Sanctification precedes wonders

Let's go to the word of the Lord in the book of Joshua. I want to go to chapter 7. I was thinking about this path that the Lord has taken us through in terms of meditating on the word these last few Sundays, beginning with December 31. And by way of summary, I want you to have the thread of the different topics that we have been dealing with these days so that you can see the connection with what I am going to focus on today.

A few weeks ago we had that first message that, as I was saying, was not sought, it was not planned. The Lord simply put that thought in my mind because you have never been on this path before, you have never been on this path, and from there came this meditation about the Lord taking us to another area, another land, another dimension rather than it was about to open up before us and it is a path, a zone, a dimension where we have never been before.

I don't know what exactly that means, but what is clear is that it is something new, it is something different, it is something unfamiliar, a land, as he told Abraham, go to a land that I will show you. And the Lord stopped me in that idea of a path, a new, unusual dimension where God was taking us and that we must have that expectation of something new that is unleashed, that is unleashed, a different anointing, a deeper entry into the call that God has had for us as a church.

The following Sunday I completed that thought with the idea that we see in the book of Joshua, in the previous chapters, that since we are going on a path different from anything that we have walked before, then we have to follow the ark, because the ark is the one that guides us in that unexplored land where God leads us. And that is why in that same chapter 3 God tells the people that when they see the ark of the covenant, they should get up, that ark that is carried by the priests and the Levites, and follow it so that they may know, in verse 4:

“…so that you may know the way by which you have to go, since you have never passed that way before.”

So the idea that God put in my heart as part of a thought that has been developing in my spirit is that idea that if we are going to enter a path not explored before, totally out of the familiar, we have to let ourselves be guided by the ark. We have to be open to the specific direction of the Lord, we have to be open to illuminations and thoughts and unexplored things.

I believe that this is a time for the Lion of Judah congregation in which we let ourselves... learn, brothers, to flow in the spirit so that if God puts something new in the service or if God calls us on a different path than we are wide open to what God wants. This is a time to be flexible, brothers. This is a time to be attentive to what God says, to be attentive to subtle changes in the worship program and to let go and not be so tense because the tension…

I've heard out there, you correct me, that when women are too tense they don't stop, when women relax they can give birth. And I have heard of women, we have met, I remember for example, in Maine, a family that she had already been told that she could not give birth. They spent years wanting to be pregnant, they couldn't conceive and then they finally decided, desperate to adopt an Asian girl, in fact, and after she adopted that girl she began to give birth and I think she had two or three more later. Because? Because he relaxed.

And it seems that yes, that doctors say that when a woman is very anxious and very tense to give birth, paradoxically the more she tries the less she stops. But when she relaxes, she will have said, well, I already have my daughter, that's good, and then the blessing came.

And I've heard, I see a lot of you nodding like I'm talking about something that… I'm not making this up. And I believe that many times to give birth to the presence of God, the gifts of God, the blessing of God in a congregation, you have to relax. The more tense we are about the program and the more tense we are about everything going perfectly right, the more control we want to exert, sometimes the less blessing there is.

And it is not that we are disorganized, it is not that we are undisciplined, it is that I believe that if we are a people that allows itself to be guided by the spirit, then we have to wait for the spirit to guide us. And we have to relax.

Like for example this morning here, for the moment I was thinking… because this morning it was Gregory who led the sacrament, okay, we do it before the announcements, after the announcements, that this and that. And look how easy things are resolved, because I left it in the spirit and it's a blessing.

Again, it is not that we are going to be messy, I believe in order, I believe in planning, but I have also learned through the years that you have to let yourself be guided by the Lord. So this is the first message of the day. But what I wanted to tell you is, when a people wants to be led by the Holy Spirit, then they have to pay attention to where the ark goes, if the ark goes here, if it goes there. How do you see that GPS? You go to a place you don't know, you are always looking at what it is telling you, the street where you are going, if it is to the right or to the left, how many miles there are, how many feet before turning, when did the last announcement come that you have to turn and when the next one came, already when it is there in the corner. You know what I mean.

Likewise, one has to listen to the voice of God and God wants a people that allows themselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, a people that prays, a people that wakes up every morning saying, okay, Father, what are the instructions for today? what do you have for me? Not simply that we go automatically. Well, I already prayed 3 weeks ago, so that anointing has to carry me forward. How many times do you eat? That is where we are not very spiritual, right? 3, 6 times a day, but when the time comes to nourish oneself spiritually, we believe that 2 weeks ago that I ate is fine.

