Let Go of the World, Hold on to God

I invite you to continue reflecting on God’s call to live healthy, wholesome lives and to develop within ourselves the capacity to renew ourselves, precisely, to be rejuvenated amid the trials and difficulties of life; how to overcome losses, tragedies, afflictions, physical and emotional defects, and past traumas; how to use all those things even to become wiser, deeper, more compassionate people who reflect God’s grace and love more fully; and to know that the difficulties and trials that come into our lives are not an indication from God.

For the children of God, trials, losses, and suffering are not indications of divine indifference; they are not indications of God’s anger; they are not indications of God’s punishment. Rather, they are indications of God’s mysterious involvement in our lives, because God sometimes uses strange tools to advance His purposes in us, leading us to become more and more like Christ Jesus.

Let us always remember that the afflictions and trials the Lord experienced on Earth, the Bible says, were mysteriously used—because I do not fully understand how—to perfect Him, I imagine in His human dimension, because there was always that tension within Him between the divine and the human. But that is what the writer of Hebrews says, right? That the Lord was perfected.

So that you do not think I am uttering heresy, now I am going to have to look it up, and I am curious about that as well, right? Because it is important, because when we talk... I told you from the beginning that my presentation—and all of these are principles that I will be developing in many different ways—my presentation about health and wholeness was not going to be superficial, but very dynamic, very mindful of the struggle inherent in human life and of how God also uses many things to perfect us that do not appear to be of that nature, right?

5:8? Okay, we have a theologian here too. 5:8, yes, thank you. Who said that? Rafael, you’re sharp, huh? That’s great. Yes, Hebrews 5:8 says—look: “And Christ, in the days of His flesh, offering up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who could deliver Him from death, was heard because of His reverent fear; and though He was a Son”—listen to this; here I think the writer begins to wrestle a little with the divinity and humanity of Jesus contained in a single vessel—“and though He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered, and having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation.”

So we see this idea that the Lord was perfected through the struggles He endured. It is evident, then, that God uses that process to purify us and work in us, and we should not reject life’s struggles as though saying: Oh, God simply does not love me. No. God is using all those things to bless us, perfect us, and make us more like Christ.

Paul speaks of wanting to know Jesus in two ways. He says, “In His resurrection”—and what is the other one, which prosperity preachers so often forget?—“I want to know Him in His resurrection and in His sufferings.” Look it up there if you like: in His resurrection and His sufferings. Because sometimes we are interested only in the resurrection, because that is what is radiant, magnificent, and beautiful. But what about knowing Him in His sufferings?

The Bible suggests that when we are going through trials, we somehow participate in the life of Jesus in a mysterious way, more deeply than in any other way. The Bible says that the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. I do not want trials, you know? But when I have to go through them, I say: Father, give me the right perspective and help me see Your work in my life.

So God wants us to use the circumstances of life to grow, to improve, and to become stronger. That is why my dialogue about living a healthy and wholesome life includes pain and suffering, because healing only makes sense amid sickness, in the context of sickness; otherwise, it would simply be something neutral. And I encourage you to see your life as something beautiful, a great tapestry God is weaving with many different colors—some darker, some brighter, but all beautiful colors that will give the final design of your life extraordinary beauty.

So why is it important? I was saying last Sunday, this past Sunday, that one of the principles that helps us become healthy people is knowing that God is with us and for us. Do you remember? I read that verse from the Psalm that says: “This I know: God is for me.”

And there is also the idea that we must actively and affirmatively remind ourselves: God is with me; God is for me. When you go to the Immigration office for your citizenship exam, walk in there and say: God is with me; God is for me; God is going to give me wisdom and grace. In fact, before you go to the exam, simply daring to apply for it already requires a certain confidence that God can do it, right?

Many times, we tend to think: It will not work out for me; it will not happen; it will not come to pass, because that is for other people. Many times, even before entering the battle, we do not fight it, because within us there is an underlying refrain that says: I cannot; I do not have what it takes; I do not deserve it; it has never happened before in my life.

