A Journey of Faith

Hebrews chapter 11 is a well-known passage about the faith to which we are being called. Let me begin by saying something about the origin of this message, which I shared this morning with the English ministry, and perhaps above all I wanted to share it with that particular group—not the English ministry, but that group at that English service. I shared that sermon because it was like the first time we were exploring this possibility of a 9:00 a.m. service exclusively in English, and I sensed from the Lord that it was like opening up something new, something different, even though we have already done similar things, and that it was a moment of some significance, and I wanted to frame it within the biblical context of faith and understanding as a Church.

And yesterday afternoon, as I asked the Lord for wisdom about what to preach that would do justice to that moment, the image came to mind of Abraham when God calls him and tells him to leave his land and his kindred and go to a place that He would show him. And it seems to me that this is the moment in which this Church finds itself, and the process this Church has been going through over the years, of which this stage is a part and a new manifestation of those instructions we receive from time to time from the Lord to make changes and adjustments in our ministry.

I have told the people that this is not really my initiative. I do not believe it is my initiative to change that 9:00 service to English and move our Spanish-speaking group to 12:00, because if it were my initiative, I would have more doubts than I already have, because faith is agonizing—that is how it is—but I feel that the Lord is calling us to a new stage of faith, to a new process of faith. Marylin, God bless you, great to see you. Marilyn, blessings.

God is calling us to a greater journey of faith. He is declaring to us the new stage that we must live through, and I say that this change is not an experiment for me. It is not as though I am tinkering with the engine to see whether something good comes out of it. I feel that we are in the very Presence of the Lord, that we are being led by God to do something heroic—heroic and risky, and generous, and selfless as well—because our Latino people are being called to let go of something that is very good and very pleasant: coming at 9:00 in the morning, for those who like to come at 9:00 in the morning for various reasons. And we are, as it were, giving up that space, that piece of Church real estate, for something that does not personally give us as much benefit or as much enjoyment on an emotional level. And we are doing it for purely clinical, ministerial, evangelistic reasons, seeking the interests of the Kingdom of God. We are not doing it because we sort of want to improve things a little or experiment with something that will give us better results, but because I believe we are hearing a divine voice that moves us forward and takes us farther ahead into what God wants for this Congregation and the destiny God has for it.

In that famous passage of Hebrews 11 that speaks about faith and what faith is, the writer of Hebrews speaks about what Abraham did and how God approached Abraham. But before going to Hebrews 11, let me first go back and connect us with the original moment found in Genesis chapter 12, at the beginning of Abram’s career, of his spiritual journey. At this point Abraham is still Abram; the “h” has not yet been added to his name, at least in Spanish as it is translated, because he is not yet that father of multitudes. His name has not yet been broadened. He is Abram, an ordinary Bedouin whose name, authority, and spiritual reach God, for some reason known only to Him, decided to broaden.

But Genesis chapter 12 says: “Now the Lord had said to Abram: Go from your country and your kindred and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And yesterday, as I thought about it, that scene came to mind of God speaking to Abraham and saying: Leave what is familiar to you; leave what is comfortable for you. Can you imagine? It is said that elderly people are very attached to their customs and their familiar surroundings. They do not like to abandon their habits or their familiar places, perhaps because they are at a fragile stage and do not want to venture into new things. But at seventy-five years of age, or perhaps a little earlier, God says to this man: Leave everything that is familiar to you. Leave everything that is comfortable for you. Leave everything you feel you have under control; set it aside and abandon it. That is the instruction God gives him, and I say that this moment is the essential moment in every journey of faith and in every life lived by faith.

And that is why the writer of Hebrews chooses this moment as one of the great moments of faith, because every move of faith in the life of a man or woman of God involves precisely that. It involves taking something that is familiar to you, that is valuable to you, that gives you comfort, that gives you a sense of security, and setting it aside in order to launch yourself into something God has for you. And that is threatening, when you strip yourself and divest yourself of something you love because it gives you peace of mind, because God has told you to do so.

And that is the process in which many of us are involved throughout our lives. It may be a young person who leaves his country to come and study in the United States because he feels that God is calling him in that direction. It may be someone who decides to buy a house and ventures out, wondering, “How am I going to make the monthly payments?” and thinking about everything that entails, including the furniture. It may be a person who is going to marry someone else and must venture to share his life intimately with another human being from now on, with everything that entails. It may be a student whom God sends in another direction halfway through his degree, and who must make up one of the years he has already spent studying or change everything completely. There are many different ways in which, throughout life, God sometimes changes our world and tells us: No, that is not the way; this is the way you must follow. And one has to decide: Am I going to obey God, or am I going to remain in the place that is familiar and safe for me?

