Every Process of Perfecting Begins with a True Diagnosis

I want to share with you: Principles for Success in Life. You will remember that we are talking about how to turn your dreams, your visions, into reality; how to go from the vision in your mind and the desire to succeed, to live a powerful life, to accomplish things, achieve your goals, fulfill them, and see them become a reality in your life, and what is required to carry that out. So, in passing, we simply consecrate this moment to the Lord now: Father, bless us and guide us during this time we are going to have, Father, in the Name of Jesus, amen.

So again: from vision to action—how to turn our dreams into reality. We have said that more than faith and noble feelings are required to achieve success; it is not enough simply to pray and ask the Lord and make declarations of prosperity, as we sometimes believe that is all we need to do. We have said that there is an inconsistency among Christians between what we confess and what we live, what we say we are in Christ. We say, for example, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," right? But then in our lives we have all sorts of bondages, and when people look at our marriages, there is destruction; when they look at our finances, we do not measure up to what we aspire to; when they look at our emotional lives, they see all kinds of defects and bondages and things that cause harm around us.

When we look at our own ability to overcome the wounds and distortions of the past, we discover that we have all sorts of invisible bondages around us that keep us from going from what we conceive in our minds to action, because more is required than simply a great many super-spiritual declarations, right? Um, we say that the mechanism of success is a gear made up of many interlocking parts, and my purpose is to alert all of us, through this series of meditations, to certain components of success, components that go beyond faith, spirituality, and declarations of faith that are sometimes empty and merely superficial.

Incidentally, I believe that many of the problems in the charismatic Pentecostal world are precisely that: people believe it is simply a matter of going to church, and we have created a show and an event almost like a theater. When people go to church, there are experts in theater—which many of us pastors have turned ourselves into—and so what we do is put on something like a collective drama and a show in which we all participate together as actors, all conspiring to produce an effect. Then we intoxicate ourselves with rhetoric and declarations and all this, and choruses and lights, but we do not affect reality.

So for a moment we feel like giants, and it is like an addict taking a drug: for an instant we escape our reality out there, but when we leave, we see that reality continues exactly as it was before, because we are not being given the necessary nutrients; we are not going deeply enough into the Word and into the practical concepts of life. Because what congregations want is pizza and French fries, that is all; do not give them spinach, do not give them well-cooked meat. We are like children: what we want is the jam on the bread, and we lick off the jam and give the bread back to Mom so she can put more jam on it.

And many congregations are like that: what they want is simply a lot of rhetoric, a lot of cheap talk that says, "Amen, glory to God, hallelujah"; they sweat and jump, and afterward they just go home. So we pastors give people what they want; they want to hear the rhetoric, but we do not have the spiritual and ethical courage to tell them: "No, the Word of the Lord calls me to be a prophetic voice, a teacher, and to give you what you need, not what you want in your superficiality." Do you understand what I am saying? So that is what we have to do: go beyond declarations.

The Bible says, "Faith without works is dead." A lot of rhetoric without action leads nowhere. I have also spoken about how successful people have a great ability to execute and turn their visions and projects into action; the person you want to learn from or imitate is not necessarily the person who talks a lot.

Do you know that, in our countries, one of the reasons our countries in Latin America do not make progress and we are always entangled in the same terrible reality of corruption, inefficiency in our governmental systems, terrible poverty, exploitation of the poor, and total dysfunction in every dimension of our governments is that a tradition of the caudillo has developed in our countries: the strong man, the imposing man with a loud voice who speaks and delivers a good speech and intoxicates people with his rhetoric.

And then people believe that the person who dazzles them with a good speech or with a constant ability to speak in an attention-grabbing way—people say, "This is the man we need"—and so we continually put demagogues in office, those who exploit us and push our emotional buttons. Then, when they come to power, they lack ability, and very often there is terrible corruption. Many times, the people who can truly change our societies are sober, quiet, simple but thoughtful people with great character, and precisely because they are people of character, they will not take part in all this commotion and froth and all this shouting and talking.

And so we never put them in power, because power always goes to the people who talk a lot, the people who make a physical impression. And that continually happens, sometimes with pastors too. Forgive me for getting into that point, but sometimes congregations get carried away by rhetoric and believe that it is the Spirit, right? Poor Paul suffered from that: they were always comparing him to what he calls the super-apostles, those who had mastered those sensational pronouncements of Greek and Latin rhetoric and who had learned to speak to people that way, using all the techniques of public speaking. And Paul would come along quietly, with the good staff of his anointing from God and his teaching in his hand, and people would say, "Oh no, his letters are very powerful, but his physical presence is weak, and his sermon is not very impressive."