A people directed by the Holy Spirit is a people that is attentive to the voice of God and that allows itself to be guided by the ark of God, the presence of God at every moment of our lives. That is why it is a people that the more we want to be directed by God, the more we will have to depend on prayer, the assiduous reading of the word of God, our ears attentive to the Lord, keeping an attentive ear.

That nice sermon that brother Isaías preached, which in fact is outside because he has the flu, and if he is listening to us we bless him. We send a word of blessing and healing to our brother Isaías. But that sermon that he preached when Eli tells him, lie down again and be attentive to the voice of God and when he speaks to you tell him, here is the servant of the Lord. I'm listening to what you want to tell me.

So, that ark... the second sermon I preached was about that, and I think that's important to us as a church. These are times, brothers, listen to this, so that the Lion of Judah congregation is attentive to the voice of God, times of silence, times of stillness, times of waiting in the Lord and that we go to bed asking the Lord, Father, give me dreams spiritual, give me a vision of what you want from my life. Guide me in a detailed way and according to what the people of God expect so it will be.

If you wait for a God who is going to speak to you, God is going to speak to you. If you are attentive to the voice of God you will hear from God and you will receive instructions from the Lord. So, we talked about the ark that the people had to be looking at because that ark was the one that was going to guide them through that unknown land that they were now going to enter. And that was the second part, the second piece of armor that God instructed me.

After that, we meditated on a third sermon where we saw that when they enter the promised land that they have to undertake that first spiritual challenge, in front of them is the first very powerful city that they had to defeat in order to continue their trajectory and their further entry. deep into the promised land and there is Jericho, closed, well closed, immense walls, a battle-hardened people, closed inside, ready to hold out for as long as it takes. They have to get in there and God gives them a crazy strategy.

And instead of telling him, look, go attack the walls and set up scaffolding and things to break those walls and enter, etc., he tells them, the only thing I want you to do, six days once around the walls, every day once, very quiet, while the priests just move and blow the shofar. On the seventh day, turn 7 times in silence, be quiet, and when the priests blow the shofar on the seventh turn, you shout and that shout was a symbol of praise, a symbol of affirmation of God's power. Our bodily movements channel spiritual energy. The symbolic movements of God, the amens, the Hallelujahs!, the raising of hands, the standing postures, kneeling, coming forward during worship, declaring the glory of God in a place. Our physical actions, a Pentecostal people, a people that flows in the spirit, believes in the power of the physical movements of the body to channel the power of God. Amen.

So, God tells you, shout, and when you shout the walls are going to come down. And then go straight ahead and do what you have to do. And then I was talking about the importance of believing in God's strategies and using counter-intuitive procedures, procedures that seem crazy but come from God and therefore, even if they seem strange, give results.

The idea that we have to be a people with a supernatural mentality, a people who are not afraid to use the tools that God has placed in our hands, prayer, crying out, symbolic acts like that act of spilling oil in the belief that God has power, fasting, holiness, all these things that are part of the tools of a people who believe in the power of God. When we are down with a problem and the walls of our life are closed, closed tight; there is a disoriented son and like the prodigal son he has left and there is no recourse; a closed marriage; economy, health, work, documentation situations, immigration, closed walls tightly closed, we have to use the tools of the spirit, we have to use the armor of God, we have to use the prescriptions that are in the word of God.

Our weapons are not carnal, says the Apostle Paul, but powerful in God for the destruction of strongholds. They are not the weapons that man normally uses and many times God is the one who gives us the strategy and we have to follow God's strategies. And that is very important that if we want to tear down those walls of Jericho, we arm ourselves with the way of thinking of a man, a woman, filled with the Holy Spirit.

And by the way I tell you, that from there comes the importance of knowing the word of God in depth. Because? And I say this to many new brothers in the congregation, people who have recently known the Lord, people who are just beginning in the ways of God, brothers who need to go deeper into the territory of faith and spirit than the The way in which you are going to understand how to use the armors and what are the armors to which you have access, is by knowing the word, because in the word is where the precedents that you can use are.

Brothers, I tell you all now, let us be saturated with the word of the Lord. God speaks to me, one of the most urgent and numerous ways in which God speaks to me is through the word activating a verse, activating an image, activating a thought because I have known that word since I was a child and that word is the one that forms the foundations of many of the things, not only that I preach but the way in which I live my life, the way in which I tackle challenges and problems and what happens when you read the word that word goes formatting your mind and goes changing the way you think and solve life's challenges. And then when there are situations in your life that immediately come a precedent from the word of the Lord, a verse, an event, a character, a theme, a chapter and that is activated. God then has material to use to give direction to your life. That is very important.

