A life of persistence

Matthew 15 verses from 21 to 28, are two passages that are linked to each other, one is found in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, the other is also found in Mark, they are passages that relate the same event but with complementary perspectives, and I want to talk about, I'm going to complete a loop about prayer. This is the fourth message, I think that he had already denied us several times to allow us to use those parking lots that have been such a blessing for us over the years.

Virtually no church in the city of Boston, an urban church in the center of the city has the benefit that we have of having access to so much parking space and all this was as a result of a time of prayer that we had with a sister we knew She heard about our situation, through our prayers, a member of the Church, and that moved a lot of factors that ended up attracting the presence of the mayor of the city of Boston himself here.

Before that, I even told them that when we got here those spaces there were destroyed, those lots where we parked, and shortly after we got here we found out that the sewage department was going to relocate all its facilities and its entire physical plant. to be right here next to us, and when I found out that they were coming here and that they were going to prepare those spaces for parking, I clearly felt that the Lord was answering our prayers, because from now on we were thinking: what's going on? What happens when our Church continues to grow, how are we going to find parking? and at that time not even the city of Boston had put resident-only parking in these areas, but I still worried about that.

And the Lord answering our prayers, just that week there was a prayer like in all those times when we had prayed, I think the Lord relocated something as big as a city agency; Forgive me if I sound presumptuous but how many believe that God can do extraordinary things? God changes the heart of a city to bless His people and what a blessing this Congregation has been.

And in answer to the prayer, say: insistence, because that's what this passage is about, the fact that when we come before the Presence of God we have to be insistent, we have to be daring because I generally don't like to be asking him for favors. nobody or knocking on doors, it is contrary to my temperament, but knowing the need of my Congregation I called the sewage department several times and several times they denied me, the last time in a slightly impolite manner, but the Lord heard our prayers , moved the heart of the king, in this case the heart of Mayor Menino to intercede on our behalf, not intercede, he practically ordered them to cede those spaces and today we can enjoy this wonderful resource that we have there.

And you know what? don't tell anyone, I'm going to tell you something here. He knows that I believe they put that hotel there, the Humpton Inn, I believe that God has a purpose with him as well and with us, I believe that one day people will come and stay there when they come to conferences and other things like that. what God is going to do here, and God has been strategically preparing this place, and when we got here it was a great hell, and God has been fixing all this.

Today I am surprised that the last time I went to the airport, I left here from the Church on Wednesday night to pick up our daughter who was coming from a trip to Washington and it took me six minutes to get to Logan Airport, we are in the center of everything here, if we want to go downtown we are there three or four minutes away in good traffic, etc. This is a very central place, brothers, the center of the city, but the center was not like that when we arrived here, on the contrary, nobody wanted to come to this place. But when God gives the vision and when there is a desire for the Kingdom of God to be expanded, and we are willing to be sacrificial then God blesses us, we wake up one day and we are surrounded by glory, when one loves the Lord in that way, because for us it was not a promotion, it was a demotion to come to this side.

As you know before, we were in Cambridge in a very select and elegant area of the city of Cambridge that God had given us, but we chose to come here because we knew there was a mission to fulfill here. So when we give to God, God then rejoices in blessing us and prospering us. Today this is one of the most sought after areas here in the city of the entire city of Boston to his glory and we still haven't seen all that God can do.

But I want to tell you, brothers, that God responds to a people who pray, God responds to a people who believe that God can do great things in favor. God responds to a people who insist and who dare to knock on the king's door, and to enter like Esther in the chamber where you have not been invited because you have to present an urgent request to the king, and God prepares the king's heart in response to our prayers, and this is a passage that tells us about coming into the king's presence and presenting our requests at times when the king doesn't want to hear from us.

If you read another complementary passage in Mark you realize that Jesus did not want anyone to know where he was when this woman approached Him, He was looking for a rest. And as it happened so many times when the Lord was not waiting, one of those desperate and daring people came, and she came in that untimely manner, and said to the Lord: Lord, I have a problem, I have a need, as Bartimaeus did, as he did. did the woman with the issue of blood, I just put my notes aside and I'm going to preach to you only in the Name of the Lord.

