I want to share with you the immense joy we felt this week as we witnessed a milestone in the life of Luz, a woman we’ve been discipling along with Jesús and Sara over the past few months. This past Wednesday, Luz took an incredible step of faith by being baptized at the beach, under a sunset that seemed painted by the hand of God.

Since we began discipling Luz and her husband Jovany, we’ve seen a deep desire in them to learn the Word of God. Luz has shown a genuine curiosity, always asking questions about what she has believed all her life, or about what she sees others in the town believe. But what has been truly remarkable is her determination to discover the truth for herself, directly from the source: the Bible.

This process of discipleship has been as enriching for us as it has been for them. We’ve seen Luz grow in her faith, question and better understand the teachings of Jesus, and reach the point where she felt ready to publicly declare her faith through baptism. I cannot describe the emotion we felt as we watched Luz come out of the water, a new creation in Christ. The tears in many of our eyes reflected the joy that only God can give.

I ask that you continue to pray for Luz and Jovany as they continue their walk with Christ. May God continue to guide and strengthen them, and may their pursuit of the truth continue to inspire others in our community.

Brothers and sisters, I encourage you to press on, always remembering that God gives the fruit in His time, and that nothing we do for Him is in vain.

With much love and gratitude,

Efraín & Vicki

This week, we witnessed a very special moment in our children’s ministry, and I am eager to share it with you. Throughout the trimester, we’ve been working with the children on memorizing Bible verses and positively participating in the classes. To encourage them, we’ve been giving out “biblical bills” that they could accumulate and later exchange for gifts at our Bible store at the end of the trimester.

I don’t know if I’m the only one, but there were days when I wondered if the kids were really learning anything. However, this past Sunday, everything became clear. Seeing Daniel, an 11-year-old boy who lives with his uncles, transform his behavior, confidently recite the verses he had memorized, filled me with hope. Daniel has started arriving early every Sunday, attending the servants’ devotional, which is a significant step for him. Then there’s Margarita, another 11-year-old girl who attends church alone every Sunday. Her consistency and commitment, despite not having close family support, is a powerful testament to the work God is doing in her life.

This Sunday, we celebrated the end of the trimester with our Bible store. The kids were able to see the fruit of their efforts as they exchanged their bills for gifts, and I am convinced that this new period we’re beginning will be even more fruitful. God is working in their hearts, and although progress may seem small at times, they are steady steps in the right direction.

I ask that you pray for these children, that the gospel may take deep root in their hearts. Pray also for our children’s ministry, that we may reach more children and help them grow in their faith. Nothing we do is in vain when we do it for the Lord.

With much love and gratitude,

Efraín & Vicki

With just three weeks left until our students’ graduation, preparations are well underway for this special event. This week, we’ve been working together as a team, sanding and varnishing platforms that will be used for the decorations. But more important than the physical preparations are the preparations of the heart.

Our students are also preparing their hearts, doubling their efforts and giving their best in these final days. Throughout the year, they’ve been studying a manual on “Self-Confrontation,” which guides them to examine themselves in the light of God’s Word. Recently, they’ve been completing the final self-confrontation exam. It’s beautiful to see how they support one another: Marcela isn’t afraid to ask questions, and Vero responds with patience and the wisdom she’s gained over the past two years, just like Jesús and Sara. They’ve also had powerful times of worship and prayer, where the Holy Spirit has led them to confess their offenses, forgive one another, and pray together.

We’ve faced challenges along the way. Illness has been a significant hurdle, with many students being hindered from their responsibilities due to sickness. Another challenge has been maintaining unity; interpersonal conflicts and our own flesh often stand in the way of loving our brothers and sisters and esteeming them above ourselves. But together, we’ve been striving to overcome selfishness—a battle each of us must fight daily, not only for our own good but for the good of our community.

As we reflect on these experiences, we find ourselves with mixed emotions. On one hand, we know that these are our last days together, and we will surely miss one another. But on the other hand, we are filled with joy and gratitude that the students have persevered, that they are finishing the year strong, and that the Lord has used this time to teach, transform, and perfect them.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support. We are deeply grateful for the role you play in this journey.

