The Attitude of Triumph – Part 2

There are actually several passages, but I want to isolate one, let’s say, that may be useful as a starting point for the subject I want to discuss with you. We could choose a great many passages, brothers and sisters, but look, let’s go to Deuteronomy 28, because perhaps it is one that I will not have an opportunity to discuss, but at least I want to plant in your hearts the promise found in this passage, which serves as our starting point. Because we are talking about the elements of a successful life. What are the elements of success?

And I have also called this series of sermons, which I began last Sunday, “the attitude of success,” because as I prepare these topics, I realize more and more that if you do not have the right attitude, the right predisposition, the right mindset, then anything—any suggestion I give you, any principle I share with you—will fall on infertile soil. If your soil is packed down and hard, the seed will bounce off the ground. Your soil must be prepared and broken up so that it can receive the nourishment of the Word of God, and that soil is your attitude. That soil is your disposition, and if I do not prepare your disposition, your attitude, your mindset, then everything else I say will not succeed. Success begins here, in the mind, the will, and the disposition of the human being. And God wants to change our minds, and He wants to change our attitude.

That is why the Word is full of references and examples—“case studies,” as they say in universities that train people in business administration. The Bible is simply a collection of particular cases that illustrate universal truths.

So there in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, for example, the Jewish people, the people of Israel, are ready to leave the wilderness, where they have been for 40 years, and enter the Promised Land, where God wants them to dwell permanently. And that is something important for us to understand even before we begin reading. God may keep you for a time in a place of drought, need, scarcity, barrenness, and testing, but God’s ultimate destination for your life is the place of abundance and success. Amen.

Seasons of testing may come into your life. Times of scarcity and crisis may come, but you must always tell yourself, ‘All right, perhaps I am here for a while as I learn some things, but my God will bring me out and set my feet upon a rock,’ as the Word of the Lord says; He will make my steps straight and put a new song in my mouth. The time of testing is simply, for me, a time of training—that is all. But God is going to bring you out of the wilderness and place you in the Promised Land.

So here we see the Lord speaking to Israel before bringing them into the Promised Land. The Lord wants, precisely, to instruct them on how they should conduct themselves in that new land to which He is calling them, what promises He has for them, and what kind of life they should expect in that new land, as long as they remain obedient to the Word and the principles of God. Because I am not here to give you easy answers for success. Many people go to inspirational and self-improvement seminars looking for quick recipes and magic formulas for success, and there is no such thing. It is an entire system made up of different truths that complement one another. And one of them is obedience to the principles of the Lord.

For example, if you want to succeed financially, you must be financially faithful to God. That is a truth. If you want God to prosper you, you must be generous toward God. That is a great truth. And I speak to you out of personal conviction because I have seen it so many times in my own life, and many of you can say amen based on your own experience of what I am telling you. If there is no obedience to the Word of God in other areas as well, you will not be blessed either. So we must understand these principles.

So, before bringing the people in, the Lord told them, ‘Look, I want to bless you. I want to lay down the rules for you, as people say. I am going to tell you your responsibilities and your privileges as well.’ And chapter 28 is a beautiful passage that teaches you, my brother, my sister, what you have the right to expect from God, what you have the right to expect once you have entered the Promised Land of the Gospel. When you enter into Christ, you enter a Promised Land of possibilities, success, victory in trials, growth, and personal development. To me, that is what makes me fall most deeply in love with the Gospel: the Gospel is not for slaves, as the philosopher Nietzsche said; it is not for defeated people. It is for heroes, for warriors, for ambitious people, because God calls us to victory and abundance.

So here it says—look at what Deuteronomy 28 says: “And it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe and put into practice all His commandments which I command you today.”

You see, there is the precondition: diligently obeying the voice of the LORD. That means listening attentively to what He is telling you to do, to His principles and His truths, and being reverent toward the truth God gives you. Many people come to church with their heads in the clouds, thinking about the movie they are going to watch tonight, or the food they are going to eat tonight, or which restaurant they are going to visit after they leave the service, while the poor pastor is up there working himself to the bone, trying to encourage the people, and they are off somewhere thinking about other things. So the Word does not penetrate their hearts as it should. They are not blessed because they do not receive it with an attitude of faith. Do you understand? Never take the Word of the Lord lightly; always believe it, receive it with faith, and say amen in your spirit.

It says, “...if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe and put it into practice”—because one must obey and practice it—then it says, “the LORD your God will also set you high above all the nations of the earth.”

Brothers and sisters, that is your inheritance. That is the bill of rights you possess. Those are the expectations you have the right to harbor in your spirit for your children, for yourself, and for your future. That is what Lion of Judah, as a collective community, has the right to expect regarding the future, and that is what I, as your pastor, am already declaring over you, and I am seeing it, and we will continue to see it in the years ahead. If Christ does not come, and I reach the age of 80 and am still with you, I will see transformed people: a prosperous community, far beyond anything we ever imagined, because that is what the Lord has called us to.

It says, “The LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come upon you.”

How beautiful that is! ...they shall come upon you; that is, it is as though they will fall on top of you like a sack of potatoes and hit you on the head as you walk down the street. I like what the psalmist also says: ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.’ It is as though they are going to chase me all the days of my life. The hound of God’s grace will track me wherever I go in order to bless me.

