We Must Live Our Lives in Alignment with the Vision

The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter 13, verse 31 and following. Remember, brothers and sisters, that we are talking about how to live a transformative life, a life in a perpetual process of development; how to live those fruitful lives of continual ascent, of continual growth in terms of self-control, of continually adding virtues and new resources—that life that becomes more and more like Christ.

That life which, as we have said, according to the Word of the Lord, is like the light of the sun. It says: “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the day is perfect.” And we have framed all of that in terms of this idea of how to turn our dreams and visions into reality; that is, the dreams you have for your life, the dreams you want to achieve in Christ, the things you want to overcome—the difficulties, tribulations, and limitations you want to overcome—and each day to become more and more perfect, more and more like Christ Jesus.

And let us also see what the apostle Paul says, right? “My little children, for whom I suffer labor pains until Christ is formed in you.” In other words, the Christian life is a continual process of formation in which we become more and more like Jesus as we add more and more details and more and more elements that resemble the power and virtue that Christ Himself reflects.

So today I want us to emphasize one thing, and that is the virtue of small things, the virtue of small things. Those small details that we sometimes do not think about very much, but which are absolutely necessary in order to have a fully comprehensive life.

Matthew chapter 13. Notice how the Kingdom of God is conceptualized here as a small seed that keeps growing until it fills an entire garden. It says: “The Lord told them another parable, saying: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed on his path, which is indeed the smallest of all seeds; but when it has grown’”—notice the three stages here, right? There is a stage of smallness or insignificance, and then there is a process of growth. It says, “When it has grown, it is the largest of the garden plants”—there is now a fullness that this seed attains—“and then it becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

Last Sunday we were talking about aligning our lives, right? We have said that, in order to get where God wants to take us, there are a number of virtues that we must keep adding to our lives, and that it is a long-term process; and we have been breaking down its different components. We cannot simply remain in the realm of conceptualization: “Oh, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to accomplish that.” Rather, we have to turn our visions into reality; we have to learn to execute the visions.

We have to name the things we want to achieve; we have to identify the different components, right? We have to move from a general vision to a more specific project, design a strategy—a way to achieve what we want—break our projects down into different components, and then proceed to carry them out little by little. And how do we do this? One thing at a time, right?

That idea of always moving systematically, with a goal in mind, always focusing on one detail in particular. We have to undertake the vision, not simply remain at: “Oh, I would like to buy a house in five years,” or, “I would like to become a professional,” or have a blessed family, a prosperous marriage, or whatever it may be. Rather, you have to say, “Okay, how do I do that?” and set a long-term goal for yourself. And there are a series of virtues and qualities that God wants us to keep acquiring so that we can achieve our goals throughout our lives, because all of life is a project of continual self-improvement, continual growth, continually overcoming defects, bondages, difficulties, limitations, memories from the past, wounds—all these things.

So we have to—God is going to take us through a life process that will bring forth in us a series of resources and attitudes: determination, energy, persistence, discipline, thinking systematically, seeking allies in our struggles and people who will support us and be a resource for us, and an ability to analyze where we are calmly and objectively, without deceiving ourselves about where we stand, our limitations, or our responsibility in the struggles we are going through—not projecting the blame and the fault onto others: “Oh, my parents, who did not love me, who did not help me with this; the society I live in; the unjust government.”

You have to take ownership of your situation, analyze it calmly, and see the things you have to do in your life, right? All these are things God is going to work on with you as He leads you through those processes. Now, many people ask themselves: “Well, how can I acquire these things? How can I arm myself with that persistence, that dynamism, that ability to analyze objectively the situation I am living in?” And that is where we have to align our lives and understand that it is a long-term process, and that we have to live an intentional life in which, every day we live, we must be thinking: “I want to become that disciplined person. I want to become that loving, forgiving person who is generous toward others, capable of overcoming difficulties, capable of mastering life’s boredom and monotony.”

Many people, for example, are not successful simply because they have not learned to master the fact that life is—frankly, 80% of life is monotony—and it is the people who master monotony and learn to move successfully within it who truly get where they need to go.