With love and gratitude,

Vicki and Efraín

This week, we want to share the story of our last student, Marcela. Marcela and her family have known God for many years and have always sought to be faithful. Marcela never married and has remained devoted to God, trusting in His providence. Throughout her life, she has faced health challenges, including undergoing open-heart surgery.

For a long time, Marcela felt God calling her to serve full-time, but fear held her back. A year ago, while searching for a house to rent, her sister and brother-in-law invited her to the School of Ministry graduation. As she felt God’s presence, she started to cry and heard His voice saying, “If you serve Me, you will always have a place to live.” With this divine assurance, Marcela surrendered to God and joined the School of Ministry, knowing it was an answered prayer.

This past year has not been easy for Marcela. It has been filled with struggles, challenges, and tribulations. However, Marcela is determined to please God, taking steps of obedience and seeking reconciliation with others. As the school year comes to an end, Marcela asks for your prayers for her calling, that God would guide and support her. She also asks for prayers for the salvation of her brother Martín and for God’s provision for her graduation and the vacation period.

We are preparing for the graduation at the end of August. We ask for your prayers for each of our students, that God may guide them with wisdom in the decisions they have to make as they move forward.

Dear family in Rancho Santa Margarita, your prayers and support mean everything to us. Thank you for being part of this journey and for lifting up our students and their families in prayer.

With much love and gratitude,

Vicki and Efraín

Miraculous Attendance

Starting with the first year of School of Ministry we experienced the Lord’s miraculous hand in all that we did. Boca Del Rio at the time was a very rural village with dirt roads and tar paper shacks. We had spotty electricity, the water supply would often be shut down for days and there was no such thing as cell phones. So, the challenge in opening up a School of Ministry in Boca Del Rio would be how anyone would even know that the school existed? From the very first year we saw God’s miraculous hand in the school as students started showing up on our doorstep. Without advertising, social media or emails, students found out about the school and miraculously started showing up. In the years to follow the Lord would faithfully send ten to twelve students that would miraculously show up on our door step. Every year we would wonder if we would have any students and every year the Lord would bring them.

The Fruit

The fruit of years of School of Ministry has been miraculous as well.  What a blessing to see our graduates go on to plant churches, pastor in their own churches and even establish schools of their own. Currently the core leadership team for the school is entirely made up of School of Ministry alumni. It’s truly a blessing to see graduates from over twenty years ago now passing on what they had learned along with decades of experience in ministry to new students in attendance. Pastor Tom still oversees and teaches at the school and recently has made a three year commitment to be at the school in Boca Del Rio six months out of the year.

Thank you for your prayers and support and may the Lord continue to use us all in raising up pastors and leaders to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Pastor John

Good morning. So this will be our last Sunday kind of going through this study, a little bit of the Spirit. So I’m going to jump right in.

Father, would you allow your Spirit to take authority over this place? Reign in our hearts and in our minds. Take every thought captive to the name of Jesus. That you’d cover us as your family in the blood of your Son. Lord, that our sins would be washed afresh, as you washed the disciples’ feet to just take away the sin of the day, Lord. That the weak would be cleansed from us. That we would enter into your presence as we did through worship. That you would inhabit our praises. That your Spirit would teach us through your Word. That we would come into a very real connection with you today, as we desire to know, to walk, and to grow in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So, we’ve been talking about the idea of salvation and what that means. And the reason I think that’s important—we were upstairs in our kind of short one-hour discipleship time, kind of turning into our Sunday school, if you will—and we were talking about what to expect when we’re saved: a new relationship with God, divine empowerment that would become available to us to live the Christian life, a new purpose.

A new reason to be alive. A calling. My shift would be not about me anymore, but now about others.

And about Him, and about the Lord. So there would be a shift in my purpose for living, and a new plan about how to grow, how to be strengthened, how to mature, how to become more like Him.

There would be a legitimate understanding of the process that it takes to grow up in Jesus. And those are the basics, right? That we hope are growing in us as we come to Christ. After we come to Christ, and we talk about—there’s this situation.

Let’s jump into a text, and we’ll follow from there. We’ll be in Luke, chapter 24, starting in verse 45. We had covered this a little bit, but we didn’t get to where we were going.

