The Holy Spirit is in you, don't waste it. Use it.

I want to invite you to go with me to the Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 18. And there is only one verse that I want to share with you. The Apostle Paul tells his congregation in Ephesus: “Do not get drunk with wine – now as it is with wine you can use rum, whiskey, that is not what he meant. With alcohol, period, because I know that those who don't run fly here sometimes. You have to be very clear. – in which there is dissolution… – Dissolution means disorder, conflicts, fights, etc. – … but rather be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Say Holy Spirit. Amen, it is a call from the Lord to us. Instead of wasting our lives with things that do not lead to anything good, instead of filling ourselves with things that are not nutritious for the spirit, for life, we are going to use and employ our energies to fill ourselves with something that is truly essential for our prosperity in the spirit.

And in these next few weeks I want to take time to talk with you about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is rice with beans, this is the basics, the tortillas and beans of the Christian life, it is the basics. I do not come with large banquets or very fine meals, but rather with the essence of the Christian life. And when I say that I remember the words of the Apostle Paul in First or Second Corinthians.

He says, "My brothers, when I came to you I did not come with excellence of words or wisdom of men, but I determined myself not to present anything to you except Christ and him crucified, because I do not want your faith to be founded on wisdom." of men but in the power of God."

Paul did not want to give the Corinthians superfluous and exotic and obscure things of the Gospel, but rather he said, I am going to give you the basics, I am going to call you to focus your attention on only one thing, on the power of God. And so that you are not distracted by other considerations, I am going to make it very simple and I am going to give you the essentials of the Christian life.

And Paul always spoke of the power of the Holy Spirit. In another passage he said, "because the Gospel does not consist of words but of power." Paul was a man, a theologian who spoke on many different occasions about the power of the Holy Spirit and it's something that sometimes escapes us because Paul spoke of many different components of the Christian life but over and over again he kind of went back to remind people of what was the fundamental technology of the Christian life and that that essential gasoline of the Christian life was the connection with the power of God, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And so in almost all of your letters there is a mention of some form, some call to the spirit-filled life. For example, here in Ephesians we have that, "be filled with the Holy Spirit," in another portion he said, "for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for the destruction of strongholds."

And over and over again it was a call to fullness, to the filling of the Holy Spirit. And I have always liked it, it is not that I have liked it but that I have seen it as a requirement of my pastorate to periodically return to the fundamentals of Christian life and remind my congregation again of what it is about, what is the power, the filling of the Holy Spirit, living life in the spirit, having a supernatural mindset, learning to drink from the waters of God's vitality and power. because that is what makes the difference in the Christian life.

And that is why Paul, when he went to where the Corinthians spoke to them, he did not go there as one of those professional reciters that existed in Greco-Roman times where they would give speeches and sometimes also wandering evangelists who would speak with all their wisdom about the declamatory arts of the Greco-Roman world. He was like a simple man to talk about the basics and to bring them back to the basics of the Christian life.

I have felt in the Lord that it is time for us to return to meditate on the supernatural life, the life of the Holy Spirit. And that is also why I have wanted through the years to have these days of the spirit so that those who do not have the opportunity to meditate on what the baptism of the Holy Spirit specifically is, a doctrine that is on all the pages of the Bible in one way or another, that they may have that opportunity.

I'm going to get a little thorn now in front of you. Many times when I have made that call we have to beg people to come, we have to make that announcement, 4, 5, 6 times. The last time I canceled the event for the Holy Spirit because the people we needed had not registered. And I am frankly embarrassed to say that in this congregation because when the opportunity to have that time is offered, many of you need to drink that milk, my brothers.

Many times those who need these things the most are the ones who react the least to these invitations. I would say that every time we make an invitation to a journey with the Holy Spirit the problem should be that people get up and run and fight to put their name there, not the other way around. And I tell you so because I love you in the Lord. Do you still want me? Because again, brothers, we have to... either we are or we are not.

I long for an even church, I have always told you that. Not a church where sometimes we have cold groups and hot groups here, Sunday people, people... Look, if what you can do is only come on Sunday, glory to God, but that is not the destiny of the Christian faith. The destiny of the Christian faith is that we are always burning in the spirit as the Apostle Paul says in another passage, burning in the faith. Burning means with fever, it is the word that is used in the original Greek, with the fever of the spirit.

But it is very easy to fall into the conventionality and normalcy of the Christian life unless one is not continually searching for the spirit. And I want in the next few weeks to go on a collective search about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When a person has a frontal encounter with the Holy Spirit, they are never the same again. One encounter with the Holy Spirit is worth 10 years of driving around in the desert, service after service after service, always pressing the accelerator and never starting.

I am an ardent supporter of the intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and that requires a life... this is not for cowards, this is for athletes in the spirit. You always have to be. If you want to keep fat off your body you have to be running all the time and exercising because the day after you stop exercising your body adds an extra ounce somewhere, it hides it and you have to have a war keep going. And so it is with everything.