So, Jericho teaches us that when we enter the land that God is going to give us, when we undertake the great events of life and the challenges that await us in this search for our inheritance and our possession, we have to use the weapons of the spirit. , not the weapons of reason, not the weapons of common sense, not the human weapons that have no power, but the weapons of the spirit, the weapons of light that are often very different.

The fourth thing that we saw last Sunday, which the Lord also deposited, was the fact that when the Hebrews enter the promised land and begin to eat the bread of the new earth, the manna ceases. When they enter into their full destiny, into their maturity, when they enter into the culmination of that for which God has had them leading from Abraham through the patriarchs, through Joseph, through their centuries in Egypt, through After 40 years in the desert, at the moment they finally arrive where God wanted to bring them, to the promised land, and when they enter that promised land after having crossed the Jordan and begin to eat the fruits that are in that land , and they already enter into the use of what God had destined for them, the substitutes are no longer necessary, the manna, the clothes that they had that did not age, the guides of the cloud and the column of fire, even the tabernacle was something provisional that I did not mention to you last Sunday. But that mobile tabernacle was a hold until the firm temple came. And God gave them a temporary provision of this immense tent, it was something that was assembled and disassembled while they were in the desert, but when they entered the land and the true temple...

And you know what? That temple was still that temple, it was a simulation of the temple up there and other things. So, God is leading us in our life, in our experience through different stages in our existences. Some things he provides for a while, they are generous provisions from the Lord while the real thing comes. And I was saying that God enters us and is entering his church in general, we prophesy times are coming in which we will see that everything the church has enjoyed up to now is manna. And God has something even greater for us. Amen.

There is one more blessing. And I invite you, my brothers, to live anxiously for that time. Don't settle where you are, let's not settle for the blessing received, let's continue hungry for something more that God has for us. And according to our appetite so will be the blessing of God. According to what you expect and desire from the Lord and long for and cry out for, to receive from God so will be the blessing. Let us be a people hungry for more. It is very important.

So that's an important part. Now I want to put the last piece of this framework, I think, and it is this idea that is found in the 7th chapter of Joshua. And it is a frankly heavy topic, but I do not want it to be a negative topic for my brothers, but rather a healthy and paternal call to all of us, including me, to be sober in the Lord, to be cautious and careful, and to have a tender conscience. before the Lord in regard to sin, in regard to those things that are an interruptive element in God's blessing. Because this message... I could not finish this series without working on this and you will see why if I limited myself only to promises of blessing and triumph and provision and good things that God has for us and omitted this part, I would be making a injustice to the full character of the word of the Lord.

Because you see in this process of conquest of the land that God has for the Hebrews, there are great triumphs. That triumph of Jericho was something extraordinary, but there comes a time when something happens, which is what chapter 7 relates to. And I say this, brothers, for the following reason, that if we are going to enter into a time of conquest and of opposing the enemy, of taking weapons from the enemy in an extraordinary way, we have to wait for a counterattack and then we have to make sure that our ark in the sense of Noah's ark is caulked. Do you know what is caulked? That it is covered everywhere so that water does not get in. That idea that when Noah made the ark he smeared it with something impregnable because that ark was going to be in the water for a long time and if he let the water get in, all that framework, all that work was for nothing. And likewise, our spirituality has to be covered and protected, because if we are going to attack the enemy and despoil him, as the Hebrews did, we have to make sure, brothers. And I believe that one message carries the other.

In chapter 7, I'm not going to read it, you can read it. If they can put chapter 7 in the projection. God gives the Israelites a great victory, they defeat Jericho. Something powerful, an incredibly strong and warlike nation collapses before God's provision in favor of the Hebrews. And then when that task is finished, the destruction of Jericho, God tells them, go in, destroy everything that is in that city so that you do not take anything home with you, because everything that is inside there is cursed, it is anathema.

In other words, the word anathema, some of you have heard it and sometimes we don't know exactly. The word anathema, eren, in Hebrew is a very complex word because it refers to two things, one, it is everything that is consecrated to the Lord for his service. Sometimes we think that it is only negative because in the New Testament it is used in a negative way almost always, but the idea in the Old Testament is two things, number 1, something that is consecrated for the Lord and for the service of the Lord. For example, temple utensils could be anathema in the Old Testament sense, that is, they were consecrated exclusively for the use of worship.

