Let Go to Receive

Luke chapter 9, verses 1 through 6, says the Word: “Having called His twelve disciples together, He gave them power and authority.” The Lord Jesus gave His disciples power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases, and He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. This endowment of power is very important.

But I want to talk about other things that, I think, are even more important. “And He said to the disciples: Take nothing for the journey; neither staff nor bag, neither bread nor money, nor take two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and depart from there. And wherever they do not receive you, leave that city and shake the dust from your feet as a testimony against them. And they departed and went through all the villages, preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere.” May the Lord bless His Word.

I want to talk about an attitude. A mental and spiritual disposition that we need to cultivate and that the Lord wants us to cultivate and adopt in order to be effective servants of the Kingdom of God. The Lord wants you and me to adopt a mindset, a way of seeing the world and life, that is extremely important if we are to carry out the tasks, the work that He wants us to carry out. And that is what this passage is about.

Normally, one would take this passage and approach it from the perspective of the power and authority the disciples received, and that is certainly tremendously important. Because those of us who believe in the Holy Spirit and His continuing work in our times know that when we enter into the Gospel, are filled with the Holy Spirit, and cultivate the gifts of the Spirit, we receive power, we receive authority. The Christian life is a life of power and authority, as that video pointed out so well.

We are not called to the Gospel merely to keep enduring and putting up with things, gritting our teeth while we take blows from the devil and from life. There are many approaches to the Gospel that seem to emphasize the ability of the children of God to endure, to accept what God sends us, and simply to live life obediently and meekly, with its illnesses and sufferings, as though that were what the power of the Christian life truly consists of: power to endure and hold on.

But what I see in the Word is that God calls us to a life of power to overcome and move forward, amen? To conquer and to abound. The apostle Paul says that, rather, in all these things we are more than conquerors. Amen. That is so true. And it is important for us to understand this: when Christ calls us to the Gospel, He calls us to live a life of victory over circumstances—lack, sickness, needs, the bondage of the mind and emotions, the past that seeks to besiege us, all these things. When you enter into the Gospel, enter with the expectation of being blessed and prospered.

But there is something the Lord wants you to lay as the foundation of that life of power and authority. There is a condition, an infrastructure beneath that power He wants to give you. And that is truly what I see in this passage—in the three passages, the three Gospel accounts of this first sending out of the disciples. Because according to Scripture, this is the moment when the Lord says to the disciples: now it is time for you to put into practice what you have been taught, what you have received from Me, the instructions. And now I am going to send you so that you may learn how ministry is done, how the work of evangelizing the nations is carried out.

And He sends them on a practicum. An experiment so that they can learn a few things. He sends them to put into practice the values of the Gospel, what they have received. And it says that He equipped them and gave them power and authority to heal the sick, set captives free, and proclaim the Kingdom of God. There is a great task the Lord has for us. And I know that the Lord wants power and authority for our lives. But there is a precondition, there is an attitude He wants to cultivate in us, and before we leave here this afternoon, I want to point it out to you through what this passage truly seeks to teach us.

This passage shows us that there is a fundamental attitude we must cultivate in order to become true servants of Jesus Christ. Where do I find that underlying substance, that foundation which the power of God must have in our lives so that God’s power may be manifested legitimately and authentically, in such a way that the devil cannot resist it, subvert it, damage it, or make it ugly? What is needed so that you and I can truly use the power and authority of God as God wants us to use them, in the way of the Kingdom?

It is in verse 3, where the Lord said to the disciples: “Take nothing for the journey. Neither staff nor bag, neither bread nor money, nor take two tunics.” There is what the Lord wanted these men and women to adopt as their way of operating. In order to receive power and authority, to proclaim the Gospel authentically, and to do the work of the Kingdom of God in a sustained way without the enemy being able to come and damage what we are doing—without his being able to come and distort the manifestation of the power and authority we have received—something is required.

And before I tell you what it is, if you have not already figured it out, let me tell you something. Throughout history, the Church of Jesus Christ has received power many times. It has received dominion over the nations many times, and every time it has become corrupted and handed its authority over to Satan. The devil has been able to deceive it and has subverted the authority it received. When the Church has moved in the power and grace of God, there has been blessing.