Then it says, “These blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.”

There are people who, look, would not receive a blessing from God even if someone hit them over the head with a bat, because they do not believe that God can bless them. It says the blessings will overtake you even if you do not want them to. I believe that a child of God, even if he does not want to be, will be blessed through God’s mercy. He will be more blessed if he wants it and applies himself, but being blessed, being prospered, is the natural state of a child of God.

“...they shall overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God.”

Look, here begins one of the greatest blessings in all of Scripture. This is one of my signature passages, one of my favorites. Underline it, frame it, use four different colors for the lettering, but remember it, because this is very important.

It says, “...Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your livestock, the offspring of your cattle, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.” Glory to the Lord.

Today it would say: blessed shall be your computer; blessed shall be the refrigerator you have in your home; blessed shall be the stove on which you cook your food; blessed shall be the car in which you go out and come back into your city and the home where you live. Blessed shall be your apartment, filled with mercy and grace, with the presence of God. Blessed shall be your children when they go to public school. They will hear the truth and receive it; they will be an example to others. Blessed shall be your marriage; blessed shall you be in your studies and in your profession. That is what the Word of the Lord is saying in modern terms.

“The LORD will defeat your enemies who rise against you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways,” says the Lord. The LORD will command His blessing upon your checkbook, your barns, and everything to which you set your hand; everything you undertake, the Lord will prosper. That is the promise of the Lord, and God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent, says the Word of the Lord.

What He promised His people under an imperfect covenant, how much more will He give us now under a perfect covenant, which is Christ Jesus.

“And He will bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you. The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the name of the LORD is called upon you, and they shall fear you, says the Lord. And the LORD will make you abound in goods, in the fruit of your womb, in the offspring of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. And the LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to send rain upon your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands.” May the Lord bless His holy Word.

I could continue reading, but I am going to leave it there. This, I would say, is the Magna Carta of the children of God; it is God’s testament for your life. It is what God wants to give you; it is the framework for all your undertakings and all your efforts. This week I was speaking with a brother from our congregation who ventured into the real estate business, and the truth is that when I saw him launch out, I feared for his life, because I thought to myself, ‘Mmmm, I don’t know whether it will go well for him.’ But do you know what? I have already learned not to trample on the dreams of God’s children, but to respect them and say, ‘Well, may the Lord be with you. Launch out in the name of the Lord.’ And this week I asked him, “How is it going?” He has been at it for about a year now, and, brothers and sisters, he could hardly contain himself as he spoke about the blessing he had received, and about how God has blessed and prospered him. I believe we can do those things.

I launched into this sermon prematurely. There is a sister who shared with me something God has done in her life recently, as well as what God has done through her life. I told her, ‘Look, you are going to have five or seven minutes to testify about how God has blessed you.’ She is a young woman I have known for years; she is a psychologist, Maribel Quiñónez. Maribel, are you there? Come quickly if you are there. And Maribel is a young woman who loves the Lord and works serving young people and Hispanics here in the community, and I told her, ‘Maribel, take a moment and share what God has done in your life. Because these are illustrations: what He has done in Maribel’s life, He can also do in your life. Do you understand? That is the key, so go ahead.

God bless you, brothers and sisters. I want to make a correction: I am not a psychologist; I trained to be a therapist. I do not want... I do not want to take such credit. Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you that I am the product of a promise God made to my mother. My mother grew up and was raised in Spiritism in Puerto Rico. Her mother was a Spiritist, and her ten siblings were raised that way. My mother says that when she was working in a factory in New York 50 years ago, as she was returning from work at the factory, living in Harlem near 110th Street, she heard a voice say to her, “I want you here,” and she looked around and did not see anyone; it was already nighttime. “I want you here; stop here,” and she thought, perhaps it is those spirits of the dead calling me, and she looked, but there was no one there. And for the third time she heard, “I want you here,” and she looked to the side, and what she saw was a church, Bethel Church, and she went in frightened because she had never entered a church before, and no one was there except an usher. And she sat in the back, and the usher said to her, “Sister, sit there; we will begin the preaching shortly, and the brothers and sisters will come.” My mother says that she does not even know how it happened, but when she opened her eyes after the preaching, she opened her eyes and was at the altar speaking in tongues, and the Spirit took hold of her and promised her that her whole family would be saved. Today, only one of her sisters practices Spiritism; nine have been saved, and her 102-year-old father accepted Christ before he died, as did her mother. My mother married at an advanced age and thought she would not be able to have children, but then she was told that she was pregnant with her first child. She asked Christ to give her a daughter, and she pleaded with Him and said, “God, I promise You that if You give me a daughter, she will be raised in the way of God, and I will always speak to her about God.” And here I am, brothers and sisters. Here I am. And I thank my Christ for my mother, because He promised her that He would save her and her household.