Weeds alike, if you don't cut the grass and weed it, weeds are the toughest thing. Because it is that the bad things are always so resistant, more than the good ones. The flowers die in a moment but the weeds that nobody kills. Mosquitoes, pigeons, and useless cockroaches have been with us for thousands of years. However, other things that are more useful die easily, I don't know why. But the bad things must be in continuous war against them and the good things must be cultivated, the power of God in our lives, the filling of the spirit.

That is why Paul in this passage… and I am going to be conversing with you in a natural way, we are going to be for a while so we are going to go in different ways. But in that same passage of Ephesians 5:18 when the Apostle Paul says, “do not get drunk with wine in which there is debauchery, but rather be filled with the spirit,” then in verse 19 and 20 he gives an illustration of how it is that one stays full in spirit.

It says, “speaking among yourselves with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in our hearts, always giving thanks for everything to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It's not that he's saying that's the only way, just singing or giving psalms. No, the idea is, look, this is the way and just as you do that you can also do other things, praising the Lord, singing among yourselves, there he is talking about congregating.

How does one stay filled with the Holy Spirit? Reading the word, adoring the Lord, confessing God's good intentions in our lives, gathering together, sanctifying ourselves, cleansing ourselves of everything that does not please the Lord, giving to the Lord, giving our time, our energy, our talents, cultivating the elements of the Holy Spirit, keeping our mind focused on the things of God. So one stays filled with the Holy Spirit.

People think that being filled with the Holy Spirit is like something very mysterious, very esoteric, very exotic. Being filled with the Holy Spirit means having that vitality in the spirit, that strength, that health, being plump in the spirit in a word.

When the Apostles were going to choose the deacons, you know that the function of the first deacons was not much, it was to make sure that there was justice in the way in which the food that was given to the poor was distributed. That's what the early deacons were, if you look it up in Acts chapter 6 I think it is.

And for such basic, rudimentary work, they said, look for people filled with the Holy Spirit. Even for something like that, for basic service. And what were people filled with the Holy Spirit? That is, people who reflected commitment to the Lord, a life of dedication, spiritual health, consecration to the Lord, vitality, seriousness, holiness, that was what they meant by being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that's how we have to be. Vitality in the Christian life costs and requires an incessant attitude of cultivation in the spirit, of always measuring our temperature to know how we are. It is not just a matter of coming to church, that is not enough. I think that we have that Catholic mentality, I say it with all due respect, but that idea that we go to mass and then we take off our mantilla when we leave there and we go to... and that's until next Sunday. Many times I know that it is a simplification, but sometimes we have that religious mentality of the Christian life.

The Christian life has to be lived 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the power of the Holy Spirit is something that requires continuous exercise, continuous surrender, continuous sacrifice before the Lord. That is why the Apostle Paul also in Romans says that "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God."

Presenting the body is like taking a sacrifice and putting it on the sacrificial table, and thus we have to be presenting our lives to the Lord, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no part time Christians, brethren, sorry to ruin your day, there is no part time Christianity. Christianity is 24 hours a day, including when we are sleeping. Ask the Lord that our subconscious be meditating on the things of the Lord continuously because we are antennas and we are always... the Lord wants to use us at some point. We don't know where he's going to use us, we have to be prepared, ready for every good work at any time and we don't know when the Lord is going to tell us, look, I want you to go there.

As one of the great men filled with the Holy Spirit who is so important that I don't even remember his name right now, which was used for the eunuch, Philip. Felipe was in a place preaching the Gospel and he was in a campaign and God told him, look, there is a person that I need you to talk to and God physically moved him to the desert and there was a limousine, I don't know if it was a Cadillac or a Mercedes, and inside the limousine there was a man, a high official of the queen of Ethiopia, he was an ambassador who had been in that area of Jerusalem for some diplomatic mission or something like that. God transported him there and there he approached this man who was learning about the Lord, he was hungry for the word, he was reading the book of Isaiah but he did not understand why he was not a Christian. It was not known what he was, if he was a Jew, if he was a Christian, in those times the Gospel was still barely there. But I was reading about Isaiah.

There is a passage in Isaiah that talks about the Messiah and Philip approaches him, “do you know what you are reading?” "No, how would I know if I'm a neophyte in this." Then, he explained to him that he was talking about the Messiah who was to come and that this Messiah had already come and was called Jesus. The man accepted Christ, converted, was baptized right there and went back to his nation to preach the Gospel.

And he knows that the Ethiopians still today, in the 21st century, serve Jesus Christ, one of those nations in Africa that still serve Jesus Christ, and there they have very strong contact with the Jewish nation as well, and it is believed that it was from those contacts they had with the Ethiopian who came and also Queen Candace, I think it was, who had a spell there with Solomon and a son was born and the Ethiopian nation followed Christianity there.