And he would say, "Hey, do not measure the spoken word; measure the essence, measure the reality." My brothers and sisters, I urge you to do that in your life: always go beyond the external foliage and seek the essence. When you go to a church, when you examine a spiritual movement, when you watch a sermon on the Internet or on television, do not focus on the rhetoric, okay? Examine the essence, examine the doctrine, examine the teaching, examine the substance.

What do I take away with me at the end of the sermon? What piece of gold, what spiritual jewel do I carry with me after listening to a person for forty minutes? Right? Because that is what happens so often; people say, "Oh, the sermon was tremendous today!" "Yes, and what did the pastor speak about today?" "Well, I do not remember, but it was tremendous anyway." And that happens so often, right? We have to be people of substance, of character. Judge people by their content; judge people by their reality, not by the dazzle of outward appearances. And we have to be like that in our lives as leaders, as parents, as husbands and wives, as friends, and as members of a congregation.

You must always ask yourself: when I am naked in front of a mirror in the bathroom, what kind of person am I looking at? What kind of man, what kind of woman am I looking at? How does God see me? How do I see myself? Right? If we asked ourselves that question more often—wow—it would be very different. At least those of us who live a public life, where we are always conscious of playing a role like actors, never take off the mask. So I believe that we have to ask the Lord: "Lord, help me to see myself in my nakedness in the light of Your Spirit, in the light of Your Word, in the light of the principles of Your Kingdom. How does my plumb line measure up in the light of the truth, of Your Truth, and of the Truth of Jesus Christ and what Christ exemplifies?"

Jesus Christ is the plumb line; Jesus Christ is the perfect man against whom you should always compare yourself. Do not compare yourself to the pastor, because he will betray you and disappoint you. Do not compare yourself to the church leader or the elder—no; we will all fail you. Compare yourself to Jesus Christ. Study the character of Jesus in the Bible and then say, "That is how I want to be, because that is the perfect model," right?

So all this is connected to this matter of success, because if you are simply a person who lives on good thoughts, personal declarations, and good spiritual rhetoric, and you do not cultivate that commitment to actions and sound decisions and, at the end of the day, ask yourself, "What did I accomplish today? How did I change today? How did I advance one millimeter in the pursuit of my goal in life?"—or my goals, because there are many different goals—that is what matters. It is not whom I impressed, not how much progress I made in dazzling my boss or deceiving the pastor or whatever; no, what did I actually do in the end?

What did Jesus Christ say when He said this? "You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free." We must have an insatiable appetite for the truth. That is why the psalmist also says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts; and see if there are any ways of wickedness in me, and lead me in the everlasting way," because we have to ask the Holy Spirit, "Illuminate me," since we are masters at deceiving ourselves all the time. And the problem with many people—the reason we do not progress in every dimension of our lives—is that we do not love the truth enough and do not allow ourselves to be illuminated by the Holy Spirit, because ultimately the human being has a terrible capacity for self-deception.

You know what? I do not trust myself. Honestly, I have already learned that I cannot even trust what I see in myself, because I know that we are perversely skilled at deceiving ourselves, and we are like anorexics who see themselves as fat. Do you know that an anorexic person is dying of thinness? Or I do not know whether to call it thinness, skinniness, or weakness—whatever—and yet, in the mirror, that person's mind makes her look fat to herself, while people outside look at her and say, "Wow, it looks as though this person has disappeared; she is gone. When she faces forward, she looks as though she is sideways; when she turns sideways, she looks as though she is gone."

Nevertheless, that is how the person sees herself, and we are sometimes like that: we believe we are spiritual giants who are doing this and that, and then we do not understand why others see us in a very different, negative way. And we blame people for not appreciating the greatness within us, but that is not it. So we have to do as the psalmist does when he says to the Lord: "Lord, You illuminate me; You teach me; You tell me."

As I think about that—and that is what happens with this, that one gets stuck; it is part of the process—that is why Peter is the classic case. And perhaps what the Holy Spirit is leading me to share with you at this moment, in order to achieve my goals and your goals, is this matter of binding ourselves to the truth. It is a very important subject: seeing ourselves as we need to see ourselves so that we can use that real diagnosis of where I am to then move toward where I need to go. But first I have to know myself as I truly am, as I really am.

And it occurred to me that Peter is the classic case of a person—a man or woman—who is self-deceived about who he truly is, and how God then sees to it that He takes a very fine little needle and punctures that balloon, that bladder, and destroys it so that He can then create a reality. When the Lord tells the disciples, regarding the time of the crucifixion, "All of you are going to abandon Me; all of you are going to abandon Me, all of you are going to leave Me," Peter tells Him, "Lord, even if everyone leaves You, even if all these scoundrels here leave You, I will never leave You. I am willing to go with You even to death itself." And the Lord smiles sadly and tells him, "Peter, Peter, truly, truly I tell you that before the rooster crows three times, you will deny Me—not once, not twice, but three times."