Whenever the Church acts legitimately and applies the values of the Kingdom of God, it receives power, authority, and grace. But the problem is that whenever the Church receives that power, along with the power come property, wealth, influence, and the masses. The powerful people of the world come. Professionals flock to it, kings and authorities flock to it; they come and enter the Church because God gives that power to the Church. But if the Church is not prepared in its inner makeup, its attitudes, and its values, that very authority and power, and that very influence and prosperity, become a curse to the Church. And then the Church loses its flavor. Like salt, the Lord says, it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out if it loses its flavor.

How has that happened? For example, historians clearly recognize that around the fourth century after Jesus Christ, Constantine, the great emperor Constantine, converted, and the Christian Church went from being a persecuted, poor, though growing Church to being the official religion of Rome. Constantine converted to the Lord, and with him his entire court, all his soldiers, and the important people of the time converted. And the Church came to have authority. But along with that authority, along with that prosperity, corruption also came.

There came a loss of legitimacy and of the values of the Kingdom of God. And then the Church began to become corrupt. Powerful people came, educated people came, and in order to make room for those people, the Church began to change the values of the Kingdom of God. And that Church became a very influential Church, but a corrupt Church that did not reflect the values of the Kingdom.

And throughout history, all the monastic movements of the Church—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Cistercians—all these were revival groups that came to the Catholic Church with the ancient values of the Word to renew it, and then God blessed them with prosperity, because where the Gospel is, there is power. But that prosperity also gradually corrupted them. Many of these monasteries became extremely powerful, extremely wealthy places, with much art and culture, but they lost the original vision.

The Gospel has always been nourished, ministry has always been nourished, by new people who come and renew those who have become corrupt. But I believe the problem is that the leadership of the Church has not received adequate training to enable it to resist that process of seduction which is unleashed when the world comes to us as a result of the power Christ gives us. I believe what happens is that we have not first been prepared inwardly. We have not been sealed with the attitude befitting a servant of God regarding material things, the things of this world, the values of this world, the security we seek, and the appetite for riches and the things of the world.

And so, many times you see servants of God and churches preaching the Gospel, but unfortunately it is a corrupt gospel that tastes of the flesh and of the world. And that is why you see so much of this easy-prosperity gospel: give me your money and God will give you a big house, and He will give you a car and a job. We have distorted the true prosperity of the Kingdom of God, and I believe in a God who prospers and blesses, brothers and sisters. I have seen it in my own life, in my family, and I believe it. When the Kingdom of God comes, it comes to bless us and prosper us. But what matters is what is inside your heart.

If your heart clings to material things, if there has not been a death to worldly affections in your heart, you are still unrefined. Then, when blessing comes into your life, prosperity comes into your life, properties come into your life, and material blessings come, those possessions will possess you instead of you possessing them.

I believe that the child of God must have gone through a process so that if prosperity comes into his life, if academic achievements or influence or governmental power or whatever else comes, that person will have gone through a process in which God has put to death in him or her the attachment to those things. Then that person uses and enjoys them, but as though they were not his, knowing that they do not belong to him and knowing that just as they came, they can also go. You use them and benefit from them, but lightly, without setting your affection upon them.

So if God gives you a beautiful house like the one we saw there in the video, you enjoy it. But if something happens one day and you lose that house, you know that God remains seated on His throne, loving you just as He loved you when He gave it to you. And you say: just as God gave, God took away; may the Lord’s will be done.

If God gives you an extraordinary job, you enjoy it, you invest in it, you invest your creativity in it. You make the most of the benefit that job gives you. But you know that if one day the Lord says to you, “You know what? Now I need you to serve Me full-time,” you have enough emotional distance from that job to say, “Okay, Lord, when do You want me? I’m ready.” And if you have to leave it, you leave it; if you have to reduce your lifestyle to the basics, you do it, because your job does not possess you; you are master of your job. And if the Lord asks you for it, you give it to Him.

Because you know that this world is temporary, and you have gone through a process in which you are living here but are not from here; you are living in the world but are not of the world. The world does not control you; it does not possess you. You are master over the world, and you move within it and enjoy creation, but creation does not rule you. And that is what the Lord wants in our lives.

God wants a posture in which blessings come, but we do not become attached to the positions and blessings that come from God. And throughout Scripture I see that God always wants to bring us to that point of being stripped and detached from material things. And that is what I see. Why does the Lord give them authority?