Think, for example, of a doctor: “Oh, I would like to be a doctor,” and we romanticize the doctor. “Oh, I would like to be a concert pianist,” and we romanticize the pianist who is up there playing gloriously before an adoring crowd. But behind that glory are years of the pianist practicing scales eight hours a day, playing the same piece until he dreams about it and gets bored with it, until his fingers learn it—not even his brain; his fingers learn the piece he is going to play before the audience.

The doctor has to deal with cadavers and biological models, study chemistry, study organic biology, organic chemistry, or whatever it may be—all of this in order to reach the moment of culmination. To a certain extent, all of life is monotony, and we have to learn to deal with that. Discouragement—people who want to take discipleship courses, well, perhaps there comes a time when it is not so appealing, in the middle of winter when it is snowing and cold outside, to put on your clothes, go out into the street, take that bus, and get to church by seven in the evening to take your discipleship class on Friday or to go to your cell group.

Since many people do not feel like going, they simply go and sit in the living room, turn on the television, and forget about it. You know? The successful person is the one who overcomes the sense of monotony, the sense of boredom from doing the same thing all the time, and says: “No, I have committed myself to a goal, and I am pressing on.”

That is the person who lives his life in alignment with what he has promised himself and what he has envisioned accomplishing, and who knows that accomplishing something great requires him to live each day as a chosen person—what I said last Sunday about aligning our daily lives with our status and our calling. Each day you have to live as though saying: “Today I have to learn something new. Today is an opportunity for me to read something, to hone a skill a little more, to learn a little more of the Word of God.”

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day reviewing the Letter to the Ephesians. I have read that Letter about eight hundred times, but I said: “You know what? Today I am going to devote myself to renewing my relationship with the Letter to the Ephesians.” And throughout the day, while doing other things, I took time to go through it chapter by chapter. I paused at two or three clear verses, refreshed my memory about certain things, and God spoke to me in new ways about that Letter. And since I am a pastor and have to preach about so many things, this is a commitment I have to that Word.

So that day I decided to take something specific, and instead of wasting time on other things—or perhaps legitimately relaxing with other things—I decided that today I could improve my knowledge of the Word, my skill in preaching and biblical analysis, and I devoted myself to that because I am a priest; I have to live my life according to my vocation, do you understand? And you have to do that in your life as well.

Do you want to be a powerful and successful father? You have to read about the family, you have to pray for your children, you have to pray for God to heal your own wounds. Oh, do you want to be a woman full of faith and a counselor to young people who are beginning the journey of their lives? Well, you have to overcome your own difficulties and the limitations from your past, and pray more. In other words, each one of us is a priest, a king, and we have to live up to God’s calling. Do you understand me?

If you want to improve your finances, then that means that every day you have to deny yourself certain things. Instead of going to Marshall’s and shopping till you drop, perhaps you can simply learn to save, go to BJ’s and buy your things there, or go to some store where they sell things more cheaply, and begin to organize your life and your finances so that you can pay your debts and buy that house you promised yourself.

In other words, many of us are not successful in life because we do not align our daily living and the details of our lives with the calling we have received from the Lord. So we waste so much time and live a life without purpose. In fact, this series we are preaching could be called “A Life with Purpose”—that is, the man or woman of God who lives so that every minute counts, as the Word says: “Redeeming the time.” Amen? Because the day is coming when no one can work, as the Bible says: “Soon the night is coming; it is time to work.”

Every day we have to live with something new, something different. To add, to grow, to enrich ourselves, to perfect ourselves, to refine ourselves, to overcome a limitation—that is called aligning our lives with our calling. In other words, we have to live a life that reflects intentionality. Say that word with me: intentionality. To be intentional, to live life with intention, with a sense of purpose, aware of how the different aspects of our daily lives relate to the greater life we envision for ourselves.

So you have to live lucidly, focused on what you are pursuing in your transformation into a powerful, thoughtful, disciplined, analytical person who is in control of himself and his appetites. That should be your life’s project, because the success you have in the future depends on your personal transformation. Intentionality, right? Your success depends on your personal transformation.

And God wants you to possess your land. It is important for you to understand this: God is committed to you; in your life of self-improvement, growth, and personal betterment, you are not alone in that project. You have an ally: the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, who says, “I will be with you wherever you go”; Almighty God, who says, “I have given you all the land on which the sole of your foot treads. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life, because I have handed it over to you; I have given you the title to your land.”