You see, Peter had an image of himself as a man of integrity, moral courage, and physical courage, completely devoted to the Lord; he regarded the others as insignificant spiritual lunatics, while he saw himself as this spiritual titan. And sometimes that is how so many people in the Church are: they do not understand why they are not already preaching or converting multitudes, why they are not given a higher position, according to how they see themselves. And we have to begin the painful and arduous process of individual perfection; that is the hardest thing for a leader.

Peter, for example—the Lord had great purposes for him, but he had to undergo a long process of purification, death, crucifixion, and confrontation with himself and his needs. Never be afraid to acknowledge where you are with the help of the Holy Spirit, because I tell you that you will not know—as I was saying, and I emphasize it—you will never truly know who you are except through the eyes of knowledgeable, wise, and mature people who can see you and tell you the truth. Do not measure yourself; ask a wise and knowledgeable person to tell you, "Okay, what can you improve?"

The point is that Peter says to the Lord, “I will not leave You, Lord,” and the Lord says to him, “Yes, not just once, but several times.” Now here is the question: I am not sure whether there really was such great cowardice in Peter that he could deny Him three times, with curses to emphasize that he was not one of Jesus’ followers, or whether the Holy Spirit, seeing that there really was a root of imperfection in him, magnified it to make it more dramatic for him that he was a man like any other, because sometimes the Lord finds ways to put us through experiences in life that cause us to stumble and recognize our human weakness and our imperfection.

We have all gone through that, including the one speaking to you; that is why I speak to you, because I have vast experience in this. I could earn a doctorate in getting to know myself through failures and difficult moments. And then the Lord tells him, “You are going to betray Me three times,” and I am sure Peter protested, “How could that happen? Never in my life!” And you know the story: when the moment comes, Peter is there in the courtyard where they are torturing Jesus and questioning Him until the early hours of the morning, and along comes this humble servant girl.

The Holy Spirit is very subtle in the way He does things. Peter denied Jesus Christ because of a small, weak woman, a servant girl; He did not do it through a Roman soldier. It was as though the Lord wanted to drive the knife in deeper, right? To show him what he was and thoroughly humble him. And when she asks him, “I think I saw you; I saw you with Jesus,” Peter knows the implications of being associated with this man who is now being treated as a criminal, and he says, “No, never.” He says it three times, cursing the third time so that there would be no doubt. Then Peter remembers the Lord’s Word, and it says that he wept.

What happened there? At that moment the Holy Spirit confronted him; he saw himself exactly as he was and recognized that he was not the great and highly spiritual man he thought he was, and he wept bitterly. Do you know what? Many times in life, in order to get where God wants to take us, we sometimes have to stumble several times, and sometimes many things have to be torn down before we can receive more from the Lord.

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I was saying—we were commenting on what the apostle James says, right? He says, “Ridding ourselves of all”—he says—“of all filthiness and abundance of wickedness, let us receive the implanted Word,” which, he says, can renew our lives or guarantee our lives. Because I was saying that sometimes we have to rid ourselves of things in order to receive things, and sometimes the first thing we have to do is recognize where I truly am, how weak I am, how little I am worth, how much I have to learn, and the terrible flaws in my life, so that afterward I can begin the process of taking on a new identity.

Colossians 4, I think it is, where it speaks about ridding ourselves of certain things and then clothing ourselves—that image of undressing and dressing appears many times throughout Scripture. We have to put off the old man in order to put on the new man who is in Christ Jesus; we have to rid ourselves of many wicked attributes within us so that we can then clothe ourselves with the various blessings, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and so on.

So my point is that Peter first had to be stripped before he could become the man God wanted him to be. The road to success is full of failures. Never allow yourself to be defeated by a failure in life; on the contrary, consider it a starting point on the way to greatness.

I believe it was Wilston Churchill who said, “Success consists of failing time after time without losing enthusiasm,” because he knew what he was talking about. He had failed several times in his political career, had lost election campaigns on many occasions, and, as a soldier and officer in the Second World War, had suffered a couple of failures in battles for which the public judged him severely. And now he found himself serving as Prime Minister, and perhaps he said this in his time of glory, after having played the most exalted role that any human being has played in modern history in his struggle against Nazism and the German forces in London, when they were bombing the city. He was practically the embodiment of the English spirit that kept the English nation holding on against Hitler and his terrible attacks and that, humanly speaking, I believe saved the Western world.