Am I going to stake everything on God? Or am I going to say to Him: Look, Lord, you know what? At this stage of the game, all I want is to retire and be at peace; do not bother me with challenges that are too great. I believe that is what all of us have to decide.

That moment when God says to Abraham, “Look, leave your country and your kindred,” is a moment that, if you are going to live a life of faith, you will have to experience many times throughout your life. And those of us who have lived through those moments know that if we have prayed and examined our motivations, and have taken time to stand before the Lord and examine ourselves honestly; if we have consulted other people who are mature in the faith; if we have consulted the Word of God; if we have determined that we are not doing it because of some individual, personal motivation; and once we have gone through all those points and that voice is still there telling us, “You have to do this; you have to do that,” then launch yourself in the Name of the Lord, and God will uphold you.

And if you were mistaken, God will make sure to straighten your path. And if you do not arrive at the place where you thought you were going to arrive, you will arrive at another place that will be better, because that is how God is when you seek His glory. Never stop living by faith; remember that. If you are going to be a genuine, authentic believer, the hallmark of your life will have to be living by faith and having those moments that will terrify you, when you look into the abyss and see what is there but cannot see the bottom, and they tell you, “Jump,” and you are going to do it in the Name of the Lord, because the Word of the Lord says that your feet will not stumble against a stone; He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

When one places one’s faith and trust in the Lord and is certain, or more or less certain, that one is doing things for the glory of God, do not be afraid; launch yourself in the Name of the Lord. That is the life God blesses and honors, and in which the Lord is greatly glorified.

I say that faith is the essential measure of the Kingdom of God. Faith is the currency with which things are bought and sold in the Kingdom of God. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. If you want to live by faith, you will have to live by faith and not by sight.

Verse 38 of Hebrews chapter 10 says: “But the just shall live by faith.” The rail upon which the righteous person rides is faith. It is believing God when everything inside you screams, “Do not do it!” It is calling your flesh into question and listening to a higher voice, a higher principle that goes beyond your emotions and what your instincts tell you to do. That is faith: proceeding according to the manual, proceeding according to principles and not according to emotions.

When you enter the Christian race, you understand that God is calling you to live according to principles far higher than your flesh and your emotions, your sense of security, and your desire for what is familiar. God is calling you to live the way one takes a pill: you simply take it with water and do not even think about what it tastes like; you simply take it because that is what must be done.

And that is how we are navigating as a Church in this time, and that is how we have navigated throughout all the years we have existed as a Congregation. It has always been by faith, for the glory of the Lord, and God has made us a Congregation that moves in that way. And whenever we think that everything is finally fine and normal, God says to us, “Wait,” trips us up, and tells us, “Now you still need this; start over.”

God demands so much of Abraham that He not only tells him, “Leave what is comfortable,” but also says, “Go to a land that I will show you,” to the land that I will show you. In other words, He does not even tell him where he is going. He simply says: Start walking, and along the way I will tell you where you have to go. And that is also something you have to learn if you want to live a life of faith.

I always think of the words of the Spanish poet—I believe it was Antonio Machado—who said: “Traveler, there is no road; the road is made by walking. Traveler, there is no road, only wakes”—in other words, the trail a boat leaves behind as it moves—“only wakes upon the sea.” That is all. The road in the Christian life is made by putting one foot in front of the other, walking by faith, and many times you do not know whether you are going to end up in a dead end or fall off a cliff. Anything is possible, and God does not fully guarantee you one thing or the other.

Faith is not being certain about everything, but continuing to walk in the Name of the Lord despite your uncertainty. And I have learned that this is one of the most important patterns for your life if you want to grow in the Lord. If God tells you something, do it. If you do not have everything clearly laid out before you, try to seek all the light you can, and along the way God will meet you, and He will open the entire road before you.

Hundreds and hundreds of years later—probably 1,500 years later or something like that—the writer of Hebrews, meditating on how to illustrate what faith is for the people of God, writes about one of the most exalted examples of faith. Incidentally, Abraham had two great moments of faith. One was that moment when he set out walking in that land he did not know, and he had a second moment, which was when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac. I spoke about that a few weeks ago, and we saw that there too God asked him to sacrifice what he loved most: that son he had fathered at one hundred years of age, who was like both a son and a grandson at the same time. And at one hundred years of age God tells him: Now sacrifice to Me that son whom I gave you. And Abram, now Abraham, decides to obey God.