And what is your land? This right here: your life, your surroundings, your family, your finances, your emotional life, your mind—those battles you have to overcome and bring under control, because when we enter the ways of the Lord, it is like the land of Canaan, full of giants who do not want to surrender the land to us, and we are going to have to fight and do battle so that those giants relinquish the land.

When you enter the ways of the Lord, you enter with all kinds of limitations—we have said it before—imperfections, personality defects, bad mental and present habits, relationships that bind you in different ways and limit you, fears, and programming that the world has bequeathed to you. And then, when you enter the ways of the Lord, the Lord says to you: “Now you and I are going to work, and now we are going to form Christ within you.” And every day of your life will be a project of personal improvement—of becoming, as I say, more and more like Christ.

Each day when you get up, you have to see that day as a little piece of land, and on that day you have to plant the flag of the Kingdom of God and learn something new, overcome something, declare something, make a little progress toward the greatness God has destined for your life—every day. And in that process, you keep possessing the land.

How long did it take the Hebrews to possess the land that God had already given them, but which they now actually had to conquer, right? That is why we have to believe: God is with me.

That is an important principle that we need to isolate for a moment and remember: the Lord commits Himself. The Lord is like a father who says, ‘You know what? Look, as long as you need something for your studies or for your cultural or personal enrichment, you can count on My help. I am not going to help you get drunk, buy four cars, or waste your money, but if you want to do something that will enrich you and help you advance in your career and your life project, you can count on Me. I will help you with whatever is necessary.’

If you need money to take that trip to Europe because it is part of your professional training, I will give it to you because I can do so. If you want to go to a museum and need the money to pay the admission price, I will give it to you. If you need a car—not to run around womanizing and misbehaving, but to go to school or university and get an education—you can count on that. In the same way, God says, ‘Whatever you want to undertake so that Christ may be formed within you, count on Me. I will give it to you. Whatever you want to do to grow and become a powerful man, a woman of God, and to be used for My Kingdom, count on the resources of heaven, because they will stand behind you to bless you and move you forward.’

And it is important for us to know that we are not alone in the project of self-improvement and personal growth. We have all the resources of the Kingdom of God behind us, and it is not merely a matter of positive thinking and self-development and, you know, all these theories out there that often tell us what we need to do, but we do not have the energy to release the spark of creativity within us. The Lord provides that spark. God has that additional energy you need for the chemistry of self-improvement, and God gives it to you because He has committed Himself to you.

Now, what I also want to say is that this project of personal growth is a long-term project, and it is composed of constituent parts, stages of life, moments that you will have to live through. God will accept your commitment to become a powerful man or woman, filled with the Holy Spirit, useful and creative, and then He will say to you, ‘Okay, now we are going to embark on a long-term process.’

Do you remember that I have told you that God is a God of processes and that He takes us on journeys, just as He took Abraham on a journey; just as He took eighty years to shape Moses and prepare him to be the deliverer of Israel; just as He shaped Saul, first placing him there to be educated in Judaism, to learn certain analytical skills, and to become a highly intelligent and educated man and a Roman citizen and all that, and then called him and sent him to become the great apostle Paul? God always takes us on different journeys to bring us where He wants to take us.

He wants the dream in your heart of becoming a great and powerful person to become a reality, but then He says, ‘I am going to take you through different stages, because I am a God of details.’ And you have to believe that, from the moment you embrace the project of personal greatness and personal development, everything that happens in your life will be part of God’s process and will consist of different moments. You have to be alert to what each moment you are living through means in your life.

It may be a time of great tribulation and severe spiritual testing, but God will be using that time to form within you patience, love, humility, meekness, dependence on God, compassion for the weak and for others, the ability to counsel and bless others, strength—all those things a man or woman needs in order to be a successful and happy person.

Think, for example, of Joseph. God gives Joseph a dream when he is a child, and he sees his parents bowing down before him and sees his brothers doing the same. In that dream, he sees that he is going to become a person of greatness and power. The moment he declares the dream, acknowledges it, and God gives it to him, the process begins—and so does the affliction—because the anger and jealousy of his brothers are unleashed. That leads them to throw him into a pit and tell his father that a wild animal ate him. They sell him into slavery in Egypt. There, God prospers him for a time, but then he is slandered and thrown into prison. There, God does certain things; they forget about him; and finally he is summoned into Pharaoh’s presence. He reaches the place he is meant to reach, and ultimately God uses him to preserve his family when that famine comes.