At the age of 13, I was in Puerto Rico and was very sick; I had an asthma attack every day. I lost too much weight. My mother and my father took me to doctors, and they did not know what to do with me. In fact, her sisters, who were not saved at that time, said to her, “Give her to us; we are going to take her to New York and bring her to a Spiritist center,” and my mother answered them, “I would rather my daughter die than go to a Spiritist center.” And do you know what? She hurried off and said to my father, “I am leaving with her and my other boys to see what Christ is going to do with her here in Massachusetts.” And she moved to the suburbs of Massachusetts, the suburbs of Boston. Brothers and sisters, I am standing here. When the doctors in Puerto Rico told her, “Give her everything”—right in front of me they told her, “Give her everything; she is not going to survive much longer”—here I am, standing, brothers and sisters, and God has taken away my asthma. Only from time to time do I become short of breath, but I do not have the asthma attacks that led the teachers to tell my mother, “Withdraw her, because she cannot continue here.” And, brothers and sisters, at the age of 14, because my parents were poor, I joined a program called CETA, which no longer exists but helped children find jobs as teenagers, and I began to tithe at the age of 14. I do not think I gave even five dollars every two weeks, brothers and sisters. That was my tithe. And with my little envelope, I happily wrote down my tithe because my mother taught me to tithe and give offerings. Ever since we were children, she would give each one of us a quarter and say, “Put that in the plate because you have to give thanks to God.”

You know, at the age of 17, I was in the program because I did not know much English... second language. My teacher, who was Jewish, saw something in me that I did not know I had, and she said to me, “You have to go to college—to a private college.” I said to her, “I do not have any money. My family does not have any money.” So she went to my parents’ home and told them, “This girl has a great deal of talent, and she deserves to attend a private school,” and my mother told her, “Well, I can work two shifts so that she can attend a state university,” but by then my teacher had planted in me the idea of attending a private school. And I said, “My God, how will it happen?”

My teacher told me where to apply, and I took the five college applications and filled them out. And what did I do? While I was at church, I placed them right here on the altar, cried over them, and said, “God, You will tell me where I have to go. My teacher says that I should attend a private school, so You will decide, Lord.”

And I had gone to my high school counselor and told him that my teacher had said I should go and apply to Boston College. Do you know what the counselor answered me? “Boston College? No Puerto Ricans go there.” That is what he told me, brothers and sisters. Be careful when you have counselors like these who do not support your children because we are a minority. Well, do you know what? I will never forget that I had to give a presentation in my high school class, and the topic was to speak about your best friend. Well, brothers and sisters, young people, I was never afraid to speak about Christ. My topic was Christ, and I spoke about Him in class. And do you know what? The teacher was astonished. He never—I swear—thought that I was going to speak about Christ. But I had a classmate in that class who seemed to be involved with drugs and deeply troubled. I always prayed for him. I was just a girl, and he would sketch and make drawings of the devil; everything was dark. He dressed in black. And when he heard about Christ, after I finished my talk and sat down, he said to me, “You know, no one has ever told me about such a Lord called Christ. You did a good job.” Who knows where he might be today? But, brothers and sisters, let me tell you that in the spring of that year, I received a letter from the universities. I received a letter saying that Boston College had accepted me with a full scholarship; I did not even know where Boston College was. I did not know where Boston College was, but I thank my Christ because He promised me. I was obedient; I gave my tithe, I gave my offering, and my mother made a promise to Christ; God made to Christ the promise concerning His daughter.

And let me tell you that afterward I began working on my master’s degree. Once again, God gave me a scholarship with very little in loans, and while I was working on my master’s degree, a professor said to me, “Maribel, I have received news that President Bush—the father—has a program through the Defense Department so that students can learn other languages and have the opportunity to go to other countries, and I want—I choose you—to write a proposal if you want to go somewhere else.” And I said, “My God, I do not know how to do this. I am competing with students from Harvard University.” So the teacher said, “Do not worry; I am going to find someone to help you write it as though it were a grant proposal.”

Well, I knew nothing about money. So this person helped me calculate—excuse me—calculate the amount of money I needed, and at the time I was also a nanny in a home, and the girl in the house said to me, “And if they accept you so that you can go to the place you are writing about, what would you do?” I said, “That would be a blessing from God”; that is what I told the girl. But I prayed to God, and you know that God sent me to the place I wrote the proposal about. I wanted to study minority ethnic groups in China, and God sent me to China for a year. And I thank my Christ. Because the world saw someone like me, who comes from the housing projects, from hardworking parents who did not have enough money but wanted their children, when they came to this country, to study and get ahead, to learn about the world and have homes of their own—and that is what God has given me and my family.

And let me tell you, not only that: I also studied at Yale University, and this was another scholarship through which I did my master’s course, when the wife of another teacher said to me, “Do you think you are going to be accepted there?” And I told her, “Of course I am.” As soon as I finished talking with her, I went to pray to Christ because my faith is great—very great. Since I was a child, my mother would read Psalm 21 to me. Since I was a child, before going to bed we had to pray and read a psalm, and she would read Psalm 91 to me: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge and my fortress; in Him will I trust.”

