We can rejoice that we are a blessed people
Dr. Roberto Miranda
(Audio: Spanish)
SUMMARY: The passage from Psalm 103 is a call to remember all the benefits that God has given us and to bless the Lord with our soul and being. The psalmist emphasizes the importance of not forgetting any of God's benefits, including forgiveness of sins, healing, rescue, crowning with favor and mercy, and satisfaction with good. The speaker encourages us to remember God's blessings and express gratitude, even in difficult times. The passage also highlights David's awareness of his own sinfulness and his need for forgiveness. The speaker reminds us that adoration is a discipline and that praising God, even when we don't feel like it, can bring joy and freedom.
In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the first two verses of Psalm 103. He emphasizes that the Bible presents us with imperfect people, like David, who committed adultery and murder, but who also loved God and acknowledged their sin. The speaker encourages listeners to confess their sins before God and to trust in His mercy and grace. He also highlights that God is a healer who can heal all our ailments, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. He cites the story of the bitter waters in Exodus and the healings performed by Jesus in the Gospels as examples of God's healing power. While acknowledging that healing is a mystery and that not everyone may receive physical healing, the speaker emphasizes that we should always approach God with faith and trust in His power to heal.
The speaker discusses how God intervenes in our lives, particularly in healing us when we are sick and rescuing us from difficult situations. They emphasize the importance of having faith in God and crying out to Him for help. The speaker also talks about how God blesses us abundantly, filling our mouths with goodness and mercy. They encourage listeners to change their mindset to expect blessings from God and to saturate their minds with a blessing mentality. The message concludes with an invitation for anyone who has not yet given their life to God to do so.
The speaker invites anyone who feels called by God to come forward and receive prayer and deliverance. They encourage confessing Christ as Lord and Savior, repenting of sins, and rebuking the enemy. The speaker also prays for those going through difficulties and tribulations, asking for God's grace and blessings over their lives. They thank God for the privilege of walking in His ways and seek to make the church a refuge for souls. The speaker invites anyone who wants more prayer to come forward and receive a touch from the Holy Spirit. They close with thanks and praise to God.
In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the first two verses of Psalm 103. He emphasizes that the Bible presents us with imperfect people, like David, who committed adultery and murder, but who also loved God and acknowledged their sin. The speaker encourages listeners to confess their sins before God and to trust in His mercy and grace. He also highlights that God is a healer who can heal all our ailments, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. He cites the story of the bitter waters in Exodus and the healings performed by Jesus in the Gospels as examples of God's healing power. While acknowledging that healing is a mystery and that not everyone may receive physical healing, the speaker emphasizes that we should always approach God with faith and trust in His power to heal.
The speaker discusses how God intervenes in our lives, particularly in healing us when we are sick and rescuing us from difficult situations. They emphasize the importance of having faith in God and crying out to Him for help. The speaker also talks about how God blesses us abundantly, filling our mouths with goodness and mercy. They encourage listeners to change their mindset to expect blessings from God and to saturate their minds with a blessing mentality. The message concludes with an invitation for anyone who has not yet given their life to God to do so.
The speaker invites anyone who feels called by God to come forward and receive prayer and deliverance. They encourage confessing Christ as Lord and Savior, repenting of sins, and rebuking the enemy. The speaker also prays for those going through difficulties and tribulations, asking for God's grace and blessings over their lives. They thank God for the privilege of walking in His ways and seek to make the church a refuge for souls. The speaker invites anyone who wants more prayer to come forward and receive a touch from the Holy Spirit. They close with thanks and praise to God.
I want to share a passage from Psalm 103, and I want to leave with you a Word of encouragement that God has placed in my heart to share, it is a Psalm of praise for the mercy of the Lord and it is an invitation from the Holy Spirit for us to remember all the things that God has for our lives; the rights, the resources, the blessings that God places in our hands, that wonderful God that we have and that we can rejoice that we are a blessed people.
The psalmist David says in Psalm 103 verses from 1 to 5: "Bless my soul to the Lord, and bless all my being His Holy Name. Bless my soul to the Lord and do not forget any of his benefits. He is the one who forgives all your iniquities , the one who heals all your ailments, the one who rescues your life from the hole, the one who crowns you with favors and mercies, the one who satisfies your mouth with good so that you rejuvenate like the eagle." What a precious psalm, what a blessing.
I wanted to share with you this afternoon, brothers, because two Sundays ago when I was here preaching for the last time before our sister came last Sunday, the sermon that I shared with you, I admit, was a little heavy to a certain extent and I I always like to balance the preaching, because the Word of God has advice for all moments of life, and there are moments when it calls us to think about our responsibilities, it calls us to think about our duties, it calls us to remember the principles of Writing.
Sometimes the Word of the Lord calls us to remember the call to holiness. Sometimes the Lord calls us to remember that the Christian life also has afflictions, has trials, has difficulties, and that we have to move forward in the midst of tribulations and trials, and that God often uses trials to strengthen us and form us. the character of Christ in us.
But there are also moments when the Word of God caresses us, and God calls us to rejoice in the beautiful things that He provides, and to receive that cool breeze that reminds us that God is there with us too; and then what interests God is simply lulling us and caressing us, and telling us: My son, my daughter, I am with you, trust Me and rest in Me.
And this psalm kind of counterbalances it a bit because last Sunday I spoke to you about how many times when we think that we can rest and that we can finish our work, God says: Don't take off your tackle yet, you have to work a little more still. And that we are useless servants, that no matter how much we do for God, we will never do enough, and that we ultimately have no right to feel like God owes us anything. If we are going to see we are useless servants as the Lord Jesus Christ says.
And we said that the word servant means rather: slave. We are the property of God, God can do with us whatever He wants, and we must arm ourselves with that mentality, always ask the Lord: Lord, what do you want me to do, what do you require of me? and be willing to give the Lord everything He wants.
And that's a heavy Word in a sense, isn't it? And although we also talk about how God does not treat us as slaves but treats us as friends, in the end, despite the fact that this is our condition, let's say, judicial, of being property of the Kingdom of God, God still in His mercy He treats us like friends, and we're done at that point.
But this afternoon I want to put the emphasis on the other side, the blessing side. The side of God's goodness and mercy, the side of remembering all the good things to which we have access as children of the Lord and this Psalm 103, and these verses above all, are like the paradigm of all things that we receive from God and have a right to expect from our loving God.
The psalmist begins by saying: "Bless my soul to the Lord" is a call to his own soul to bless the Lord. Brothers, how important it is that we remember that adore the Lord and bless His Name is something that we must do at all times of our lives. And there are times when we are going to arrive at Church, we will feel burdened, we will feel tired, we will have problems that we are dragging on, there will be financial difficulties, and the truth is that if we are honest, we will not want to praise the Lord; our soul will be tired. But you know what? It is in those moments perhaps when we have to adore the Lord the most and say to our soul, to our mind, to our emotions, to our spirit: my soul, bless the Lord.
Sometimes you just have to do it on principle. And know? Some people say: no, I don't want to praise the Lord because I don't feel like doing it and I don't want to be a hypocrite. Know what? God does not care that you praise him even if you have no desire, on the contrary; He rejoices in that sacrifice of praise that you offer him. Worship the Lord no matter what, but worship him, lift up your soul and call it to worship.
Adoration is a discipline and it is something that we have to cultivate in the morning, at night, remember the many blessings that God brings to our lives and adore him. That beautiful chorus that we sing many times, right? "Praise God when things go well for you, how good it is! Praise God when you don't have any problems, what a good thing! But if you praise him among your brokenness, that holy Christ glorifies himself within you" Hallelujah. And we have to know that sometimes when we least want to praise the Lord and decide to do it is when God is most glorified in our lives.
The Lord Jesus Christ has said: "The spirit is always willing but the flesh is weak" we praise the Lord with our spirit, we do not necessarily have to praise him with our emotions. That emotional adoration is very nice, but God likes us to praise him in spirit and in truth, that means in principle, we praise him because we recognize that he needs to be praised.