What is interesting is that Abraham has already learned some lessons, you see, because when Isaac asks him—but, Father—Abraham has not told him what is going to happen, and Isaac says to him: We have the wood, we have the fire, but where is the lamb? And Abraham does not tell him, “You are the lamb.” He tells him, “God will provide.” That is where the name Jehovah Jireh comes from; that was what he said in Hebrew: “God will provide the lamb, my son.”

And the writer of Hebrews says that Abraham believed God was powerful enough that, if he ended up killing his son, God could raise him from the dead. So he had learned that although he did not know what was going to happen and did not have the process completely clear, the Lord would be faithful, and God would make sure that everything turned out for good in the end. And that is how we are, and how we have been throughout the years, always trusting that God holds all the pieces of this process we are living through as a Congregation.

The writer of Hebrews says in verse 8 of Hebrews 11: “By faith Abraham, when called, obeyed and went out to the place he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out without knowing where he was going. By faith he lived in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.” And I was telling the brothers and sisters this morning that God loves tents—“stores” in Spanish, but not in the sense of Marshall’s, so do not get any ideas here. “Ah, I knew it! That is why I love stores so much.” No, forget that. I already saw you looking mischievously at your husbands and saying, “See? I told you!” Those are not the kind of tents I mean; I mean camping tents.

But God likes tents. Do you know why? Because faith gets along very well with camping tents, because camping tents are easy to put up and take down; they are very portable, very easy to carry, and if you walk by faith, you need to be ready to move at any moment when God tells you to. If you build yourself a four-bedroom house and a swimming pool in the desert, you have problems, because the desert is made for simply moving on. That is why the Bedouins live in tents, because they are always moving from one place to another; they have to.

When God sent the people toward Canaan, He commanded them to live in tents, and I believe He was teaching them a lesson, preparing their lives so they would learn to live by faith. And the tabernacle He instructed them to build was not the final temple they would build when they entered Canaan; it was a structure that the priests and Levites could assemble in no time. They put it up and took it down, as we did here with the piano and the pulpit—easy to move. The columns were poles, and the walls and roof were animal skins, and the lampstands and the things they used were easy to take apart, put into a container, and carry to the next place where God had to take them.

And God provided them with a pillar of smoke, a cloud of smoke, and a pillar of fire to guide them by night and by day. I say, “Wow, why didn’t He give them a GPS? Good grief, how stingy the Lord was! He knew GPS devices were going to come along; He could have given them something high-tech.” But no, He gave them a humble pillar of smoke and fire to guide them, so that they would learn to discern, because many times God does not give us perfect instruments with which to navigate, because He wants us to exercise our discernment. He wants us to exercise our sense of dependence on Him. He wants us to inquire, to seek, to remain attentive to Him, to make ourselves vulnerable. And that is why God often does not give you the instructions for everything He has for you all at once, but gives them to you little by little so that you learn to trust Him.

How does one develop the instincts of faith? This is how: God gives you little riddles, and in the process of your trying to solve them, He exercises your understanding. That is how God deals with us. That is why He will never give you one hundred percent of the instructions and the exact directions to where He wants to take you.

I have spent my whole life, I tell you, following a very imperfect compass within me regarding what God wants, and whether you like it or not, by having me as your senior pastor, you are involved in that journey, in that personal spiritual journey because—thank you, sister, for affirming that for me; at least there is one person listening to the sermon here—because ever since I was a child, I have been living according to that Will of God and that cloud that guides and directs me. And I shared with the brothers and sisters this morning that I have felt that call from the Lord to seek something, something that is still ahead of me.

And I was telling the brothers and sisters that I am like those birds that fly over the Atlantic Ocean and travel great distances by means of a biological compass they have that guides them. They say birds read the stars; they orient themselves by the stars. Do not ask me how they do it, but they can navigate instinctively and find their bearings, and they travel across an ocean that has no markers at all, simply finding their way. And sometimes it may be magnetic, some scientists say: they orient themselves by the Earth’s magnetic currents. Do not ask them what they are following or about the physics behind all of that. They are simply obeying a clock, a biological mechanism that God has installed in them, but they find their way very well, do not get lost, and return.