They say that they have the ark of the covenant back in Ethiopia. The fact is that God used Felipe at one point he called him, because Felipe was a man filled with the Holy Spirit. I was doing God's work and when God looked over the earth, I need someone to take this man and advance my kingdom and advance my plans, he grabbed Philip and took him there.

You don't know when God is going to speak to you. And that is why we always have to be prepared in the spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit with our high measure, because God wants to tell us something and many times we are clumsy, rough, brutish and we do not understand what God wants to tell us.

I began my meditation this morning by speaking to the brothers about an experience I had this morning. At 5:15 in the morning I woke up with a start because I had forgotten to set the alarm, because I get up early to do the sermon, forgive me for doing it at that time on Sunday but it's the only time that I… sometimes I tried to do it before but I can't. And I hadn't worked the sermon and I got up because the first light of day was coming in through our window. And thank God I got up because I had to, I needed to.

But I was interrupted by the morning light, a dream I was having at the time. It's what I say that God speaks to us in many different ways and we have to be…live that spirit-filled life. The dream had been a sustained dream for a long time, because I knew that I had spent the night as if meditating on it, and in the dream I was in the basement of our house before we renovated it, several years ago we renovated the basement completely and we take the opportunity to work the foundations of the house, a number of things. One time I preached on that, and rearranging the house and everything, a complete job.

But this dream was before we did that job. And I could see a green snake whose presence ran through many parts. It was very long and was rolled up and curled up in the basement of the house. And I could see part of his body on top of a little wall that we have there. But I couldn't see his head. The head could not be seen because it was hidden somewhere.

Now I know the theme of this dream because I have lived with that theme for many, many years of my life. Spiritual warfare and warfare about this church, about my life, my ministry, a number of things. The fact was that I did not know where the head was and in the dream I knew that I had been cutting pieces of that snake, starting with the tail, pieces through a long time, searching until I reached the head, because you know that in the head is where the life of a snake is. You can cut off parts of its body and not necessarily kill a snake. It has to be the head.

The fact is that the snake was very calm asleep, there was no problem, I was cutting pieces and I knew that I was getting closer to the head, but it still had a good piece. In the dream I also saw myself talking to two characters, one of them was for some reason my grandson Caleb, who is 9 years old now, and the other person was an adult. I had to go on like a short trip somewhere and I knew that that work was going to continue and wanting to make sure that if they bumped into each other that they didn't get caught off guard, I was giving them instructions about that possible confrontation.

And I remember I asked him for a paper, I think it was Caleb, and he drew a piece of the body with the head on it and I said, “Look, the more you cut into the body, the closer you're going to get to the head.” That was the theme of the whole dream, the more they cut into the body the closer they will get to the head.

And I knew that when that moment came there was going to be a serious confrontation because the snake can cut a lot but as long as you don't threaten the essentials. And I understand the dream well, my life, the theme of my life and the struggles and the spiritual warfare, and the demonic opposition, things that God wants to do and another dream that I had a couple of weeks ago when I went to preach to those churches in Vermont and in New Hampshire, that God revealed another part of this to me. I understood well because I believe that a definition and some things that God wants to do in these times are getting closer and partly has to do with a war, a serious spiritual confrontation.

But the case was that when the morning light surprised me there was this idea, the more you cut to the body the closer you will get to the head. And I'm not really that interested in explaining to them about it. I understand well what that means, it is a process and it is a gradual process that God has his control over it to get closer and closer to the head.

But the most important thing of all is that I know that this was a revelation from God and I receive it with instruction for my life, my ministry, and the idea is that God is always speaking to us. When you live a life in the spirit the world becomes full of meaning. God speaks to you in small and big ways. You interpret everything in light of God's intention. You don't see it as mere coincidence. You know how to discern what is from God and what is simply something else.

Because not all dreams are from God. Many times because you ate too much rice and beans before going to sleep, but many times they are revelations from God and they have their meaning. God has spoken to me through dreams, through the years and they have been of great benefit to me. As you know the origin of this church, this Lion of Judah congregation, our name, our ministry is about a dream.

But what I want you to understand is that, brothers, that God wants to be intimate with you. God wants men and women animated by the spirit. God has not stopped giving revelation to his people. God has not stopped bringing prophetic revelation to his children. God has not stopped doing miracles of healing and deliverance in the lives of his children.

The devil hasn't changed and God hasn't changed in his methodology either. And what you see portrayed on the pages of the Bible is what God wants to see repeated in your life as well. The Book of Acts is not an archeological book that's just there for us to say, wow, what a super people those early Christians were, and it stays there. No. It's written that way so you know that God wants to work in your life too.

