the flesh and that we let us cultivate humility and simplicity of heart. That we know that we are not better than any congregation. We have our flaws just like any other church. People out there look at the grass and say that the grass from afar looks very thick and very pretty, but when they come in and see all our warts and wrinkles, they know that we are human just like any other congregation.

Let's cultivate humility rather. Let us denounce ourselves and thus the devil will never be able to accuse us, because if you denounce yourself before God, what will he accuse you of if you have already denounced yourself, you have already accused yourself. Then the grace of the Lord can flow over your life. We are going to ask the Lord, we are going to be a simple and humble church of heart. We are going to exalt the little ones and the greatest let us lower ourselves to be all at the same height.

And Paul had understood that mystery of the Christian life of actively making himself small so that the power of God could then be manifested. When a church... and that's the danger when God blesses a congregation. The church in the United States in the 21st century is a very blessed church in many ways, it is blessed with large, very modern buildings. We here in León de Judá enjoy an enviable physical plant, 3 buildings in the center of the city. We have beautiful devices that project the images of our choirs and the Bible readings, we have great seats, very comfortable, we have air conditioning and heating, we have excellent teachers, we have beautiful and well-organized worship, we have computers everywhere, we have a service program who is admired and respected by many people in this city.

But that also has its negative and dangerous side, and that is that we can get used to all those things and get used to the well-organized program and the orderly environment, and the well-structured sermons, and we can forget that that is not where it truly resides. the power of God and the ability to affect the world out there.

If I had the courage one day it would be good if we turned off all the lights, turned off the heating, turned off the projections and all the microphones and had a service as they had for centuries. Until recently people did not have microphones or horns. Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers. I was watching a documentary recently of Charles Spurgeon once preaching to 25,000 people and he had to do it without a microphone, there were no microphones at that time. There were no projection screens. People had to exercise their memory and learn the hymns by heart.

Today we do not learn a little by heart. We can't even remember that chorus, your fidelity is great, and that's all it says, great is your fidelity. And we don't remember the blessed corito because we are atrophying, we depend on all these things. And unfortunately in this nation where there is so much eloquence, where there are so many technological resources for the church, more than ever the church is decrepit and lacks influence and voice in this nation. Isn't it ironic that the more progress the church experiences, the more resources it has, many times the less efficient and effective it is in the proclamation of the Gospel? Because? Because we get used to the comforts, we get used to the program.

When the first disciples came together in the first century it affected the entire world and changed the course of history, coming out of a tiny town after the Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost. Do you know how people met? People gathered in houses, they met in small groups, they didn't have the Bible, they didn't even have the Bible because the New Testament hadn't been written yet. The New Testament was written little by little and if they had a letter that Paul had written there was no printing press, there were no computers, not even the Old Testament, not even one that had been written much earlier, they could read it because a manuscript was something that was worth the salary. of a person for a whole year.

And I can imagine the nonsense that was said in those houses about Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Gospel because there was no teaching. These were people who listened... an itinerant preacher came to a mountain, to a small village he preached that there was a man named Jesus who died for humanity and that he was the Son of God and that everyone who believed in him was saved, and I asked 4 or 5 in that village, do you believe that? and they said yes, yes, amen. Receive the Lord. And he was leaving. And those people now had to have a church life among themselves, with no theological education, no instruction on anything else of who Jesus was theologically, or any other kind of teaching.

And so it was that the Gospel spread throughout the earth until the Roman Empire itself fell on its mouth before the power of the Gospel and of those people who loved the Holy Spirit, saying stupid and nonsense and babbling, inventing incoherent short songs but they were full of of the spirit and who loved the Lord. And that is what God is looking for in the end, it is not bombast as Paul says, it is not great technology, it is not well organized things, although I love all of that.

Many of the problems that I ask myself in this church is due to my insistence on order and excellence, but I know that at the end of the day and in the end none of that counts if the Holy Spirit is not involved in it and encouraging it . And that is why we move uncomfortably between these two extremes, between the extreme of order and the system and good administration and excellence and preparation and also the fertile chaos of the glory of God when he wants to get involved in doing what he wants. want between us

We have to do both. Pablo could move in both worlds. He moved in the world of reason, of intellect, of theology, but he also knew when it was time to let the Holy Spirit manifest. And he knew that the most important thing was that: a congregation that discerned the spirit, knew the spirit, moved in the spirit because of the two things that is the better. In the end…

Look, I have my fights with the pentectostal world because it has many atrocities and many harmful things that it does and there are many people who run over the Gospel, many thunderous people pastoring churches that should not pastor churches. But you know what? I tell you something, that if I have to choose between those dead and ultra-rational churches that only know reason and intellect and theology, and those churches that are there babbling and diving but loving the Holy Spirit, I'll stay with those . I love Pentecostals. I love people who nakedly, foolishly, making mistakes but love the place where God's presence is.