Salmon go to the place where they are going to die, where they were born; they go back to where they were born to die. And how do they reach that place? Do not ask them. They have something written within them, and they are guided there. The children of God have a compass within us. Some have a witch, while others have a compass within them (laughter). I would prefer to have a compass anytime, you know? But God guides us.

I remember having that sense of the Lord’s direction ever since I was a child, wherever it might lead, and I am still like Abraham, seeking a land that God will show me along the way. Some may think that land is already Lion of Judah, that at sixty years old I am already where God wants me, but I still feel that it is not, that there is still another part of that road, and I do everything as a partial experiment.

And what I have indeed seen is that our Congregation has been guided in such a way as to keep building more and more, and God keeps adding different pieces to that structure for something I do not fully understand. But as I tell you, ever since I was a child in the Dominican Republic, I have been a traveler like Abraham, and perhaps many of you can say the same thing. But the first thing was that God took us out of Alma Rosa, there in the Dominican Republic, and brought us to Brooklyn, New York. And I believe that even before that I was a traveler, because my family comes from Africa and Spain. I have African blood, glory to God, and Spanish blood, because the blood of many peoples is in us. That is why the Latino people have something very special that God wants to do, because they are also a traveling people. We are Africa, we are Asia, we are Europe, we are Amerindia; all the races of the world are within us.

Yesterday I was at the home of a family from the English ministry, and there was a couple: he is Asian and she is Central American. And even though she is Central American, she looked perfectly Asian, and it was as though she could easily belong to the race—I am not going to say much about them—they looked exactly alike. Why? Because Latin America contains Asia. Asians came across the Bering Strait, passing through North America until they reached South America. The Mayans and the Aztecs are of Asian blood; we have it, and God has made us a migratory people.

That is why I believe that those Latino people whom God has brought from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean have something God wants in this time, and that this nation is going to be blessed by a pilgrim people, because we are pilgrims and foreigners. God loves pilgrims and foreigners. There is something that God is—the human race, humanity, is searching for something in this time, and those who will help them are those who are pilgrims like them in the faith, those who, like Abraham, are searching for a land that God will show them and reveal what that land is.

That is what we—and many people here do not want us, but God is the owner of the land, and He knows how He distributes His land and gives it to whomever He wants. And we are not here to steal anyone’s land, but to bless this nation that has welcomed us. We do not want to conquer; we want to bless, and we simply want to earn our bread and bless this nation, because that is what God wants.

The migration crisis of all those peoples migrating from the Middle East is quite a spectacle—those desperate boats in which many hundreds of people sometimes drown at once. There is something that God—humanity is searching; it is migrating toward something. They are like birds migrating toward their destination. Nowadays there are movements all over.

And the Bible says—Daniel says—that at some point people would be traveling, there would be a restlessness, and distances would grow shorter. And we are now in that time in human history, because something is happening, and God is calling us to get in tune with it: to be a pilgrim people, to be a people of tents. And God is going to use that—people who are willing to migrate like that, to move in that way; people who do not love the land, people who do not love their house, people who are willing to leave everything. And if God tells you, “Leave everything; forsake it all, because I have something for you,” you say, “Amen, Lord. Where do You want me to go? Show me the way.” Those are the people God is going to use: people who are willing to let go of what they love and who are ready in an instant to get in tune with God’s call upon their lives.

And that is why God has called us at this time when it seemed like: “Okay, we have already invested millions of dollars in constructing these buildings, and we have invested in furniture and technology and all kinds of things.” We could say, “Okay, Lord, that’s it. How wonderful—we have arrived. Let us make three tents, and we will stay here,” like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. And the Lord tells them, “No, no, no. There is work to be done down below.” We cannot rest on our laurels. Where the glory is, one wants to remain where the glory is, but God says, “No, you are a pilgrim; you are a foreigner. You are called to live in a process, to move on to the next stage of glory.”

God always has more glory for us. How does that little Pentecostal saying go—do you remember? I will remember it later, but we say those things: “And to His glory, more glory.” “Who lives?” “Christ!” “And to His glory?” “More glory!” We say that, but many times we do not understand what we are saying. And many times we want to hold on to the glory we have, and the Lord tells us, “No, you have to let go of that so that I may give you more glory,” and that threatens us. It is like those television game shows that tell you, “Okay, you won $500. Do you want to risk the $500 to win the car?” And you are thinking, “Hey, what do I do? Do I lose the $500? Do I win the car?” You have the choice, and if you are willing to risk the $500, then you may very well win the car. The thing is that God does not guarantee that you are going to win the car; perhaps you will lose everything, but you have to take the risk in the Name of the Lord. Glory asks you to strip yourself of what you have.