Look, God can give authority and power to His Church because they come from Him, and He grants and transfers them to His servants, and He does so almost by decree, so to speak. In an instant, when the Spirit rested upon them on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were changed. From being cowardly, insignificant, frightened people who were fleeing from those who crucified the Lord, they suddenly became lions. And the same Peter who denied Jesus Christ three times now proclaims and tells everyone: it is better to obey the Lord than to obey men. So if you do not like it, too bad; I am going to preach the Gospel anyway.

And he is filled with courage and boldness, and the Church becomes an unstoppable force. Why? Because God transferred power to them through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But there is something that I believe God does not do that way; He chooses not to do it that way, and that is to foster within us the attitude of a servant detached from material things and from the things of the world. And He must impart that through a process of formation within us, so that as time passes, day by day we increasingly strip ourselves of that attitude held by the typical, ordinary man or woman—the belief that possessions are everything: my life is everything, friends, money, the enjoyment of material and sensual things, clothes, I already mentioned friendships, social things, prestige, a nice car, a beautifully decorated house, fine clothing.

The day has to come when all those things lose their fascination for you. You can use them, you can enjoy them, but you know that there is no life in them, that they are not who you are; you are more than those things. And if you do not have them, amen, you can be happy. If you do have them, you are willing to surrender them to the Lord whenever He wants. And throughout Scripture I see again and again that God wants to take us through processes that gradually dissolve and thin out those threads the world has tied around us, again and again.

For a man or a woman to be used with authority, that person must first go through a process of crucifixion, of being stripped of self, of the appetite for material things, of putting one’s treasures where they belong, of loving the Kingdom of God and eternity more than the things of the world and the material realm.

Think, for example, of Abraham: God gave Abraham a son. At 100 years of age, He gives him a son. After promising him one for 25 years. At 75, this man believes he is going to the grave without an heir, and his wife believes the same. And He tells them, “I am going to give you a son,” and He leaves him simmering over low heat for 25 years before giving them that son when Abraham is 100. And after He gives him to them, when this son is a teenager and Abraham has learned to love him deeply with the love of an old man, He says to him, “Now give Me your son, kill him for Me, and sacrifice him to Me.” Can you imagine the atrocity, what went through Abraham’s heart and mind when he had to take his son to that mountain to sacrifice him and kill him himself?

But Abraham said, “Well, Lord, if that is what You want, I cannot understand it, but if that is what You ask of me, I am going to give him to You.” The Lord wanted to bring Abraham to the point of being willing to give Him what he loved most. His whole life was bound up in that son: his affection, his descendants, the promises the Lord had given Abraham—everything was bound up in that young man, and God allowed him to go through that process. Until, at the very moment he was about to plunge the knife into his son, God sent His angel and said to Abraham, “Stop. Because you were willing to give Me your son, your only son, I will give you descendants so numerous that if the sands of the sea and the beach can be counted, then your descendants will be able to be counted.”

“And I am going to give you influence, and you will be a blessing to the nations. Whoever curses you, I will curse, and whoever blesses you, I will bless. And the nations will rejoice to call themselves your descendants,” as we do here today. How wonderful that we are descendants of the father of faith, Abraham, through whom Jesus Christ came. But it all began with a moment of death in which Abraham had to give God what he valued most, in his heart and in his mind, because that is where this process has to take place. Not necessarily in the material realm.

There has to be that detachment within us, from the inside. And I see that throughout Scripture. Look at the rich young man. When that young man, who was a man of influence—he must have been 30 or 35 years old; in those days that was nothing, just as I now look at 35-year-olds and say, “How young they are.” As you get older, people look younger and younger, don’t they? But this man—we call him the rich young man—was perhaps 30 or 35 years old. In an era like that, a 30- or 35-year-old was a very young person because it was a society that looked more to its elders.

So here was this young man at the height of his influence, his career, and his prestige. Because he was a man of money and social influence. Some believe that he was a member of the religious Sanhedrin. People regarded him as a person of prestige. And that young man, in the prime of his manhood, approaches Jesus with a pressing need, filled with anxiety. It says that he came running, threw himself at the feet of Jesus Christ, and said, “Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He did not know what he should do; he was overwhelmed by uncertainty about the future.

The Lord looks at him, and because the Lord has eyes like drills, He immediately went to the center of his heart, where He knew this young man’s weak spot was. And He set a trap for him. And He said, “Well, no problem. How wonderful that you are interested in the things of the Kingdom. Look, the only thing you have to do is keep the commandments. Keep the commandments, behave yourself, study the Bible, and go to church.” And he says to Him, “But Lord, I have done that since I was little. What is more, I am a pastor, I am a preacher, I am a member of the Council of Churches of the Assemblies of God. I have kept all that since my youth,” he says, “and it has not given me satisfaction.”