This woman and the dialogue she has with Jesus Christ exemplify important values and principles of the prayer life and how to relate to God. The first thing I see in this woman is that idea of urgency, and many times God will not answer our prayers until we feel desperate. What's more, God sometimes listens to our generic, half-hearted prayers and He says: I'm going to wait until you reach the point of despair, because the Lord likes our prayers to be clear and specific, that's why in the Bible there are so many situations where God responds to people who have a sense of urgency.

And that's why I sometimes tell people: look, if you're not willing to get uncomfortable and get out of your seat even to receive a blessing from God, oh why, God can bless me here just as he blesses me there, and sometimes I have to step over people to get out of the seat; there is something when one makes those symbolic gestures that unleashes the Power of God.

God wants us to learn that prayer is ultra important, when we give time and importance to prayer. Many times I go to bed early because I have to get up early to pray, it is not for any other reason, because I know that if I want to pray I have to do it in the early hours of the morning because otherwise I won't do it the rest of the day , that is, one has to plan to pray. Now, if prayer is something that you do while you are eating a sandwich at lunchtime, then I think that this has something to do with it, because God has to give it to us, God likes us to dress well to come before the Presence of the King, if the King summons you, it will be better for you to go well dressed and that is how it should be with prayer, and God responds to that sense of urgency and need. This woman was blessed so to speak that she had a major crisis in her life.

This morning I preached that message and an African woman approached me and said: Pastor, your prayer blessed me, she is new to the Church, she told me: my daughter lives in a European country, she is a grown woman and developed, and has a demon that persecutes her sexually, so to speak, such things exist, I have met people in that situation, and who possesses her, has a sense of possession of her, ok, thank you.

And he told me: please pray for God to heal her. These are not fairy tales, they are very real things, and this woman here two thousand years ago had a similar situation, her daughter was possessed by a demon, and she had the benefit of that energy that she had, that love that she had for her daughter impelled her and gave her a sense of urgency.

Do you remember that I have said many times that you have to have passion to pray and you have to take the request to a level of great concentration so that God often responds? And I have alluded to that prayer of Jabez where he said: oh, if You would bless me and enlarge my territory, and if Your Hand were with me, and free me from evil” and he says that the Lord granted him what he asked for, and I have said that oh! of Jabez was an oh! of: "I am fed up Lord, I need an intervention on Your part". We have to get to that oh! For God to respond, we have to give importance to coming before the Presence of the Lord.

And we have to present to the Lord a specific request, a specific request, she came before the Lord and said: Lord my daughter is seriously afflicted by a demon. Notice that the first thing she said was: Lord have mercy on me, Lord son of David have mercy on me and that was like the prelude to the prayer.

Bartimaeus said the same thing to the Lord Jesus Christ when he was walking down the street, Lord have mercy on me, and he said to the disciples: let him come closer, and then he asked him: and what do you want me to do? Lord, may I recover my sight, that is always the second part of the prayer, it is when we present a specific prayer to the Lord, a specific prayer, and we often have to tell the Lord in great detail what we want Him to do for us. us, and we have to take time, and many times the Lord will artificially bring us to that point.

And I believe that this dialogue that the Lord establishes with this woman is precisely to bring her to that point of focusing her prayer and working on it, and developing it before Him, and that is why the Lord gives her that initial rejection. It is not because the Lord had come to preach to the whole world, He says: Daughter, I have only come for the children of Israel, but the Lord on other occasions made it clear that He had come to save the lost.

The Lord commanded the disciples to go throughout the world to preach the Gospel and in His first public appearance the Lord said: He has anointed me to bring good news to the prisoners, to the blind, to those who are depressed, He did not respect of persons. He healed the son of the centurion's servant for example and other occasions when He ministered.