God calls us as a Church: let us never fall in love with what we have, brothers and sisters. And I know the sacrifice being asked of the brothers and sisters who come especially to the nine o’clock service, because it is as though, after all this work we are doing—and how wonderful, we have worked, we have bled to have this place—now we have to let go of half of that and then crowd into the service? But I believe that when we do that in obedience to the Lord, God does not come up short; He blesses us and gives us much more.

But that is how it is: go from your land and from your kindred, from what is familiar to you, from what is comfortable for you. Enter the new stage of glory that God wants for your life, and the Lord will take care of it. I believe that if we are faithful to the Lord at this point in our development as a Congregation and obey the Lord, having no guarantee of success but believing that by doing so we are opening up a space for God to use us in a greater way and enlarge our space as a Congregation, the Lord will bless us, and we will be glad that we did it. That is the journey of faith.

I was telling you that it has been this way throughout my entire life, and you are involved in a very interesting drama, because my life, your life—and I dare to say these things at this stage of my life—I have kept them to myself for many, many years, and I feel tremendously uncomfortable doing so, I confess. I do not like talking about myself. I do not like talking about my personal dramas, and I like taking risks even less, or risking my image before an audience. And that is what I am doing right now by telling you that for decades, ever since I was a child, I have lived believing that God has something to do through my life, and that God has shaped this Congregation and my life within it, and is taking us through a drama whose ending we still do not understand, but I believe it will be for the glory of God.

And do you know what frightens me? That one day, after I have died, my coffin will be here in front, and someone will be saying, “Pastor Miranda always believed that God called him to something, although he never made it,” and that is where the nightmare ends, to be honest with you. And that is why I have often repressed that vision, because I do not like making myself vulnerable; I do not like taking risks in front of people. But on the other hand, I have sensed from God that if I do not do it, I may be repressing the vision, because the Bible says, “Declare the vision and write it on tablets.”

And many times the vision must be declared by faith so that the vision may come to life. If you do not declare it, if you do not take the risk, the vision remains there, stagnant. And I am declaring it before you; I am declaring an intuition—that is all—it is a voice. I do not necessarily believe that Abraham physically heard the Voice of God speaking to him from heaven and saying, “Abraham, go from your land and from your kindred.” Who knows whether it was a dream he had, like the dream I had that God would take us out of our land and away from our kindred in Cambridge? It was a dream. We Pentecostals like to say, “I had a vision,” as though to raise its status. It was not a vision; to me, a vision is something you see while in a trance.

It was a dream, and it could have been that I ate too much rice and beans the night before; nothing guarantees that it was a vision, a revelation from God. To me it was something so real, so vivid, so meaningful, that I saw—I believe I did—God showed me the face of the Lion of the tribe of Judah above the rooftops of Boston’s financial district, that area we can now see from the fourth floor, with a number of giant poisonous spiders over those buildings, Boston’s skyscrapers, and the face of the Lion of the tribe of Judah—which I later understood was the Lion of Judah—watching and exercising authority over those demonic entities, and my hand pointing up from below toward the lion, saying three times: You are the Lord, You are the Lord, You are the Lord. And that was the origin of our move from Cambridge to Boston, leaving our country and our kindred to go put up buildings and deal with rubble, and with a neighborhood full of crime and other things. And we have seen that God added an H to our name, as He did with Abraham, because He has enlarged us; He changed our name.

Which do you prefer, Central Baptist Church or Congregation Lion of Judah? I think that second name is more dignified, and that too was part of God’s revelation. There is something in that name, Congregation Lion of Judah, because I believe that in this time of history in which we are living—Christ has many names throughout history and throughout the Bible; there are dozens of names that apply to Him: the Lamb, the pearl of great price, the Rose of Sharon, a great many names.

I believe that at this moment in history, the Name that applies to Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Why? Because Satan has been given power to move throughout this land as never before, and there must be a lion that roars and drives away the power of the enemy. At this time in history, the Church of Christ must be a lion or a lioness; the time of the lamb was another time.

When Christ comes, He comes as a warrior, and He comes with His robe covered in blood; He comes with a sword proceeding from His mouth. The Christ whom John sees in Revelation is not some half-baked Christ; He is a being who inspires terror when you look at Him. A sword proceeds from His mouth; He is burnished bronze; He is fearsome, so much so that John’s legs melt beneath him and he faints. That is why these evangelicals here in this nation who are so cowardly bother me so much: they want to win people over with nothing more than a kitten’s meow, when what God wants is a lion’s roar.