And many people who lived without Christ and without the power of God’s Kingdom upon them continue carrying the same defeatist recording they had when they were without Christ after they enter the Gospel. Now that you are with Christ, all the resources of heaven are with you and in your favor, my brother. God is with you. God loves you. God has good purposes. You can do great things in the Lord because Christ is with you, within you, and for you. You have the great Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who encourages you, enlightens you, teaches you, and fights with you and for you.

Therefore, everything you do brings far greater benefit than it does for someone who tries to do these things merely through their own strength. Do you understand? That is why it is so important to remember that principle, and reaching a firm conviction about that principle takes a great deal of time and effort.

You must partake of a nourishing diet of faith. You must listen to sermons of faith, sing choruses and hymns of faith, and associate with people of faith. Look: flee from pessimistic people as you would flee from a plague, brother. Gather and speak with people who have faith; and if you speak with people who do not have faith, let it be to help them acquire faith. But do not allow yourself to be infected and contaminated by pessimistic people, you know? No, bring them into the optimism of the Gospel. We have an almighty and powerful God who is with us throughout every process of our lives.

And before moving into the next teaching, let me linger here a little longer because, as I told you, this is an ongoing, long-term dialogue, and sometimes I am going to go back a little in order to move forward. But let us remember these principles. When you go to the airport—I was just in Miami, and Miami is an airport, but it is incredible; it is immense; it is a city—you often have to get on a train to go from one terminal to another.

So you have to walk a great deal to reach certain places. To get to the car-rental area, you have to walk about half a mile or perhaps more—I do not know. But do you know what they have there? They are like moving belts that move slowly, yet quite a distance. So what do you do? You step onto them. They are strips that stretch, let us say, two hundred or three hundred feet, a hundred yards. You step onto these moving rollers, right? You get on them, and the belt itself already has a certain speed. Now, if you walk on the belt, you are walking twice as fast, right? Because you have the belt carrying you as well as your own motion. That is, compared with a person who is off the belt and is merely walking on the stationary floor, you are going to travel much faster, okay?

And I have always said: Wow, this is a perfect image of us, God’s children. I like it because of its complexity, because on the one hand it does not tell me: Just stand there like a lazy lump, holding onto the belt so it can carry you. No. If you have strength, walk; take advantage of it, right? So there are two things: for me, that moving belt is God’s blessing, the nutrients of the Kingdom, and God’s Word, which in and of itself is already going to bless me in everything I do. Now, there is a part that, if I do it, brings a double blessing. If I move with the wind of God, I will travel faster than the person who is trying to do things on their own. Do you understand?

And I believe that this is the dynamic, tension-filled vision of prosperity and of God’s blessing in our lives: there is a part that God gives us. When you enter the Gospel, you are given the whole armor of God; you are given all the nutrients of the Kingdom; you are given the Lord’s truth and Word, His promises, and God’s goodwill. That is the moving belt. But He says: Now use the endowment I give you; be strong and courageous; do not fear or be dismayed; be strong and courageous, because I will be with you wherever you go.

You are going to step onto the Gospel’s moving belt, and you will travel faster and with less effort than those who have to rely solely on their own strength. But that does not exempt you from making your own effort as well, from struggling, and from doing your part. Yet you must be convinced that God is with you and for you, because that will give you courage.

And reaching that conviction, that posture of faith, requires reprogramming the brain, especially for those of us who have suffered from depression and defeatism, who come from a background of poverty where we were not affirmed, where no one told us they believed in us or that we could accomplish things, right? We grew up in a world that was sometimes difficult, where our parents had no time. The poor things were fighting just to survive—what time did they have to tell us that they loved us, that we had worth, and that we were children of God? The poor things were merely surviving too, and sometimes they would even give us a good whipping. And when we brought them a little drawing and said, “Look, Daddy, what I made,” they would say, “Oh, child, go away.” The poor things were depressed, struggling with life.

So when we enter the Gospel, we sometimes find it difficult to accept the idea that we have a good God, a benevolent Father who has good things for those who love Him, who wants to bless us, who is committed to us, who will take every element of this fallen world and turn it into gold and nourishment for our growth; and that I have the right to aspire and to believe that there is a bright future for my life and that God will help me through the processes of my life.