So we see that, oh yes, God planted greatness in that man, but then He took him through a series of processes. We therefore have to understand that everything that happens in our lives is part of the process. You always have to ask the Lord, as people say, not, ‘Why do You allow this to happen to me?’ but, ‘What for? What are You forming?’

I always ask myself, ‘Okay, God, this thing that happened to me—why? What is it that You want?’ Not in the sense of, ‘Why me?’ but, ‘What do You have in this? What is the purpose of this? What can I learn?’ And you have to read your life as though it were a spiritual book teaching you.

So God is a God of processes, and God is a God of details. God is a God of moments. God is a God of lessons learned, and God is a teacher who is not as interested in your comfort as He is in your sanctification, your perfection. Sometimes He will put you into the fiery furnace and turn the temperature up to 450 degrees, and you will be in there sweating buckets, but you know what? That is part of melting away all that unnecessary fat in your life so that you can be dangerous and thin—lean like that—but when you strike, it hurts, because it is pure bone doing the striking: the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the concentration of God in your life.

So God is going to take you through—God is a God of details, and that is why I wanted to talk about this matter of small things, right? The virtue of what is small, of what is specific, because God has intentionality in everything He is going to take you through. It is important for us to understand that the great lifelong project of becoming perfected is composed of small things, and we have to identify those small things and not underestimate the importance of what is small in our lives.

That gesture you make today may mean something great. I have told you, for example, that when I am about to enter the church in the morning and I see a little old lady—the mother of someone in the congregation or something—do you know what? My ethic is this: I have to stop before that elderly woman, who perhaps cannot read or write, and I have to bless her and look her in the face. A homeless person wandering the streets, sometimes smelly—that is one of my favorite clients. I have to go over there and bless that person. Do you know why? In my life, I want to reflect the love, mercy, compassion, and humility of Jesus Christ. I do not always succeed, I tell you. Now, that sounds grand, doesn’t it? To be a humble and generous person.

Well, start there. Greet someone you do not like. Greet someone who cannot give you anything. Greet someone insignificant. Greet someone unpleasant. Greet someone nobody would look at twice, and train yourself in humility, generosity, and love, right? So that small gesture has immense implications, doesn’t it?

That sock you left on the floor when you got up—do not expect your wife to pick it up. Pick it up yourself, and through that declare order in your life. Look at that little piece of paper there. Right now there is a little white piece of paper there, and it is taking away my blessing right now, you know? And that is why you will often see me over there talking with someone, and I do this, and I pick up that little piece of paper, you know?

My ethic is this: I walk along a staircase and see a piece of paper or a little piece of cookie, and I am going to pick it up. I wash my hands afterward, just in case, but I am going to pick it up at that moment, you know? Because I say, ‘No, this is the House of the Lord. This is the church. This is the temple of God, of the Holy Spirit. That means this little piece of paper is an offender, and I have to remove it from there. It is an enemy over which I now have to declare victory,’ right? You go into the church bathroom: make sure that bathroom is in better condition when you leave than it was when you entered, because you are a servant of God, a manservant or maidservant of God. Do you understand what I am telling you?

And you are declaring discipline. You are declaring attention to detail. You are declaring reverence for the Kingdom of God. You are declaring war against the disorder of the sinful world in which you live. You are doing many great things through a small gesture, because what is small serves as the foundation for greatness, right? And in our pursuit of spiritual greatness, we have to master the small things.

What does the Word of the Lord say? ‘Come, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, so I will put you over much.’ Do you know what happens? We do not understand this principle that is so important throughout life: greatness is made up of many minuscule interventions. So there are people who want to say, ‘Oh Lord, take me to Africa! Take me into the Amazon jungles so I can offer my body there, so the natives can fill me with arrows and I can suffer for You and be a burnt offering to Your Grace! I want to evangelize nations! I want to evangelize multitudes!’ And someone says to you, ‘Brother, there is a sister over there who needs you to visit her and pray for her because she is going through a crisis.’ ‘Oh no, sister, that is too small for me. I have to go to Africa. I have to prepare to go to Europe and preach the Gospel.’