And you know what happens when you start praising him? the sorrows are clearing up. The Spirit of the Lord enters our life and those oils that are dry and hard there begin to loosen, glory to the Lord, and you begin to experience that joy of God in your heart because your spirit is coming into contact with the Spirit of the Lord, and that blessing begins to flow. And you begin to wonder: but what was he so worried about, why? your mind has changed and you already see things differently. Bless my soul to Jehovah, it is a mandate that you have to give to your soul continually.
And then he says: "And bless all my being his holy name." He adds: "Bless Jehovah my soul and do not forget any of his benefits." Do you know that sometimes we have to do this, not to forget the benefits that God brings to our lives? how easy it is to forget all the things God has done in our lives. When the scare passed we already forgot what God did, although when we were smelling gunpowder we still said: I'm never going to forget God, I'm going to look for God but how easy! When the rest times come, we return to the routine again and we forget about the many blessings that God has given us. I have promised myself to recount those moments in which God's liberation has come into my life and to remember them as a beginning of life.
I was telling the brothers this morning that there are so many things, there are so many benefits, that by dint of being so natural and such a normal part of life, we forget that they are God's active provision until they are gone, and then we remember. Because sometimes we sit down, we eat a good meal but what about the healthy stomach that is digesting it, right? or the teeth we have with which we can chew that food.
Sometimes the simplest things, I also told the brothers and I think I shared with the twelve o'clock service, that sometimes we have so many things in our homes. That tube of pasta that when it's finished you have another one and open the cabinet, and there it is ready. When the brush wears out, you simply have one or two more lying around ready, and there are people who don't even have a brush to brush with. A good part of the world does not have those things to which we are so accustomed.
The water with which we bathe, warm water. We open a key, there is warm water. Many people know that they have to go with a can to the river or to a communal tap to fill it up and take it home, and the poor bathe themselves with cold water, and we have so many things that we take for granted, generosity, goodness of God.
I think it's a good exercise for us to sit down sometimes and start recounting all the blessings that God has brought into our lives. The health that it gives us, the mind to reconcile our thinking, the company of loved ones, a job that it gives us. That food that somehow reaches our homes, all the benefits. Being able to come and worship the Lord. Knowing that our life is safe, that even if we die we have access to the Kingdom of Heaven. That we are reconciled with God, that God has forgiven our sins, that God has not treated us as we deserve, all the benefits. Having access to the Throne of God in prayer.
So many things we have to be thankful for. The Bible says, "Be thankful." When you thank the Lord and express your gratitude, that generates more blessing. The expression of gratitude cleanses us, sets us free, breaks ties. Sometimes we are constantly complaining and then what that complaint does is that it brings more weight and more suffering to our lives. Let's try praise, let's try expressing gratitude, let's actively remember all the blessings that we continually receive from the Lord and our life will be blessed by it. Do not forget any of His benefits.
And then David goes into a series of specific benefits that he feels he has received but that we can also identify with. He says: "He is the one who forgives all your iniquities." Why did David put that as the first consideration that was important to him? because David knew that he was a sinful man. David knew that he had made serious mistakes throughout his life. He loved God and God loved him greatly, but David also knew that he had a record with a few little spots on it, you know?
Did you know that when David wanted to build a new sanctuary for the Lord, God told him: David, thank you very much, but you know what? have you spilled too much blood? David was a warrior. David was a conquering king who brought his people to a very high level of prominence in the Middle East. But in the course of that, he killed a lot of people, shed a lot of blood, and the Lord said to him: You know what? I need the person who builds My Sanctuary, something as sacred as that, to have hands a little cleaner than yours, David, thank you. But you know what? what I am going to do is that I am going to let your son build me the Sanctuary. And then David had to give Solomon everything he had collected to build that Sanctuary.
Then David knew: I have shed a lot of blood, and I assume that when he was saying that he also remembered that terrible moment when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and that he used his authority as king to impose himself on this woman, full of lust, full of desire And later when this woman became pregnant, David wanting to hide his sin, wanted to make a plot so that her husband, who was a general of his army, a faithful, honest, courageous man with great integrity, wanted to bring him from the battlefield. so that he would sleep with his wife so that they would believe that it was he who had impregnated her, and he said: I can't do that because I have to be with my men who are having work on the battlefield, and David finally ended up killing this man to cover up his sin and God knew it, and gave David a very, very serious punishment, because God unfortunately loves us but also disciplines us. And David's life and his generations were persecuted for the blood that he had shed of this righteous man.
And David remembered this I guess. There's that Psalm: "Have mercy on me, O God according to Your mercy." That Psalm of expression, of David's pain when God confronted him. David was not a good Father either. Everything indicates that he was a careless father. Absalom, his son, strongly rebelled against David when Absalom himself made a mistake but David didn't know how to deal with it. He had many women, children of different women, this created problems in his lineage. And we see at the end of his life, this old man, King David ready to die, the last scene recorded in the Bible of David is giving advice to Solomon: I want you to kill the one who treated me badly when I was running away from my son Don't let him go to his grave in peace. What thing.
This man who did so many good things, the last portrait of him is: seeking revenge against one of his adversaries, giving advice to his son who is going to become king, to replace him. And those are the things that strike me about the Bible, that it does not present us with plaster saints but radically imperfect men, like David, right? he loved God greatly, he beheaded a giant for fighting for the honor of God, he loved God desperately but he also had areas of sin in his life, and he was very aware that he had failed the Lord. And I think that's why the first thing David puts there is this: He is the one who forgives all your iniquities, he knew what he was talking about.
My brother: I can say that all of us feel portrayed in that. Who has not fallen short before God? who right now cannot remember something that has violated, in a very strong way, the Will of God for their life? we all have our record right? And we continually have to come before God and present ourselves before His Grace and His Mercy.
God forgives us too. And I know that we talk a lot about being upright before God, about the holiness that befits the House of the Lord. But let us not forget, brothers, within that, that whenever we talk about the call to holiness, we do so in the context that we are sinners, our own fallen nature, that we have to be aware of our need, that we have access to divine Grace, that we have a God who is amazingly able to forgive those who confess their sin before Him.
The Word says: "As the father pities the children, the Lord pities those who fear him, because He knows our condition, He remembers that we are dust." What often allows us to rest in the Lord is that fact, that we have a Father who is merciful to us; we don't have a foreman there with the whip ready to beat us every time we sin. But the Word of the Lord says that: "If we confess our sins He is faithful to forgive them." The Lord says that if our sins were red like scarlet, they would become white like wool.
And the Lord also says that when we confess our sins and God forgives us, He no longer remembers our sins, He treats us as if we had never sinned, you know? Through the blood of Christ Jesus we are like innocent babes, though we are scoundrels out there, we know it; but God is merciful and kind.
I encourage you: do not abuse the Grace and Mercy of God but when you need a little sap, anointing there on your back, go before your heavenly Father and confess your sin, that is what then gives us strength to continue forward. Because I believe that when we present to the world a God who is harsh and always ready to whip us every time we offend him, then we do like Adam and Eve: we hide from God. But you know what? you don't have to hide from the Lord. All God wants is for you to acknowledge your sin and come before Him, and receive grace and mercy, and He will always forgive you.
There we have that eloquent image of the publican who comes before God, approaches to adore the Lord and his heart is full because this man is a criminal, abuses his governmental position, exploits the people, and says: Lord have mercy on me who I am a sinner The Bible says that this man, due to his pain and recognition, left justified by the Lord, while there was another next door who supposedly did nothing, did not break a plate, did not do any kind of bad things, a Pharisee and He said: Lord, thank you because I am not like this publican here, I am not like this dirty sinner. I fast, I tithe, I go to Church three times a week. And the Bible says that he left with all his sins on him just as he had entered the temple. The other acknowledged.
I told the brothers that we are in a culture today, currently, that is mired in sin, as all other cultures have been through the centuries, but this particular culture in which we live persists in not recognizing its sin and give another name to his sin. Nowadays we call sin: human rights, we call sin simply: well, a genetic condition, we call sin other things. And we believe that by changing the label of sin, God up there is going to make a transaction and also change its name. And you know what? in the long run in our consciousness, we know that we are sinning.