I ask you: In whom do you trust? Because the promises are there, waiting for you to pray and have faith, because Christ has much in store for us. A year and a half ago, I asked for something I had wanted since I was a child, because my mother would always say, “Maribel, you have to be an independent woman, not depend on men, and be self-sufficient,” and she would say, “You have to own a house.” She told me that ever since I was a child. And a year and a half ago, I prayed. It was January; I was praying and fasting, and I began to fast and pray and ask Christ to give me a house because it had always been my dream, because my mother planted the seed there. And do you know what, brothers and sisters? Through the Boston program, through a lottery, I won a house—a new house—and that is where I live today, in Boston. And I give thanks and glory to my Christ.

I think we could very well—and yet it is something I am not going to do—end the service, because we have already delivered a good word from the Lord. There is the makings of a preacher in you, Maribel—definitely a great deal of good material.

That is what it is about, brothers and sisters: believing God and believing God for our children and for our community. Who said that the Hispanic community has to be a dysfunctional community, or the African American community, or the Latino community in general? We have so many cultural treasures and so much beauty within us that we ought to be reigning over this nation. But Christ unleashes—sets free—the potential of human beings, just as He did in Maribel’s mother, who was enslaved by Satan for so many years. But when Christ comes in, He changes everything.

I stand here beside Maribel, and I can say the same thing about my family’s life and my own life—how God has unleashed His grace in so many ways. God places us in the positions of kings, brothers and sisters, and the poorer we are, the more God delights in placing us in high places. That is the reality. Thank you, Maribel; you have blessed us greatly, and I did not know what we had in this woman. I want to ask you to commit to the twelve o’clock service, if possible. If you have something unavoidable, then we understand, but I would love for you to begin trying out your preacher’s wings. Thank you. Amen.

That is the beautiful thing. That is why I live in love with the Gospel, and that is why I serve the Lord. Because the Gospel is something atomic: when you receive it, you enter a new dimension, and there is nothing more beautiful than helping people enter that dimension of the divine. What could be more noble than helping to break the chains from people’s minds and placing them within the love of God! There is no nobler profession than that, I would say. And that is why I serve the Lord.

And that is what you must understand when you enter the ways of the Lord: you enter a land of promise, a land of possibilities, where the Lord says to you, “Look, this is what I have for you. These are the things; these are the rights to which you have access. Now, work for them, and I will bless you and give them to you. Do your part, and I will certainly do Mine.”

I began last Sunday by saying that the most important element is this: expanding and enlarging our mental territory. If you want to live a successful life, you have to expand your capacity to believe that great blessings can come into your life. If your territory is small, God will only be able to place small things there. If your expectation is small, God will only be able to give you small things. But if your expectation is great and ambitious, God will be able to place greater things in your life. In keeping with what you envision and expect, so will be the blessing you receive. Amen.

If you expect little things, God will give you little things. If you aspire to great things in the Lord, if you are not content merely to go—and glory to God for state schools; they are tremendous, and if you attend a state school, do not be ashamed of it—but God gave Maribel a measure of faith that told her, “Look, you do not have to attend only a state school. You have what it takes to attend a prestigious private school,” and God blessed her with that.

Someone reminded me of a passage about which I preached and have preached many times. It is the passage about King Jehoshaphat and Elisha, when Elisha, on his deathbed, calls him to come and have one final conversation with the prophet. Because that is another thing: when God blesses the church, the church summons kings, and kings have to come to it. Elisha summoned the king to come to his bedside and said to him, “King, take the arrows that are on the floor, take your bow, and stand at the window facing Syria, Israel’s worst enemy.” It was always pursuing and mistreating Israel. And first he said to him, “Take it,” and then Elisha spoke a word: “The arrow of Jehovah’s deliverance,” and he shot it in this symbolic way. Then he said, “Take the arrows in your hand and strike the ground with them.” And Jehoshaphat, who was a man of mediocre faith, if you look at his life, took the arrows in his hand and struck the ground three times. And Elisha, there on his deathbed, became angry with the king and said to him, “You do not know what you have done. You have lost the opportunity. If you had struck the ground four or five times, God would have destroyed Syria until no one remained. But because you struck only three times, you will defeat it only three times, but you will not destroy it completely.”

Do you see, brother? This man’s faith was only enough for him to enter into God’s purpose minimally, but if he had been a daring man, if he had been a David, he would have smashed those arrows against the floor, striking it with them, and would have completely wiped them out. God wants to bless us, but He blesses us according to the measure of our capacity to believe God.

And it is incredibly revealing that, according to your capacity to believe, God may want to bless you with much more, but if your faith to believe God only reaches a certain level, God is going to bless you accordingly; and how great God’s blessing and abundance will be in your life is in your hands, under your control.

There are many people here whom God would already like to have in the places of kings, but their capacity to believe God is not enough for them to dare to undertake great things—to be bold, determined, and enterprising. So God has blessed them at the level of their capacity to believe, to broaden their minds to other levels.

I ask you in the name of Jesus: enlarge the place of your tent, as we were saying last Sunday. Open up the plot of land in your mind so that the house God places there will be a mansion instead of merely a little shack. How sad that there are people missing out on immense blessings because they do not have the capacity to enlarge their capacity to believe the Lord!

So I was saying that the first rule of success begins with conceiving great dreams for the Lord and in the Lord. Believe great things concerning your children and expect great things concerning your marriage. Expect great things concerning yourself. Expect great things in the future concerning your finances.