Because it is what I tell you, brothers and sisters: you can come to church every Sunday. Jump, give money. But what takes place in the mind, in the heart, in the emotions, and in the will—that is what counts. For the Lord, it is not so much doing as being. Doing is born from being. What you do is born from what you are and from the works God has done within you. The hardest work of the Christian life is what takes place inside me. What no one sees. The formation of the structures of my brain, my mind, my will, my emotions. That is it.

Because everything else is born from there; that is the driving force of the human being. If your emotions are right, if your spirit is right, if your mindset is aligned with the Kingdom of God, what comes out of you will be good. The Lord says that the mouth speaks from the treasure of the heart. And He says that all things are born from what is in the heart. Murders, crimes, oppression, theft—everything is born from what is inside the human being. Therefore, the first thing God wants to work on in us is our inner being. Our affections, priorities, appetites, what we consider important, what has priority in our lives.

So when the Lord tells this young man that, and the young man answers, “I do all that. I go to church every Sunday, I lead worship at church. I preach from time to time, I am a member of the board of deacons,” the Lord says to him, “Oh, well, thank you for letting Me know. Then you lack only one thing. You know what? No problem. Since you have already done all that, I am going to give you just one little assignment. Take everything you have, all your money and all your possessions, the houses you own, the cars, and sell it all. Hold a big auction or sell it to the bank, whatever, and give all the money to the poor. Then come and follow Me, and you will find the peace and the answer you need.”

He struck him exactly at the center of his heart. He reached him in his mind, where his treasure was. He aimed that rocket, that missile, directly there, at the very essence of his appetites and what he valued most: his money. And here is the thing, brothers and sisters: until God comes and takes up residence in what we love most, we cannot truly say that we are disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Word says that when this young man was confronted with the assignment God gave him, he went back home with his head bowed and full of sorrow because he did not have the courage to do what Christ told him to do. As the Lord watched him return to his reality, He said, “Ah, how difficult it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Why? Because you have something that... You do not have to be rich in money; you can be rich in beauty, rich in friends, rich in talents, even rich in rhythm. You may be rich in rhythm and dance like a spinning top, and that is what you love, and you want to go to the clubs every Saturday night. It is not bad in itself, but it is not the best place, along with everything that comes with it. And because rhythm is what you love most, the Lord says to you, “You know what? I want you to surrender your rhythm to Me.” And you say, “Father—ah—but why didn’t You ask me for something else?”

You can be rich in any kind of energy. Good humor, that kind of spicy humor that people love at parties but that is not pleasing to God, and you do not want to give it up. Then God says, “Okay, no problem.” Where is our wealth? That is what we read: where your treasure is, there your heart is also. And the Lord wants to go to your treasure and have you sign a note that says, “That belongs to Me.” And when you do that, when you surrender to God what you love most, the Lord says, “Now you and I can work. Now I can use you. Now the devil will not be able to wreak havoc in your ministry and in your life.” I believe that is the legitimate way to embark upon ministry and service to the Lord. Or upon any area of our lives.

People of God, God wants to shape you. So why did the Lord tell them, “Do not take anything”? If you are going to serve Me on this missionary journey, do not take two tunics. Do not take money; take only what is absolutely necessary. Do not take food or money, or a bag or staff for the road, or anything. Why two tunics? Because two tunics represent the security one has.

Sisters, when you travel, what are those suitcases like? You go away for a weekend, and it looks as though you are going to Africa or Asia for ten years. You need two or three people to push that suitcase, filled with different purses for every occasion, shoes in different colors, and earrings that match the shoes and the necklace, and all those things. Because one is thinking about convenience, about all the things that might come up. And the Lord said to the disciples, “You know what? I want you to strip yourselves of all the scaffolding of security that one uses in life.”

“And I want to begin forging in you an appreciation for simply depending on My provision. I want you to learn to trust Me and to trust that if I send you to do something and you depend on Me, you will lack nothing along the way. So do not take anything with you. Go and trust in My provision for the journey.”