Why do you think that in these communities there is so much suicide, so much depression, so much neurosis? And it is because man can name things but his conscience knows that he is far from God. I say: why don't you stop suffering and just come before the Lord, confess your sin and ask him to forgive you, cleanse you, heal you? Confess your sin, restore yourself, move on, fight in the Name of the Lord and God is powerful to restore your life. Less effort.
We, the children of God, never cover up our sin, brothers, let us be transparent before the Lord. Keep short accounts before God. If you offend the Lord, immediately throw yourself at the feet of the Lord and settle your situation with God. Confess your sin and sin no more, for that is what the Lord said to the adulterous woman. Woman: I'm not going to condemn you, go away. People forget that part too right? He likes a lot about: I do not condemn you, but they forget that the Lord told him: Go and sin no more. We then have to commend ourselves to the Lord and to His Grace and His Mercy. God is so good. He not only forgives you when you sin but He helps you not to sin through His Holy Spirit. Commit yourself to the Lord and commit your life to Him, and He will be faithful to help you in any way possible. Then the Lord forgives our iniquities.
David goes on to say, "The Lord is the one who heals all your diseases." We have a healing God brothers. God specializes in healing us, He is the one who heals all our ailments. That plural: ailments, and I believe that the name itself does not say diseases, although that is an implication, right? But that plural: ailments, implies the wide range that covers the healing power of God in His great mercy.
Our diseases are diverse, they can be of different kinds: physical, emotional, spiritual. Ailment can simply be a child that causes us pain, a difficult marriage, a situation with a friendship that is costing us, something at work. Illness is everything that takes away the joy of life, everything that is the result of the fall of this world in which we find ourselves. But all these things God heals, God intervenes in all those areas of our life.
One of the most beautiful images of healing that I see in the Bible is found in Exodus chapter 15: the waters healed by God in Mara. The Bible says that the Jews were walking through the desert and came to a place, an oasis where there was water, and they were very happy to drink from the water but they discovered that the water was bitter, it was not healthy. And then they began to complain before Moses for having brought them into the desert and taking them out of Egypt, etc. Because that's what we do many times, right? When we have difficulties, what do we do? we complain to God, we blame the Lord for our debts. What we have to do is cry out to the Lord and present our needs before God.
And what did God do? He said to Moses: Take a tree and throw it into those bitter waters. In verse 25:15, Exodus: "And the LORD showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. And the LORD said to Moses and said to the people of Israel: If you listen attentively to the Voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep the statutes of the Lord, none of the diseases that I sent to the Egyptians I will send to you, for I am the Lord your healer." I am Jehovah your healer.
Have you heard the expression: Jehovah Rafa? Rafa, that word that in Hebrew means: healer, comes from there. I am Jehovah Rafa, I am Jehovah, that is one of the names of Jehovah in Scripture, our healer, the one who heals all our ailments. What a beautiful image of this tree.
Many interpreters of Scripture have seen an image of the cross on that tree, because Christ was crucified on wood that came from a tree, and they have seen this sign as when the cross enters our ailments, when God throws bitter waters into our from our life the Power of the cross of Christ we receive healing.
When you have a situation in your life that is taking your spirits away, the joy of the Lord, go to the cross, ask the Lord to heal. The Bible says that the Lord carried our diseases and sins on His shoulders, and the Lord is powerful to heal all our diseases.
By the way I tell you: healing is a mystery. Sometimes God heals and sometimes we ask him, and we continue with a situation of illness. There are many different things that go into the mystery of healing. Maybe it's not God's time. Perhaps God is allowing some suffering in our lives to serve a greater purpose that we don't understand. But what I tell you is this, brothers: the Word of God invites us to concentrate on the power of God to heal. I believe the emphasis of the Bible is on the God who is our healer.
That image of mara being sweetened by the tree of God is what I see throughout all of Scripture, over and over again we see the Lord healing. If you look in Luke chapter 4, at the very beginning of His Ministry, the Lord opened the Book of the prophet Isaiah and said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
In chapter 4 of Luke right there, the Bible says that: "As the sun went down, all those who had patients with various diseases brought them to Him and He, laying His hands on each one of them, healed them. They also came out demons of many crying out and saying, You are the Son of God, but he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ." What a beautiful image of a Christ that all the people who brought to Him healed them all.
I have not yet seen a single passage of Scripture in which a sick person approached Him and the Lord did not heal him. Now, if you have prayed to the Lord and have not received the healing that you are asking the Lord for, keep praying, keep hoping, keep trusting, keep confessing from the Lord. Sometimes we put so much emphasis on why God heals us that we forget that God says: I am your healer.
I believe that our position should always be: I am going to come to the Lord believing that God is going to heal me today, I am going to cry out to the Lord and I am going to leave the rest to Him; Let us pray for the people who are sick, let us anoint the sick with oil and then leave the rest to the Lord.
Even I say: we have to pray when we are healthy, not only when we are sick. Let's not pray to remedy diseases only, let's pray to promote health in our life. Pray when you are totally healthy and declare the life of God in your life. Pray for your joints, for your veins, for your lungs, for your nervous system, for your brain, for your spine; pray for your skin, pray for your eyes, pray for everything and say: Lord, radiate Your healing Power in my life, fill me with health, fill me with vigor. Visualize God's blessing in your life because when we visualize health, it makes it easier for God's health to descend into our life. Let's not think so much about the negative. Let us think of that God who invites us to believe in Him as our healing God, the one who heals all our ailments.
Another element of life that God intervenes in is when we find ourselves in difficulties and problems. The Word of the Lord says that: "He who rescues our life from the pit." By the way, do you know that sound? I think it's Caleb, my grandson who is calling me asking for face-time, he doesn't know I'm preaching here so we'll talk later. The Lord also reminds us of the good things in life, right? even when we are preaching up here. The one who rescues your life from the hole, when we get into trouble.
The word that the psalmist translates: hole or that is translated into Spanish as hole is the word: shaha, which literally means: a well where there is no water, it is a hole where, for example, a trapped animal sometimes falls and cannot get out of the. He was also referring to Sheol, that mysterious region of which Scripture speaks and we do not know exactly, but the ancients believed that there was a place like limbo, a gray and dark place where souls, as an intermediate between life and death.
And it's an interesting image, isn't it? because sometimes we are like in Sheol. When one has difficult situations in life, one feels trapped and everything looks bad, there is a gray atmosphere over our lives, we are in trouble; a situation from which we cannot get rid of and David says: "The one who rescues your life from the hole."
David was a hole specialist, he many times got himself into holes and he knew what he was talking about when he said that God rescued him from holes. He got in sometimes, and how many times do we get into holes because of our bad head. What's more, there are people that you advise and I know you are saying: well, I'm going to get into the hole and then I'll see how I get out, yes or no? it is so. There are people that you advise them: look, don't get into that relationship because it won't go well for you and they say: well no, I'll get out of the jam and then I'll see, the Lord will get me out somehow, right? Look: don't go into a hole. If you know it's a hole, don't get into it so that God doesn't have to come and get you out of it.
But you know what brother? Even when we sometimes make mistakes and have fallen into holes of our own making, the Lord still does not abandon us. I'm in a situation, I can't solve it, but You have the answer.
You know that sometimes it even comforts me to find myself in a situation where I can't get out and I don't even know how I can get out because I know that in that impossibility, God can enter and take the glory, and He's going to get me out somehow.
I was talking to someone recently and we were discussing a situation that this person was in that quite frankly, me looking at her, humanly there is no way that this person could get out of this situation unscathed. It is a very cumbersome, intricate, very difficult situation. I told him: you know what? you can now then with all confidence go before the Lord and say: Father, I do not know how I am going to get out of this but I entrust this situation to You, and you know what? the Lord pulls a rabbit out of a hat in some way that you can't explain but He does.