I can study. I can have a good marriage. My children can become powerful, good, and noble people. I can enjoy a healthy and vigorous old age. I can save money. I can undertake changes in my life. I can reprogram my personality with the help of the Holy Spirit. I can get out of life’s quagmire because God has good things for me.

You can believe in those things because God has told you so and promised them to you, and He is committed to you. Perhaps He will not give you success immediately because He wants to develop biceps in you; He wants to build muscles. If He does everything for you, all He will make is a parasite who simply sits there with its little mouth open for the Lord to put things into it. No. He wants you to work too, to exert yourself. He wants men and women with initiative and authority because they have fought their battles and then seen the Lord bring them through their trials. Sometimes the Lord holds back a little so that you can develop certain muscles, but He is unquestionably with you, and that is important.

Let me move on, because there are many beautiful things in that idea. But remember: commit yourself to the project of becoming a woman or a man who is confident that God is with you and for you; and consume, chew, and digest everything you can concerning God’s possibilities within you and God’s good, benevolent purpose for your life. Consume a diet of faith. In that sense, I strongly believe in affirmative preaching, okay?

Now, there is another principle that I believe is important for emotional health, and it too is something we must gradually learn to integrate over time; it does not come naturally. It is also connected with everything I have been saying, including when I said that we should remember that one of the principles of health is the idea that I have inherent worth in God and that I do not have to look to the world, to what others think of me, to what people say about me, or to the trappings of success to give me value. I have value because God says I have value, and God loves me.

I was saying—notice—that you can isolate a distinct principle from that. It is included within it, but it is separate, and it is this idea: again and again I am returning to the idea that we must learn to detach ourselves from the world and to detach ourselves from people. That is a principle worth isolating.

To the extent that you want to be an emotionally healthy person, you have to gradually disconnect yourself from the dependence that the worldly man, the worldly woman, has on what others say, what others think, what others do to them, the circumstances they are experiencing, and the things happening around them. And you have to gradually disconnect those cables and connect them to faith, to spiritual vision, to what the Word of God says, and to the principles of the Kingdom of God.

I believe that in the Christian life, as you mature, you attach less and less importance to people, to the world, and to the things you see day after day, and you live more and more by the principles of the Word of God. You depend less on emotions and insecurities, on fears and past experiences, and you increasingly become someone whose driving force is not what people say, or aspirations, or the striving of life, success, or the motivation provided by ambition; you learn to be a person who moves by faith, by what God has said, by what God has declared.

If I am afraid, that is fear’s problem, not mine. If you doubt yourself, you tell it, “Hey, move aside; I believe God is with me.” If one day people do not call you, you say, “Ah, it’s their loss.” If one day it is cloudy outside, you do not get depressed because it is cloudy, because you know that God’s sun is shining within you; the Presence of God is within you.

I learned that from my mother. At first I would say, “Oh, it’s raining; look how ugly the day is,” and my mother would say, “Don’t say the day is ugly. It is a day created by God; it is a good day.” I reached the point where I now love the rain; my mother did a good job in that regard.

And I believe that one learns more and more to be a creature not of time and space, but of eternity. I mean, regarding what the Word of God says, right? It says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” There you have the tension.

Many people live on the bread of life, of the world—what the world has in store for them, what people tell them, the prestige that comes from having degrees or having people’s respect, or from the artificial achievements of life—and their self-esteem depends on that, on the bread that comes from the world, instead of depending on every principle, every word, every teaching, every truth that proceeds from the mouth of God, from the Word of God, from the principles of the Kingdom of God.

That is why it is so important—do you remember that we talked about the armor of God, about the armor of the Roman soldier, which is also spiritual armor? And what is the first one it mentions? Truth, isn’t that right? Truth, and then righteousness, and also the shield of faith; those three ideas are connected. I was telling you that, when applying that to a life of health, one has to live in the truth.

If you—this is not something I say; psychologists, psychiatrists, and all mental-health workers say it—every neurosis arises from a rejection or ignorance of the truth. When you know the truth, the truth sets you free, as the Lord Jesus Christ says, and we must dwell in God’s Truth because the world throws all kinds of lies at you.