But the second use of that word is something that is set apart and consecrated for destruction and also in a God-like sense. it is something that God reserves for himself and that he says, separate this to be destroyed and to be annihilated. Then God tells them, everything that is in that city and the terrible thing about it that includes men, women, children, cows, everything, everything that is within that city is anathema, it is reserved, set apart for destruction. And there is a personal interest of mine in that this is the case.

And that is where this unity comes from, this union of anathema as something that is consecrated to the Lord and something that can also be for destruction but in a sense is also consecrated to the Lord, but for destruction. And God derives special satisfaction from that being destroyed. It is also a sacrifice before God but with a negative connotation.

Then God tells the Hebrews, when you enter, everything that is in there is polluted, it is impure, it brings displeasure, it is an abomination for me and therefore destroy everything and nothing is left, just leave the metal things and some other things that are reserved, and reserve them for the sanctuary. You see there that strange mixture of consecration for God and consecration for destruction as well.

And he gives them specific prescriptions about the only thing that can remain. Everything else in a sense is contaminated. So, time passes, they destroy Jericho and then they find a second city called Ai, a very appropriate name because they said, oh, after they got in there.

The city of Hai is a tiny, insignificant city, compared to Jericho that is a hamlet, as we say. And it should not represent any effort for the Hebrews who have just destroyed a gifted city like Jericho. Joshua sends out a few spies and they come back with a self-assured report. Brother, beware of overconfidence. When God blesses you and God prospers you, be careful, it is when you should most exercise humility and simplicity of heart before God and ask God to have mercy on your life. Overconfidence is carelessness, when blessings come it is one of the greatest dangers. I have seen so many people prosper in the ways of God when they enter and consecrate themselves to the Lord, and then they kind of grow up and believe that they are better or that they know more than even the pastors or whatever, and one sees the decline. You have to be very careful. Humility is the greatest protection over us.

The Hebrews go to this city, the spies tell Joshua, look, Joshua, don't worry the people, send yourself 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers and in two hours we're going to eat bread and butter. So don't worry, the rest of you stay there listening to the radio or whatever. and what happens? When they reach Ai, woe happens to them. The inhabitants of the city counterattack them, kill 36 Jews and everyone runs out with their legs, why do I have you? And then Joshua panics and says, Lord, and he goes somewhere and cries before God, Lord, you have brought us to this city, to this nation, to this land to destroy us. You have promised us and now look what happens to us, blaming God. And the Lord says, hey, why are you yelling like that? Stand up, I'll tell you what's going on.

And here comes something very interesting and that is that without Joshua or Israel's intelligence services knowing it, a man named Achan when they destroyed Jericho disobeyed God's strict instructions and reserved for himself part of that property that God had said, that property is cursed, that property is polluted, that property is an abomination in my sight. Do not bring her into the camp of Israel. And Achan could not resist, he saw a precious cloth, a Babylonian mantle, he saw some silver coins, he saw a gold ingot, he was carried away by greed, and he did not have the courage and the will to say, that is a curse, and he took it and he took it quietly, he thought no one had seen him. He put it under his tent, buried it, I imagine he put a chair or a table on top and thought, out of sight, out of mind, if I don't see it, it's not there. And he reserved it there in the bank to take it out again one day. What he didn't know was that God was watching what he had done.

That is something, brothers, that should terrify all of us, that God is always watching our actions. And that act of bringing the anathema into the territory of the Lord brings a curse to all the people. And it's interesting that when the Lord speaks to Joshua, look how he says in verse 11:

"Israel has sinned," it is not Achan, an insignificant man and member of the tribe of Israel, but minimal, his family... but it is not the man or the individual that has contaminated, it is the act, it is the object, it is the curse that God has declared. That must not enter my town. And then he says, “Israel has sinned, they have broken my covenant that I commanded them, they have taken from the cursed thing and they have even stolen, they have lied and they have even kept it among their belongings.”

I am afraid of the idea that it is not Achan but that the entire town is contaminated by Achan's action. And then he says, "For this reason the children of Israel will not be able to face their enemies but will turn their backs before their enemies because they have become accursed."