And when a church and a people are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and cultivate the Holy Spirit, God moves in that space. I have seen even when I preach or when we preach about the baptism of the Holy Spirit something wakes up immediately. Like in this service here at the time of worship, something happens. I have learned that what one preaches is what happens in the life of the church as well. And that we always have to stay like this, because God wants to talk to you, God wants to work through you. God wants to do miracles through your life. God wants to give you instruction on how to be a better parent. God wants to give you authority, how to be a better business man or woman, how to be a better housewife, how to be a better wife or a better husband, how to manage your mental, emotional, spiritual life, how to attend to your material affairs and physical.

God has devised that power of the Holy Spirit, that third person of the trinity. Christ said, "I am going but I will send a helper, and now I am with you but later in a sense I will be in you."

Do you know that the life of God moves within you and is called the power of the Holy Spirit. When you receive Christ as Lord and savior, the Holy Spirit enters your life, but there is a difference, it depends on what you do with that presence of the Holy Spirit within you, with that technology of the spirit that God installs in your life. life. It depends on how you move with it because for many of us we receive Christ and we believe that that is all. They already signed me up there in heaven and when I die I know that I'm going with God and that's all. And here from time to time I come to church because I already punched out the card and I already know that I am going to heaven.

While you are here on earth God wants to be intimate with you. God wants to juice you while you're here on earth. God wants to speak to you, God wants to reveal himself. God wants you to know him and he wants to have more of you and you have more of him. And that is called the life filled with the Holy Spirit.

And it all depends on what you do, the initiative you take. That is why I tell them that it does bother me, for example, is the word, when I see people in our congregation who need to seek that experience of the Holy Spirit and are offered a great opportunity to spend hours listening to what I think it's a good word and having good experiences, and you talk to them and tell them, “Look at the experience that others have had,” and they get flattened, as we say, simply without doing anything about it.

If you feel guilty, that's what I want to happen and react next time. Because it all depends on what you do. If you activate the power of the Holy Spirit. What does the Apostle Paul say in Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 6, he tells Timothy:

“I advise you to fan the fire of the gift of God that is in you…– Say, it is in you. – … by the imposition of my hands, because God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and self-control.”

That verse everyone should know by heart. Fan the fire of the gift of God that is in you. For many Christians the gift of God is already there, and I say that the problem for many Christians is not that they don't have the gift, it's that they aren't living it up. And so I also say to the brothers who come to the days of the spirit. I tell them, “Look, we have been in this intimacy with the Holy Spirit, we have taught him, we have prayed for them to receive. You have received, but now, from now on, it depends on what you do with it, because if you simply leave an encounter with the Holy Spirit and believe that since you already have it, you don't need to cultivate it, don't dress that you won't .

That is something that from then on you have to look for it, cultivate it, encourage it, enliven it. And when you live in that fire, that passion, then God can do something in your life. I see my brother Niron here, I think I have used him before, but I like it when I see these men who give themselves to the Lord and are not perfect, even though I know your wife thinks you are perfect, but other than that, No. but he has passion and loves the Lord and one sees that he has an appetite for the word, he is looking for God, he is witnessing to people. And these are the people who prosper in faith because they not only receive Christ, they not only receive the Holy Spirit who comes with Christ, but then they are restless seeking and I hope they never lose that spirit, because later with time the People are getting used to regular life, to the inertia of the Christian life, as it also happens with congregations.

Churches often start with fire but as the Apostle John told the church in Revelation, in the Apocalypse, but I have something against you that you have lost your first love. It was to the church in Ephesus, he told her, I have something against you, you have suffered for the Gospel, you have rejected those who come to preach a false Gospel, but I have something against you, that you have lost your first love.

And that happens in the Christian life, that's why it's like cars that have to be tuned up every six months or 8 months because otherwise all the parts loosen up. And that's how churches are, with use, over time, gossip, the fights that occur, the mistakes of the leaders, the inertia of life, coexistence, familiarity, what happens? The churches are losing their energy and the fire of the gift of God that is in them must be rekindled.

That has to be done continuously. For many of us it is not the problem that we do not have the gift, the problem is that we do not keep it alive. And my desire through these meditations is to call each other back, to return to that consciousness. We are a Pentecostal church, we are not denominational Pentecostals, we are Pentecostals in spirit, we are Pentecostals because of our spiritual and biblical convictions, our theology, that is what matters.

And as you live that life, burning in the spirit, diligent in the Lord, God is going to do something in you. And my desire through these meditations is precisely that, that we learn, to invigorate those who are lukewarm more, those who are cold to gain a temperature, those who are hot to stay there.

I was speaking to the congregation this morning, and some of you have heard the story of how we went from being just an evangelical Baptist church to being more of a Holy Spirit-filled church.