And that is what we have to do. Life is a journey. You still have 20, 30, or 40 years left to live, and you have to believe that Jehovah is your Provider. You will lack nothing for the journey. And so you have to live without depending on your bank account, your friendships, your cleverness, or your training. Depend on the Lord; your trust is in the Lord. He is the One who will provide for you along the way. And let me tell you something: if you learn to live with a fierce and militant dependence on God, the Lord will not fail you for even a single second of your life. Cultivate that dependence on the Lord.

And when the Lord tells you, “Strip yourself of it, because I have other interests, and give Me your property, give Me your gifts, and give Me your talent,” whatever it may be, surrender it to the Lord, whatever it may be, because God is your Provider. And more will come from the same place it came from. God can provide for you.

We are going to finish in just a moment. I ask the musicians to come up here quickly, and I ask you to wait just a couple more minutes if you can, okay? So this is important. God wants to create a people who are used by Him. I believe God has truly extraordinary things for you and me in the future. But He wants to forge in us the mindset of a disciple. The mindset of a person who has died to self and to need and who lives for the Kingdom of God. Look, God’s mercy and God’s provisions have no end, no limit.

I do not know whether I have used this illustration from our own lives. Years ago, when Mecha and I got married and I was still doing my graduate studies, Mecha had barely begun working. I remember one time. We had even already bought our house in Somerville, and money was tight. And God has always, it seems, allowed the money and the purse sometimes to dwindle to just a couple of coins. And God allows it to reach that point to show us, “I am your Provider. I am the One who can replenish it for you.”

I may have told you this: I remember that I was near Union Square there in Somerville; I do not know why I clearly remember where it was. And God has always provided for me, brothers and sisters. I could tell you stories of how I have always had to walk believing in the God who is my Provider, and He has allowed me to live like a king, like a prince, brothers and sisters, I tell you. He has always given me the best, but it has always been this way, with me depending on Him. And Him pampering me, as we Dominicans say. Truly, always giving me the very best.

So there I was that day, walking along a little troubled because there were things to pay, bills to pay. And for some reason I opened my wallet, and there was a little card inside. I tell you, I have never known where that little card came from or how it got into my wallet. An angel put it there—I do not know. God created it out of nothing—I do not know. The thing is, I do not use a wallet anymore; I carry everything in my pocket—very biblical, isn’t it? I do not know why, but at some point I stopped using a wallet. But it is there; the wallet is somewhere, and one day I am going to look for it. I carried that card in my wallet for many years.

And there was a tiny little card there, almost the size of the wallet, that said the following: “Leave it to the Lord.” It said nothing else. And I was surprised to see it inside my wallet, but in light of my need and my situation, I knew that God was telling me, “Hey, I have never failed you. I have never forsaken you. Let Me handle it; cast your burden upon Me, and I will take care of your need.” I believed and received that Word from the Lord, and needless to say, God provided and blessed me. I do not even remember what the situation was or how it was resolved, but I assure you that it was resolved, and the blessing and provision came. Because God wants us to learn to live that way.

And on another occasion God gave me a sermon that I felt was a blessing, rich, and that was greatly appreciated by my brothers and sisters many years ago. You go to my house and there are two boxes of sermons, which I stored there over the years and years. Sometimes I wrote 12 and 18 pages of notes for preaching. Thank God those days are over now. And the sermons were just as long, too. The point is that on that day the Lord gave me a Word that I had not written down. And do you know what I had thought? How good it is that I am writing all these sermons, because the day will come when I will have 100, 150 sermons and I will no longer have to prepare any new sermons; all I will have to do is take sermons out of there and preach them, reheat them, and preach them again, and that will be it. I will not have to work anymore to prepare sermons.

Look at where my faith and my ambitions were at that time. So I preached that sermon that day, and I was lamenting that I had not written it down; I had no notes for the blessed sermon. That sermon is so good; I am going to lose it, I am going to waste it. And my desire was to get home and start writing it down immediately. And the Lord said within me: from the same place that one came, many more will come. The Lord said to me: I have no limits; just as I gave you that one, I can give you other sermons. Do not worry about putting it down there and casting it in bronze, for My creativity is infinite.

Concern yourself instead with establishing a connection with My Spirit, because if you are connected to My Spirit, My Spirit is infinitely creative, and you will always be creative with My Word; you will never lack My Word. That is what you need to make sure of. And the Lord has never failed; that water, to the glory of the Lord, has always flowed.