This little man, who was about 5'2", was nevertheless a titan, a giant. He had failed many times in his life and in many things, but he was always there; he kept going, kept going. And that is what he used to say, right? That success consists of failing time after time without losing enthusiasm. People of greatness, success, prosperity, and power are people who have used their failures as allies and as stepping-stones forward.

If you did not reach a goal you pursued, if you suffered a very great failure in your life, if you come from a background of suffering and abuse or exploitation, do not let that defeat you. Ask the Lord, “Father, how can I take this impure material, recycle it, and turn it into gold for my future growth?” Because many times life’s great sufferings, great losses, and great deserts are simply periods of waiting and preparation, so that when you emerge from there, you emerge like a titan and the devil cannot tear away what you have accumulated. Do you understand what I am saying? Can you say amen, just so I know you are still there and have not fallen asleep on me?

I am going to continue with Peter, but let me bring Moses into the middle of this, and I hope I do not forget Peter—and that is where the Lord had me. This was a summary, but it is important because all these are lessons we can use to live a powerful life. So look at Moses. From the moment Moses is born, God has a purpose for him. In fact, from the foundation of the world—there is a passage that says God knew Moses was going to live, was going to exist, and was going to be the deliverer of His people.

Then God puts Moses through a process. He causes Moses to be born at exactly the moment when he has to be born in the development of the Hebrew people, who are in Egypt and will leave at some point decades later. But Moses is born in God’s timing, and that is another thing. You have to understand what I was telling the brothers and sisters in the English-language ministry downstairs: God is the builder par excellence, the planner par excellence. God is neither early nor late. We are in a hurry; God is never in a hurry.

And part of being able to run the race of faith in a wise way that does not wear you out is running at God’s pace—not getting ahead or falling behind, but seeing how God is running and then running alongside Him so that you are always by God’s side, okay? Because many times God is going to take a long time to bring you to the fulfillment of your dreams and your life. God is not in a hurry. God is like a barber who sits you down and tells you, “Forget about it; I am in control now. Let Me do the work, okay?”

God is like a surgeon who gives you an anesthetic and tells you, “Go to sleep, because you cannot do anything. Tie me down—no.” He does it as He wishes, and He is not in a hurry. And when God works in your life, many times you have a goal: “I want to do this, I want to accomplish that, I want to be used by God in this, I want to obtain that, and I want it in six months.” God says, “No, I am sorry. If you want it, it is going to take you ten years, because there are a number of things I have to do in your life so that you can obtain what you want. A lot has to be cut away from you, many things have to be ripped out of you, and I have to give you a lobotomy and a blood transfusion and put a new heart in you, and that takes a long time.”

You say, “No, Lord, all I want is a house; all I want is a happy marriage.” Well, if you want it, you are going to have to do a number of things. So people say, “Do not ask the Lord for patience, because He will give you trials,” because people say, “Oh, Jehovah, give me patience! Oh, hallelujah, glory to God, I receive it!” God does not touch you with a magic wand that gives you patience. Instead, God puts you through a process that produces patience in you. Through many struggles, trials, and times of brokenness, you are going to say, “Wow, I no longer yell at my wife the way I used to. I no longer immediately pull out my belt and blindly start handing out whippings when I get home and the children are acting up,” because there is a process, and God takes His time.

God does not open the top of our skulls, touch us with a wand, and completely rewire our brains. He works through His engineering: events, inspirations, moments like this one, falls, successes. All of this gradually shapes an individual’s personality and takes it where it needs to go in order to achieve and retain its goals. Because many people attain goals in their lives, but they did not attain them by running the race legitimately; they cheated. So when they reach the goal, the devil comes and takes it away from them as soon as they obtain it, because the devil is a cynic, and he does not mind giving you things so that you will destroy them, only to take them away afterward and destroy you emotionally because you failed.

But when a man runs the race of faith and ministry legitimately, then no one can take it away from you, because God gave it to you and you earned it with Him. Many pastors produce a large church in no time, and people say, “Wow, Pastor, have you seen so-and-so’s church and how large it is growing?” They say it with alarm, as if to say, “Where does that leave us?” I have always quoted what one king said to Ahab, I believe it was: “Let not the one who puts on his armor boast like the one who takes it off.”

That means that anyone who is going off to war can put on his uniform and all of that and boast a great deal, but it is when you return from battle all battered, having been beaten from every direction and covered in welts, that you have to say, “Okay, how did it go for me over there?” Right? It is only when you truly finish the battle that you can then say, “Okay.”