I knew about the spirit, my mother was a Pentecostal woman without the name of Pentecostal, but my mother was a fiery woman in the spirit, accustomed to the supernaturality of the Christian life. I grew up with his example. And when I was a young teenager I went to various places looking for the filling of the Holy Spirit and I always thought that I had not received it because I did not fall to the ground, I did not lose consciousness, I did not end up dancing on one foot, I did not shout, I did not prophesy, Nothing outrageous or extraordinary was happening to me and I went to Brooklyn, New York for a while, I went to various churches supposedly where the Holy Spirit was, seeking that fullness. And then I left it like that and then I entered the university, many years of being away from the Lord in a certain way, and then I came back.

The Lord did a revival work in my life when I was doing my doctorate and when I was starting this church, in the year 82, and one day I found myself in the South End where the church had started, we were about 3 months old, just before for the service to begin, it was a very small church at the time, we were just getting started. And I had searched and I was experiencing a revival in my spiritual life, that's why I was in that church cleansing me and healing me from many junk and many things. And I was wanting more of the Lord in my life.

And I found myself there alone before the service began, because at that time I was working, taking a year off college, and was in Lawrence working as a social worker, before going back again to reintegrate myself into my studies. And I was there and I said, wow, I've been looking for the filling of the Holy Spirit all this time and I promised myself that I would not leave... I knelt down and that I was not going to stop there until I knew that I had the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit.

I prayed to the Lord and again here is the important thing, I can tell you that I did not feel any kind of spectacular or extraordinary sensation or strange in any way. I am a very thinking, lucid person and I am not very given to emotional outbursts. I believe that the Lord works according to each of our systems and in his way and in his time. The thing was, I opened my mouth, because again I believe these matters what you believe, and I have always believed that tongues are part of the experience but not the only and inevitable sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. .

But I opened my mouth and began to verbalize a language that I had never used before and it was a fluid, developed, complete language and I decided that I was never going to go anywhere again to ask God to initiate, because there are fillings of the Holy Spirit but I said, I believe today that I have been baptized in the Holy Ghost. Now I may have been baptized that first time I was in Brooklyn, in those churches, but I didn't know it, I hadn't received it that way, because I thought it had to be this way or that way.

I tell people, to receive the Holy Spirit, don't get burdened with this idea that you have to fall to the ground, cry, drool, you have to roll your eyes, you have to come out with an extraordinary voice, no, I don't know put so much mess in your head. Receive the Holy Spirit, believe it, appropriate it, and then the Lord will take you in due time and in your place to that exalted, emotional, extraordinary, spectacular experience that you are looking for.

But the first thing you have to do is own, actively receive the infilling of spirit into your life and settle that, put a stamp of full reception on it, and then continue from then on seeking that more powerful, fuller manifestation, because your life is going. to be a continuous search for the filling of the Holy Spirit. And there are going to be different moments that God is going to fill him again, again and he is going to visit him again.

After that initial experience I have had very powerful experiences in the Holy Spirit, even emotional ones, but at that moment what God wanted was for me to shake his hand and seal that pact with him. And God began to do many things, he continued to do great things in my life, moves of the spirit were unleashed in my life. And look here 30 years later serving this congregation, the same congregation where I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit or affirmed.

And so it happened to us when we were in Cambridge too. After a visit to an African-American church in California, one Sunday when I was in training for people who work in prisons, I was volunteering at an agency that works with prison mates, a very large agency that works with prisoners in different parts of the world, and I had gone to a training in San Francisco, California, and one Sunday they took us to an African-American church that is a church filled with the Holy Spirit. They took us there so that we could see what the spirituality of a good part of the people who are in those prisons was, unfortunately, the African-American community has a way of worshiping and praising the Lord and many of those wayward people are in those prisons. It's long to explain and I don't want to confuse you too much.

But the fact is that they wanted to see how African Americans worship the Lord and how those congregations like this, because many of those who were part of my company did not know that dimension. It was more like normal, typical evangelicals. And I went to that service, a blessed, spirit-filled, prosperous, great church, and I believe that God did something there in my life, touched me in some way. That was after I had the experience here too. But I had not shared that experience with the congregation that I already pastored.

That was that morning, Sunday, I had that experience. At night a pastor friend invited me to another small church, a church that was starting in a home and when I got there expecting an experience similar to the one in the morning, very vital, very animated, the pastor began to say that he was resigning. to the group and began to talk about his discouragement, how discouraged he felt, that he did not know if God had truly called him to the ministry, and he did not really know if that church was part of what God wanted, a very discouraging, discouraging confession .

And I felt that the Lord was telling me something at that moment, because I was just beginning in the ministry at that time, I was about 3 years younger, that God had called me to the ministry in that church, in Central Baptist Church, today called Lion of Judah. And while I was listening to this brother, it was as if God said to me, look, I have presented you with 2 pastoral and ministry models today, one where the filling of the Holy Spirit is sought, where the worship of God is glorified, where there is ease in the spirit. Another, as that congregation was, was not a congregation that was looking for at all, it was a rather general, basic congregation. And choose which of the 2 you want as your model for the pastorate. Of course, I said, Lord, I want that vitality, I want that strength, I want that power.