And God says, ‘You know what? If you cannot attend to the small things for Me, I am not going to put you over the great things,’ right? You have to be generous in small things. When no one is watching you, that is the moment for you to do something great for God. When something is so minor that it does not seem interesting or as though it could be rewarding for your life, do it, and then you will be exercising personal discipline, attention to detail, self-control—a whole host of things.

The greatness of what is small—that is one of the great truths. I have an illustration to share with the brothers and sisters this morning: the illustration of the penny and the million. Perhaps some of you have heard it before, and of course you will know what it is. If I were to say to you right now, ‘I have here a fully funded check for one million dollars and a penny that will double every day for 31 days. Which one do you want?’

Perhaps many would say, ‘Wow, the million dollars, of course! One million dollars compared with a penny that doubles every day for 31 days?’ Do you know what happens, brother? That little penny, doubling each day, is 2 cents on the second day, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, et cetera. On day 31, you will have $10,740,000 because of the virtue of multiplying what is small. In other words, if you choose the little penny that doubles every day, you will come out far better off than the person who chose the million immediately.

And do you know who benefits from that—the virtue of multiplication, what is called compound interest? Bankers. Bankers say to you, ‘You know what? Yes, we are going to give you a house. We are going to give you a 20-year loan to buy your house, and we are only going to charge you 4 or 5 percent interest. Wow! Tremendous!’ Do you know what? That 5 percent interest over 20 years becomes twice the price you paid for the house. So if the house cost you $250,000, that banker is going to put $500,000 into his pocket before you finish paying him the $250,000.

The virtue of what is small. Insurance companies understand this very well, and even casinos understand it tremendously well. All the people in the world with shrewd minds understand that tiny things, when multiplied, can go on to accomplish great things. In fact, throughout my life that has led me to devise something like a formula. I consider this a sacred formula for my life, and I always use this formula for every project I want to undertake in my life. It has already become like part of my being. I do not even think about it anymore, but it is very important.

I say: small actions carried out every day over the long term yield astonishing results; they produce astonishing results. Small things carried out every day over a long period of time—those three things are the key. Start with something very small, then do it every day, and do it for a long time, and you will see what happens.

If you read one page a day—for example, ‘I am going to read two pages of an article about computers’—in the past people had to own an encyclopedia that cost $800. Do you remember when they used to sell those encyclopedias for the home? I was not alive at that time, but they tell me that is how it was, right? The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia Americana—and these people would come, and 18 boxes of encyclopedias would arrive at your home, 500 pounds of books, and you would put them there and read them.

Nowadays you can go—here, brothers and sisters, there are about 50 encyclopedias, encyclopedias alone. You can Google anything you feel like; you can go to Wikipedia, and if you say, “You know what? Every day I’m going to read two pages about some field of knowledge”—one day it may be Europe, World War II, the history of Colombia, the beginnings of Christianity, Church history, theology, whatever you want—and you begin little by little. Don’t worry if one week you don’t read very much because you’ve been busy, but do it little by little, and you will see that in one or two years, it is amazing how much you will have learned and how your mind will have been enlightened and expanded.

Now, once again, that requires you to align your life. You are saying, “No, I want to be a knowledgeable person; I want to be an informed person; I want to be a cultured person; I want to enrich my intellect; I want to enrich my spirit.” So, when you take that on, you break it down, and every day you read a little about something.

“Oh, I want to lose 25 pounds because I’m too fat,” or whatever. Fine. Begin simply by cutting out one latte with double cream and seven spoonfuls of sugar each day; have one or two, but if you have three, cut one out, and do that over six or seven months. You will see the ounces magically melt off your body. Instead of taking the elevator, climb the stairs now and then, amen? Take the clothes off that treadmill you are now using as a clothes rack, get on it, and scare yourself by watching yourself run on it one day. If you can’t do it tomorrow, come back the next day and begin little by little.

I tell people: twenty minutes of exercise three times a week does incredible things. People say, “No, I need to run two hours a day,” and they begin, and the next day they are wiped out and never run again. Get on and walk a little, and tomorrow walk a little more, and say, “Throughout my entire life, I am going to make sure I take good care of my body.” Instead of three pork chops, I’ll eat two, right? Instead of putting sauce and cream and all those things on the cake, I’ll just eat it plain, and perhaps have a diet cake now and then. Details—small things that gradually produce an amazing result.