So, Luke, chapter 24, starting in verse 45. It says, “Then He opened their minds.” Of course, Jesus was walking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

They were discouraged. He was resurrected. And He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day,

and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” So He’s a little bit kind of speaking into their hearts about what He would declare in the Great Commission, right? Which was really the generalized purpose for all of us, for the church in general.

And we talked a little bit about this, but it’s just worth saying again: our need so often is the opening of my heart to understand the Scripture, right? I don’t know how young I was in the Lord—some guy that, you know, you would meet him and think nothing of this young man.

To me, I was the cool kid; he was geeky. And I came to Christ.

And it was all about computers. And I’m old enough that computers weren’t even popular. And he grabbed me, and he grabbed a study Bible, and he just started.

I didn’t know he was discipling me, but that’s what he was doing. He was teaching me and showing me and helping me grow in the Word of God. Not a pastor, not a leader, not even somebody I was impressed with.

But he took, for some reason, an interest in me. Bought me my first study Bible and started walking with me. Taught me most of the songs I know.

So much, right? And that’s what God’s trying to haul you into, right? That you would care enough about someone that you don’t have to be anybody super special. If you just love God and have a Bible, if you’re willing to grow in Christ and believe in power and walk in it,

God has a purpose for you in the Kingdom of God, right? And yet, I remember this young person teaching me. I was young then, too. He was teaching me.

He said, “At the time, I’m passionate about buying some commentaries. I’m reading commentaries, and they’re confusing me. The bad thing about a commentary is you read three commentaries, and they tell you three different answers. You’re like, ‘Okay, now I’m more confused than I was before, right?’ And so he said, ‘You do know that the guy who actually wrote what you’re reading in the Bible is right here with you, and you could ask Him—not knucklehead Joe, Jim, or Jane from the commentary.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, so I’m going to talk to God, and He’s going to answer the Bible questions? Is that what you’re saying?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘Have you ever tried that? Have you ever sat there and read and then stopped and said, “I don’t understand,” and I’m going to pray and wait and talk to God until He answers before I go on, because I’m not willing to go on not understanding?’ I thought he was crazy a little bit, but I was studying, and I was enjoying studying. I spent a lot of time reading crazy commentaries. I said, ‘Close all the commentaries.’ I said, ‘I’m going to take at least the same amount of time that I was reading what other people thought about what I’m reading, and I’m going to start to sit and pray and ask God what.’ And man, He started talking, and I got scared. The guy who wrote the Bible, the Spirit of the living God who caused men to write what you’re reading, is still alive. And He’s right there dwelling inside of you. And if you’re willing to slow down, and if you’ll believe enough to actually act as though it’s true and real, He’ll actually respond to you and speak to you.”

But here’s the cry: “Open my mind. Help me understand the scripture.”

Verse 46: “And He said to them, ‘Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed.'” And so we could talk about that a lot. We’re just going to go right by that, even though I think it’s so important: “would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Verse 48: “You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father.”

Now, if you don’t have that underlined, if you’ve never gotten a concordance or a Google search or a good Bible app and looked up “promise,” let’s get it right: “of My Father.” That’s a pretty important Bible study. What is the promise of Jesus’ Father for you, for the church, for me? And He said, “Listen, you need to hold on. Behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father.”

And then that word “upon” in Greek is “epi,” which I very much like Greek, and I read Greek, but I don’t try to teach in Greek because let’s just teach what’s in English. But in this case, the New American Standard is phenomenal because they change the word “epi” to “upon” every time. Other versions don’t do that.

So what you want to catch is if you’re using NASB and He said, “I’m going to send this ‘upon’ you,” He’s talking about—remember we said there were three experiences with the Holy Spirit that were important: The Spirit of God walks with unbelievers, convincing them or convicting them that they’re sinners, that He’s a righteous judge, and that there’s eternal judgment. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit in an unbeliever.