When He tells her: I have not been called but to the sheep of Israel, I think he was doing it to provoke a reaction in her to lead her through a dialogue, because first of all, He knew that this text was going to be used by many generations. through the centuries to understand many principles of relationship with God, to learn to pray effectively, the Lord was a sublime teacher. And then He was working on her to bring her to that point where a word of faith came out of her bowels, a certain word came out of her heart and that is what happens many times with us, God, when we enter into prayer, for this reason we cannot underestimate the complexity of the sentence.

This text teaches us that prayer is a science and that prayer is a science, and many times because we underestimate the complexity of prayer, and that prayer is often intended to change us first and to teach us how to relate to God, to enlighten us about the true nature of our struggles that we are presenting before the Lord by developing them before God under that illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Lord is not only wanting to respond to our immediate need but also to take us to a higher, deeper level of relationship with him.

And that is why I always say that prayer not only changes the heart of God but also our own heart. For me to pray, perhaps I have used this image before, it is like sitting on the couch, on the sofa of a psychiatrist and there I close my eyes and start talking to God, and I realize that my divine psychiatrist is listening to my prayers , and that the very act of presenting my need before God is like an act of psychoanalysis and interior healing where I in a sense remove and cast out my demons presenting my needs before the Lord and developing my requests before God, to I like to take time.

And I believe that this part in which the Lord says to her: look, I have not been called to heal people like you, and she responds, and then the Lord responds, that moment is designed to show us that prayer is interaction also between God and us. Just as this woman did not simply tell her, the Lord healed her and she left happy and content, the Lord, because prayer is a process, and what I see here is that this moment is a process; the Lord speaks, she listens, responds and then the Lord responds and she speaks to her again, and finally then comes the Word, it is not a shopping list that one makes and one sees that continually in Scripture.

When the woman with the issue of blood secretly approaches the Lord and reaches out her hand, and touches the hem of Jesus' cloak, and feels a discharge come from Jesus, and enter her body, and she knows that she has been healed? What does she do? Is she going to slip away quietly and plan to return again to her secret, anonymous, solitary life where she has lived under twelve years of rejection because she is impure? she has an issue of blood and that makes her impure. Accustomed to her anonymity, accustomed to her solitude, she thinks: well, I received what I needed and now I'm going home because I have what I need, and the Lord tells her: it's not that easy, come here, I want to talk to you.

Who touched me? says the Lord, the disciples who were always simple in their way of thinking: but Lord if everyone is touching you, this is a crowd, he says: No, no, someone touched me because power came out of Me, there was faith in her and the Lord felt, it was a thrill of His Power that went out of Him, and He called to her. And the Bible says that she told him everything that had happened in her life, that is why we know who she is and that is why we know that she had been with many doctors and a number of things, he listened because the Lord is not only interested in a quick result, the Lord likes processes.

And for me the most important thing about prayer is not the result, it is what happens when you talk to the Lord, you immerse yourself in His waters and enter into a dialogue with your Dad, and when you talk with your Dad you feel His darling, you feel His closeness, you feel His Power, and it heals you, it ministers to you, you talk about your need and the Lord is sitting there too drinking His latte sitting with you and listening to your request, and delighting in knowing so with intimacy what is happening, He knows it but He wants to hear it from you, as one knows the psychology of a one-year-old child but how good when that child climbs on your legs and you caress him, and you are there feeling his warmth , that is beautiful.

And do you know that God is like that? God likes to spend time with us. This woman in her dialogue with Jesus Christ He does not want her to leave, He can already give a Word for her daughter to be healed, she did not! He wants to know her, He wants to know a little more about her, He wants to delight in that manifestation of faith that comes from her heart. He also wants to bless us two thousand years later by reading this passage, getting a little more texture, texture, richness from that moment because God is an artisan and artisans not only delight in the final product, but above all they delight in the creative process itself. And when you take time to develop things and say, no, no, wait, take it easy, don't go so fast, I want to hear more from you, the Lord likes it.