The Bible says that the heart is the most deceitful thing there is; remember that. Do not be guided by your heart, because your heart is biologically connected to the world; your emotions, your brain, your neurological programming are connected to the world and to experience. You are programmed by the experiences of the world. You are the sum total of everything bad and everything good that you have experienced; generally, the balance will lean more toward the bad because this is a fallen world.

So if you always live according to your neurology, you will always be a very deformed person. We have to live by divine Truth, and we have to cultivate an inner rejection of the world.

I believe that this is something modern theology has somewhat lost, you know? In our desire not to be an exclusivist, alienated Church, and to win over the world through a certain degree of likability, it is as though the biblical language concerning the world and the Church has been lost. The truth is that, if you examine biblical language, there is a very powerful idea: the rejection of the world. That hymn I am always quoting says, “The world cannot be my home; in glory I have my mansion; the world cannot be my home.”

The Bible says that whoever makes himself a friend of the world makes himself what? An enemy of God. It also says, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world.” So I believe that this has often been lost. In our desire to be modern and integrated, we have lost the other part: that we are not of the world, and the world is ruled by a rebellious prince called Satan, who rejects everything that belongs to God and everything that belongs to the Kingdom of God. Yes or no?

The values of the world, its culture—everything is ultimately permeated by the principle of evil and the rejection of God, and by attachment to time and space instead of to eternity. So we must recover the biblical language of rejecting the world and of the separation that exists between the world and the Church in that sense, because, on the other hand, yes, we are in the world! And we have to be a positive force, but we must also be clear: yes, I am here in the world to restore and heal lives, and to get everyone I possibly can out of it and bring them into the ark of salvation, but I know that this world is condemned to destruction.

When I go to a museum and enjoy the beautiful paintings of Monet or Michelangelo or whoever it may be, I also know, even as I delight in them, that one day all of it will burn and go up in flames when this world is destroyed and God creates a new world and a new earth. I will see them, but I will see them only on video, because I do not think they will be there, since none of that will be able to enter eternity. What is more, I will be able to paint some of them the way Michelangelo painted them; my brain will be perfect. What is more, I will say, “I know,” and a painting will come out just like that (laughter).

But you know, I delight in those great works with a divided mind: one part of my mind enjoys and celebrates the greatness and creativity of those men and women, and another part says, “But vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” “Man is like the flower of the field; the wind passed over it and it perished, and its place will know it no more.”

The Bible is full of references to the fragility of life, the fragility of the world. The Bible says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man,” and I believe we have to learn, brothers and sisters: ask God every day to disconnect you from people, from the world, and from lived experience, and to allow you always to see life through divine lenses, the lenses of the Word of God—the true and irrefutable diagnosis of the Word and the principles of the Kingdom of God—because that will make you invincible, it will make you untouchable, it will cover you with a protective membrane so that nothing sticks to you.

When you go through suffering, tribulations, and rejection, they will slide right off you because you are smeared with shoe polish all over. “Betún” is a Caribbean word, I think, right? But it is the paste you put on shoes. Perhaps I should use something more elegant, but you understand what I am telling you. Anoint yourself with oil so that the bad experiences of life slide right off you. Okay, you fell and scraped your knee: put a little oil on it and keep moving forward in the Name of the Lord. Do not remain in the past; keep moving forward, embrace the life that lies ahead of you, God’s positive calling for your life.

Do not remain stuck on what happened to you, what they did to you, or what they did not give you, because when you are in the Kingdom of God, all of that will fall away from you. You will be a perfectly renewed creature. In a sense, you will not remember it, because nothing that happens in this life will have any effect on you, and you are turning everything that happens into a blessing.

And that is why it is so important that, as Christians, we purpose to understand this, because this is a principle you will have to hear one hundred and seven thousand times before it sticks in your consciousness. But at least, if you know that you must move toward it, you will continually reinforce it: I will not become attached to the world; I have to detach myself from the world; I have to detach myself from what people say about me; I have to detach myself from what I experienced today, and I have to see it through God’s lenses.

That is also connected to faith, to God’s Truth, because God’s Truth is above every lie of the world and every illusory thing. And it is also connected to the life of faith, which enables you to say, “No, what I am seeing and feeling has a certain degree of truth to it, but it is not the final word. The final Word belongs to what the Word of God says in my life.” And that ability to see the world with detachment is so important.