Then, if I believe in Christ, if I accept what He’s done for me on the cross, if I desire that He would be Lord of my life, if I surrender my life to Him and willingly repent, which means I’m no longer trying to live for myself, serve myself, love myself, but I’ve changed my heart, and my new desire is to try to live for Him, to try to love Him, and to try to serve Him. If I have faith and repentance and I say that to Him—I confess openly; I’m not ashamed of it—then the Spirit of God, by faith, comes into me, and I’m born again.

I become a new believer. I become a new creation. I become alive in the Spirit.

I died in the Spirit when Adam died, frankly. When Adam rejected God, he died a spiritual death, and all of his descendants stayed spiritually dead. And last week, I think we covered it—I hope, if we didn’t, it’s in John—where Jesus breathes on the disciples after He’s resurrected from the dead.

So after the real blood of the real Lamb really paid for the sins of the whole world, then you and all the Old Testament saints at that moment became holy because He lived a perfect, righteous, obedient life to the law. He completed every jot, every tittle. He crossed every “T” and dotted every “I” of the law.

He obeyed perfectly. And in His obedience, He remained holy. And so, when He died for you and me, that holiness, that blood that never needed to die because the wages of sin is death, He willingly lays down His life so that His blood could pay for your price and my price.

And here’s what’s important in that. This is really important. Have you ever said, “See, I’m an arguer; I’m a debater, and when I came to Christ, I was worse.”

But it was kind of good because I was arguing with God in the Bible. And I’m like, “I don’t understand how the death of one guy who was obedient, Christ in His humanity, dying on a cross for me, could pay for everybody’s sin.” And I heard it taught that it was because He was God.

So I don’t think God could die for you. I don’t think God could be your redeemer. God couldn’t do that.

I’m not saying that Jesus wasn’t God. I’m just saying He had to also be fully man. Because Ruth will teach me that I have to have a kinsman-redeemer.

I have to have a close relative that can pay my price, that can buy me back, that can get my value and my property taken back and returned to me. A stranger can’t do it. It has to be someone very, very close to me and my family.

And I still say, “Well, that doesn’t make any difference to me.” I’m like, “Jesus wasn’t close to me, right? I mean, I’m not even a Jew.”

But see, here’s the thing. Sin didn’t come through me or you. Sin came through one man, Romans says.

We don’t have time to go there, but that study on salvation—those are the two most important studies you can do: the study on salvation and the study on the Spirit. If you don’t get those figured out, it comes as more classes. But He died.

Do you know who Adam died for? Or forgive me, do you know who Jesus died for? He died for Adam. Well, you say, “How was Jesus a kinsman or a close family member to Adam, the first man?” And the answer is, God breathed in Adam, and he became a living soul. And the Spirit of the living God hovered over Mary, and Jesus became a living soul.

They’re brothers—same dad, first brother, not second brother, not stepbrother. And when Jesus—we call Him the second Adam—dies for the sin of the first Adam, His death by federal headship covers the whole world. What is federal headship? The Bible in Romans says that because Adam sinned, he died, and death, the consequence of sin, passed to all men.

Even though they didn’t necessarily sin in the exact same way that Adam did, the consequence of being dead spiritually was passed to all the descendants of Adam. And no one lived with the Spirit of God in them since Adam until Jesus. And when Jesus died in your place, He paid for the sin of Adam.

Therefore, He paid for the sin that flowed from Adam to all men, including you and me. And now you, if you would repent and believe, became holy. And then Jesus, in John 20, towards the end, after He’s resurrected from the dead, sees the apostles and breathes on them. Oh, remember that.

What’s the big breathing thing? Well, God breathed on Adam, and the Spirit of God indwelt him, and he became a living soul. And no one had that experience until Jesus had paid the full price by His death on the cross. And then He went to His believers, His apostles, and He breathed on them.

And for the first time since Adam, the Spirit of God indwelt man again. That was new birth. That was the living Spirit of God in me, born again, a son or a daughter of the living God because you had been made holy by the blood shed by Jesus on the cross.

And yet you’ll say, “But hold on, hold on. In the Old Testament, there was this power, there was this Spirit that came upon Moses, and he prophesied, and the Spirit came on David, and the Spirit came on Samson.” Those are all that, and now we’re moving from Greek to Hebrew.