King Jehoshaphat when he found himself surrounded by a tremendously powerful army and that army inevitably came to possess Judah, and I have always carried that Word in my heart, because Jehoshaphat appeared before his people, called a great national meeting in the square Jerusalem and said these powerful words to the Lord, he said: "Lord, we do not know where to go and to You we turn our eyes."
And out of that meeting came the voice of a prophet who told Jehoshaphat exactly what to do, and Jehoshaphat didn't just have to strike; God resolved the situation and killed all that huge enemy people. They turned swords against each other and gathered spoil all day. The Lord knows how it will resolve.
Sometimes a solution that seems utterly impossible for God is easy and one laughs at how easy it is when God gets in the way. Do not worry: if you are in a difficult situation, appeal to the Lord, He is your mercy, He is the source of the solution to your problem. When you find yourself in trouble, cry out to the Lord and He will get you through.
"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth" hallelujah. If the Lord made the heavens and the earth, everything that is within them is under His dominion and He is powerful to get you out of any situation, simply cry out to Him, fill your heart with faith, declare your expectation that God will solve your problem. Do not stop crying out to the Lord, throw yourself at the feet of the Lord. Present your case again and again, and the Lord will not let you be ashamed.
I have had to do this over and over again, every time we have gotten into all these constructions, I have had to come to the Lord: Lord, you are not going to allow Your people to remain in shame, You are going to bring us forward. One gets into the holes. That hole is a good hole for the glory of God, you know?
But sometimes you get into those holes and you don't know how you're going to get out or not. Frankly, when we began to build this building, I did not know what was going to intervene in those years, but as the Word says: "If I perish, let me perish." There are times when one has to get into things by faith and God will take care of getting ahead. He was more than powerful one and the other, and
again to get us ahead.
I can give you a small example, for example: when we were dealing with all that money that we had to pay each month. Every month, we came at the end of the month or at the beginning of the next month, and there is Yoxmar who doesn't let me lie. Every beginning of the month, for seven or eight months, after we sat down and looked at the possible tickets, we had about sixty or seventy thousand dollars left that we still had to pay. Money had to be paid to that bank, there were contractors, there were construction expenses. Look: for six, seven months the Lord again and again opened the sea before me.
And I can say, so many brothers, some of them are here. The first was a sister who told me: Pastor, and I, with what face do I come to ask a person? This sister came, she gave us a check for fifty thousand dollars from her, she told me: here is this, you don't have to pay it for now; not for now? important. A brother came literally with a brown paper bag, with bills of 50 dollars, 100 dollars, fifty thousand dollars: Pastor, here is this money, I have been saving it. Do what you need with it. We never ask for anything.
God pulled us out of the hole over and over again, to the Lord be the glory. God did not leave us and so, the Lord will not leave you at any time. I thank the Lord for the example of my mother who left me with an attitude of radical trust in the Lord, that God is capable of parting the Red Sea before us. And we have inherited that faith and it has been a blessing to us. Give that inheritance to your children and believe in a God who gets you out of any bind if you cry out to Him, and He will answer you. Those who trust in Him will not be put to shame.
And my final point, according to what the psalmist says here, right? says that: "God is the one who crowns us with favors and mercies, the one who satisfies our mouth with goodness so that we rejuvenate ourselves like the eagle." Here we have an image of overwhelming abundance, the abundance of God, the provision of God, immense and generous. The blessings that we have indicated before are of a defensive nature, they are remedies. The one who heals all your ailments, the one who rescues your life from the hole, the one who all your iniquities. The Lord corrects negative things but you know what? that God also specializes in blessing us without it being to heal something negative. Here it is simply God blesses you, God fills your mouth with good things, God overwhelms you with His blessings.
I say brother, I firmly believe that the life of a believer, of a child of God who is guided by the principles of the Word is a life of blessing, provision and prosperity, my brothers. What happens is that sometimes we do not saturate our mind.
Sometimes we have to reprogram our minds, because when we are in the world the devil turned our backs when he wanted to, and when we come to the ways of the Lord and we do not understand that we now have heavenly citizenship, that we have a heavenly Father that our condition has changed; now we have all the resources of heaven in our favor. Now we can appeal to the Lord and He covers us with His goodness and His Mercy. Now we have the right to come before the Throne of Grace and receive opportune help from the Lord. We do not change programs.
And then we continue in our life as if expecting disaster and destruction, and then we feel like madmen who do not count on the ways of the Lord. But God has good things for you and your lineage.
God has changed the program, God has changed your condition. You have gone from being a stranger to being an adopted son of the King of kings and Lord of lords. You have the right to come and bring your case before the Lord, and receive blessing from the Lord. You have to ask the Lord: Lord, change my program.
You know that having that blessing mentality requires a change in our lives. It requires a continuous regimen, good food in the Word, prayer, confession of God's goodness, saying good things with our mouths, listening to good music, programming our thoughts to confess God's blessing and then become magnets of the Lord's blessing. . You have to believe that, because you are a child of God, you are entitled to receive great blessings from the God who created you.
And then we can say like the psalmist in Psalm 128 and with this I end, Psalm 128: "Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord." Do you fear the Lord? you are blessed. "Blessed is everyone who walks in his ways. When you eat the work of your hands, blessed are you and it will be well for you. Your wife will be like a vine, your husband, your children like a vine that bears fruit on the sides of your house. Your children they shall be like olive plants around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed, the woman who fears the LORD. Bless the LORD from Zion and see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life, and see the children of your children." Amen, glory to the Name of the Lord. We bless your life my brother, my sister, stand up.
Let's thank God for all His blessings. I want you to leave this afternoon with the certainty that you have an incredible inheritance, you have all the resources of heaven at your disposal. The Word of the Lord says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. He does not say that he is going to bless us, he says that he has already blessed us. What we have to do is learn to dwell in the blessings that God has given us. What we have to do is saturate our mind with that blessing mentality which then attracts God's blessings into our life. Receive it in the Name of the Lord.
I want to invite: if there is anyone this afternoon who has not yet entered into that blessing of being a child of God, a member of the Lord's family. If you want to confess your faith in God this afternoon, perhaps the Lord has spoken to you through adoration or through this message, and you need, you know that you need to make your peace with Christ and give your life to the Lord. This place is open right now.
If you know that God is calling you, come over here and we will pray for you, we will deliver you into the arms of the Lord. If there is someone who has not done it before, come here and we will enjoy this moment of intimacy with the Lord, come and we will give your life to God. God bless you my brothers, amen.
Is there anyone else brothers? Glory to God, everyone who wants to come through here. The Bible says that: "To all who thirst: come to the waters." Any family that knows they need God? any couple, any young? We are going to be here for a moment in the Presence of God, will there be someone else? If you know that someone is in need, encourage them and come here, accompany them, let's pray for them, a good God. God wants to bless our community. The Latino community needs God brothers. The neighborhoods of this city need God.
The only solution for our people is to give their lives to the Lord. The only solution for this city is to cry out to God. God has power to change your life.
When we come forward here, what we do is confess to the Lord, Father: I am a sinner and I need Your Grace, we confess Christ, we confess him as our defender and our helper. If anyone else this place is open, stop by. And over your life, son of God, daughter of God, I declare happiness, joy and health.
And at this moment I also remember brothers who are going through their tribulations that the Lord gets them out of the hole, the Lord gets them out of the bind. The Lord brings Persio out of his illness, Dalia, we bless her in the Name of the Lord. Also to Carolina and Pedro, a young couple from our Church who are also in trouble, in the Name of Jehovah we bless them right now.
To the brothers who are here that I know that some are going through tribulations and difficulties at this moment, brothers: I bless your life, and I declare the Grace of the Lord, do not stop crying out to God. "Call to Me" says the Word "and I will answer you, and I will teach you great and hidden things that you do not know." Do not accept an opinion of evil in your life. Believe in the God who has good purposes for you. Seek the Lord.