So I believe that throughout history the Ministry has been full of superficial people, superficial pastors, superficial leaders, and congregations that accompany them in their superficiality. So great ministries and great churches are being built on demagoguery, attractive lights, experiences, technological procedures, and the manipulation of the details of culture and of what people want. Any person skilled at exploiting the elements of culture can artificially produce a church and succeed in the Ministry, but he is not building on the rock; he is building on the sand of people’s carnality.

Many people come to church and want to be told, “God is going to prosper you. God is going to give you money. God wants you to have ten Mercedes cars.” They come for anything you want, and every Sunday they come to be injected with a drug of prosperity, and they come and give money and create great palaces in which to celebrate their carnality. But nothing is being built on the principles of the Kingdom of God, and sooner or later the devil comes, kicks that sandcastle, and knocks it down.

And that is why, in ministries and in life—your marriage, your emotional life, your lay ministry, whatever it may be—make sure you build it on solid biblical principles, not on what people want from you, because you will build quickly, but you will not retain what you gain, nor will it be a blessing to your life. The only thing that is a blessing to a man or a woman is what has been gained by using the biblical principles of the Kingdom of God and of truth. Any other way of attaining victory is illegitimate, and it is what Paul says: “Let us run the race of faith legitimately.”

Because many people are taking shortcuts, but God is not like that. When God builds, He goes piece by piece, system by system, interweaving one thing with another, and that is why it takes time. And that is why we cannot rush or try to produce an Isaac or a—what was Isaac’s other brother’s name?—an Ishmael whom God... I am mixing things up now, and there are already three: Peter, Moses, and Abraham, because these two principles are repeated throughout the Bible, right?

God tells Abraham, “You are going to have a son,” when he is 75 years old, and by the time he is 100, He still has not given him that son. And Abraham says to Him, “Listen, I am already drying up completely, so what is going to happen? I am going to die and I will not have that son, so let me help God,” he says. And there is an attractive servant girl around, and he says, “Okay, help me here; I am going to sacrifice myself.” So he has a son, Ishmael, but it was not God’s time, because God wanted to develop a spiritual lesson that would serve humanity throughout the generations.

Because many times your journey in life is not only for you, but also for your children, your community, your church, and the people for whom you work, who will observe your walk and learn from it. God is using you as a metaphor, an illustration of the principles of His Kingdom, and that is why sometimes God will not give you everything you want at that moment, because God wants to extract all the juice from your life and make you a blessing to many. And afterward, in the end, God gives you what you want and hands it to you gently, fresh and clean, and you can enjoy it for a long time.

So Abraham gets ahead of God’s plan, and do you know what happens? Ishmael has caused problems for the whole world and throughout all of history; those Arabs are still there, throwing bombs at us everywhere and engaging in terrorism. Do you know that the Arabs descend from Ishmael? Ishmael was Isaac’s brother, and Ishmael is always the stock of a culture that is exactly as he was. Examine that history, and that is why I believe the Bible is real, because when you examine Israel’s character, you see the character of the Arabs and the Muslims, who have this man’s spiritual and genetic stock in them.

And there was always conflict between Ishmael and Isaac from the very beginning. Ishmael hated Isaac from the time he was very little; the Arabs hate Isaac, and Ishmael was a fierce, quarrelsome, strong man, blessed by God, just as these Arabs were blessed with all the oil they have, because God told him: I am going to bless him; he is your son, so I have to bless him. But notice what happens when a man gets ahead of God’s plan: he gets what he wants, but it leads to his destruction. Never get ahead of God; never use manipulation to obtain a position in the Church, and do not pressure anyone into giving you something, because you are using the devil’s weapons, and if you do that, the one you are giving the right to take it away from you is the devil, because the devil gave it to you and therefore can take it away. If God gives it to you, the devil cannot take it away from you; but if the principles of hell gave it to you, hell can take it away.

If you use the principles of hell in your marriage, in your relationship with others, in the way you treat people, or in your work, hell has power over your life and can manipulate you, and can take things on loan or give to you or take away from you or manipulate you or do whatever it pleases with you. But when you act according to the principles of the Kingdom, the devil does not know how to meddle with what belongs to God.

So our goal is this: I am going to strip away whatever is not of God, whatever does not reflect God’s essence, because it is a landing strip for the devil. The Lord has spoken to me a great deal lately about a subject that I am going to share in a moment. This came to mind: neither give place to the devil. That has been working on me all this time, and I have to speak about it at some point, because many of us give place to the devil. And giving place to the devil does not mean going into the drugstore, buying one of these saints or one of these strange figures, and lighting a large candle to Satan—no. Giving place to the devil means using principles that do not belong to the Kingdom of God.