In other words, what Achan does as he enters this object that God hates and that is spiritually polluted and that has been set aside for destruction, and that is like wholly associated with God's holiness, with his character…. Because these nations have been driven from the earth and consigned to total destruction for their utter perversion. For centuries God had given them an opportunity to repent and God says in the Bible in a passage that he had waited until the cup of his wrath was filled by these nations.

Because God is a mysteriously generous God. And when it got to the point where he felt he had the right, in a sense, to exterminate them and expel them from the land, it was only at that moment that he allowed the Hebrews to come and made the decision to expel them and give them that land. to the people of God.

And then these people with their idolatry, their worship of demons, their sexual perversions, their persistent sinning before God, their continually offending God, had become an abomination before the Lord and everything they owned was abominable in His eyes. of God and God told Israel then, if you really want to succeed in your business you have to completely disassociate yourself from that past. Erase and new account. They have to get all that filth out. Achan by not doing that, I say, like he brought into Israel a biological bomb. It's like every plague in the world can always be traced to a person, a contaminated animal or whatever, and from there it spreads by contagion and by association and multiplies and its roots spread throughout the world. sometimes.

There are plagues that spread throughout the world and have destroyed millions of people. Achan in a sense enters a totally contaminated object into the heart of Israel and there the blessing is cut off. So when the Hebrews, without knowing what is happening, enter this war against this insignificant little group, I think they realize something and perhaps God allows that so that they understand that they are not the ones carrying out the victory, what is God Because if they can't take on a tiny town like this, definitely what happened in Jericho was God who did it.

When they do not have the power of God, the presence of God, the favor of God, towards them, not even with a minimal city like Ai, they can succeed. And then God tells Joshua, this is the problem. And that is why, brothers, this calls us, me and each one of you at this time when we are yearning and desiring and visualizing great things that God is going to do in our midst, we have to understand something, and it is that what happens here in Joshua occurs in the context of spiritual warfare, it occurs in the context of spirits that have to be evicted and that are going to look for any excuse and any loophole to bring accusation before the people of God, and to reduce our effectiveness in spiritual warfare.

Some time ago you will remember, I told you about a snake that I saw and I know that this will have caused a little intrigue to many of you, and that snake was in the basement of our house because I know that I have been, my family, we have been in spiritual warfare and there are spiritual powers... Do not be too scared, you know brother, I see this as something very natural in the sense that Satan seeks to destroy the servants of God and sometimes there are spiritual battles that occur to prevent people and congregations with whom God has great purposes from entering their destiny and their inheritance.

So, I have known through many years that there is a spiritual war in the air regarding the call of God for this church and for my life, and that these things are very powerful and that we are in a spiritual war and that those powers then, they will look for ways to counterattack, to weaken us and to lead us to prevent God's destiny from being fulfilled in our lives. And I saw in that snake, that I was getting closer to her head, but she was asleep, calm, simply exerting influence and doing the work that she does. But I knew that I was getting closer to his head and that God had already clearly determined the moment to cut off his head and destroy it completely. It was a green, muscular, dense snake like, I would say looking at it like that in my mind, as I saw it in the dream, a diameter of about 18 inches thick and full of muscles that to cut its body with a sword you had to… it was like a tree trunk rather.

But that doesn't shock me. I tell you, brothers, it does not scare me because I have walked with that understanding of spiritual warfare and the struggle that I have and that this congregation has to enter into God's destiny. As these Israelite tribes had to fight with demonic powers, these tribes were consecrated to Satan and were fighting against all odds to protect their lives, their families, their finances, their culture, and they were not going to give up space lightly.

If you give me a little more time, I am going to tell you about a dream that my brother Sergio Pérez had and that yesterday he had called me at my house to tell me, "Pastor, I had a dream and I want to share it with you because I think it has to be do with New England in general.”

We were talking a long time about all this. Sergio tells me that he was with some brothers, some pastors that we also know and they got out of the car where they were, near the place where they have their church. Before they had their main offices there, and he says, I'm shortening it, when he got out of the car, he got out first, and put his foot on the ground, he realized that he was not stepping on earth but that he was stepping on the skin of a snake that he had just shed his skin.

Imagine, he was below and he suddenly puts his foot on the snake and also realizes that it is not earth but a snake. And then he says that he was not afraid, but he realized that the snake was very long, very thick and that it could easily take their cart and tie it up. It was like a boa constrictor. He says that he realized that in the brush that was in front of him the snake was looking at him and was aware of him, was watching him.