Some people have said that if you devote six months of your life, every day, to something—for example, to a particular field of knowledge—you can become a world-class expert. But it has to be something consistent and long-term; you can do extraordinary things.

The Bible is full of references to small things. It occurred to me, you know, that Zechariah 4:10 speaks about “not despising the day of small things.” When the Hebrews were building the second great temple after the first great Solomonic temple, they began, and it looked small and sad in comparison with the magnificent temple of Solomon—that second temple did. The Lord told them, “Do not waste the day of small things; learn to respect the value of small things.”

Jesus Christ was small, insignificant. The Bible says that He had “no beauty that we should desire Him.” In other words, He was not a movie idol in His appearance; He was an ordinary, average-looking man. If you saw Him today on the streets of Roxbury or in the middle of downtown Boston, perhaps you would walk right past Him, but the full deity of God was there.

That insignificant little baby, born in a manger because there was no room for Him in an inn, in an insignificant village, in an insignificant country of the world, was God Himself, who was going to change the destiny of humanity through His death on the cross. Think of the insignificance of the cross and of His death, and remember that there the Lord dethroned principalities and powers and canceled the record of decrees that stood against us, through a small thing like that, right?

It says that the Lord walked as a slave and humbled Himself unto death, even death on a cross. It says, “Therefore God gave Him a Name that is above every name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. He began as something small, and then the Lord raised Him up.

And another example occurred to me here this morning between the two services. What does Paul say in First Corinthians about the first Christians? He says: Look, you are not a very developed or extraordinary community. There are not many great professionals among you, nor people with a lot of money or a lot of authority. He says that God chose the small things to shame the great, and God chose the foolishness and folly of the cross to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to accomplish the great things He wanted to do.

Today Christianity fills the whole Earth and has given rise to the greatest artistic expressions in the universe, and it has been a driving force of humanity and has transformed nations and cultures. And it all began with one tiny baby, because God takes His time. He has spent two thousand years working on Earth on His project of restoration and creation, and He delights in working through ordinary people like you and me to uphold the values of His Kingdom.

So we have to develop a deep appreciation for small things and see how those small things are connected to the great visions we have conceived in our spirit. Always remember this: the project of continuous improvement. Improve, improve, improve your life. Don’t worry about how long it takes; you have your whole life to achieve those great projects. And remember again: give them names; be specific about them.

Okay, my memories hurt me and limit me and depress me. Name that giant, and then develop a strategy, with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, to deal with it, because it is harming you in your marriage, it is harming you in your relationship with your colleagues at work, and it keeps you from undertaking great things because you have that brake there. Every time you move, it is like a horse whose bit is pulled, hurting its teeth, because that memory holds you back. So name that memory and devote yourself to destroying it.

It may be a mental bondage, fantasies, mental dependencies, sexual things that bind us. It may be a relationship that you know is not good for you, and that is harming you in other areas of your life. It may be your marriage; as I have said, it may be your finances; it may be the anxieties in your life, a tendency to be resentful, to resent authority, to seek revenge—when someone does something to you, they have to pay for it—to believe that everyone is against you, low self-esteem. Name whatever giant you want. Many of us suffer from one, two, or ten of those defects.

So do not simply be content to say to Him, “Lord, bless me.” God says, “Okay, how do you want Me to bless you? Where do you want us to begin? Which of all those giants do you want Me to behead with you?” And then submit a life project to the Lord and keep improving, improving, improving. There are things in my life that I have been fighting for twenty years, even now, and I still have to watch out for them from time to time. Now, that does not make the power of God any less in me. On the contrary, I believe God is glorified in my struggle, my agony, my tears, my sweat, my bleeding before Him, my failures, and my getting back up. And through it all He says, “There is My son putting into practice everything I have taught him, and I delight in him.” And that is what God wants from your life as well.

But you have to keep improving, improving, and improving every day, knowing that you have all the time ahead of you. And if you die without having achieved it, glory to God, because then you will instantly be perfected, because your body will be glorified, your mind transformed, and then you truly will be like Christ in an instant. How wonderful it is when life is that—a project of self-improvement—and when death arrives, it finds us with sword in hand, cutting through the undergrowth before us like a knight-errant, waging war against everything that is contrary to the Kingdom of God and to what God has declared over our lives.