But it’s that “upon” experience. The baptism of the Holy Spirit, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to be a witness and a servant and a minister for God was happening in the Old Testament. But new birth—the Spirit of the living God dwelling in someone—that didn’t happen in the Old Testament since Adam.

Joel prophesied in Joel chapter 2, and I know they don’t get the words because I didn’t tell them. Joel chapter 2, starting in verse 28, says, “It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit upon”—or it’s the word that’s similar because we’re looking at Hebrew and not Greek—”pour out My Spirit on all mankind, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions, and even on the male and female servants, the slaves, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” What did he say? In the Old Testament, it was limited.

Saints, prophets, priests, judges—just leadership, just Israel. But he said there was coming a time where that was going to change. And because you were born again, because the life and the power of the living Spirit of God was in you, you were called into service.

A purpose for your life opened up before you. And the strength to be supernaturally empowered by the Spirit of God, just like Samson, just like Moses, just like John the Baptist. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that John the Baptist was the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets, but anyone who was born again or in the Kingdom of God was greater than John the Baptist.

I want you to think that through because He’s talking about you. If you’re born again, from God’s understanding and estimation, see, John the Baptist was never born again. John the Baptist was never holy.

John the Baptist was never indwelt by the Spirit of the living God. He was empowered. The Spirit came upon him.

He was moving in the outward authority and power of the gifts of the Spirit, but he wasn’t a child of the living God. He wasn’t born again. And what the Bible is saying is that you, as a believer, the Spirit of God has come into you, and you’ve become a new creature in Christ, and you’re born again, and you have something that no Old Testament saint had.

Verse 49, still in Acts 24: “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father.” That’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The promise of My Father upon you. But you are to stay in the city until you’re clothed with power from on high. He said, “Listen, you’ve been born again.

I breathed on you. You’ve been called. I’ve trained you for three years.

I’ve commissioned you. I’ve told you what you need to do. I told you what’s going to happen.

You need to step up and boldly be obedient. But don’t go anywhere yet. You’re not ready.”

I remember sitting through the School of Ministry under Chuck Smith, and he taught on just Friday afternoons. He taught through Acts for the whole two years I was there. And the sermon was the same sermon every Friday.

It was shocking how he could teach the same idea over and over and over and over from a different place in Acts. And the end of the sermon was always the same: “Don’t go into ministry.

Please don’t go into ministry unless you’re filled with His Spirit. Unless the baptism of the Spirit is upon you.”

I started calling him the “American Express Pastor,” because at that time the commercial “Don’t Leave Home Without It” was popular. And that’s basically what it’s saying. Don’t leave home.

Don’t leave Jerusalem. Don’t step into the fullness of ministry without the empowerment—the supernatural empowerment, the same empowerment that had been poured out on priests and judges and kings. That empowerment is now available for you.

And He’s telling you, “Don’t jump into ministry unless you have it.” Right? He says, “Wait. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jumping to Acts chapter 1. The first account I composed, Luke writing. He’s talking about the first account being Luke, the gospel of. “The first account I composed, O Theophilus,” which means “friend of God,” but most people think he was the owner of Luke.

Luke was a slave. The doctors of that time were slaves to rich families. We have a different idea of slaves now, but often in slavery, the slaves became more beloved than a child.

You know, they became more faithful. There was the idea of even a free will slave that, after he served under bondage, the relationship between him and the master became so strong that he would tell the master, “I know I’m free, but I don’t want to be free. I just want to serve you forever.”

Is that okay? And he would take him to the doorpost, and they’d drive an awl through his ear and put an earring on him that let everybody know that, although he was living and acting as a servant to the master, he was there by free will choice. Paul and most of the people in the New Testament picked up that whole idea of, “I serve him, I’m his slave, I’m his servant, but it’s a free will choice.” So, Luke is speaking. He says, “The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.” I’ve got lots to talk about here, but I love that Jesus was a doer and then a teacher.

I was working on some books, and I was watching YouTube, and the person that was talking, the author that was talking, took about 10 minutes to explain that they had authored 40 books, and seven were on the best-seller list. And they said, “The reason I say that is not because I want to boast; it’s because I’m looking at all these YouTube channels, and they’re talking about how to be a great author, and they’ve never published anything.” I love listening to people who have accomplished something.