One of the most wonderful passages of Scripture is in the Book of Genesis at the time of creation, it says that God descended to have communication with Adam and Eve. I don't know what that was like, if it was a soft wind, it was a presence that condensed, the divinity in an epiphany as it is called in theology, we don't know, the fact is that God was looking for Adam and Eve to have communication with them and did not find them.

But that idea of God descending into the garden to talk and communicate with Adam and Eve shows us something and that is that God likes to have fellowship with his creature and prayer is the best space for that, when you take time to develop your request. .

A mother with a prodigal son who is resistant to the Lord who is on bad and destructive paths comes before the Lord, and it is not a matter of telling the Lord: My God, you know Juaniquito, bless him and have mercy on him, no, that mother must take time. Lord: I present to you Juanito, You know his heart, You know how rebellious he has been to You, and I know that he has offended you but You are a God of mercy, You say it in Your Word, remember how the prodigal son was blessed and forgiven by his father. Lord I ask you to touch his heart, heal his life, change it, look at those boys he is with who are leading him down the wrong path, establish a wall in the Name of the Lord between them and Juanito.

He deals with his heart, I know that he has been hurt by his father's absence, I know that he has rebelled against authority because his father abused me and him too, and my other children. Father, change his rebellious heart and heal him so that he can submit to authority and seek from You, and You know, Lord, that there is a lineage in his family of perdition and that there is a generational curse of alcoholism, drug addiction, physical abuse, unbridled sexuality Father I ask you: break in the Name of Jesus that chain of family curse and I ask you to heal him, and that you make him a new creature, and establish a new generation with him, I claim him in the Name of Jesus for You Lord and I declare that he will be a great man of God, and that he will serve you all the days of his life.

That just as the devil has wanted, and perhaps someone is praying that prayer for his son, just as the devil has wanted to rejoice in his perdition, I declare that you will take advantage of it a thousand times in the Name of the Lord and you will use it greatly for Your glory and Your honor. And Father, if I have offended him, and if I have neglected him, and if there is something in me that has contributed to that situation, forgive me first, Lord, and I ask your forgiveness, and I ask you to give me wisdom.

I could be here for ten minutes, brothers, praying for Juanito without knowing him, and that is how our prayer has to be because prayer is linked to one, and while you pray, the Holy Spirit will illuminate you, you know? and it teaches you: Yes, pray for that situation with his father, pray for that rebelliousness, pray for that wound, pray for that insecure masculinity, and then you are sending a blessing, a blessing in those different areas, and your prayer is no longer just a shopping list and it becomes a dialogue, and the Lord is there listening and says: Give me more, give me more, I want to hear more from you, I will respond.

You are not only praying and asking for your son, you are prophesying and declaring things as well. And Father: I thank you because it is already a fact, I see him healed, I see him restored, I see him a strong man in the Spirit, I see him doing feats in the Name of Jesus for Your glory and rescuing other young people who are in the same situation, thank you Lord I glorify you, thank you because you are merciful and do not leave your loved ones in shame, I know that not a single word that I have said before you will fall to the ground but that you will fulfill everything that I have declared

That is a prayer developed from the bowels, brothers, it is dialogue, it is a word of love, it is validation of the Grace of God, it is healing, it is personal psychoanalysis, it is healing that flows through us, all things and the Lord is there. and said: you know? I liked that sentence so much that I want you to come back tomorrow and continue a little more, I'm not going to answer it yet because I liked what you told me, that song I want you to sing it to me again.

But God is already beginning to work in Juanito, you know? The Word already began, and his heart, Juanito there in another part of the city for now, pin! something is wrong with his spirit. A little thing, a little move of the Spirit of God, a slight dissatisfaction with the lifestyle that he is living, something that he dislikes for the moment in the conversation that he is having with his friend, and he says: um, what could that be? and returns again, and continues; something happened, a seed was planted, and God began to work, and God began to create circumstances around that are going to change Juanito's life, that is part of what is happening, brothers.

That is prayer and that is what I see here in this dialogue between Jesus and this Canaanite woman, it is the Lord provoking her, stirring her up, I want to see what is inside you, if I tell you that you are practically a dog and that You don't deserve the food that comes out of the table, let's see that I'm going to see if you really want what you're asking or if you're going to leave offended because you didn't like what I said, glory to God that she stayed .