What does the Word of the Lord say? It says that we have to take every thought that rises up against the Name of Christ Jesus, every rebellious head, and submit it to the purposes of the Kingdom of God. Anything you identify in your life, any area of your life—behavior, attitudes, whatever it may be—about which you say, “This does not conform to the excellence and greatness of the Kingdom of God,” name it as a giant, put a label on its forehead, and hurl the biggest and most powerful stone you can find at it in the Name of the Lord, because everything that is contrary to the Kingdom of God and its excellence is your enemy, and you have to attack it in the Name of the Lord in your life.

When something small and defective is taken and continually improved, you end up with something truly magnificent—magnificent, right? This is part of those small actions carried out each day over the long term. I will finish with this illustration.

I don’t know how many of you have heard the story of the Wright brothers. There is a project for you: when you go home, look up the Wright brothers on Google. It is in Spanish too. Did you know that Wikipedia, for example, is in Spanish? It is in Italian, in French, in whatever language you want. There is no excuse; nowadays we can all learn something. The Wright brothers—two brothers—undertook the project of inventing a machine that could fly, an airplane, and they spent years conducting experiments. They devoted their whole lives to it.

After a while, they left their jobs; they left everything because, again, that is part of focus, and they devoted themselves exclusively to conducting experiment after experiment, reading everything they could about aerodynamics. They worked with different types of materials. In fact, they moved to a part of the country, North Carolina, where there was an area with winds suited to what they wanted to do and sand so that, if they crashed, the landing would be soft. They devoted their lives to it—many experiments, continually experimenting—because that is part of it, right? Continual work, improving; they learned from their failures. You always learn from everything.

If you try at first and it doesn’t work, then get back on the horse and keep going. You fall down: clean off your knees and keep going. In fact, that is the principle of science. The scientific principle is this: experiment a great deal, fail a great deal, and keep improving, improving, improving until you reach your goal.

So these men devoted many years to experimentation and to searching for a machine that could fly. And then came their first success. There is a day regarded as the day of the first airplane flight, and if we look at that day, it was actually something rather pitiful in one sense and very humble. That machine was a glorified box; it was a crate made of sticks and wood, and it flew a few hundred yards. That was all. It went like this, rose a little, and boom, crashed again. But it remained suspended in the air for a certain amount of time, and it weighed a few dozen pounds. I don’t think it even reached 100 or 200 pounds. It was very small and traveled, as I say, a very short distance, and that was all. But that is considered the day aviation began in the world.

That was around the 1930s, I believe. Now we are in 2013, almost 2014—eighty years later, let’s say. What has happened during that time? Nowadays, think of another airplane, the Airbus 380, the A380, which is flying in different parts of the world right now. That A380 airplane you see there is an airplane whose height is almost ten stories, okay? It is a building, and its length from nose to the end of the tail is the size of a football field—American football. We are talking about almost three times the size of this building from one end to the other here. It weighs hundreds of thousands of pounds, travels at nearly the speed of sound, Mach .85, and can travel from New York to Hong Kong without refueling.

Okay? Now compare that extraordinary, glorious machine with that humbling beginning of the Wright brothers, and picture your life that way; the project of your life is like that. Perhaps right now you are worse than that little airplane. I hope I am not insulting anyone right now, but that is how we can be. This morning—we couldn’t do it at the twelve o’clock service, and I think we are going to do it next Sunday—we are blessing into ministry the homeless people whom God has been forming here at Lion of Judah. And I encouraged my brothers and sisters who are now in painful financial circumstances like theirs, who have nowhere to live. You can imagine what it would take for such a person to escape the trap of homelessness.

And all the defects and wounds that have contributed to that painful situation—how does a person go from years of homelessness and wandering the streets to being a person who has a home and a job and can function in life? It is a project more difficult than that of the Wright brothers. But you know what? God is more than powerful enough to do it; God delights in impossible things. Perhaps your depression right now seems almost impossible to overcome because you have suffered from it for 40 or 50 years. God is with you; God can give you the answer.

That little crate can fly at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Perhaps no one in your family has ever graduated from college, and you are now 30 years old and say, “How am I going to start studying?” God can do it. You can learn English, you can earn your GED, you can learn the skills you did not acquire because perhaps you did not graduate from high school. But you have to go piece by piece. Begin with what you have at hand, what you have at hand.