What's going on? You see Satan when he moves... many times there is contamination in the cities, there is contamination in the regions, there is contamination in our lives, the devil does not have to be throwing stones at you, or throwing darts or spears at you, he is happy simply to contaminate and infect your life.

When I saw that years ago... I had that dream of poisonous spiders that are simply symbolic expressions of evil over the city of Boston with the size of airplanes, they were calm, they simply settled like a cloud over the city's skyscrapers. They weren't doing anything, I wasn't throwing anything away. They just hung like a cloud of influence over the city of Boston. And all they did was simply by being there, it was contaminating, infecting. Now I also saw, as I have told you, above that, in the firmament, that lion face that I understood to be the Lion of Judah who also looked over that scene and exerted influence with his gaze and I said to that lion 3 times, you You are the Lord, you are the Lord, you are the Lord, opposing the influence of those demonic presences, opposing that influence, the influence of God, of the Holy Spirit. Because in the spirit world you don't have to struggle so much. The spirits simply exercise their authority that they have.

I know, and through the years I have understood, there is a struggle and you also have that struggle. Perhaps I have it in a different way, the Lion of Judah congregation has it in a different way, but in your life there are also powers, there are spiritual struggles, there are tribes, so to speak, demonic in spirit that want to prevent your entry into the blessing that God has for you and your life. God has a future for you, God has a future for your family, for your marriage, for your health, for your finances, for your children, your generations. And there are powers that will try to prevent you from entering into the blessing that God has, the destiny that God has for you. And you're going to have to plunder those powers.

The devil is not going to allow the blessing to come into your life unless it is through a spiritual fight, a struggle. The devil is not going to allow the church of Jesus Christ to come out of Egypt and worship God like the Hebrews did outside of Egypt unless it is through a fight like there was with the 10 plagues. Because these are symbols, symbols of what is in the spiritual world. Every great victory, every great success, every great feat in the spirit world has to be preceded by a great conflagration, a great fight, a great conflict so that God may be glorified.

And many of us are in that fight, God wants you to break the ties that are in your life, that generations of dysfunctions in your life, of poverty, madness, incest, alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce, ignorance, family conflicts, divisions, all this is defeated but there is an enemy who is at the door wanting to prevent.

We are always in spiritual warfare, brothers. And I think that part of this sermon, what I want is to take off the blindfold, to take away our innocence, because I believe that many of us live the spiritual life like little rabbits in a jungle without knowing that there are beasts that want to devour us. And so we go jumping around, through the jungle, happy, and we don't know that there's a snake waiting, ready to grab you and destroy you.

And it is not that we live in paranoia, brothers, God does not want us to live in fear, but God wants us to live alert. There is a difference between living with paranoia and fear and living on alert. Yes or no? does not say the word of the Lord, "be sober and watchful because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

That's in the New Testament, not the old. Because sometimes we think that in the new one we don't have to worry about those things. And the Apostle Paul also says, "because our struggle is not against flesh and blood." In other words, the nature of the believer's struggle, of the believer's daily life, the drama that you and I experience, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, in other words, it is not against society, it is not against culture. , it is not against the emotional problems we have, it is not against our father who abused me or it is not against the sin that I committed and that now besieges me and keeps me tied up, it is not against the disease, it is not against my lack of immigration documents, it is not against this oppressive culture that steals my money, it is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, says the word, against hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

We have to understand that parallel to this world of time and space that we inhabit, we are also inside another spiritual world, another tremendously serious world, another world where the risks are greater than we can think, where there are powers sworn against of our well-being, our progress, our blessing, our health, the progress of our family, and we have to be aware of that and walk soberly, walk carefully, take nothing for granted, keep short accounts with God.

If we offend the Lord, what do we have to do? Go immediately and settle accounts with the Lord, denounce ourselves. Put safety ropes around us, ask the Lord as David says, search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there is a wicked path in me and guide me on the eternal path.

Why did David say that in Psalm 51? He had just sinned terribly and God had denounced and punished him terribly and David says, Lord, I don't want that to happen again. Create in me, O God, a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me. Don't cast me before you, don't take your holy spirit from me.

Brothers, the call of this word so strong for all of us is that the times of childhood are ending for this church. The antics of adolescence are already ending. And as we enter the maturity of the promised land, the promises are great, but the price of disobedience is also great. And the spirit of God is telling the newest of this church, starting with me at the head, and going out to all of us, brethren, to examine our ways and to walk soberly before God because we have an enemy that will not forgive any excess, any getaway that we want to do.