I tell you, brothers and sisters, I cannot wait for the next 10, 15, or 20 years to see what God will have done in my life. Because I live enamored of that God who said, ‘I am going to bless you every day of your life.’ And for me, life is a beautiful box of surprises, and every day I open new things. And I expect great things from my God because I have spent so many years seeing great things that I have learned always to expect great things from the Lord. So expand your capacity to believe God. That is, for me, one of the most important rules of success.

And the second one that I want to share with you, very briefly, is a sister to the first; it is what is called a corollary in the field of philosophy. That is, it is a sister branch of the first and might seem almost the same, but it is not the same; it is a distillation, something subtler than the first thing I just said. So subtle that last Sunday, when I was about to begin the sermon, in fact, in my original notes, I had put the two together and was going to present them that way. But at the very moment I opened my mouth, I realized that they were two different things, so I decided to separate them for the purpose of learning. Therefore, the second law of success is to believe that God is with you and on your side.

The first is to believe that God can bless you beyond your present position, but the second is to believe that God is with you and on your side in everything you undertake; at every moment of your life, God is with you. And He is there to help you; that is why Christ called the Holy Spirit the Paraclete. The prefix ‘para’ means ‘beside’ in the original Greek. The Holy Spirit is always beside you and is your helper, your coach, your encourager, your trainer, your supporter, your provider. The Lord is always beside you, saying, ‘Wherever you go, I will go with you. And if anyone fights with you, they will have to deal with Me. If anyone speaks ill of you, they will have to speak with Me. And as for your enemies, I will take care of them. Don’t worry. I will deal with them in such a way that one day you will ask yourself, “Where are they?” and you will not even be able to find them.’ That is what the word of the Lord says in Isaiah.

So, brothers and sisters, what often enables me to undertake bold things which I myself, in my carnal mind, sometimes think I am going to fail at, is that law in my spirit that God is my helper. God is my support. God is with me, and God supplies what I do not have. God fills the deficit in my life; God supports me. When I undertake something greater than my strength, I always say, ‘I have a God who can cover the deficit. I have a God who, at the end of the day, even though my account is in the red, says, “Do not worry; sleep peacefully, because I have settled it.”’ That is the God in whom I have believed.

And I have now learned that I cannot dwell on whether I am afraid, whether I doubt what I am doing, or whether it looks as if I am going to crack my head open in the abyss. I say, ‘My God is with me, and He will know how to get me out of this mess that I have gotten into in His name and for His glory.’ That enables me to undertake things that frighten me when I look at them. That enables me to dare to do things which, to my human mind, I cannot see how they could possibly happen.

I can tell you, brothers and sisters, that I have not lost a battle in the name and for the glory of the Lord; and if I have lost anything, God has always restored it to me in other ways. Because when you undertake things in the name and for the glory of the Lord, God always gets you out of trouble. And if you make some mistake along the way, God fixes it for you because your heart will be like David’s, which loves the Lord; but God says, ‘Do not worry. You got yourself into trouble, but I am going to get you out of it because you are with Me.’ That is very important.

And I see that throughout all of Scripture: you have to talk to yourself and continually give yourself therapy, telling yourself, ‘God is with me. God is on my side.’ I believe that one of the passages that most beautifully and eloquently expresses this truth is the famous and well-known Psalm 23. We all know it by heart:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing. He will make me rest in a place of tender pastures. Beside still waters He will shepherd me. He will restore my soul. He will guide me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake—and look at what it says—and though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”—why?—“because You will be with me.”

Do you see? God is with me. ........... to see those tables before me in the presence of those who distress me.

David is possessed by an overwhelming sense of the continual presence of his God, and he views it from the perspective of a defenseless little sheep that is confident because its strong and loyal shepherd is always shepherding it. And that, brothers and sisters, was David’s kind of mindset: he was a man who undertook everything saying, ‘The Lord and I are the majority.’ Everything David undertook, he undertook with his God beside him.

I ask the Lord to set our minds free to believe that God is with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the kitchen while you prepare food for your family, God is with you; while you wash the dishes, while you make your children’s beds, while you go to the factory in ten-below-zero cold, with a wind that bites your cheeks. While you feel alone and separated from your family in Central America, South America, or wherever they may be, God is with you. The same God who was with you there is with you here. And if they take you there, He will also be with you there, because the whole earth is God’s territory, and His arms are not shortened—neither here, nor in Guatemala, nor anywhere else. Wherever you are, the Lord is present in your life.

God—the Lord Jesus Christ—said, ‘Behold, I am with you every day until the end of the world.’ When you believe that God is on your side, that He fights your battles, and that He supports you at all times, that should give you the courage to undertake bold things in your life, to submit an application to a university that seems unlikely to accept you.

I shared with you what a great blessing it was for me to receive those 630,000 dollars to train Hispanic pastors, when I never thought they would give us that money—never in my life. But I did it in obedience to my God because God is with me. God supports His children’s projects.

Just now, many of you were there at Tremont Temple on Friday, and you saw what a blessing that was. Brothers and sisters, I was there, and as I watched those people arriving, arriving, and arriving from all over this area—there were about 40 or 50 pastors from different churches there—when the pastors were asked to come forward; when I saw those white Americans eager to receive from the Lord, and I saw a group of Latinos ministering to them through praise, and saw those people’s spirit of receptiveness, love, and surrender, I repented of my lack of faith the day before, because that very morning I myself had said that the evening was going to be a great blessing.