Thank the Lord we do not have to choose between one and the other, we can be in both areas. And there are times when we are going to talk about order, about the system, about good administration, about intellect, about high theology, and sometimes we are going to take off our tie and open our shirts and we are going to jump like little lambs in the middle of the congregation. and glorify the spirit of the Lord to learn and practice what it is to be a people of the Holy Spirit. Both things are necessary and that is what maintains a balanced church, a healthy church, a church filled with the Holy Spirit that also manifests the excellence, the symmetry, the order, the balance of the Kingdom of God, which is a beautiful and beautiful. When people see it, they see the order that is in the universe but they also see the dynamism that is in the universe because God created it too. Both things are necessary.

And I ask the Lord to help us do that. That is why this week we have been fasting and praying and searching there. What we have offered to the Lord is a milaña, in good Dominican, but it is nothing more. We do a little and we already believe that we were crucified and threw ourselves so that the lions would eat us alive. We have done some fasting and some half-baked prayers, we have not suffered until the blood as the Apostle Paul says in another passage. But glory to God, how good, the Lord is satisfied with our efforts, we could do more.

But what I'm saying is that this week has been an exercise in the technology of the Holy Spirit. This week I hope that as a church and you as an individual and me as a pastor, it has helped us to revisit the fundamentals of life in the spirit, the abc's, the arithmetic of the Holy Spirit. Those minutes that we spent in the morning on Thursday or semi-vigil on Friday, or on Monday with the group led by our sister Mayra, or on Wednesday in our prayer service in the middle of the week, are exercises, are the babbling of the baby trying to learn to speak.

And I hope these things help us understand that, that we have to be a church of the Holy Spirit. Our faith has to be primarily in the spirit of God, in the supernatural life. And that is what Paul is saying here to the Corinthians, he is telling them, brothers, when I went to preach the Gospel, he says, I set my mind, in other words, he had to make a prior determination to seize those horses so strong that he had intellectuals and spoke a simple Gospel so that people would not look at him, so that people would not put their delight and their attachment in the complex words he preached or his eloquent way of speaking or things merely human, and that upon listening to the weak and simple man, he wanted to make himself, brothers, a transparent figure so that people would not look at him. He wanted to make himself transparent so that when people looked, they would look through him and see the Christ behind him.

And that is what I believe that every pastor, every preacher, every servant of God must do. It must be made transparent so that people do not look at him or her. Beware of anyone who draws too much attention to himself. Beware of any church that says, we are the church that God has chosen and the others don't know what they are doing. Be careful because that is not the spirit of the Lord. People who truly serve and glorify the Lord never draw attention to themselves, they always divert attention to the one who is the source of all power and all grace, is Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

And that's why Pablo says, when I went to where you were, I didn't call attention to my skills or my technology, but I proposed myself, I decided, beforehand I determined, with a previous personal decision of mine, not knowing anything, putting Put aside all my frame, all my theological intellectual arsenal, put it all aside, know nothing, nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Do you know that the crucifixion was the greatest humiliation? The cross was the most terrible, most humiliating thing that a human being could experience. One person was practically naked, perched on a log, his biology exposed, bleeding, moaning. He knows that the cross was such a shameful thing that the Roman government would not allow any Roman citizen to be crucified. No citizen of Rome could be crucified because the Romans thought that the cross was such a shameful and horrible thing and that if a Roman citizen was crucified it was a shame for Rome by extension.

And that was the destiny of our Lord Jesus Christ. The most extreme humiliation, the most extreme suffering, the most total shame, and from that shame, from that total despondency, God drew liberation and the greatest feat that has occurred in the universe since the universe was created, salvation. of humanity and the defeat of Satan. On the cross, the Bible says, that Christ defeated principalities and powers and also says that he annulled the act of decrees that was contrary to us.

All the accusations that the devil had a right to throw at us, the Lord nullified on the cross. He says that he publicly exhibited the principalities and powers on the cross, in the place of greatest humiliation, greatest impotence, greatest shame, greatest annulment of all power, immobilized there the Lord manifested his power as never before or after, in the cross, in weakness, in crucifixion, in shame.

And that is why Paul says, I determined not to teach anything except Christ, and not the Christ of power, not the Christ who will come one day on a white horse as the scripture puts it, not the Christ that the Jews expected him to seize and defeat to the Romans and put Israel back in power like when David was there, because that is what they expected, a victorious Messiah. No, he came as a humble lamb, mounted on a donkey, unrecognizable as the Son of God and in that state God used him to bring redemption to humanity.

And then Paul says, I purposed therefore that you should know in my preaching, not the mighty man, but the Christ and not just any Christ but the crucified Christ. And I was among you with weakness and much fear and trembling. Neither my word nor my preaching was with persuasive words but with a demonstration of the spirit and power so that your faith is not founded on the wisdom of men but on the power of God.