Right now confess Christ as your Lord and Savior, rebuke the enemy of your soul and tell him: you no longer have power over my life. I believe that Jesus died for me on the cross of Calvary, forgave my sins, healed my wounds, annulled all the devil's accusations against my life and the Lord gives me a new identity today, confess it like this, believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior. Repent of your sins and the Lord will not leave you in shame. The Lord will change the condition of your soul as if you were a baby out of your mother's womb without an absolute record. God cleans your record and gives you a new opportunity.
If there is someone else, there is still time, we want to pray for you. Thank you Lord, thank you Father for the privilege, the privilege of walking in Your ways. Thank you because you are good Father. Thank you because You always give us a new opportunity Lord. Thank You for what You are doing in the lives of Your sons and Your daughters. Pray for this brother too please, someone to accompany him. Thank you Father for precious souls that You love and that You know well. Give thanks because there is hope for us.
We ask that Your Father Church be a refuge for souls, that Your Church can offer hope to those who are stuck in a blind alley, Father. That Your people can serve as prophets and prophetesses who declare the good Will of the Lord over the city. Thank you because Your Word encourages us to have faith and to trust that the future is good because You are in our midst Lord, thank you for the positive of Your Word, we confess you as our God, as our Savior, the source of our blessing, thank you Lord Jesus.
Keep there praying for your brothers, something soft. While our brothers there are receiving grace from the Lord and if you still want to come forward here, for whatever reason, come and we will pray with you even if it is not to receive salvation. If you feel that you still want us to pray for you, come here, we are going to spend a little while in front of the Presence of God. We have a good God, and other brothers who come by and pray for each other.
Come and if you feel from the Lord to be here for a moment at the altar of God and receive the touch of the Holy Spirit, look, there is never redundancy, it never hurts to come and seek another round of blessing from the Lord. Come here brothers, let us pray for these brothers who are here and let us make this moment a moment of deep spiritual ministry, God wants to touch your life. God is here for grace, for healing, for blessing. Receive grace from the Lord in your life, confess the goodness of God right now in your life. Thank you Lord, thank you, thank you God.
The psalmist David says in Psalm 103 verses from 1 to 5: "Bless my soul to the Lord, and bless all my being His Holy Name. Bless my soul to the Lord and do not forget any of his benefits. He is the one who forgives all your iniquities , the one who heals all your ailments, the one who rescues your life from the hole, the one who crowns you with favors and mercies, the one who satisfies your mouth with good so that you rejuvenate like the eagle." What a precious psalm, what a blessing.
I wanted to share with you this afternoon, brothers, because two Sundays ago when I was here preaching for the last time before our sister came last Sunday, the sermon that I shared with you, I admit, was a little heavy to a certain extent and I I always like to balance the preaching, because the Word of God has advice for all moments of life, and there are moments when it calls us to think about our responsibilities, it calls us to think about our duties, it calls us to remember the principles of Writing.
Sometimes the Word of the Lord calls us to remember the call to holiness. Sometimes the Lord calls us to remember that the Christian life also has afflictions, has trials, has difficulties, and that we have to move forward in the midst of tribulations and trials, and that God often uses trials to strengthen us and form us. the character of Christ in us.
But there are also moments when the Word of God caresses us, and God calls us to rejoice in the beautiful things that He provides, and to receive that cool breeze that reminds us that God is there with us too; and then what interests God is simply lulling us and caressing us, and telling us: My son, my daughter, I am with you, trust Me and rest in Me.
And this psalm kind of counterbalances it a bit because last Sunday I spoke to you about how many times when we think that we can rest and that we can finish our work, God says: Don't take off your tackle yet, you have to work a little more still. And that we are useless servants, that no matter how much we do for God, we will never do enough, and that we ultimately have no right to feel like God owes us anything. If we are going to see we are useless servants as the Lord Jesus Christ says.
And we said that the word servant means rather: slave. We are the property of God, God can do with us whatever He wants, and we must arm ourselves with that mentality, always ask the Lord: Lord, what do you want me to do, what do you require of me? and be willing to give the Lord everything He wants.
And that's a heavy Word in a sense, isn't it? And although we also talk about how God does not treat us as slaves but treats us as friends, in the end, despite the fact that this is our condition, let's say, judicial, of being property of the Kingdom of God, God still in His mercy He treats us like friends, and we're done at that point.
But this afternoon I want to put the emphasis on the other side, the blessing side. The side of God's goodness and mercy, the side of remembering all the good things to which we have access as children of the Lord and this Psalm 103, and these verses above all, are like the paradigm of all things that we receive from God and have a right to expect from our loving God.
The psalmist begins by saying: "Bless my soul to the Lord" is a call to his own soul to bless the Lord. Brothers, how important it is that we remember that adore the Lord and bless His Name is something that we must do at all times of our lives. And there are times when we are going to arrive at Church, we will feel burdened, we will feel tired, we will have problems that we are dragging on, there will be financial difficulties, and the truth is that if we are honest, we will not want to praise the Lord; our soul will be tired. But you know what? It is in those moments perhaps when we have to adore the Lord the most and say to our soul, to our mind, to our emotions, to our spirit: my soul, bless the Lord.
Sometimes you just have to do it on principle. And know? Some people say: no, I don't want to praise the Lord because I don't feel like doing it and I don't want to be a hypocrite. Know what? God does not care that you praise him even if you have no desire, on the contrary; He rejoices in that sacrifice of praise that you offer him. Worship the Lord no matter what, but worship him, lift up your soul and call it to worship.
Adoration is a discipline and it is something that we have to cultivate in the morning, at night, remember the many blessings that God brings to our lives and adore him. That beautiful chorus that we sing many times, right? "Praise God when things go well for you, how good it is! Praise God when you don't have any problems, what a good thing! But if you praise him among your brokenness, that holy Christ glorifies himself within you" Hallelujah. And we have to know that sometimes when we least want to praise the Lord and decide to do it is when God is most glorified in our lives.
The Lord Jesus Christ has said: "The spirit is always willing but the flesh is weak" we praise the Lord with our spirit, we do not necessarily have to praise him with our emotions. That emotional adoration is very nice, but God likes us to praise him in spirit and in truth, that means in principle, we praise him because we recognize that he needs to be praised.
And you know what happens when you start praising him? the sorrows are clearing up. The Spirit of the Lord enters our life and those oils that are dry and hard there begin to loosen, glory to the Lord, and you begin to experience that joy of God in your heart because your spirit is coming into contact with the Spirit of the Lord, and that blessing begins to flow. And you begin to wonder: but what was he so worried about, why? your mind has changed and you already see things differently. Bless my soul to Jehovah, it is a mandate that you have to give to your soul continually.
And then he says: "And bless all my being his holy name." He adds: "Bless Jehovah my soul and do not forget any of his benefits." Do you know that sometimes we have to do this, not to forget the benefits that God brings to our lives? how easy it is to forget all the things God has done in our lives. When the scare passed we already forgot what God did, although when we were smelling gunpowder we still said: I'm never going to forget God, I'm going to look for God but how easy! When the rest times come, we return to the routine again and we forget about the many blessings that God has given us. I have promised myself to recount those moments in which God's liberation has come into my life and to remember them as a beginning of life.
I was telling the brothers this morning that there are so many things, there are so many benefits, that by dint of being so natural and such a normal part of life, we forget that they are God's active provision until they are gone, and then we remember. Because sometimes we sit down, we eat a good meal but what about the healthy stomach that is digesting it, right? or the teeth we have with which we can chew that food.
Sometimes the simplest things, I also told the brothers and I think I shared with the twelve o'clock service, that sometimes we have so many things in our homes. That tube of pasta that when it's finished you have another one and open the cabinet, and there it is ready. When the brush wears out, you simply have one or two more lying around ready, and there are people who don't even have a brush to brush with. A good part of the world does not have those things to which we are so accustomed.
The water with which we bathe, warm water. We open a key, there is warm water. Many people know that they have to go with a can to the river or to a communal tap to fill it up and take it home, and the poor bathe themselves with cold water, and we have so many things that we take for granted, generosity, goodness of God.