Anything that does not manifest the essence of Christ is of the devil—fleshly, earthly, demonic, as James says, so that nothing is left out. And we have to learn to discern: What is of God, and what is of the devil? What is of the Kingdom, and what is of darkness? We must always bind ourselves to the Kingdom and discern whenever a little demonic leaven is creeping into our lives, and say: Aha! No, I saw you; I do not want you—out! And then choose the Kingdom of God. That is what leads to success; that is what leads to a strong life; that is what leads to a clear mind, and to peace when you lie down and rest your head on the pillow. You can sleep soundly; you can be at peace.

If the devil trips you up, you know that God is going to get you out of it, because it is simply a trial that God is allowing, and it is meant for blessing; it is not the devil getting his way in your life. Going back, then—we have left Abraham behind; I think I have exhausted that subject—let us return to Moses, and with that I will finish. Moses is born in God’s time, and God has a path for Moses.

I was saying that we have to adjust ourselves to God’s timing and to the way God builds in our lives. Whatever goal you may have in your life—name whichever one you want, whatever it may be: buying a house, having a good marriage, having good children, losing 25 pounds over the next three months, whatever it is—ask yourself: How can I use the methodology of the Kingdom to achieve that goal? And once God tells me, “Okay, let’s go, let’s get to work, but you have to do this and that, here and there,” how can I ask the Lord for wisdom so that He will help me do it?

Then you have to flow with God’s timing, and that means that God will sometimes place intermediate goals before you that will seem like detours or obstacles, but no, they are simply intermediate moments in your journey toward the goal. And God is telling you: No, I want you first to add this to your psychological, emotional, and mental profile. And when you have attained that subgoal, then He will tell you: I want you to do this other thing. Then He will tell you: Okay, stop here for a while, and I will work on this a little. And after you have accomplished a little of that, then He says: Okay, now go on to the other thing. And He may tell you: Okay, now that you have completed that, you can go back and tighten that up a little more; then keep going and move a little farther forward. That is how God works; it is marvelous.

Now, if you are impatient, you are going to throw in the towel and say: No, man, this is too arduous, too difficult. And then you start doing whatever you want, thinking that the devil has not seen you and God has not seen you. They have both seen you; they are titans, and you cannot deceive either one of them. God, because He is God, and the devil, because he is old and has spent a long time observing human nature, and he knows when we are deceiving ourselves and pretending to deceive him.

So God takes His time, and that is why Moses is born at that moment. God sends him to be prepared in Egypt. There is that part of the story in which he is Pharaoh’s adopted son, so that he can acquire a series of leadership experiences that he needs and receive the education of an Egyptian prince, studying science and grammar, history and politics, because he is going to be a statesman who will lead an entire nation out of Egypt. And sometimes God places us in situations like that. There is time, you know? We have to prepare; we have to take the time needed for God to do His work in your life.

You have to ask yourself: Lord, how have You been using all the experiences of my past in my life, the ones I believe are dead ends? How can I see them in a redemptive and positive way? You open your eyes, and then you discover that the miserable poverty you endured in Guatemala was not something that destroyed you, but something you can use to bless others and help others move forward. That father who gave you so many beatings over there in the Dominican Republic, in some little rural town around Mao or wherever it may have been—God was not absent from that. It hurt Him, but He was allowing it so that perhaps one day you could teach others about being tender with their children, about using other means, or whatever it may be. You can use anything.

In God’s hands and through a mind illuminated by the Holy Spirit, you can take anything from your past and see the God who is in it, and move forward and even rejoice in it, saying: Glory to God that I was able to experience one aspect of human experience and human nature, and to know more deeply the character of humanity and Christ Himself. That is why Paul speaks of completing the sufferings of Christ. It is a strange expression in the Gospel, but many times we have been completing the sufferings of Christ, because Christ experienced in His own being every dimension of human life and every human experience, and He wants us to be like Him and to know some of those experiences.

I invite you this morning, if there has been something in your past that hurt you, disfigured you, and made you feel as though God was not there: God was there, and He was suffering with you, and He was also seeing what you were going to do in the future and how you were going to use that to be redeemed and to bless others in your life. And when you see that, you are going to say: Glory to God, I am not a victim; I am living in victory, because Christ has been working in my life to take me where He wants to take me.

Redeem, redeem anything from your past. Whatever may be in your past, do not see it as the work of the devil; see it as God working to bless and perfect His son or His daughter. And when your perspective changes, your experience will also change, and the effect of those pains will change as well. I subscribe to what Paul says in Romans: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” That is not only for the present and the future; it is for the past as well. Retroactively, that can become a reality in your life when you transform everything by looking at it through God’s lenses.