And it is a call from the Lord. Jesus Christ has said in his word, "whoever wants to plunder the house of a powerful man must first tie him up and then plunder him." Much of the church has wanted to enter the house of the devil where these souls are here in this city. This is a Jericho, Boston is Jericho. Its walls are walls of intellectualism, walls of culture, walls of technology, walls of intellectual elegance, walls made up of great universities, great medical centers, a lot of elegant history, walls of great culture, world-class symphonies, world-class museums, a Athens, one of the most developed nations on earth, a city of influence and its walls are closed, well closed and one wonders how we are going to penetrate this impenetrable wall of a city like this?

How are we going to loot those inside? We have to receive a strategy from God, we have to receive revelation from the Lord, and we have to bind that strong man because that strong man is going to fight back. The image of… Sergio consulted me and shared this with me and it coincides with everything I have been telling you.

Chuck Pierce, this prophet of the Lord who came here recently, was talking about a huge serpent that is standing at the gates of this great influential city that is Boston. And that this snake has to be defeated. Michael, the archangel, has to come and make war against those powers so that the destiny of God's people can be released because there are areas of influence through which those doors, through which the King of Glory will enter, are currently tied and impeded by those supernatural powers. .

So, Sergio told me, I have understood that this dream is not only something local or for me, but that it is something of a regional nature. And I shared my dream and the dreams that I have had through many decades of this opposition that exists, which endures the blessing of the people of God, such as the blessing of entering the promised land. He endured that the Hebrews could enter his inheritance.

And that blessing, brothers, that God has for your life right now I individualize and personalize this word for each one of you who are here, for me too. And I ask you in the name of the Lord to do a healthy study, not in a compulsive and fearful way, because this is not to fill you with fear, this is to free you, rather, because we have such a merciful and kind God that the word says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive them.

But what God wants is for the insistent sin, the systemic sin, the repetitive sin, the offense against God in our lives, brothers, to cease and for our hearts to be made very tender with respect to what God expects of us. Because one man could stop the blessing of God for an entire nation because he violated the will of God specifically invested in that this anathema not enter his people.

And many things in our life that prevent God's blessing from entering, and we wonder why it is that my life, like I don't give a ball, I'm always crying out and I build blessing structures and they fall down and I don't prosper spiritually . I am struggling with the same things all the time. And brothers, many times it is because there is an anathema buried.

Again, beloved brothers, the blessing is this, that it is so easy to take that out and give it to the Lord, we confess our sins, we ask the Holy Spirit to examine us, we take time to reflect, we make a vow of purity before God or of honesty. The businessman who is cheating says: now, Father, I confess, I am going to put my life in order. The person who is putting love above God says, no, Father, I am going to follow your commandments, I am going to order my life. The person who is so involved and so invested in his career, going ahead and neglecting the affairs of God says, Father, I am going to consecrate myself, I am going to put you first in my life. The person careless in the things of the Gospel says, Lord, I am going to take my consecration to you more seriously.

What God wants, brothers, is that we look under our tent and ask ourselves how am I influencing my own life and the lives of the beings I love in my position of authority or influence? And how can I correct this in my life? And that we do a healthy analysis.

Because what I see here is this, simply that... that's why this is here, because if we are approaching an unprecedented time, we have to seal that part and that's why I couldn't honestly finish this series of messages without putting that piece in the puzzle, a call to sanctification, the consecration of our lives to the Lord as a people.

And Meche told me this morning, and I feel that it's something that I don't know how we're going to do in this time of me leaving for a while, but she told me, "Look, Roberto, perhaps what we have to do is react to the sermon this morning in English, maybe we will as a church find a moment to have… like a consecration of the people of God, and we will think about it and we will pray about it.”

So that as a people we can come before the Lord and have a moment of holy reconsideration. Don't you think that makes sense in the spirit? And I want to commission all of you, brothers, to all of you who are here, and even to those who are not here, to those who were in the morning service alike, that we conceive a holy purpose right now individually, those who come From time to time, those who are new, those who are more consecrated, all those who are here, I want to invite them when that call is given...

Listen to me, I am committing myself to something very serious, let's see how we do it in this time. When you hear that call, you commit to come, let's fill this house and have a holy convocation of recognition before God. God told Joshua, before entering the promised land, "Tell the people to sanctify yourselves because tomorrow I will do wonders among you."