I believe that God changed our name, changed our identity, changed our ministry; God enlarged us. As He told Abraham: I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea; if the sand can be counted, then your descendants can be counted. I will be with you; those who curse you I will curse; those who fight against you, I will fight against them. God... we dared to leave our country and our kindred.

And I have always been leaving my country and my kindred. There are so many things—I am not going to go into those details; I did so this morning—but there have been moments throughout my life when God has called me again and again to leave what was comfortable for me and enter another stage of my life.

I am going to share something that perhaps I have not shared before. When I was at Princeton, my field of study, my concentration, was international relations, international politics. I wanted to be a diplomat; I wanted to enter the United States Department of State and work in diplomacy. That is why I entered a department, the Woodrow Wilson School, which was a school within the university, and I was preparing to head in that direction. Halfway through, after I had invested a great deal of time in that field, God changed my course, and through a university professor I met, Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, I changed direction and decided, when I began my doctoral studies, to change my concentration and enter the field of Spanish American literature, Romance languages—the direction—and glory to God, because that prepared me.

I always tell people that one of the best ways to prepare for ministry is by studying literature, because in literature you learn to appreciate characters, and every one of you is part of a most interesting cast of characters. Getting to know characters and analyzing them is one of the most important skills a person can have, and you are very interesting characters. One day I would love to write a book, “Characters of Lion of Judah.” I would try to disguise them completely, because there are some revelations in there that are (laughter) terrible.

But I believe the Lord was leading me; it has always been that way. When you live by faith, when you live by faith, God is always taking all the pieces on your board, and just when you think you finally have them all in the right places, He gives them a swat and they go flying onto the floor, and He tells you: Put it together again. That is how one must live the Christian life.

And we have seen time and again that when a person launches out in faith, brothers and sisters, seeking the Lord, God never disappoints us. One of the latest—am I boring you? Give me a couple more minutes (laughter), let me continue. Do you know that God always speaks through metaphors? And as Christ says: He who has ears to hear, let him hear. The problem is that God speaks to us and we do not see it because we are shortsighted and slow.

But after analyzing that process for quite some time, I am now convinced that God put me into a metaphor of faith through these screens, because that is how God trains His servants and His children. And one must learn to see and understand that, in this time when we are embarking on this other journey of faith, changing the Church’s arrangements in terms of its services—because the truth is that, as I told you before, personally it was agony for me to take the risk.

All the way from China, brothers and sisters, a Chinese man named Sherlock—where do they come up with these things?—the risk one takes in doing this sort of thing. But that is how God trains us, and I tell you: I say to Him, Lord, do not let me crack my head open in front of these people. And thanks be to the Lord, I believe the Lord brought me through safely, and we are going to see even more beautiful things that are still to come. That other screen is already here; the thing is that there is a part we have to install in order to put it up. But that is how God works: He puts us through exercises of faith. It is like training a warrior, training an athlete.

How is an athlete trained? Through exertion, through artificial ways of training the muscles, and in that way he prepares for the real battles. And I believe this was something like a part of it; God’s playful nature is always involved. I see God in so many things throughout my life, scenes that are not a matter of my projecting something prophetically; I simply believe that this is how God speaks. I believe God is always winking at you from behind the scenes. He does not reveal Himself completely, but every now and then He winks at you, and I believe that the thing with the screens was God winking at me to show me something: that sometimes you have to launch out by faith, that you have to travel great distances to obtain what He wants, and that you have to take risks in the Name of the Lord. If your heart is clean and pure, you are doing it for His glory.

If you have prayed, if you have cried out, if you have sought counsel, if you have examined yourself, if you desire the glory of God, if you want to bless others, if you are doing something contrary to what you would like to do in your flesh—if you put all those things together and they tell you, Go in, move forward, because that is what the journey of faith is like; that is how you find the Will of God.

Many people ask me: Pastor, how can I know the Will of God? That is like asking me, What is the origin of the universe? It is very complex; it has many pieces, but some of them are like these, and the walk of a man of God is quite complex. But in the end you have to leap into the abyss. A time comes when you have looked at it from every angle, examined it, and there is nothing else to see. Then stop thinking about it and jump in the Name of the Lord, and the Lord will send all His angels to guard you in all your ways.