I believe that is what the elderly, people who have lived a long time, learn. You see that elderly people no longer care as much—unless they are Joan Rivers, having fifty thousand plastic surgeries to hold on, because those are worldly people, you see? Worldly people see themselves aging and want to fight it and cling, in a deforming way, to a fictitious and grotesque youth. But generally, when a person ages wisely, as time passes, they no longer care as much about what people say. They come out in a simple little housecoat when visitors arrive, and you see them sitting there in it, because why should they care what people think, right? They have already been toughened by life.

They see the little grandson who broke a plate. The mother, who does not have much experience, thinks her son is going to become a criminal one day because he misbehaves. The grandmother says, “No, girl, you did worse things when you were his age.” She no longer allows herself to become obsessed with the moment because she sees things through a perspective stretched across years, across decades of life. Imagine if you could see life in the light of eternity, the way God sees the world. He sees, “Oh, a tragedy; 50,000 people died.” God says, “Hmm, I have seen 100,000 people die; more than that died in the flood,” says the Lord. The divine perspective is a perspective of a thousand years. It says, “A thousand years as one day, and one day as a thousand years.”

And, insofar as possible, we too have to acquire that eternal perspective so that things—the momentary sufferings of life—somehow become diluted and less powerful over us, less deforming; they have less power, less ability to deform us, because we are seeing everything in light of God’s eternal perspective. Then we could not care less about what people say or think: “You determine whom you are going to serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah.” If they did not like that, that is their problem.

“Oh, you never come on Sundays when we invite you.” “No, because I go to Church. I have to go seek God and be strengthened by the Lord. So look: come with me, and afterward we’ll go somewhere.” What does God say, what does God want, what does God determine and diagnose? And one lives by that, brothers and sisters. Ask the Lord to disconnect you from the world and from circumstances. Do not be so attached to what your mind tells you and what your eyes see, nor to what your heart dictates or the experiences that shaped or deformed you; develop an inner capacity to live detached from the world.

Do you know that all great wisdom depends on that? Even, for example, if you look at Hinduism or Buddhism, there is that call to detachment, to letting go. Buddhism, for example, says that the root of all evil is attachment to the world. Christ did not say it; the Lord said it, but Buddha and other wise men said it as well. I am not saying that all their teachings are true, but in that respect it is very powerful.

Natural observation itself shows us that to the extent we depend on daily circumstances and the things of life, to that same extent we will be tied to their fluctuations, like the Wall Street stock market. One day it rises, one day it falls, one day it is a little higher; someone is killed in the Middle East, and immediately they take advantage of it to raise the price of oil a little, or whatever it may be, in order to steal our money. That is all, you know? And so we live like a weather vane instead of having faith and living by this: What does God say? What has God decreed concerning my life?

I write here: “That idea of always adopting the divine perspective of faith is paramount. Living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God instead of by what we see or experience. Replacing the divine perspective with the experiential perspective”—the perspective of experience. “Training ourselves to live this way takes time and effort, but it is worthwhile. It enables us to live above negative circumstances, physical defects, deficiencies, and the need for others’ approval. It stabilizes us emotionally and enables us to process life’s losses in a healthy way,” because when you lose something, experience a setback in your life, or undergo some tragedy, you know that this too shall pass, as life says; that this world is a condemned world—I was looking for a word—expire. It is a world condemned to expire; its license is going to expire.

The date of sale. Do you know that food products have a date after which the product should no longer be sold? The product is no longer legitimate—the expiration date. This world has an expiration date, and when you experience it, you know that it has an expiration date.

People who do not have God, or the Word of God, or the divine perspective believe that the world is going to last for all eternity, and that is why they see their yard here, and if something fails them here, they shoot themselves, they hang themselves from a doorframe, as happened to our dear Robin Williams, because if your self-esteem is tied to your physical beauty, or to what people think of you, or to your popularity in the polls, no matter how much money you have, rest assured that you are going to be unhappy.

But when you know that this world is illusory, fictitious, deceptive by nature because it is governed by an essential lie—the lie of rebellion against God—because it is governed by an essential liar, who is Satan, who has not accepted the lordship of God. And this nature that does not accept the Lordship of God is destined for failure, so if you attach yourself to it, you too are destined for failure.