As I have undertaken this effort to unite the churches in Massachusetts to work on behalf of Christ and the Gospel, brothers and sisters, I tell you, my heart is full of doubts and fear. The more I explore the dangers and divisions among God’s people, the less certain this undertaking seems. It is the most ambitious and public thing I have undertaken in my life, and I continually live with the fear that it will dissipate into nothing. But do you know what I do? I put one foot in front of the other and believe that my God, who has placed me in this work, will not allow me to be put to shame. And then, with every step I take, I see that God blesses it, and that the things I say with my mouth, sometimes without even believing them, begin to happen.

And God has given me this project. I do not know where it will lead, and I tell you that I am afraid, but I have already learned; I can no longer allow myself to be led by my emotions. I have learned that my emotions, doubt, and fear—I have learned that I am going to live with them every day of my life, but what I am going to do is set them aside. ‘Keep talking over there if you want, but I am going to keep following the voice of my God.’ Ultimately, the successful person is no different from the person who lives in failure, who lives in mediocrity. Everyone feels fear and doubt; the difference is that the successful person has learned to set their doubts and fears aside and simply believe that God is with them, and they keep moving forward. That is the only difference.

Even in the secular world, honest people will tell you that in their struggles and the things they undertake, they often feel doubtful, but they simply do them because there is a natural force within them—even within the secular person—that says, ‘I can.’ How much more in Christ Jesus.

Because Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” If you feel that you cannot do it in yourself, appeal to Christ and plug into the power of God that is in your life. He has an unlimited engine, and that engine transfers power to yours; go through life like an atomic battle tank. Believe that God is on your side. That is the key. I have so many passages I could share with you in the time I have left.

You have to pay a price to receive the Lord’s teaching, so let me continue; do not get bored or discouraged sitting there, okay? Look, there are so many passages I could show you about that. Let us continue with David, since we are already talking about him.

First Samuel 17, an extremely revealing passage, and I will continue sharing these things as time allows over the coming weeks and as we have occasion.

First Samuel 17. It is the famous passage about David and Goliath, and it reveals much to us about David’s mindset and things we must learn, because David was a man of great success in warfare, music, finances, politics—in every area he undertook. He was a multifaceted man, but he had a great heart and believed that his God was with him at all times. And here we have David while he is still very young, and we see how God blesses him in this undertaking.

Let us go to chapter 17, verse 26. David, still a young boy inexperienced in warfare, has simply been anointed by the Lord through Samuel, but he has not yet entered into his reign. He arrives at his brothers’ camp, where his brothers are serving as members of Israel’s army, and he has merely come to do a little household errand. He comes to bring his brothers some food at the camp—bread and cheese, some cheeses his father sends with him; he is an errand boy, because that is what he is doing. It does not matter where you begin; with God, where you finish is what matters. David begins there as a nobody, simply running errands.

There are times when God will send you somewhere to do something, and you will do it in obedience, and it will seem like something very small, but God’s blessing for your life will be there. When you serve others, God’s blessing begins. Never despise small beginnings. It is one of the truths I want to share with you in the future. Do not despise small beginnings. Successful people do not despise small beginnings. David is sent to bring cheese to his brothers, and there he realizes that there is a giant who is continually insulting God’s people—a man who stands more than 8 feet tall, an experienced warrior—and no one in Israel’s army dares to take that giant on. Every day that man stands there to shame and insult God’s people.

This young boy, inexperienced in warfare, arrives, and look at what David says in verse 26: “...then David spoke to those who stood beside him, saying, ‘What will be done for the man who defeats this Philistine and removes the reproach from Israel?’

I see something there about David’s psychology; there is a lot in that question. Because David is saying, “Well, what benefit is there for.....” This young man is already thinking about his future; he is thinking about what he can gain...... Brothers and sisters, there is nothing wrong with wanting a successful and blessed life. Sometimes we want to be more Catholic than the Pope. And someone says, “Oh, I am going to serve the Lord even if He gives me nothing,” and this and that. Look, we all want to be blessed by God. There is no harm in aspiring to and desiring great things. You have to be restless in life. You have to want to triumph; you have to want success. If you have no desire for success, if you do not want God to bless you, if you are not eager for success in ministry, or in your work, or in your marriage, you are not going to receive anything.

David had a desire to advance in his heart. God had placed ambition in him; He had placed an enterprising character in him, and when he sees this, he says, “Look, who knows, perhaps here I can advance my life and my career,” and so he begins to ask questions. You have to ask questions in life. You have to knock on doors. You have to be restless.

Do you remember what I was telling you about that with regard to success? People who are industrious, who ask questions and knock and get involved and undertake things and take risks—those are the people who are blessed. So he begins to ask. And look at what it says:

“For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” And the people answered him in the same way, because Saul had promised a great reward to whoever dared to take on Goliath, and no one had been willing. Do you see? All that was needed was a man of courage who believed that God was with him. And you know what? When his brothers hear him asking questions, what happens? They jump all over him and insult him. How dare you...? Who are you, boy, you little brat, to be asking and inquiring? Go home right now. When you have great dreams, mediocre people will want to drag you down into mediocrity too. Never listen to the voice of Maribel’s counselor telling you, “Hispanics don’t go to Boston College.”