I ask the Lord that in this stage—and with this I will finish—we are at a time in history when humanity is going through a process. It definitely has something to do with the end times. I am not going to say that Christ is coming tomorrow, but it is near, it is near, and I believe humanity is searching for something. And I believe we are living at a time when we are here in Boston, but all around us, forces among the rest of humanity are roaring and manifesting themselves, conspiring to bring everything to its culmination. And this is a moment that, if it is not humanity’s final moment, is an incredibly epic moment, of epic proportions—if you do not know what that means, look it up in the dictionary—of extraordinary proportions, carrying tremendous weight.

When one looks at everything happening in the world at this time—as I say, the great migrations from the Middle East, Islam enraged and rising up to judge the nations and hold them in checkmate, all those nations that deny the sacred and say that God is dead, but now this horde rises up and says no, that God is alive, and they are going to impose Him one way or another through their violence.

Nuclear war, the rise of China, North Korea with its threat of becoming a nuclear power, Iran on the other hand, Israel in difficulties with the Palestinian movement that gives the nations no peace, this nation that has lost its credibility in the world. The United States used to be the stabilizing force in the world; that is no longer the case. The United States has now lost its credibility, its prestige, because it has sold itself to secularism and experimentation and has lost its course, lost its clarity. The United States itself is in crisis, a terrible leadership crisis unlike anything before, a division among the different groups that make it up, a crisis of the family, of youth, a terrible racial crisis, an epidemic of crime and violence.

In Chicago this past weekend, 64 people were wounded and 11 killed in a single weekend, and this summer is expected to be the most terrible summer in Chicago’s history because of all the gang violence. Right now this nation has one of the most terrible and highest rates of violence and crime among all the civilized and industrialized nations of the world. Terrible—something is happening in the world.

And God requires a Church, a Church He can use to give counsel to this world. I believe the governments of the world will come to the Church seeking wisdom and counsel. God is leading the world into a crisis; self-sufficient, secular, rational man is being humbled and shown that he does not have the solution to his own problems. Man has always believed that the next stage of his development will bring the solution to the evils of the world: the industrial age, the scientific revolution, the space age, the discovery of atomic energy—this is it, we have arrived, we have arrived.

Before the First and Second World Wars, people believed that the industrialization of the world would bring everything, and that the scientific age would do so, and that religion was no longer necessary. The Second World War came, and the First, with all the destruction of tens of millions of people, and that vain dream of man’s self-sufficiency came crashing down. Man still insists that he does not need God, and God is humbling him, humbling him, and he is now reaching his final limit.

And I know that the Church of Christ has a heroic role to play in the end times, and God is going to need pilgrim churches, churches that allow themselves to be guided by Him, churches that hear from Him, churches with a millennia-old technology of the Spirit and of the power of God and the wisdom of God, to counsel these nations that are being led into a dead end. And we want to be that Church; we want to be part of that people whom God will use in the end times, at this time in history. But this requires us to live out a frontier spirituality, an uncomfortable spirituality, an insomniac spirituality—I believe that is how you say the word—the spirituality of people who do not sleep well because they are thinking about the Kingdom.

If you do not sleep well, it is generally because—and when you are with God, many times it is because—you are thinking and scheming. I do not sleep well because I am always scheming about the things of the Kingdom of God. God wants people who, like soldiers, sleep lightly because they are at war.

How did the Lord God separate Gideon’s warriors, the three hundred who remained out of the thirty thousand at the beginning—the ones who lapped the water like dogs, I believe that was it? No, that was it, wasn’t it? That is, those who were simply watching while—the ones who knelt down, no, because they were putting their heads into the water and had to keep looking around—the ones who simply lapped the water like this because they wanted to keep their eyes on their surroundings. Those were the ones God chose. Do not confuse me, Lucy. All right.

No. Why? Because God chose the heart. God told Gideon: Bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you. Do you know that before God chooses those who will be in His army, He tests them, He tests their hearts to see whether they are willing to leave everything behind? God is not going to work through comfortable congregations, congregations that sell out to the world, congregations that look to the latest marketing doctrine and then shape their preaching accordingly, that are willing to sell the cross or the distinctives of the Kingdom, or the scandal of the crucifixion, in order to please the world. God is going to seek those who say: no, we are going to stand firm on what God said because that is what He said, and we are going to obey it to the very end, and if we perish, let us perish.