But the Lord told her: Children's food is not for dogs, and I think the Holy Spirit gave her the precise answer: well Lord, that's fine, if you want to hit me, amen, you are God, but remember something Lord, that even the dogs, do you tell me that I am a dog and that my daughter is a dog? well, remember that even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.

What happened there? there is a very powerful principle of prayer and it is what I call the judicial procedures of God, that God works through His Word, and what we are seeing here in person is something that we see in the midst of the promises of Jesus and all of this: the Bible is a legal document, the Bible is a constitution, the Bible is a living commitment that God has made to His creation. In all these accounts, all these passages, all these promises, all these statements in the different Books of the New Testament and the Old, all of this is God's commitment to His creation, God's expectations in His creation, the obligations and privileges , everything is coded here.

This is a universe that God created that if one looks at it in its abyss it nauseates us because of how big and how deep it is, the Bible is like that, and when we pray we must pray from the platform of what is Written, that is why it is so important that we be a people of the Word.

Brother: if you want to be mature in the faith, get into the Bible, read it from cover to cover, read it several times throughout your life, memorize entire passages if you can, verses that you can remember in your DNA that is programmed there, If you feel weak, you should say: I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.

If you have offended the Lord, you should remember that God says: come and let us be accountable, if your sins were red like scarlet they will become white like wool, that if you are sick that the Word says: Jehovah is my healer, If you have a need, it says: those who trust in the Lord will lack nothing. If you feel shy when you want to do something and you don't know if it will turn out well or not, remember that the Word says: those who trust in You will not be ashamed. , and on, and on, and on, and on.

Do you feel guilty? you say: if God justifies, who will condemn? He who spared not even His Son, how will He not give us all things together with Him? If you feel that what you are asking of the Lord is too great, remember that God says: cry out to me and I will answer you, and I will teach you great and hidden things that you do not know.

Do you feel depressed? remember what the Word says: be anxious for nothing but let all your requests be known with all prayer and supplication, and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will keep your hearts in Christ Jesus. If you feel anxious, remember that the Word says: You will keep in perfect peace the one whose thought remains in You.

The Word has to be alive in you and you have to be like a lawyer who, when he appears before the court, carries the constitution in his hand and the legal precedents that have to do with your case, and you take the precedents out of your repertoire. , and he tells the judge: yes, Mr. Judge, I am here for my client and this is the precedent, my case is presented in accordance with that precedent and I say that he is not guilty, and that he deserves the consideration of the court, and the judge, even if he is not willing or in a bad mood, will say: he is right, that is the state law and I respond to his need positively.

When the Lord says to her: it is not fair to give the children's food to the dogs, she says: okay, now I got you, and she says: yes, Lord, but the little dogs still eat the crumbs, and the Lord laughs and tells her He says: you grabbed me, you grabbed me, and I think he gave at least a smile of pleasure, and he was going to say an illustration but I'm not going to say it because I think it's not appropriate that it's very similar to that.

We are delighted when our children and our little ones say something that may seem insulting to others but for us it is an indication of trust and an occurrence, the boys have those occurrences that delight us, and the Lord was pleased with the occurrence of this woman . And He said: the truth that your faith is great, be done with you according to your request, right now your daughter; go, go, your daughter is already healed.

The Word of the woman was what healed the daughter, you know? the Word of the woman when she came into contact with the Power of Jesus from how many kilometers away, we do not know, she experienced an immediate healing because his Word, she came with the right word, the Lord provoked in her that precise request, that formulation of a spiritual principle that the Lord came to look for what had been lost, that the Lord sometimes when we are most distant from deserving something is when He gives us the most, grace, what is grace? Grace is when someone who does not deserve receives something and this woman did not deserve the healing of her daughter, she was not a member of the community of Israel, she did not know the true God, what is more, she did not even truly know Jesus, she saw a magician who He worked miracles, he did not have a developed theology, he did not know that he was the Messiah promised by God, God man, she did not know anything about that, she simply had a magical mentality that knew that this man, there was something in Him.