The Lord always asks people: What do you have in your hand? When God sends Moses to speak to Pharaoh and tell him, “Let My people go,” Moses has been waiting eighty years for his moment, and he has spent forty of those years in the sands of the desert, and his self-esteem has been shattered, and he says to Him, “Lord, I can’t; I stutter,” this, that, and the other, and God, exasperated, says to him, “But what do you have in your hand?” “Well, I have a staff.” “Well, take that staff and throw it on the ground,” and the staff turns into a snake. “Now pick it up,” and it becomes a staff again. “Put your hand inside your cloak,” and the hand comes out covered with leprosy. “Now put it in again,” and it comes out clean. “With those two signs, go to Pharaoh and tell him: I am sending you.” They were in his hand; the answer was in his hand.

After that, a long-term process begins. Pharaoh says yes, then he says no; the plagues come, persecution from his brothers comes, the people’s complaints come, but finally, one day, the people leave, and even then the process is just beginning: forty years in the desert until they enter the Promised Land, because God is a God of processes, and you have to begin with what you have in your hand.

You have to believe that this great, impossible, inconceivable thing that is difficult to undertake—God and His power in you, the Word of God in you, the principles of the Kingdom of God in you, continual prayer, and obedience to the Word of the Lord—become a tsunami that nothing can withstand. It will level everything before you until you reach the goal that God has established in your heart.

Believe in small beginnings; live your life thinking about the details. Do not let yourself be overwhelmed by the greatness of the vision before you. Believe in the God who delights in details and processes. He does not simply want to give you a result, because if He gives you a result, you will learn nothing from it. He wants you to develop skills through practice because He wants to create a powerful man, a woman filled with the Holy Spirit, capable of using the truths of the Kingdom of God and bringing glory to His Name every day, because each day he or she is becoming more and more like Christ Jesus. And with that Christ inside him or her, nothing can withstand them.

Let us stand for a moment, and right now I want you, in your spirit, to receive that Word and ask yourself: “Father, where is the beginning of my journey? Where is the end of that long thread that I must follow until I reach Your destination?” And launch out day by day. Begin to take notes about your life; write things down; be specific with God; present specific tasks to Him.

God says, “Okay, what do you want Me to do for you? Take away your blindness? Soften your heart? Put strength in your legs? Heal your memories? What do you want Me to do?” Then ask the Lord for one thing at a time. Write down all the tasks that lie ahead of you, and then delight in watching the Lord give you all those things throughout your life. Delight in making your life a heroic long-term undertaking, an adventure of the Spirit, and in reflecting more and more of the greatness of Christ Jesus each day and bringing delight to your Heavenly Father, who will be watching your story unfold from His Throne and delighting as He says, “That is My daughter; that is My son. I designed them, I trained them, I taught them, I discipled them. Look at them applying the Truths of My Kingdom.”

Receive now, in the Name of Jesus, God’s calling upon your life. Father, we are going to be specific people; we are going to be detail-oriented people; we are going to focus day by day; we are going to declare the things of God specifically. We will not be content with generic declarations. We are going to appreciate the details of life. We are going to live life intentionally; we are going to connect our days to our destiny. We are going to see the project of life as something long-term in which our God is deeply involved. There will be no failures in my life, only experiments from which I will learn and which I will use as stepping-stones toward greatness.

I will not question the complexity of Your processes, but I will embrace everything You bring into my life, and I will use it as raw material for the greatness You want to develop in my life. Even in my suffering and afflictions, I will find the potential to become more like Christ, who was perfected through His sufferings. So, Lord, this afternoon I receive Your Truth. Begin with me, Father, for I am the one preaching it, and help me, Lord, to put into practice what I declare, and help each of my brothers and sisters as well.

Help us to become a community that is specific, patient, and systematic in what it does; a community of integrity in the way it lives, aligning its daily experience with its projects and visions of greatness, Lord. And thank You because You have committed Yourself to us. Day by day we will walk until we reach the upward call of Christ Jesus. We thank You, Lord; we worship You and bless You. Thank You, Lord. In the Name of Jesus. And the people of God say: Amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters. May the grace of the Lord be with you. Amen and amen.