That is the Church God is going to use in this time. Right now they are being tested, right now they are being tested, and only those who are willing to give up their lives and not love them even unto death, and to obey God's scandalous demands—only they will be used in the conquest, and I plead with you who are listening to me to live at that level of authenticity and integrity.

When you hear me propose a new project here, understand that I do not do it simply because I need to keep busy with something, because I am restless by nature; I do it because I believe I am hearing from the Lord, and you should join in, live that life, be generous with your money, with your time. And brothers and sisters, I am telling you the truth: I am not going to change. If this Church's modus operandi bothers you, you are going to have problems, because this is not going to change; in fact, it is going to get even hotter. This Church needs warriors.

We are not looking for evangelicals; we are looking for warriors, we are looking for Kingdom people, we are looking for pilgrims and strangers, we are looking for tent people, people who move at a moment's notice, people who sleep lightly because war may begin at any moment and they must get up immediately, and they sleep with their weapons beside them; generous people, people who do not love money, who do not love the approval of others, who do not love prestige, who do not love comfort, who do not love their profession, who have laid everything at the Lord's feet and say to Him: Father, do whatever You want with it. And those are the people God is going to bless, support, and even prosper as He prospered the Hebrews. That is God's call for our time.

What we are doing is honestly minimal in view of the way God has already blessed us and what He still has ahead. There is a land to which God wants to take us, there is a land to which God wants to take us, and He has been taking us there through all these moves of faith we have made, and like Abraham, we continue on our way.

How many more times will we have to take down the tent? I cannot tell you, but I believe that every time we do it, God will bless us, affirm us, and show us that it came from Him; He will vindicate us in what we are seeking.

I bless this Church and open myself to God's purpose, and we say: Lord, whatever You want, whatever You want from us; just help us live up to the calling, help us live at the level of the greatness You have for us. Stand up and open your heart and your spirit to God's call in this time; say amen to the Lord's purposes, to God's plans.

Tell Him: Lord, I want to be a bird of prey; I do not want to be a turkey walking around there with its head down. I want to be an eagle that soars through the heights, with eyes that can see for miles, swoops down upon its prey, seizes it in its talons, and continues in flight, dwelling in the high places. God wants eagles in this time; God wants birds of prey for His glory.

Ask the Lord to sharpen your instincts as a female warrior, to sharpen your instincts as a warrior bird, as a warrior, as a hunter for the Kingdom of God. That is the call; embrace it right now. Tell Him: Lord, make me one of Your warriors, make me one of Gideon's three hundred, make this Church one of the three hundred that You are going to use.

Bring us into our destiny; we surrender our lives to You. Young person: surrender your dreams of greatness and self-fulfillment to the Lord; surrender to Him your appetite for money and fame and prestige. Homemaker, surrender your children to God, surrender your marriage to Him, surrender your body, your mind, your intellect to the Lord. I lay it all down. I do not think I have much left to surrender to the Lord, because everything I believe I have is at His feet; and if there is anything, Father, reveal it to me so that I may cast that at Your feet as well. Let us pour out our lives like a drink offering, like water poured out before the Lord's feet, and let us live at that level.

Surrender to the Lord everything you love about yourself, every characteristic of your personality, everything you love about your temperament, your personality, your habits; surrender it all to the Lord. Tell Him: Father, whatever You do not like, whatever about me is not pleasing to You, I surrender it to You. Strip it from me, Father, even if it hurts, because I need to travel lightly, and I cast off every weight that limits me in my race of faith, so that my marriage may be a light, blessed, agile marriage; so that my praise may be unencumbered praise; so that my sharing of the Gospel may have Your anointing, Father. I strip myself even of everything I love about myself; I surrender to You everything I love most about my own being. I lay it all at Your feet so that my home may be a home where You dwell, through which You can speak, in which You can abide, and which You can bless.

This Church, Father—strip from us every weight that is not pleasing to You, Lord; strip it from us so that we may walk lightly and run this race, make this pilgrimage lightly before You, agilely before You. We surrender to You everything we are, everything we have, everything we love, Father. Everything we consider ours, we relinquish it right now; every sense of ownership, we lay it all at Your feet. Make use of us, Lord, and do whatever pleases You with this people.

We promise You that we will live lightly and hold things lightly, not clinging to anything in this world, Lord, so that Your Name may be glorified, so that Your Name may be exalted, and so that Your Will may be done on Earth and in history as it is done in heaven. We surrender our lives to You; we surrender Congregación León de Judá to You for the glory and honor of Your Name. Thank You. Amen, Lord.