There are going to be many people in your life who are going to...... and sometimes with good intentions. Sometimes your parents will be the first to tell you, “Young man, don’t get involved in that; you are going to have a hard time. You are going to fail and feel terrible. You had better pursue something more at your level.” When my daughter Sonia told me during her second year of high school that she wanted to go to Harvard, inwardly I resolved to try to rid her of that dream as quickly and as gently as possible. Do you know why? Because at that time she was not academically prepared to go to Harvard. And I, who have attended universities....... and who was an admissions officer at one of the most demanding of Harvard’s peers, which is Princeton University, knew what was required, and my daughter did not have it, because she was a naturally intelligent young woman, but she had not fully applied herself and simply did things by relying on her natural intelligence.

But when she began to seek God in her life, God changed her mind. He changed her character and changed her mind, and He placed in her heart the desire to go to Harvard like her father. And inwardly I doubted, but thank God I said nothing to her at that moment. She began to work, and I saw her grades begin to rise; then, when I saw that she was serious, at some point I said, “Well, I am going to have to support this young woman.”

I sat down with her and said, “Look, if you want to get into Harvard, there is no room for you to make even one mistake between now and the time they consider you. You are going to have to be impeccable and perfect in everything you do academically.” And to make a long story short, brothers and sisters, Sonia finished with the second- or third-highest grade-point average in her entire school, an A+. She did an extracurricular project that earned the admiration of all the teachers at the school, and in the end, when she applied, not only did Harvard accept her, Princeton accepted her, Yale accepted her, Brown University accepted her, and Boston University accepted her with extremely generous scholarships. And God turned her from a sure failure into a sure success. When the time came to receive the admission letters, I knew she was going to be accepted.

Why, brothers and sisters? Because when you dare in the name of the Lord, apply yourself, and have the wind of God behind your boat, you can accomplish anything. And I tell you, you have to dare in the name of the Lord. David had this conviction that he was destined for success, and when he saw that giant, he did not look at himself; rather, he saw the God who was with him.

But many times, when people do not have your faith or your understanding, they will feel threatened by you when they see your dreams, and without realizing it, they will want to bring down that balloon that is rising and pull it down to their own level. Do not let them kill your dreams. Keep dreaming. Keep daring. If they close one door on you, go in through another, but keep moving forward, and God will give you the victory.

David went to Saul and spoke to him, and look at the encounter between David and the giant, because this is what matters. The giant looks at David with contempt and says, “Who are you to come before me with a stone?”—somewhere around verse 42. “He disdained him,” it says, “because he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance.”

David was a delicate, attractive young man, and this giant, this warrior experienced in battle, sees him and says, “This little squirt—how dare they send him to me? I was expecting a warrior with all his armor, all his swords and his things, and his spear.” It is not the resources you have at hand; it is the power of God directing those resources.

Then in verse 45 David says, “David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Jehovah of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.’” David knew that God was with him. There was nothing in his physique or his immediate circumstances that justified what he was doing. The only thing that justified it was a persistent suspicion in his heart that God was going to honor him and that, even if he went there with his legs trembling as he walked, God was with him and would get him out of his predicament.

And look at how he speaks: “Jehovah will deliver you into my hand today, and I will defeat you and cut off your head; and today I will give the bodies of the Philistines to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and all the earth shall know that there is a God in Israel.”

One of the most important things you have to do when seeking success in your life is to speak positively in the Lord. Perhaps you cannot control the feelings within you, but you can control what your mouth says. Because if you speak negatively, pessimistically, or neutrally, the devil knows and senses what is happening in your mind and often holds you back. But when you speak positively and prophesy in the name of the Lord, even if your whole being tells you, “No, it is not true,” speak anyway. Get into the habit of cultivating positive language in your life. Banish negative language from your life. Banish the continual confession of depression, sadness, failure, or fear, and speak positive things even if you do not believe them. But as you continue confessing them, your mind will gradually be reprogrammed, and your emotions will learn to obey your declarations.

Cultivate positive language in the Lord. Prophesy in the Lord. Speak about the future God is going to give you. Speak about the success you are going to have. Speak about the things you are going to see. Bless your children with a positive attitude. That is why many children of depressed parents grow up with depression: because they became accustomed to their parents’ negative language and behavior and were infected by it. It is not necessarily because it is something genetic, but because a spiritual genetic inheritance has been transferred to the children.

Negative language creates a negative atmosphere and produces negative results. Positive confession in God reconfigures external reality and aligns it with the reality of the children of God. We must confess positively. Speak positively. Declare positive things in the Lord, and they will come into your life.

“And all this assembly shall know—v. 47—that Jehovah does not save with sword and spear, for the battle is Jehovah’s, and He will deliver you into our hands.”

Whatever battles you fight, do not fight them by yourself; fight them with God and in God. The Lord does not save through your painful efforts. The Lord saves by His power through a channel of faith, which is your faith.