I like reading dead guys. What I mean by that is I like reading books that are over 100 years old because I know how they finished. I remember being excited about the book on dating, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

It came out in Spanish, so it was really exciting. So we were handing it out, and it was a good book. It was the idea that dating wasn’t the thing; it was a long-term commitment toward marriage.

They used the word “courtship,” and it developed into some really good teaching. I think it was about 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago now, 12 years ago, the guy came out and decided his book was wrong. He didn’t believe in Jesus, and he was really sorry that he hurt everybody by telling them those lies. And I’m like, “Can I get all those books back really quick?” I love that I can look back at the people who changed the world for Christ and whose lives made a difference.

And I know how they finished. Whether that’s C.H. Spurgeon, A.W. Pink, Gordon, or any number of incredible classic writers—saints that changed the world, that lived it out, that finished well—I’m drawn to those conversations. But I’m more so drawn to Jesus because here’s the history of His life.

Whether you want to look at the biblical history of His life, or you want to look at Josephus, who was a Jewish historian that wasn’t a Christian and wrote about Jesus’ life, or you want to look at Philo, the Greek historian who wrote about Jesus’ life and wasn’t a Christian, or Pliny, who was a Roman, who basically was a guy who wrote about how the Christians were crazy, and all they did was sit around and pray, and they were fanatics. And I’m thinking, “Hey, even the enemies are testifying about who we are. Even the guys who don’t like us are testifying.”

And I look at Jesus’ life, and there’s no witness, no testimony, no writing that says He was a murderer, a liar, a thief, a manipulator, a charade, or a fraud. He finished well. He lived out the calling and taught about it along the way.

And He’s calling you to follow Him. He’s calling you to live it out. He’s calling you to respond and say yes to the new purpose of your life.

He’s calling you to live in such a way that you can teach about how and why you live the way you live, respond the way you respond, speak the way you speak, witness the way you witness—because you’re living a thing that was transforming your life before you began to teach it. Jesus, it says, Theophilus, did all that Jesus began to do and teach, verse 2, until the day when He was taken up to heaven after He had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. That’s an important thought because the shift now was, as Jesus ascended, there was this shift, right? He said, “It’s better for you that I leave because when I go up, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit.”

And now the Holy Spirit was the person all the way through the rest of Acts. It’s the Holy Spirit talking to Paul. It’s the Holy Spirit talking to Peter.

It’s the Holy Spirit speaking to the jailer. It’s the Holy Spirit who is now the communicator for the church. Are you walking with the Spirit of Jesus? Do you know the voice of His Spirit? By the way, it was His Spirit that wrote the words that are the living Word, Christ Himself.

They’re one thing, and yet, the person of Christ has ascended to heaven, and the person of the Spirit has been sent to the earth to work in and through you and us, the church. To tell you, the day He was taken up to heaven after He had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles—do you notice they were orders and not recommendations? Are you under orders? I remember I had just gotten involved before I was a Christian, right? I had just gotten married, and I got orders in the U.S. Army to go overseas. Unaccompanied.

Semi-combat tour. Called everybody I knew. Checked in with my first guard.

Called a couple of officers I knew. I was working at headquarters, so I had some relationships. I was just looking for a way out of the order.

That’s all I wanted. And to the man, they said, “Well, son, you signed up in the United States Army, right?” I’m like, “Yep.” He goes, “So that means you came to follow orders, right?” But I don’t, and I think, and he said, “Yeah, you can think all you want, but define the word ‘order’ for me, son.”

And I’m like, “I don’t know what it means exactly.” “Oh, here,” he said, “it’s simple. It’s a commandment that you need to obey and then think about.

It’s a commandment that you need to do, and then we can talk. It’s a commandment that you need to execute, and then we can discuss. But it’s an order, son.”

And that solved it for me. Packed my bags, got on a plane. And that helped me because when I came to the text and I saw “orders,” I was like, “Oh, so this is just something I don’t have to really understand fully; I just have to do, and then we can talk about it later.”

That’s how I took it. Everything that I read, I was like, “Yep, we got to do that. We can talk about it later.