And that is why I encourage you this afternoon, my brother, my sister: stay close to the source, and make sure that if the Lord asks you for something, you give it to Him, and that your affection is set on the Lord, on His Kingdom, and on the things of eternity. Make yourself an instrument in the hands of God, set your affection on the Kingdom, and the Lord will never tire of blessing you.

I will finish with this: what happened at the end of the disciples’ story, when they went out to do their work? They preached the Gospel, they did as the Lord told them, they took no money, they took nothing. Look at what happened: days later, in Luke chapter 22, verse 35, we see the Lord once again with His disciples, and it says here: “And He said to them: when I sent you without purse, without bag, and without sandals, did you lack anything?” Look at the question.

When I sent you without money, without a credit card, without MasterCard, without cash, without a computer from which you could transfer money or whatever else, when I sent you out to do the work of the Kingdom depending solely on My mercy, My Grace, and My provision, did you lack anything? Did I fail in any way to fulfill My promise? And they said: nothing; we lacked nothing.

Brothers and sisters, if the Lord promises you a blessed life, do not hesitate, do not doubt. Throw yourself into living life and working for the Kingdom, and into being an instrument, a channel of God’s Grace. Sell, give away, lend, invest, strip yourself, give to the right and to the left, distribute to seven and even to eight, because the Lord will never tire of blessing you. His mercies are new every morning, hallelujah.

This afternoon I invite you: adopt the mindset of a servant of God, whether man or woman. Sell what you possess, surrender it all to the Lord, strip yourself inwardly. Close your eyes for a moment and concentrate on the Lord’s call. Right now you are the rich young man, the rich young woman, and the Lord says to you: sell everything, strip yourself of everything, die to yourself; what is it that you love most? Die to your dreams, die to your appetites, die to what you love and cherish most, and dare to lay it at My feet. Even the desire to do things for Me—surrender that to Me. Even the desire to be used—look, surrender even that to Me, and simply love Me and value Me for who I am.

Appreciate Me purely for what I am worth in Myself; lose yourself in Me. Lose your life and you will gain it. Die and you will live. Let yourself fall like scattered grain and come apart in the earth, and you will bear abundant fruit for My Glory. Make yourself small, and you will have many spiritual children, and you will have blessing, and you will have glory in My Kingdom. Live as a pilgrim; you are only passing through the world. You are a foreigner; do not become attached to anything in the world, do not love the things of the world, do not love what is in the world, because loving something that is in this world is enmity with My Kingdom and enmity with Me. Love My Kingdom and love Me for who I am.

Strip yourself; let go of everything you love right now. And let the coming years of your life be about this: surrendering to the Lord everything He asks of you, one thing at a time, one thing at a time, one thing at a time. Your character, your temperament, your personality, your attitudes, your way of being, your way of speaking. Tell Him: Lord, I want to be like You. I want to love like You, speak like You, walk like You. The Son of Man has no place to lay His head, says the Lord, and I want to be like You in my spirit; and if You call me to be a pilgrim with nowhere to lay my head, I will do it for the glory of Your name, because my desire is for Your name to be exalted and glorified.

In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. People of God, adopt the attitude of a disciple. And if there is anyone who has not taken that step of faith, of adopting the mindset of a disciple, I hope we are not too hurried in our spirit to surrender our lives to the Lord right now.

Is there anyone who has not yet taken that step of faith, surrendering their life to Jesus, and who would like to do so before we leave here, just as we presented those children? Perhaps you feel called to present your life to the Lord and surrender yourself to Him this afternoon. I would like to bless you and place you in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there is anyone who has not yet done so and wants to do it this afternoon, I want to have that opportunity and bless your life.

Amen. Nevertheless, surrender your life to the Lord here, within your heart. This Church surrenders itself to You. I surrender to You everything I have, everything I am, Lord. May Your Name be enthroned in me, in us, in this Church. Plant Your flag in the very center of Congregación León de Judá. Lord, establish the symbol of Your Kingdom in our hearts. Let León de Judá not be seen; let the cross of the slain Lamb be seen. Let the flag of the Kingdom of God be seen; let the name of Jesus Christ be seen.

No other value, no pride, no reputation—only the name of Jesus, nothing else, Lord. May the values of Your Kingdom be established in this Church. We hunger and yearn to see Your agenda established, Lord, through this community. May Your Glory be seen and known among the nations. Establish Your purpose; take possession of us, Lord; we surrender everything to You. We surrender everything to You. Thank You, Lord. We worship You, we bless You. Thank You, Lord; praised be Your Name.