So you can see there that what governs David is this conviction: my God is with me; my God is going to support me. God is my helper. And that is the mindset you have to cultivate in your life. It is a positive mindset, one of possibility rather than scarcity.

We have undertaken this project of starting an English-language service. For years I resisted doing it because I do not have time. Humanly speaking, it is madness to start an English-language service at this point in my life and in the life of the church, with all the demands on the pastoral staff and everything else. I cannot justify it in terms of the church’s resources, my time, the other pastors’ time, the space we have available during this season of so many activities, and the responsibilities I have in so many other things inside and outside the church. There is no way; it is madness.

What led me to do it was two Americans who persistently said to me, “Pastor, when are you going to start an English-language service? If you had one, we would come every Sunday.” And I have learned that when a voice comes to me like that, I must listen to it. They are prophetic voices, though they themselves perhaps do not know they are being used. I have chosen to think that these are prophetic voices from God, because for some time God has been speaking within me, telling me that He wants our church now to begin expanding into the English-speaking community as well.

And I met with them some time ago; I invited them to dinner with my wife and told them, “It is not possible; now is not the time.” But they came back again in a gentle and mild manner. They are shy, gentle young men, but God has placed this in their hearts, and over the years others have come as well. And I believe we are in a season when God is calling us into a more public, more extensive sphere than merely the Latino community. And you have to learn to observe the times and seasons and to look with discerning eyes, because often the circumstances around you will push you toward where God wants you to go. And you have to be attentive so that you can hear the voice. That is very important: successful people are always attentive to their environment, and they are always observing and assessing things and gathering information, and that gives them places to go and search and to be in the place of blessing.

That is to say, I have made so many excuses and given so many reasons not to start an English-language service: there is no time, there are no physical resources, there are no personal or ministerial resources, it requires a great deal of planning—27 different things. But I have always believed something, and that is that you should never operate from a mindset of scarcity, but from a mindset of provision. That is another rule of success that I will discuss with you later.

Always act in terms of what God can do, not what you cannot do. So I am looking at the manual, and I have learned that I must not look at what we do not have, but at the God who will provide for us if we launch out in faith. Begin to walk by faith. That is the key to life. Take steps of faith and obedience.

Come forward, brothers and sisters, yes. Take steps of faith and obedience. The priests were told, “Begin to walk, and when your foot steps into the river, the river will open.” They were not told, “Wait for the river to open, and then begin to walk.” When their feet step into the river..... you have to begin taking steps of faith. And I have learned that God always meets you along the way. Amen.

So that is why we are..... The fact is, I am always living out that dynamic in my life. I do not express it in those terms, but instinctively I have learned to incorporate those principles into my life. Behind that English-language service there is an entire drama of spiritual principles doing battle. Am I going to yield to doubt and limitations, or am I going to yield to the God who is powerful enough to keep this from becoming a disaster? I believe; I bet on God. And I believe that God knows how to honor the faith of His children. So you launch out in faith, and God gives the answer. God blesses in many ways.

Do not yield to impossibilities; instead, act according to the principles you see in the Word of God. Do not yield to doubt; do not yield to previous experience; yield to what God has said in His Word. Amen. That is how the people of God live.

Let us stand for a moment. The Lord tells you, the Lord calls you, to believe that God is with you. Stop mourning what happened to you when you were a child. Stop keeping your mind fixed on the failure you experienced 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Set aside the poverty of your family and your origins. Stop looking at the insignificance of your person or your appearance, and begin to fix your eyes on the God who owns every spiritual blessing, who has told you, “I have blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

God has declared blessing over your life. Now it is in your hands to take that blessing and bring it down into the realm of time and space. It depends on you. Are you willing to believe that God is with me like a mighty giant, as the word of the Lord says? Though I walk through the valley of shadows, I will fear no evil, for He will be with me. Apply that truth to every dimension of your life: any project, whether large or small; any situation in your life; any struggle, any bondage, any emotional or mental problem, neurosis, physical defect—whatever it may be—apply this to it: ‘With God I can.’

Say with me, ‘With God I can,’ ‘With God I can,’ ‘With God I can.’ Let’s say it five times, as Jehoshaphat expected it to be said. The fourth time: ‘With God I can.’ ‘With God I can.’ And one last time, for good measure: ‘With God I can.’ We give thanks to the Lord. Glory to God. .............. With Christ Jesus, it is possible. In the name of the Lord, we conquer mountains and heights, tear down strongholds, cut off the heads of the giants in our lives, and possess the land God has given us. For the Lord who is in us is more powerful than the one who is in the world. Live with that program in your mind. Live with that certainty in your mind. Make it a way of life, and it will transform you completely. For the next 15, 20, 30 years, your life will be a life of growth, development, and professional, emotional, relational, and spiritual expansion. Believe. Begin to desire great things for my God. Widen your field of vision, and also believe that God will be with you to fulfill your dreams, and launch out in the name of the Lord.

I want to ask whether there is anyone here this morning who has not yet given their life to Jesus. It has been some time since we have given an altar call.

Sermon by Dr. Roberto Miranda recorded January 22, 2006, at Congregación León de Judá

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