Because Moses—you know the story, don’t you?—after forty years as a prince, experiences a failure. Again, all along he knew that God had called him; he knew it intuitively. Something in his spirit told him: I have a prophetic calling; I am a liberator of souls; God has called me to a great work. And one day he discovers that it is to become the liberator of his nation, because one day he discovers that he is not Egyptian; he is Jewish.

But what happens? When he sees a Jew being oppressed and beaten by an Egyptian, he kills the Egyptian, believing that by doing so he will spark a rebellion among the Jews, that they will rebel against Pharaoh and escape, and that they will choose him as their liberator. But that was not how it was to happen; it was not God’s time, because the proud and violent man Moses was could not lead a people. As violent as he was, he would have killed them all. The Bible says that there is no man meeker than Moses, and yet look what his congregation drove him to do—learn from that, brothers, huh?—to strike the rock and lose the blessing at the end.

The point is that sometimes God has to form a person. So He had Moses heat up for forty years in Egypt, and then He had him cool down for forty years in the desert, because he had to flee, leave everything behind, run for his life, abandon his exalted past in Egypt, and spend forty years raising goats—a profession that the Egyptians despised. For forty years, God placed him there to be formed in the silence of the desert, looking at the stars at night, alone, thinking and looking within himself, because the darkness of the desert was so powerful that the only thing he could do was look inward.

And there, for forty years, this man is formed and broken, and his character is prepared. At the age of eighty, God tells him: Now is the time; go to Pharaoh and tell him: Let My people go. Everything in life is like that. We have to take a long-term view; we have to walk and run according to God’s timing and always ask: What are You doing in my life? What intermediate goal are You setting before me to take me to the greater goal?

We have to have an incredibly observant eye to see the subtle Hand of God in the processes of our daily lives, because He is always, always at work. Let whoever has eyes to see, see; let whoever has ears to hear, hear. The world is full of people who neglect and ignore God’s works in their lives and His daily interventions because they have no eyes to see, have no discernment, and have not developed discernment. If you want to succeed, you have to be a tremendous observer of the supernatural, abstract, and absolute truths of the Kingdom of God—and of the kingdom of hell as well, by the way.

So God had a plan, but Moses was not going to fulfill it at the age of forty, nor even at the age of eighty. Moses did not even see the fruit of his work in the end. After forty more years, at the age of 120, he was unable to accompany his people into the land of Canaan; God only allowed him to gaze upon it from afar. Who knows? Many times, perhaps you will not be the one who perfectly fulfills the plans and goals you have. It may be your children or your grandchildren, or someone else whom you discipled, inspired, or blessed.

And yet, in the process, you are going to enjoy the journey, you know? That is the beautiful thing: in the Christian life, you enjoy either reaching the goal or making the journey. Learn to enjoy the journey too; enjoy your life every day. That is another long subject—thank God we have finished, because otherwise we would still be here. Enjoy the journey. God is a God of journeys and a God of processes, and many of us are so focused and obsessed with the goal that we do not enjoy the journey. Enjoy every experience, every achievement, every rung you climb. Celebrate it; rejoice in the Lord’s grace today, because He is already pleased with you. You already have God’s approval.

Whether you become a pastor or not, whether you finish seminary or not, God is already pleased with you now, with what you have accomplished in your life. Look at all the good there has been in your life, celebrate it, rejoice in it, and use it to build an altar and bless God for what He did at that moment, as Abraham did, building altars wherever he went. Look at the things God has done through your life today. Look at your children: the good things they have accomplished, the beautiful things they have achieved. Celebrate the good things around you.

Do not look at what you do not have; celebrate what you have. Celebrate what God has allowed you to do along the way toward the final goal. When you reach the final goal, you will be happy; if you have not attained everything you wanted, do not worry. Solomon puts it this way in Ecclesiastes; he tells us: “Never let white garments be lacking on your body, nor oil on your head; enjoy life with your wife or your husband or your friend all the days of your vanity, because God is already pleased with you.” Let us learn to enjoy the moment as we move toward eternity, because God is a God of stages, moments, and processes, and the process is long, and you need to celebrate the moments you have on the way to the final goal.

And so, to finish with Peter—poor Peter, whom we left neglected—let us remember this: the Lord takes Peter through a process of confrontation and the death of his self-image, and when he has already betrayed the Lord, he believes there is no redemption left for him. But the Lord knows that is not so, that Peter betrayed Him and failed, but it was a stage; it was not the end. That is why He loves us even when we betray Him, because He knows what we will become in Him. Peter thought: Now I’m done for; there is no hope left for me; my ministry is over.