I think it's a good exercise for us to sit down sometimes and start recounting all the blessings that God has brought into our lives. The health that it gives us, the mind to reconcile our thinking, the company of loved ones, a job that it gives us. That food that somehow reaches our homes, all the benefits. Being able to come and worship the Lord. Knowing that our life is safe, that even if we die we have access to the Kingdom of Heaven. That we are reconciled with God, that God has forgiven our sins, that God has not treated us as we deserve, all the benefits. Having access to the Throne of God in prayer.
So many things we have to be thankful for. The Bible says, "Be thankful." When you thank the Lord and express your gratitude, that generates more blessing. The expression of gratitude cleanses us, sets us free, breaks ties. Sometimes we are constantly complaining and then what that complaint does is that it brings more weight and more suffering to our lives. Let's try praise, let's try expressing gratitude, let's actively remember all the blessings that we continually receive from the Lord and our life will be blessed by it. Do not forget any of His benefits.
And then David goes into a series of specific benefits that he feels he has received but that we can also identify with. He says: "He is the one who forgives all your iniquities." Why did David put that as the first consideration that was important to him? because David knew that he was a sinful man. David knew that he had made serious mistakes throughout his life. He loved God and God loved him greatly, but David also knew that he had a record with a few little spots on it, you know?
Did you know that when David wanted to build a new sanctuary for the Lord, God told him: David, thank you very much, but you know what? have you spilled too much blood? David was a warrior. David was a conquering king who brought his people to a very high level of prominence in the Middle East. But in the course of that, he killed a lot of people, shed a lot of blood, and the Lord said to him: You know what? I need the person who builds My Sanctuary, something as sacred as that, to have hands a little cleaner than yours, David, thank you. But you know what? what I am going to do is that I am going to let your son build me the Sanctuary. And then David had to give Solomon everything he had collected to build that Sanctuary.
Then David knew: I have shed a lot of blood, and I assume that when he was saying that he also remembered that terrible moment when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and that he used his authority as king to impose himself on this woman, full of lust, full of desire And later when this woman became pregnant, David wanting to hide his sin, wanted to make a plot so that her husband, who was a general of his army, a faithful, honest, courageous man with great integrity, wanted to bring him from the battlefield. so that he would sleep with his wife so that they would believe that it was he who had impregnated her, and he said: I can't do that because I have to be with my men who are having work on the battlefield, and David finally ended up killing this man to cover up his sin and God knew it, and gave David a very, very serious punishment, because God unfortunately loves us but also disciplines us. And David's life and his generations were persecuted for the blood that he had shed of this righteous man.
And David remembered this I guess. There's that Psalm: "Have mercy on me, O God according to Your mercy." That Psalm of expression, of David's pain when God confronted him. David was not a good Father either. Everything indicates that he was a careless father. Absalom, his son, strongly rebelled against David when Absalom himself made a mistake but David didn't know how to deal with it. He had many women, children of different women, this created problems in his lineage. And we see at the end of his life, this old man, King David ready to die, the last scene recorded in the Bible of David is giving advice to Solomon: I want you to kill the one who treated me badly when I was running away from my son Don't let him go to his grave in peace. What thing.
This man who did so many good things, the last portrait of him is: seeking revenge against one of his adversaries, giving advice to his son who is going to become king, to replace him. And those are the things that strike me about the Bible, that it does not present us with plaster saints but radically imperfect men, like David, right? he loved God greatly, he beheaded a giant for fighting for the honor of God, he loved God desperately but he also had areas of sin in his life, and he was very aware that he had failed the Lord. And I think that's why the first thing David puts there is this: He is the one who forgives all your iniquities, he knew what he was talking about.
My brother: I can say that all of us feel portrayed in that. Who has not fallen short before God? who right now cannot remember something that has violated, in a very strong way, the Will of God for their life? we all have our record right? And we continually have to come before God and present ourselves before His Grace and His Mercy.
God forgives us too. And I know that we talk a lot about being upright before God, about the holiness that befits the House of the Lord. But let us not forget, brothers, within that, that whenever we talk about the call to holiness, we do so in the context that we are sinners, our own fallen nature, that we have to be aware of our need, that we have access to divine Grace, that we have a God who is amazingly able to forgive those who confess their sin before Him.
The Word says: "As the father pities the children, the Lord pities those who fear him, because He knows our condition, He remembers that we are dust." What often allows us to rest in the Lord is that fact, that we have a Father who is merciful to us; we don't have a foreman there with the whip ready to beat us every time we sin. But the Word of the Lord says that: "If we confess our sins He is faithful to forgive them." The Lord says that if our sins were red like scarlet, they would become white like wool.
And the Lord also says that when we confess our sins and God forgives us, He no longer remembers our sins, He treats us as if we had never sinned, you know? Through the blood of Christ Jesus we are like innocent babes, though we are scoundrels out there, we know it; but God is merciful and kind.
I encourage you: do not abuse the Grace and Mercy of God but when you need a little sap, anointing there on your back, go before your heavenly Father and confess your sin, that is what then gives us strength to continue forward. Because I believe that when we present to the world a God who is harsh and always ready to whip us every time we offend him, then we do like Adam and Eve: we hide from God. But you know what? you don't have to hide from the Lord. All God wants is for you to acknowledge your sin and come before Him, and receive grace and mercy, and He will always forgive you.
There we have that eloquent image of the publican who comes before God, approaches to adore the Lord and his heart is full because this man is a criminal, abuses his governmental position, exploits the people, and says: Lord have mercy on me who I am a sinner The Bible says that this man, due to his pain and recognition, left justified by the Lord, while there was another next door who supposedly did nothing, did not break a plate, did not do any kind of bad things, a Pharisee and He said: Lord, thank you because I am not like this publican here, I am not like this dirty sinner. I fast, I tithe, I go to Church three times a week. And the Bible says that he left with all his sins on him just as he had entered the temple. The other acknowledged.
I told the brothers that we are in a culture today, currently, that is mired in sin, as all other cultures have been through the centuries, but this particular culture in which we live persists in not recognizing its sin and give another name to his sin. Nowadays we call sin: human rights, we call sin simply: well, a genetic condition, we call sin other things. And we believe that by changing the label of sin, God up there is going to make a transaction and also change its name. And you know what? in the long run in our consciousness, we know that we are sinning.
Why do you think that in these communities there is so much suicide, so much depression, so much neurosis? And it is because man can name things but his conscience knows that he is far from God. I say: why don't you stop suffering and just come before the Lord, confess your sin and ask him to forgive you, cleanse you, heal you? Confess your sin, restore yourself, move on, fight in the Name of the Lord and God is powerful to restore your life. Less effort.
We, the children of God, never cover up our sin, brothers, let us be transparent before the Lord. Keep short accounts before God. If you offend the Lord, immediately throw yourself at the feet of the Lord and settle your situation with God. Confess your sin and sin no more, for that is what the Lord said to the adulterous woman. Woman: I'm not going to condemn you, go away. People forget that part too right? He likes a lot about: I do not condemn you, but they forget that the Lord told him: Go and sin no more. We then have to commend ourselves to the Lord and to His Grace and His Mercy. God is so good. He not only forgives you when you sin but He helps you not to sin through His Holy Spirit. Commit yourself to the Lord and commit your life to Him, and He will be faithful to help you in any way possible. Then the Lord forgives our iniquities.
David goes on to say, "The Lord is the one who heals all your diseases." We have a healing God brothers. God specializes in healing us, He is the one who heals all our ailments. That plural: ailments, and I believe that the name itself does not say diseases, although that is an implication, right? But that plural: ailments, implies the wide range that covers the healing power of God in His great mercy.
Our diseases are diverse, they can be of different kinds: physical, emotional, spiritual. Ailment can simply be a child that causes us pain, a difficult marriage, a situation with a friendship that is costing us, something at work. Illness is everything that takes away the joy of life, everything that is the result of the fall of this world in which we find ourselves. But all these things God heals, God intervenes in all those areas of our life.