We can understand it later. I can get the nuances of why later.” But here’s what it is:

This is God’s Word, and I need to obey the truth if I believe it’s the truth. I at least have to try to obey. I learned in the Army that there were a lot of orders I couldn’t obey.

“Go take the hill”—that was a bigger order than it sounded like. But I had to respond intending to obey. The Holy Spirit had given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.

To these, He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Gathering them together, He commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem but wait for what the Father had promised, which,” He said, “you heard from Me.”

For John baptized—now we’re going to find out what the promise is—for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. What’s the promise they were supposed to wait for in Jerusalem? What was the promise of the Father? That they would be baptized, empowered, filled, and supernaturally strengthened to serve in ministry.

Now, if you’re the devil, and you’re a schemer and a liar, and you’re trying to stop the progress of the church—right? I grew up military. Loved Sun Tzu’s book The Art of War, probably the most popular military book in the world.

And the root truth of that book is: assume your enemy is going to be very, very intelligent and make very, very good decisions. Because the biggest failure in combat is thinking your enemy is not intelligent and he’s going to make dumb decisions—and then you get killed. So assume your enemy is very, very intelligent and is going to make very wise decisions. And what that tells me about the enemy, when I brought it to this text, is that if I’m the enemy, and I’m very, very intelligent and I’m going to make very, very good decisions, I’m going to divide the church right where the most important ideas are.

I’m going to cause the body of Christ to be separate and fight amongst themselves right on the most important issues of the Word of God. Because I don’t care which side they take on it—as long as they don’t have it as a whole, I’ve won. I’ve weakened.

I’ve divided. I’ve hindered their progress. And that sent me into a spiral of looking at where God—or where really the enemy—had divided the body of Christ.

Where have the churches fought about things? It was water baptism, spiritual baptism, marriage, rebuke, correction, instruction, discipline, discipleship, evangelism—the gifts and the power of His Spirit moving through you.

Tongues, healing, and miraculous types of things happening in ministry. And whether you know it or not, the church is divided over all those things. Some say yes. Some say no.

Some say maybe. Some say before, but not now. And then if you get the other side, it just goes hyper-focused on the power and the baptism and the authority that they forget the doctrine and the Word and the relationship with Christ.

See, it doesn’t make any difference which side I can get them to take as long as they don’t stand in a balanced teaching of the love of the Father, the truth of the Word of the living God that calls you to purpose and action, and the power of the Spirit that comes upon you and equips you to actually walk out the calling of Christ unto the love of your Father, which is the beautiful picture of what the Trinity is in the Bible. As long as you don’t have the fullness of God, the enemy is winning. And what we’re talking about is understanding evangelism and the need for the Spirit to work with the unbeliever—to convince them that they’re guilty of sin, to convince them that He’s a righteous judge, and if they die in their sin, He has to judge their sin, and to convince them that there’s an eternal condemnation and punishment—that if they die in their sin and are judged guilty, they will find themselves in condemnation forever.

And if you can have that in balance with believing in Christ and understanding that He lived as a man and obeyed as a man—yes, He was God at the same time—but He set the right to utilize His deity, His power, to one side and walked out everything as the second Adam, a kinsman to Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world. And if you repent and change your desire and seek after Him with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, you would find Him, and His Spirit would come into you, and there would be new life, and you would have the mind of Christ. There would be power, and there would be privilege, and you would have access to the throne of God, and you could talk to Him and cry out for wisdom and understanding, and He would fill you and speak to you and love you like a father.

But then you gotta go the extra mile and wait in Jerusalem or wait wherever God has you, because there’s one more promise. The love of the Father gave one more promise—because now you’re a son or daughter—and the promise was the empowerment, the anointing, the overflowing infilling of His Spirit upon you.

We’ll start again in verse four. It says, “Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised, which He said, ‘You heard from Me. For John baptized—excuse me—for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.'”

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You’re restoring the kingdom of Israel?” He had talked about the kingdom of God, but they were still stuck in politics, still stuck in nationalism, still stuck in, “Are you going to raise up our country now?” He’s like, “You know, for Israel, that’s coming; actually, He is going to raise up Israel again, but it wasn’t the time.”