When I returned to Cambridge after that trip I began to share with the congregation and I told them, "Brothers, I feel that God has spoken to me." I believe that in fact in that service with that Afro-American congregation, God touched my body, my spirit and awakened me even more.

Because I tell you that these are fillings, they are different times and what had happened here in the South End at the [Inaudible] Health Center that I received the Holy Spirit there in an active way, but I had never put it into practice, Because that church and the pastor who founded it, a great man of God, I remember his memory with great respect, but his style of pastoring was not Pentecostal at all, he was very Baptist. And then as I had grown spiritually with his model I had incorporated that rather into the church and we had continued his precedent.

But it had not brought the church to a level of greater involvement in the Holy Spirit. When I returned from California with that word that I felt that God gave me, I came determined to initiate our church in the search for the filling of the Holy Spirit and I also told them, "Brothers, I believe that God has spoken to me, God He is calling us to start searching for the spirit.”

And I started talking to them about it. I had no experience in the Pentecostal movement, I knew almost nothing about what a Pentecostal church was. It had no precedent and frankly the Pentecostal churches that were in the city did not interest me as a model for different reasons. So I had no mentors really. Our search was an exploratory search and we had to reinvent the world in the light of the Holy Spirit.

And then I started babbling like a child and the first thing that occurred to me, what do Pentecostals do? They have an electric piano and they use drums and a bass, so we go buy ourselves a bass and a drum and a keyboard, and we begin to sing the choruses of Marcos Witt and all those worship and praise singers. That was how we started.

I began to tell the brothers to start being Pentecostals, to move as Pentecostals. We began to stoke the service. Of course, that unleashed a very strong resistance in a group of people who did not want that for different reasons. The cream of the cream did not like that little bit of syrup that we were adding to the juice. And then another one was unleashed – that one day I am going to speak to you about that, what happens in the separation of essences, when the Holy Spirit begins to speak and move.

But we started like this, we began to add different music and I launched myself in the name of the Lord because in reality I did not know, brothers, how Pentecostal life is done at the congregational level. But one dares, it is that one must dare, one must begin to walk in the spirit. What God wants is a move, an action that launches you.

There are so many things that I do in my pastoral life that I assure you fill me with terror when I start them, because sometimes they are serious things and they are very public and one does them and says, Lord, if I look bad I will look bad before a large congregation, before many people. But I have never let fear dominate my actions and my decisions in the ministry.

I have asked myself, Lord, is it according to your will, am I obeying your call? Am I doing it with the right motivations? is it biblical? And if I feel that the Lord tells me, yes, yes, yes, I launch myself and start walking in the name of the Lord, believing that God will give me the direction, the path itself and that he will not let me be ashamed.

Many of the decisions we have made, you have seen, over the years it is like that, it is simply out of obedience to what I believe is a call from the Lord and to a God that I believe does not leave us if we obey his voice . And so I started this Pentecostal journey of the church in the year 89 more or less. I started not knowing what I was getting myself into.

And the interesting thing is that as I began to activate, to fan the fire of the gift of God that was already in me, because that is the thing. I believe that if it had started in 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, at that time God's move would have begun, but God had to wait until I was ready to throw myself into the waters. And when I told the church, this is the time, we are going to begin, God began to activate his power, I began to fan the fire of the gift of God, it was already in me, and that spirit began to awaken and move and manifest itself. . People filled with the Holy Spirit began to come to our church, who knew the move of the Holy Spirit and began to talk to me and sometimes irritate me with their suggestions as well.

But I've learned that I don't let myself go… even if it irritates me, if it's from God I'm going to receive it and I'm going to listen. And God began to bring people who had experience with the Holy Spirit, he began to bring musicians, because all the musicians had left us in that separation that occurred, we ran out of music in the church. A tremendous choir that we had left us, the musicians who played the different instruments left us and I was left with a pianist who only knew how to play by lyrics. And God also began to bring people into music. Some of them are still here, brother Gonzalo and others like him, they began to come. God brought the deposit. I think Delmi came at that time.

Others were activated like Fanny, sister Carolina León came part of that time. God began to strengthen this poor young man who was just babbling and needed help. Because when something happens in the body that requires reinforcement and when we are doing things for the Lord, then God begins to send the resources.

Do you know where God does not send resources? Where people are not doing anything. But if one is beginning to seek God, God begins to bless you and give you what you need. Spirit warriors began to come to help me and hold my arms. Musicians began to come, the gifts of the Holy Spirit also began to manifest, demonstrations, liberations, demonizations, people baptized in the Holy Spirit, people who fell regardless of the fact that no one laid their hands on them during a time of intercession and adoration. God began to raise the spiritual temperature of the congregation, he began to give me a Pentecostal vocabulary, helping me to preach in another way as well.