One of the most beautiful images of healing that I see in the Bible is found in Exodus chapter 15: the waters healed by God in Mara. The Bible says that the Jews were walking through the desert and came to a place, an oasis where there was water, and they were very happy to drink from the water but they discovered that the water was bitter, it was not healthy. And then they began to complain before Moses for having brought them into the desert and taking them out of Egypt, etc. Because that's what we do many times, right? When we have difficulties, what do we do? we complain to God, we blame the Lord for our debts. What we have to do is cry out to the Lord and present our needs before God.
And what did God do? He said to Moses: Take a tree and throw it into those bitter waters. In verse 25:15, Exodus: "And the LORD showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. And the LORD said to Moses and said to the people of Israel: If you listen attentively to the Voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep the statutes of the Lord, none of the diseases that I sent to the Egyptians I will send to you, for I am the Lord your healer." I am Jehovah your healer.
Have you heard the expression: Jehovah Rafa? Rafa, that word that in Hebrew means: healer, comes from there. I am Jehovah Rafa, I am Jehovah, that is one of the names of Jehovah in Scripture, our healer, the one who heals all our ailments. What a beautiful image of this tree.
Many interpreters of Scripture have seen an image of the cross on that tree, because Christ was crucified on wood that came from a tree, and they have seen this sign as when the cross enters our ailments, when God throws bitter waters into our from our life the Power of the cross of Christ we receive healing.
When you have a situation in your life that is taking your spirits away, the joy of the Lord, go to the cross, ask the Lord to heal. The Bible says that the Lord carried our diseases and sins on His shoulders, and the Lord is powerful to heal all our diseases.
By the way I tell you: healing is a mystery. Sometimes God heals and sometimes we ask him, and we continue with a situation of illness. There are many different things that go into the mystery of healing. Maybe it's not God's time. Perhaps God is allowing some suffering in our lives to serve a greater purpose that we don't understand. But what I tell you is this, brothers: the Word of God invites us to concentrate on the power of God to heal. I believe the emphasis of the Bible is on the God who is our healer.
That image of mara being sweetened by the tree of God is what I see throughout all of Scripture, over and over again we see the Lord healing. If you look in Luke chapter 4, at the very beginning of His Ministry, the Lord opened the Book of the prophet Isaiah and said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
In chapter 4 of Luke right there, the Bible says that: "As the sun went down, all those who had patients with various diseases brought them to Him and He, laying His hands on each one of them, healed them. They also came out demons of many crying out and saying, You are the Son of God, but he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ." What a beautiful image of a Christ that all the people who brought to Him healed them all.
I have not yet seen a single passage of Scripture in which a sick person approached Him and the Lord did not heal him. Now, if you have prayed to the Lord and have not received the healing that you are asking the Lord for, keep praying, keep hoping, keep trusting, keep confessing from the Lord. Sometimes we put so much emphasis on why God heals us that we forget that God says: I am your healer.
I believe that our position should always be: I am going to come to the Lord believing that God is going to heal me today, I am going to cry out to the Lord and I am going to leave the rest to Him; Let us pray for the people who are sick, let us anoint the sick with oil and then leave the rest to the Lord.
Even I say: we have to pray when we are healthy, not only when we are sick. Let's not pray to remedy diseases only, let's pray to promote health in our life. Pray when you are totally healthy and declare the life of God in your life. Pray for your joints, for your veins, for your lungs, for your nervous system, for your brain, for your spine; pray for your skin, pray for your eyes, pray for everything and say: Lord, radiate Your healing Power in my life, fill me with health, fill me with vigor. Visualize God's blessing in your life because when we visualize health, it makes it easier for God's health to descend into our life. Let's not think so much about the negative. Let us think of that God who invites us to believe in Him as our healing God, the one who heals all our ailments.
Another element of life that God intervenes in is when we find ourselves in difficulties and problems. The Word of the Lord says that: "He who rescues our life from the pit." By the way, do you know that sound? I think it's Caleb, my grandson who is calling me asking for face-time, he doesn't know I'm preaching here so we'll talk later. The Lord also reminds us of the good things in life, right? even when we are preaching up here. The one who rescues your life from the hole, when we get into trouble.
The word that the psalmist translates: hole or that is translated into Spanish as hole is the word: shaha, which literally means: a well where there is no water, it is a hole where, for example, a trapped animal sometimes falls and cannot get out of the. He was also referring to Sheol, that mysterious region of which Scripture speaks and we do not know exactly, but the ancients believed that there was a place like limbo, a gray and dark place where souls, as an intermediate between life and death.
And it's an interesting image, isn't it? because sometimes we are like in Sheol. When one has difficult situations in life, one feels trapped and everything looks bad, there is a gray atmosphere over our lives, we are in trouble; a situation from which we cannot get rid of and David says: "The one who rescues your life from the hole."
David was a hole specialist, he many times got himself into holes and he knew what he was talking about when he said that God rescued him from holes. He got in sometimes, and how many times do we get into holes because of our bad head. What's more, there are people that you advise and I know you are saying: well, I'm going to get into the hole and then I'll see how I get out, yes or no? it is so. There are people that you advise them: look, don't get into that relationship because it won't go well for you and they say: well no, I'll get out of the jam and then I'll see, the Lord will get me out somehow, right? Look: don't go into a hole. If you know it's a hole, don't get into it so that God doesn't have to come and get you out of it.
But you know what brother? Even when we sometimes make mistakes and have fallen into holes of our own making, the Lord still does not abandon us. I'm in a situation, I can't solve it, but You have the answer.
You know that sometimes it even comforts me to find myself in a situation where I can't get out and I don't even know how I can get out because I know that in that impossibility, God can enter and take the glory, and He's going to get me out somehow.
I was talking to someone recently and we were discussing a situation that this person was in that quite frankly, me looking at her, humanly there is no way that this person could get out of this situation unscathed. It is a very cumbersome, intricate, very difficult situation. I told him: you know what? you can now then with all confidence go before the Lord and say: Father, I do not know how I am going to get out of this but I entrust this situation to You, and you know what? the Lord pulls a rabbit out of a hat in some way that you can't explain but He does.
King Jehoshaphat when he found himself surrounded by a tremendously powerful army and that army inevitably came to possess Judah, and I have always carried that Word in my heart, because Jehoshaphat appeared before his people, called a great national meeting in the square Jerusalem and said these powerful words to the Lord, he said: "Lord, we do not know where to go and to You we turn our eyes."
And out of that meeting came the voice of a prophet who told Jehoshaphat exactly what to do, and Jehoshaphat didn't just have to strike; God resolved the situation and killed all that huge enemy people. They turned swords against each other and gathered spoil all day. The Lord knows how it will resolve.
Sometimes a solution that seems utterly impossible for God is easy and one laughs at how easy it is when God gets in the way. Do not worry: if you are in a difficult situation, appeal to the Lord, He is your mercy, He is the source of the solution to your problem. When you find yourself in trouble, cry out to the Lord and He will get you through.
"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth" hallelujah. If the Lord made the heavens and the earth, everything that is within them is under His dominion and He is powerful to get you out of any situation, simply cry out to Him, fill your heart with faith, declare your expectation that God will solve your problem. Do not stop crying out to the Lord, throw yourself at the feet of the Lord. Present your case again and again, and the Lord will not let you be ashamed.
I have had to do this over and over again, every time we have gotten into all these constructions, I have had to come to the Lord: Lord, you are not going to allow Your people to remain in shame, You are going to bring us forward. One gets into the holes. That hole is a good hole for the glory of God, you know?
But sometimes you get into those holes and you don't know how you're going to get out or not. Frankly, when we began to build this building, I did not know what was going to intervene in those years, but as the Word says: "If I perish, let me perish." There are times when one has to get into things by faith and God will take care of getting ahead. He was more than powerful one and the other, and
again to get us ahead.
I can give you a small example, for example: when we were dealing with all that money that we had to pay each month. Every month, we came at the end of the month or at the beginning of the next month, and there is Yoxmar who doesn't let me lie. Every beginning of the month, for seven or eight months, after we sat down and looked at the possible tickets, we had about sixty or seventy thousand dollars left that we still had to pay. Money had to be paid to that bank, there were contractors, there were construction expenses. Look: for six, seven months the Lord again and again opened the sea before me.