And this week that's what we've been doing, brethren. We have been trying to remove all the scaffolding. That's what we wanted to do today in these clumsy babblings, to explore to see what happens. That's why I tell you, sometimes it's good. I would love to be able to sit there quietly, wait until my turn comes to preach and not have to be here like an athlete jumping around here and giving a microphone to so-and-so and another. Many people see that, I know they see it in a certain critical way, why does Pastor Miranda have to do that? Not many pastors do that, but I do it to humble myself and force myself to depend on God. that my church learn to be a church led by the Holy Spirit, that my church learn to come here and say, hey, what's going to happen today? what is God going to do today? and one comes and says, and what happens if he doesn't show up? And what happens if a great embarrassment happens and I do these things here and nothing happens?

It's good to feel that once in a while. It is good to come to church with fear many times, it is good to come to church with a great sense of insecurity and become small and humble. I know that the Lord sees those things as a deposit and the Lord blesses those things. Because sometimes pastors exalt themselves much more than necessary, because there are so many other ways that one can seek greatness if he wanted it. But when one humbles himself before God, one says, Lord, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know if you're going to show up or not, I don't know if what we're doing is going to work, but we love you so much that we want to give you a chance. If you want to come and visit us, move.

I believe the Lord honors that. I know that through this crucifixion of self, God can do great things in our midst. This week, my brothers, let's get out of here... I want you to pray continually, that this week is not an exceptional week, but rather that God help us as a congregation to be God's people. This is what we should be doing every day, we should be looking for more and more… agonizing before the Lord and asking God to truly make us that anointed people, filled with the Holy Spirit.

Let's keep praying, let's keep looking for that cry from God, that it's not just this week or today. Let us ask the Lord not to lose this vision of a people that comes open to what God wants, like a radar trying to catch a wave of eternity and the kingdom of heaven, that God speaks to us and that he uses us for his glory , because that is what is needed in this time.

The walls of Jericho that are in this world right now are closed, well closed, and the church is not capable of tearing it down on its own. The church does not have the strength to break the cultural patterns of this 21st century culture. It requires a visitation of the power of God, supernatural power, an invasion of the Holy Spirit, a latter rain like the one Joel promises at this time in history. Only through a visitation of the supernatural power of God, it will not be done by incremental increases in energy, nor by man-made techniques, it will have to be a landing of the power of God more powerful than what was on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.

We are going to ask the Lord to bring it. We are going to wail and cry before God like a pregnant woman until the baby is born. This is the time of visitation. We are going to be the people of the spirit.

Stand up and let's ask the Lord to consume and consume this time. Get out of here and I hope that tonight before you sleep God will put a thought in your heart. Father, remember us, visit us, visit my church, visit me, visit my family. I consecrate myself to you. Consecrate yourself to the Lord right now, consecrate your home to the Lord right now, consecrate yourself as an instrument in the hands of God, an antenna that can receive the emanations of eternity, that is a voice of God here in the city of Boston.

Right now I consecrate my house, I consecrate my church. Come over here. Consecrate your house to the Lord. Consecrate the walls of your house, the floor of your house, the roof of your house. Brothers, hold on there for a moment. We are doing something sublime. If you can wait a minute back there, wait a second. This is important. The car will be there waiting for you when you arrive. Don't worry, no one is going to steal it. Wait a moment. This is a sublime moment. Consecrate yourself to the Lord if you feel of the Lord to do so. Give your house to the Lord.

I give my house, our two daughters, our grandchildren to the Lord, our marriage, our home to the Lord, this church that the Lord has put us to lead together with its other pastors and leaders, we give it to the Lord. Our house, me and my house will serve the Lord. Say that. I and my house will serve the Lord. This city will serve the Lord. Our homes will serve the Lord.

You may be single and now you go to an apartment by yourself, but your house will serve the Lord. You are going to serve the Lord, you are going to be an instrument of God, you are going to be a warrior with a powerful sword in the hands of God. Your children are going to be used by God, we consecrate this church, Father. We consecrate this place to you, Lord. Use us for your glory, Father. Land in this city, oh God.

You who have given us all these resources, Father, and these spaces, fill them with your presence and use us for your glory, Lord. We want your glory to descend on our city, on our church, on our house and on our nation and to fill the whole earth, to be fire running through a pasture and filling everything with the glory of God.

We bless you, we consecrate ourselves to you, use us, Lord. We consecrate ourselves to you. Take away all lukewarmness of heart, take away all spiritual mediocrity, take away all divided minds, all divided spirits, Father, and make us completely passionate about you alone, looking at you alone and desiring you alone, Lord, and serving you alone for the glory of your name. Thank my Lord. Hallelujah! we bless you The people of God say, amen, glory to God.