Like the one who was on the cross and said: Lord, remember me when you are in Your Kingdom and the Lord said: it's okay, I'll give you eternal vacations there in heaven with me, He didn't know who was there, he knew he was a just man , a powerful man and that was all. God gives us what we do not deserve, and by the principle of Grace, she appealed to him, and the Lord answered her prayer, and by her faith her daughter was saved.

That is what I am telling you, brothers, that is why we have to take time, prayer is like a blind man's groping, it is like an exploration, you enter into prayer and give yourself time, you begin to go around. It's like a musician looking for the right melody, you start playing and experimenting with different things, the water flows, the emotion flows, the inspiration flows and for the moment it fits with the right melody.

When you enter into prayer it is like that, perhaps you are hard and the oils are dry and hardened from lack of use, but when you submit them to the heat of the Presence of God you begin to flow in adoration, recite a verse, read a Psalm Lord: heat the oils, let Your Word flow and then when you begin to pray and cry out to the Lord, the Holy Spirit himself gives you the words and gives you the precise request, and this woman discovered that principle, that prayer is a science and we must insist.

Everyone told her: shut up, the Lord doesn't have time for you, she broke the barrier and kept insisting, and the Lord took care of her. It is a science, it requires focus, it requires long-term vision, it requires humility, it requires persistence, it requires asking the Lord for the right word and asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten us. Lord: we don't even know how to pray, show us how to pray, I need Your blessing and Your inspiration, but I know that You are a merciful God and here I am presenting my need to You.

Take time, appeal to the principles of Scripture that you should already know by reading that Word, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, do not get tired because he did not answer you that day, perhaps the Lord is waiting for you to reach the precise point or maybe the prayer has already been answered and maybe now the world has to align and reorganize around your request, and that takes time, God is going to have to move an agency from one part of the city to another and build, and to renew, to feed, it takes time, and then that the precise man comes to give you access to those places that He has prepared for you, and that with your faith you have thought: that is for me, that you dare.

The Lord uses your prayer, uses your faith, uses your ability to think long term, your patience, your humility, your daring to believe Him, and all of these things come together to produce the miracle of answered prayer.

Let's say a little prayer brothers, let's lower our heads, receive from the Lord now, ask the Lord to make you now a man, a woman of faith, a man, a woman of prayer, who knows how to extract the blessing from the Lord. It doesn't bother him that his little son, his fragile little daughter, comes and takes the bread out of his very mouth, and he laughs and says: okay, take it boy, but we have to cry out to God and we have to ask the Lord, and believe that He is faithful, just and kind to reward those who believe in Him, and you have to wait, you have to wait and you have to wait, the answer will take years and possibly decades, Abraham had to wait 25 years starting at 75 to have a child.

Prayers are sometimes bigger and more ambitious, the longer they take, the bigger the miracle, the more strength we have to accumulate to receive from God what He wants to give us. God wants a mature people, an understood people, God wants a deep people to move powerfully in favor of those who have a perfect heart towards Him and believe Him enough to cry out and agonize before Him, that is what I want be before God and may He give me long-term persistence, long-term duration, and not let myself be scared away by the first refusal or by the first day of delay, and keep crying out to the Lord.

Oh Lord help us to be like this Canaanite woman, help us to honor Your Word with a life of persistence Lord, and we appeal to Your Holy Spirit, there are requests that we have in our hearts simmering for decades and we ask Lord: remember our prayers that we have brought before You, respond Lord, we need an answer from You.

I ask that this people be filled Lord with a dangerous faith, a militant faith Lord, a faith that asks God for great and hidden things, in the Name of Jesus we declare Your grace upon us, this Church that learns to be a Church of courage and prayer, a Church that appreciates and values places of intimacy. With You Father, thank you Lord, in the Name of Jesus, thank you Father, in the Name of Jesus, amen and amen, God bless you my brothers.