And I can say, so many brothers, some of them are here. The first was a sister who told me: Pastor, and I, with what face do I come to ask a person? This sister came, she gave us a check for fifty thousand dollars from her, she told me: here is this, you don't have to pay it for now; not for now? important. A brother came literally with a brown paper bag, with bills of 50 dollars, 100 dollars, fifty thousand dollars: Pastor, here is this money, I have been saving it. Do what you need with it. We never ask for anything.
God pulled us out of the hole over and over again, to the Lord be the glory. God did not leave us and so, the Lord will not leave you at any time. I thank the Lord for the example of my mother who left me with an attitude of radical trust in the Lord, that God is capable of parting the Red Sea before us. And we have inherited that faith and it has been a blessing to us. Give that inheritance to your children and believe in a God who gets you out of any bind if you cry out to Him, and He will answer you. Those who trust in Him will not be put to shame.
And my final point, according to what the psalmist says here, right? says that: "God is the one who crowns us with favors and mercies, the one who satisfies our mouth with goodness so that we rejuvenate ourselves like the eagle." Here we have an image of overwhelming abundance, the abundance of God, the provision of God, immense and generous. The blessings that we have indicated before are of a defensive nature, they are remedies. The one who heals all your ailments, the one who rescues your life from the hole, the one who all your iniquities. The Lord corrects negative things but you know what? that God also specializes in blessing us without it being to heal something negative. Here it is simply God blesses you, God fills your mouth with good things, God overwhelms you with His blessings.
I say brother, I firmly believe that the life of a believer, of a child of God who is guided by the principles of the Word is a life of blessing, provision and prosperity, my brothers. What happens is that sometimes we do not saturate our mind.
Sometimes we have to reprogram our minds, because when we are in the world the devil turned our backs when he wanted to, and when we come to the ways of the Lord and we do not understand that we now have heavenly citizenship, that we have a heavenly Father that our condition has changed; now we have all the resources of heaven in our favor. Now we can appeal to the Lord and He covers us with His goodness and His Mercy. Now we have the right to come before the Throne of Grace and receive opportune help from the Lord. We do not change programs.
And then we continue in our life as if expecting disaster and destruction, and then we feel like madmen who do not count on the ways of the Lord. But God has good things for you and your lineage.
God has changed the program, God has changed your condition. You have gone from being a stranger to being an adopted son of the King of kings and Lord of lords. You have the right to come and bring your case before the Lord, and receive blessing from the Lord. You have to ask the Lord: Lord, change my program.
You know that having that blessing mentality requires a change in our lives. It requires a continuous regimen, good food in the Word, prayer, confession of God's goodness, saying good things with our mouths, listening to good music, programming our thoughts to confess God's blessing and then become magnets of the Lord's blessing. . You have to believe that, because you are a child of God, you are entitled to receive great blessings from the God who created you.
And then we can say like the psalmist in Psalm 128 and with this I end, Psalm 128: "Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord." Do you fear the Lord? you are blessed. "Blessed is everyone who walks in his ways. When you eat the work of your hands, blessed are you and it will be well for you. Your wife will be like a vine, your husband, your children like a vine that bears fruit on the sides of your house. Your children they shall be like olive plants around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed, the woman who fears the LORD. Bless the LORD from Zion and see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life, and see the children of your children." Amen, glory to the Name of the Lord. We bless your life my brother, my sister, stand up.
Let's thank God for all His blessings. I want you to leave this afternoon with the certainty that you have an incredible inheritance, you have all the resources of heaven at your disposal. The Word of the Lord says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. He does not say that he is going to bless us, he says that he has already blessed us. What we have to do is learn to dwell in the blessings that God has given us. What we have to do is saturate our mind with that blessing mentality which then attracts God's blessings into our life. Receive it in the Name of the Lord.
I want to invite: if there is anyone this afternoon who has not yet entered into that blessing of being a child of God, a member of the Lord's family. If you want to confess your faith in God this afternoon, perhaps the Lord has spoken to you through adoration or through this message, and you need, you know that you need to make your peace with Christ and give your life to the Lord. This place is open right now.
If you know that God is calling you, come over here and we will pray for you, we will deliver you into the arms of the Lord. If there is someone who has not done it before, come here and we will enjoy this moment of intimacy with the Lord, come and we will give your life to God. God bless you my brothers, amen.
Is there anyone else brothers? Glory to God, everyone who wants to come through here. The Bible says that: "To all who thirst: come to the waters." Any family that knows they need God? any couple, any young? We are going to be here for a moment in the Presence of God, will there be someone else? If you know that someone is in need, encourage them and come here, accompany them, let's pray for them, a good God. God wants to bless our community. The Latino community needs God brothers. The neighborhoods of this city need God.
The only solution for our people is to give their lives to the Lord. The only solution for this city is to cry out to God. God has power to change your life.
When we come forward here, what we do is confess to the Lord, Father: I am a sinner and I need Your Grace, we confess Christ, we confess him as our defender and our helper. If anyone else this place is open, stop by. And over your life, son of God, daughter of God, I declare happiness, joy and health.
And at this moment I also remember brothers who are going through their tribulations that the Lord gets them out of the hole, the Lord gets them out of the bind. The Lord brings Persio out of his illness, Dalia, we bless her in the Name of the Lord. Also to Carolina and Pedro, a young couple from our Church who are also in trouble, in the Name of Jehovah we bless them right now.
To the brothers who are here that I know that some are going through tribulations and difficulties at this moment, brothers: I bless your life, and I declare the Grace of the Lord, do not stop crying out to God. "Call to Me" says the Word "and I will answer you, and I will teach you great and hidden things that you do not know." Do not accept an opinion of evil in your life. Believe in the God who has good purposes for you. Seek the Lord.
Right now confess Christ as your Lord and Savior, rebuke the enemy of your soul and tell him: you no longer have power over my life. I believe that Jesus died for me on the cross of Calvary, forgave my sins, healed my wounds, annulled all the devil's accusations against my life and the Lord gives me a new identity today, confess it like this, believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior. Repent of your sins and the Lord will not leave you in shame. The Lord will change the condition of your soul as if you were a baby out of your mother's womb without an absolute record. God cleans your record and gives you a new opportunity.
If there is someone else, there is still time, we want to pray for you. Thank you Lord, thank you Father for the privilege, the privilege of walking in Your ways. Thank you because you are good Father. Thank you because You always give us a new opportunity Lord. Thank You for what You are doing in the lives of Your sons and Your daughters. Pray for this brother too please, someone to accompany him. Thank you Father for precious souls that You love and that You know well. Give thanks because there is hope for us.
We ask that Your Father Church be a refuge for souls, that Your Church can offer hope to those who are stuck in a blind alley, Father. That Your people can serve as prophets and prophetesses who declare the good Will of the Lord over the city. Thank you because Your Word encourages us to have faith and to trust that the future is good because You are in our midst Lord, thank you for the positive of Your Word, we confess you as our God, as our Savior, the source of our blessing, thank you Lord Jesus.
Keep there praying for your brothers, something soft. While our brothers there are receiving grace from the Lord and if you still want to come forward here, for whatever reason, come and we will pray with you even if it is not to receive salvation. If you feel that you still want us to pray for you, come here, we are going to spend a little while in front of the Presence of God. We have a good God, and other brothers who come by and pray for each other.
Come and if you feel from the Lord to be here for a moment at the altar of God and receive the touch of the Holy Spirit, look, there is never redundancy, it never hurts to come and seek another round of blessing from the Lord. Come here brothers, let us pray for these brothers who are here and let us make this moment a moment of deep spiritual ministry, God wants to touch your life. God is here for grace, for healing, for blessing. Receive grace from the Lord in your life, confess the goodness of God right now in your life. Thank you Lord, thank you, thank you God.