That is why the Lord gives Peter that look when he betrays Him three times. It says that the Lord looked at Peter when the rooster crowed the third time; the Lord looked at him. I imagine that look: it was a look with a loving, ironic smile, as if to say, “I told you so.” But it was not a look of condemnation. I do not believe the Lord gave Peter a condemning look. God gives him the kind of look a father gives his son when the boy falls after his father told him, “If you do that, you’re going to fall, you know?” The son stumbles, and then the father says to him, “See what I told you?”

The Lord’s look was one of mercy and compassion, and also a gentle warning: Be careful; look at what you truly are and remember it. But what matters to me in all of this is what happens at the end of the story, when the risen Christ sends for Peter. Do you remember that, right after rising, He says, “Tell the disciples and Peter that I have risen and that I am going to see them”? How incredible the Lord is, isn’t He? Because He knew that Peter was going to play a tremendously important role in His Church, but He first had to put him through the mill; He had to get all the animal nature out of him.

And here is the thing: what prompted me to think about Peter was that, when the Lord has that intimate encounter with Peter at the end of that terrible ordeal and says to him, “Peter, do you love Me?” Peter says to Him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” Notice that he is no longer the Peter who says, “What? How can You ask me that? You know that I love You more than everyone else around You does.” He says to Him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He says to him, “Peter, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord, I love You.” “Peter, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord, You know all things.”

That third time Peter answers the Lord, it is as though he were saying: “You know what, Lord? I’m no longer sure whether I love You or not. You will know whether I love You or not. You know; You know that I love You despite everything.” I believe that the person who is truly useful to the Lord is the person who has been drained, weakened, confronted with his humanity, and who now knows that he does not know; the only thing he knows is that he does not know whether he knows.

God truly uses us when He has drained us and put us through many processes, and He takes His time in bringing us along. That experience Peter had, so painful and so terrible, was a page in Peter’s file for his future, because Peter would become a great man. He is the leader of the Church when we see him in Jerusalem after Jesus Christ’s ascension; Catholics consider him the first pope, though I do not think he would have claimed that position.

Christ said, “You are Peter”—mysterious words that commentators have never known what to do with—“and upon these rocks I will found My Church.” I do not know exactly what He meant by that. But the fact is that Peter was going to become a great man of God. Christ could not use that blowhard, as my brother Miguel Prieto, who was there, calls him—the one who says, “I love You more than everyone else, and I will never leave You.” That Peter could not become the Pastor of His Church; he simply could not. And look at this: read the twelve Epistles of Peter—glorious, humble, profound, wise, sober Epistles, filled with the wisdom of God, which inspire people to remain firm in the faith when they are enduring great trials, difficulties, and persecutions in life.

The man who writes those Epistles toward the end of his life could never have written them with the personal makeup Peter had when he was young. That man at the end, who writes those Epistles, is a man who has been put through the mill and knows who he is and who God is. And that is why God wants—He does not merely want to give you the product you want; He wants to prepare you, use you, bless you, give you joy, enable you to preserve your achievements, be a blessing to others, inspire others, and teach others. And then He also wants to give you that little thing that dazzles you and that you believe you will die without; that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is who you are, not what you have.

Always remember this: it is the character of the woman and the man that matters, not what they have. That is very important, and that is what matters most to God. That is why He works on us, and everything that happens in your life is God, like a sculptor, striking you with a chisel to shape you into the image of Christ Jesus. Remember that in everything that happens in your life. Do not fall in love with the goal; fall in love with the process, and you will become a great, great person in the Kingdom of God. Amen? Glory to the Lord.

Stand up; stand up for a moment. Glory to God. If anything you have heard this morning makes sense to you and God has spoken to you in some way, receive it right now. If there is some profound truth that comes from God and you feel, “This spoke to me,” I encourage you now, in the Name of the Lord, to say: “Father, I receive it and make it my own; let it take root within me. Help me to know myself; deal with me, shape me, break me. Do not leave me undealt with, Lord; do not leave me uncrucified or unstruck, because I want to be like Your Son so that I may be happy.

Teach me how to run the race legitimately. I do not want shortcuts in my life; I do not want deceit. I do not want tricks; I do not want pretenses. I want truth, and I want Your processes to be carried out within me.” Father, I am praying this prayer for myself and for my people this morning. We embrace Your Truth. We want to be a people of Truth and of the truths of Your Kingdom, Father.

I bless Your sons and Your daughters this morning, Father. Our hearts yearn for You; we want to be an offering that is perpetually consumed before You each day. Help us as a Congregation also to be a Congregation founded upon Your Truth, Lord, and keep us from evil; deliver us from the enemy who wants to trample the beauty You want to place within us. We love You. Remain with us; continue working in our lives, Father, and we will always give You all the glory and all the honor, Lord. Thank You, thank You, Lord, in the Name of Jesus. Amen and amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters; may the grace of the Lord be with you.