Sanctification preceded wonders. And that is why God called them to be circumcised because they had not been circumcised, they had not settled those accounts with the Lord. In a sense they were still unclean. And then God called you, get circumcised, settle accounts with me, celebrate Easter for the first time in 40 years and then you can enter the promised land and enter the destiny that I have for you.

Because I know that as a church we have been a church for 35 years, how many things have we done to offend the Lord in that time. We have done beautiful, precious things, and glory to God, and we are free in the Lord, this is not for us to throw dirt on our heads and leave here all depressed. God has used us in great ways. God has blessed us in great ways. God has prospered us and has allowed us to be of great influence and progress for the Kingdom of God, but with every use there is sweat, every machine that works produces waste and produces impurities and the nuts have to be adjusted and there has to be a cleaning of the system and all that stuff.

And I believe that in this time of 30 or so years of work as a church and of suffering, suffering, victories and falls, there must be a time of reconsideration before God and that we come before the Lord and say, Father, we give you thank you for all the beautiful things that you have done in our life, but we also want to admit that we have failed you and offended you and we want to settle accounts with you and put ourselves before your presence again and receive fresh anointing for the future. Amen.

And we come here... I need us to celebrate, brothers, an Easter before God, that we prepare our hearts and our lives as a congregation for what we will call a holy convocation, a time to humble ourselves before God and ask for forgiveness because we have offended him and to seek his face. To say, Lord, here we are, we want to be used by you, we want to do great things, we want to do feats, we want thousands of lives to be converted and we need you to pour your oil and your holy water on us so that we can enter free to serve you as you want to.

Because God wants both things, he wants good wishes, good intentions, but he also wants holiness from us. And that's why he told Joshua, look, go, determine where he is. God knew where the anathema was, he puts them through a process and they get to Achan and Achan confesses, he says, yes, I have sinned against God, I did this, I did that and terrible things happen.

Thank God that we are in the grace of the Lord, because Achan did not have that privilege and he and his entire family were destroyed. Don't ask me how that's justified, God did it, God dictated it, but…until that essential tumor was removed, Israel couldn't enjoy God's defense and blessing and power and endowment.

So, brothers, right now where you want to lower your head, or if you want to stand up, perhaps you have not given your life to the Lord Jesus Christ yet, well I encourage you right now, do not play with the Lord. We have a God who is pure love but is also a consuming fire and he wants a people who can present themselves before his presence in a proper way and who manage his ark according to the instructions he gives.

So, my brothers, I invite you right now to conceive in your heart a holy purpose of surrender to the Lord and humiliation before God. If you have not received Christ as your Lord and want to do it from there, then I invite you to come here, if you have not, if you want to re-consecrate your life, this is a moment of healthy surrender to the Lord. God's people are before God.

We have the divine X-ray going through this place and God is speaking to us and calling us to a holy consecration in our lives as a church. Let us humble ourselves before the Lord and make that holy purpose of walking the way God wants us to walk. The times of adolescence have passed and the times of maturity and responsibility before the Lord are coming.

God tells us, no more milk. He wants meat, he wants solid food for our lives in Jesus name. Father, we confess our failures before you, we confess our sins before you, Lord.

If they allow me, I am going to impose myself on our brothers because there is a choir that says, teach me your way, Lord. And I want us to sing that chorus as a request, a prayer before God, because this morning we sang a chorus that was very beautiful but did not respond to the theme of this sermon.

What we are asking the Lord is to search our hearts and reprove us, purify us, humble ourselves before the Lord, as I am doing right now before you, presenting my request before God so that he can do his work in my life.

We want to offer the Lord a clean, pure congregation before him. We will never be perfect but we can be tender in our desire for holiness. And yes, we can be very picky and careful in asking the Lord to do his work in our lives.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus we reconsecrate ourselves to you, we give ourselves to you, we acknowledge that before you, Father, we cannot stand except by your grace and your mercy and we receive this call, Lord, from you to a life that honors you, a life that pleases you, Father. We refuse to give Satan entrance and give him the right to accuse us, give the enemy any type of hold, any type of reason or excuse to harm our family, our church, and this afternoon, Lord, we choose to consecrate ourselves before You, the re consecrate ourselves, Lord and recognize our need for your healing, Lord.

Deal with us and take us to that place, Lord, where you want to take us. Purify us and if there is something in us that is not in accordance with your will, Lord, remove it from us and reconfigure us according to your desire and your requirements. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. Amen.