I felt that God promoted me and raised me in my ministerial status. That dream came with the Lion of Judah that brought us here, to Boston, I had that revelation that totally changed our identity and our location and a number of things. It was after that time. God began a process of training us for years and that process is still ongoing. Because it is what I tell you, that the filling of the Holy Spirit is not yes or no, it is gradual, it is progressive and there are many fillings that God wants to bring into our lives.

The fact is that when I publicly declared that we were going to be a Pentecostal church, that we were going to exist in a Pentecostal modality, that we were going to cultivate the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Lord said, "I'm going to take you seriously, son, and I will provide you with all the resources you need to make it so.” I have never regretted that statement, brothers. On the contrary, I tremble to think that because of the arduousness of that task and its magnitude and its unpredictable nature, I could have said, "No, this is too big, I don't want to get into it, I'm going to leave it there."

We were still maybe a scared little bunch of people on that corner of Cambridge Port. Because it is that when you begin to declare things, and that is what I say to you, my brothers, if you want to move in the power of the Holy Spirit you have to decide, you have to have a crisis, a moment of crisis in your life. , when you say, no, I want to live my life in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the gifts are for me, they are for today, they are for the church, and that God has a purpose in my life, God wants to use me and I am going to start living that Pentecostal life, that life of service, that life of surrender, that life of taking risks, that life of hearing from God, that life of sanctifying the experiences that God gives me and believing that they come from him and beginning to move in the power of the Holy Spirit.

That is the difference. The difference is not between those who have and those who have not, the difference is in those who do something with what they have and those who simply leave it there. The parable of the unfaithful servant, the Bible says that a man when he was going on a trip gave each of his servants, his employees, a portion of money, which is equivalent to the endowment of the spirit, and told them, negotiate meanwhile that I return He gave each one money, a capital, and he left and when he returned he called them to account and said, okay, now report to me what you did with the gift I gave you.

And that will happen one day in heaven. The Bible says that one day we are going to have to appear before the court of Christ, not the court to determine if we are saved or not, but it is a court to know what we did with what God gave us. What are you doing with the gift of God in your life? Are you doing as Paul told Timothy, fanning the fire of the gift of God that is in you?

Because the gift that God has given you is not a gift of cowardice, it is not a gift of being conservative, it is not a gift of just giving the Lord the tip of your finger, giving him the wing to keep you with the breast. No, it is to give you everything, a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, to give you everything, to put everything on the table of sacrifice. Everything, everything.

How many of us can say, I have given everything to the Lord in my life. And many cannot say it, I want to challenge you this afternoon. If you cannot say no, there is no dishonor in it, but admit it and then say, I am now going to give everything to the Lord. From now on I am not going to live as a part-time Christian, no, I am going to live as a full-time Christian, a total dedication of my life to the Lord. All my gifts.

Because one day the Lord is going to call you to account. That is something that often does not dawn on us in our minds. When you die there will be a moment when you will have to appear before the evaluator of lives and they will ask you, not if you knew Christ because you already knew him, but they will ask you what you did with what that I gave you, and some are going to enter heaven but they are going to be ashamed. That kind of doesn't... because we think that when we enter heaven the whole world is going to be...

It is this primitive idea that we have of eternal life as that it is a life of a single color and that there are no variants, there is no work, there are no achievements, there is no differentiation, we are all going to have the same band and the same harp to play. On a cloud. That is a hoax, that is a lie from the devil. Eternal life is going to be a life of great activity, differentiation, levels of glory, tasks, things that can still be achieved without the poison of sin and the fall that is granted by working in something bad and suffering. But there is going to be work, there is going to be differentiation, there are going to be different levels of glory, there are going to be different awards that we are going to receive, there are going to be different levels of authority and power. Some will be given authority for one thing and others for another.

That authority will depend on what you do here with the gift that God has given you. The thing is not if you have a gift, the gift you have, what are you doing with the gift? I advise you to revive the gift of God that is in you because God has not given us a spirit of cowardice but of power, love and self-control. God has given you. God has not called you to live from plate to mouth, conservatively, giving God the minimum. God has given you power, authority, love, control of your passions, control of yourself, a lucid mind, a thinking, clear mind. That is the spirit that you have received. Do not waste it.

The parable of Christ ends in this way. The Lord gathers all his servants and puts them in front and goes to each one of them, what did you do with your gift? Lord, I multiplied it to you, here you have it surrendered 10 times more than what you gave me. The other one, Lord, here you go, 5 times more. To each he says the same thing, well done. He doesn't say to the one who gave the gift 10 times and to the one who gave the gift 5 times, oh, how good you gave it 10 times and the other… No, they did something with the gift, they multiplied it. Even the one who does less tells him, it's good, well done. But there is one of those servants who is the fourth or fifth who says, Lord, I was afraid with the gift that you gave me, because I was afraid that the gift would be lost, that I would invest it in something that would not bear fruit. and that for the moment I lose everything you gave me and I know that you are a man who does not play with anyone, you cut off anyone's head.