Disconnect yourself and enter the divine ark, the ark of God’s Truth, and live your life always asking yourself: What does God say about this? I try to do that continually; with this Church and with other things, I always say: Lord, what is it that You say? Because if I let myself be swayed, I would be changing my tie every day and putting on a wig or whatever, or doing this, changing the program or whatever so that people will come to Church.

I say: Lord, what does Your Word say, and what constitutes a healthy and true Church? I am not going to be watching people’s fluctuations, no; I look at what the Word of God says, and I stand firm in that. And you know what? Time passes, and the blessing becomes greater and greater, and greater, because you live by principles.

The other day I found myself—I will finish with this illustration, I promise you. I always like to have a little coffee early in the morning, and sometimes, since one never asks oneself, How much coffee should I put in? sometimes I put in a little more, a little less, and sometimes the coffee is strong, and sometimes it is not so strong. One day I said: I am going to measure how much is the amount that I like. And after years of drinking coffee, I decided to take a measuring spoon, put in the coffee, and find the measurement that would make me say: Wow, this coffee is so good.

So I took that precise measurement, and by the way, for me it is one tablespoon of coffee, because I do not put in that many grounds, that much coffee powder. And then I discovered that this works well for me: one tablespoon, one full spoonful, one of the larger measuring spoons, of coffee. But around the third day, I put it in and it seemed like very little, but my mind said: No, that is the amount you put in the other days, and you liked it. And this idea came to mind: trust the process, trust the process, trust the process.

Wow, that came to mind, and I said: Wow, trust the process. Do not stop to dwell on whether it seems like a lot or a little, or whatever—no. If you know that it is a precise measurement, put that in and trust the process. If it is the same coffee, the same amount of water, the same stove, the same flame, the same principles of physics, put it in and trust; and that is exactly what happened: I put it in, and the coffee was perfect. Trust the process.

And that is when I said: Wow, I have to learn this truth. And on several occasions when I have felt inclined to violate something that is working for me because today it does not seem so good to me, I say: No, trust the process, trust the process, trust the principle.

And that is how we have to live life. If you know that there is a truth that God has spoken into your life—even the children are affirming it, glory to God, they are saying amen. If you know that something comes from the Word of God, embrace it, believe it, build your life on it, anchor your behavior to it, and do not look around you at what people say, or what your own mind says, or even what your emotions say. Believe what God has said, because that does not change; climb on top of it and live life according to those principles, and you are going to be successful, and you are going to be happy, and you are going to prevail over every situation and every fluctuation of the world and of life.

Live your life according to solid principles of faith and spirituality; live according to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Detach yourself from the world, detach yourself from people—that is the title of this sermon this morning. Detach yourself from the world and detach yourself from people, and, in parentheses: attach yourself to God and to His Word, and you will be happy, you will be sound, you will be healthy. Begin to live that way, because it is going to take time; learn it, put it deep inside yourself, and let it spread through every part of your being until it becomes second nature within you. Without knowing it, you will know it; without hearing it, you will hear it within yourself. Live by it, and you are going to be happy; you are going to be successful in your life.

Let us bow our heads for a moment and receive that Truth of God into our hearts. Father, this morning we refuse to live by circumstances, events, opinions, experiences. We will use them for information, but that is all; instead, we will live by Your Truth, Your diagnosis, Your intentions, Your purpose, Lord.

And we know that Your Truth is irreplaceable, irrefutable, invincible, eternal; that if we bind our destiny to it, no force in this world will be able to defeat or deform us. We receive it this morning and take it into our hearts, Lord. Thank You because You have made everything right and good, and because You have good purposes for us. Oh, thank You for Your Truth, Father; I receive it within me, I receive it, Lord.

I bless my brothers and sisters. Heal us from the wounds of the past, Lord. Help us reflect the perfection of Christ Jesus in our lives. Thank You because He has overcome every circumstance; He has even overcome the world, and we too can overcome the world and live above the world even while we bless it. Thank You, Father; send us out from here with Your blessing, in the Name of Jesus, amen and amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters; may the grace of the Lord be with you.