By the way, this is Christ, this passive Christ, who loves everything and allows everything and accepts everything, is not the Christ that I see in scripture, nor the Christ who comes to judge the living and the dead. And he tells him, I was afraid because I know that you don't marry anyone, you have to take yourself seriously and I was afraid that if I wasted the gift and didn't give up and lose it, you were going to cut my head off, like this that here is your gift, and he opens a sweaty handkerchief with a bow and says, here is your gift.

Look, he didn't steal it, he didn't steal the gift, he didn't waste it, he didn't throw it away, he didn't do anything with it, that was the problem. He did nothing with the gift, he kept it, he retained it and the Lord of the parable is indignant with this man, and says to him, bad servant, I judge you by your own word, why even if it were not you put it in the bank so that took 2% interest, and says, throw it into the eternal fire. That is very complicated there, theologically. But the fact is that the idea is that you have received something in your life, that gift of the Holy Spirit is for you to use it, it is for you to give it up, it is for you to cultivate it and then God can use you for his kingdom.

Do not return to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords your gift intact. Intact, do you know what that means? untouched, intact. God wants your gift to be well used. Give your gift to the Lord but inverted, squeezed, squeezed out of all its content and all its benefits. Fan the fire of the gift of God that is in your life. The Holy Spirit is in you, don't waste it. Use it.

This week I am going to be speaking more and more about that filling of the spirit and we are going to have times to look for that anointing and to impart that filling of the spirit. I would ask you to prepare yourself in these next few days, pray to the Lord so that he will take us. As a congregation we are going to ask the Holy Spirit that in these days of speaking about his word, he clears the air above us and that he removes all resistance and all inertia that there is and that he cleans the air so that there is a visitation of the spirit in the lives of all who desire that filling of the Holy Spirit.

We are going to take time to pray, impart, anoint and ask for a visitation from God in your lives. I wish that all of us who are here in one way or another enter into that filling of the Holy Spirit, that this transforms our life as a congregation. Amen. Can you say amen to that?

We'll be on it. I am preparing. If you can pray, fast these days so that the Lord does something in our church because I want to make the most of this time. I have meditated on these sermons a lot and I have been preparing and fearing them in a sense as well, even if you don't believe it. Please join me in praying that the Lord will do something extraordinary among us.

Because the snake we are already getting close to the head and we need something new and fresh. I have been preaching these things for years and years. Last night I had the opportunity to do something, to visit some emails from the past and I was reading and watching some sermons that I preached years ago and the truth is that these are the things that I have been preaching for years and years, because those are the things that captivate me in my Christian life, in my ministry.

I know that the Lord has been there waiting for his moment, his time, and I don't know how much longer until we reach the head of the serpent itself, but I know that we are close and we need to seek more, sanctify ourselves more. I am asking the Lord to resolve this. I ask the Lord, Father, everything that is not of you that is in this church, and I say it here with fear and trembling to the Lord right now, anything that grieves his holy spirit, anything that is an obstacle to the manifestation of the power of God in this church, I ask the Lord to take it away, whatever it is. Hopefully it will be with mercy and grace but if it has to be with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, Lord, your will be done.

All impurity, everything that is not of God in the name of Jesus, Father, cut off its head and remove it with a strong hand and outstretched arm if necessary, Father, but remove it from this church. Bring it out, Lord, in the name of Jesus, we say it with fear and trembling, Father, with fear and trembling, Lord.

Clean it up. Clean what is not of you, Lord, what is not of you, any behavior, father, any habit, anything that grieves your holy spirit, Lord, take it away in Jesus name. Oh Lord take him out of our life. Leave this place clean, Father, leave it clean, Lord, we need a visitation from your spirit, Lord, at this time. Purify us, Lord, sanctify us. We want your glory to manifest in this place, Father, we want your glory to manifest in this place, Lord. And we want the danger of your spirit to be felt in this place, Lord. Let the fear of God run in this congregation. Oh Lord, I understand the seriousness of this prayer, Father, and I ask you to do it, oh God. Have mercy on us, Father, but we need you, we need you Holy Spirit, we need you to visit us. Have mercy on us, Father. Bring to light every hidden thing, Lord, every Babylonian mantle, Father, every gold ingot that should not be in the land of your temple, Father, bring it to light.

Lord, we beg you, Father, in your mercy work, Holy Spirit. Don't let us wander in the desert anymore, Lord Jesus. Work in this congregation, Father, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus clarify what needs to be clarified, Lord. Bring to light everything, everything that does not suit you, Father.