Verse four: “Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised, which you heard from Me. John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

And they didn’t ask, “When do we get that? How do we get that? How does it work? How soon can I have it? What do I do after?” So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You’re going to restore the kingdom of Israel?” He said to them, “It’s not for you to know the times or the epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” But He’s like, “I know that’s what you’re worried about. Let me bring you back to what we’re talking about.”

Have you ever had that? You’re having a conversation, you’re trying to explain something super important, and the young man goes off-topic. I’m like, “Okay, yeah, I get that, but can we come back to what we’re talking about?” This is what we’re talking about. Jesus lets him float off for a second, but then He comes back and says, “But listen, now you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

Now, why am I getting power? Why would I need power? What’s the power for? “And you shall be My martyrs”—that’s the word there, meaning to be a witness unto death, to stand confessing the truth in front of every possible enemy, to stand as Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego said, “My God can deliver me, but even if He doesn’t, I’ll never bow my knee to you.” Death is preferable, and I embrace it compared to walking away from my King.

Listen, we’re coming into a time where that choice needs to be made. We always taught soldiers, “You need to decide you’re willing to die before you have to make the decision whether you’re willing to die.” I tell that to people who are engaged, thinking about marriage. It’s the best counsel I can give you. If you’re thinking about getting married, sit down and decide you’re willing to die for that person, no matter what they’re saying or doing to you. And if you’re not willing to die, don’t get married.

Am I willing to die for the King? Am I willing to die for the calling? Am I willing to die for the purpose? Am I willing to die as a witness? We think maybe that’s a radical conversation today. Maybe Tom’s trying to overemphasize it. Maybe our pastor is just too radical. Just go grab Fox’s Book of Martyrs and just read half of it. I mean, if you get depressed halfway through, come see me. I’ll try to encourage you so you can finish it. But one after another, every one of the apostles died, except John, for the gospel. The men who translated the words you read were burned at the stake and sang worship songs as the flames lapped up over their bodies, martyred. And people came to Christ, shocked at how you could stand in faith in the midst of such things—a witness unto death.

That’s the call of Christ for you—to be so in love with Him, so sure of the truth, that nothing could make you recant, nothing could turn you back from Him. And let me tell you, when I think of that, I’m really glad there’s something called the baptism of the Holy Spirit because I think I need a little extra help for that. I need an empowerment that comes outside of me for that and for so much more.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” And you shall be My martyrs, My witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest parts of the earth.

Jump with me to Matthew chapter 6. Oh, you know, I love and hate the Bible. I know nobody can relate to that but me. See, I love the Bible because when I like what it says, it’s so encouraging. But sometimes I don’t like what it says because I think, “Wow, I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I want to do that. I don’t know if I could ever do that.”

In my younger days, I just said, “But it’s an order,” and jumped—with no preparation, no thought, no logical reasoning process. Because every time I let that happen, I said no. So I started just saying yes, and it took me to crazy places. We did crazy things. I got used to it. Then I came here, and I got comfortable. And I read this text again for me, but I hope it speaks to you.

Matthew 6, starting in verse 25, says, “For this reason, I say to you, do not be worried about your life.” Does that connect to what we were just talking about? Being a witness, being a martyr, dying for Him? Are you worried about your life? “Do not be worried about your life.” What’s He talking about? “Don’t be worried about what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink. Don’t worry about your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Jesus speaking: “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?”

It’s really hard to believe that I might be strong enough and believe enough to die as a martyr witness for Christ if I can’t live enough and believe enough to trust that He meets my daily needs. Yet, I challenge you to trust Him on a daily basis. Verse 27 says, “And who of you, by being worried, can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil, they do not spin,” He says. Basically, they don’t make cloth. “Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these little flowers.”

Verse 30, transitional words: “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, you of little faith?” I don’t know if He’s talking to you there; I’m just saying He’s talking to me. They say, “Oh man, did we just talk about love? Where’s the grace in that?” The grace is He loves you enough to call you His son or daughter and invite you into the battle of the ages—to stand in the purpose of the Kingdom. And He’s telling you that if you’re called as a soldier, the good King always provides uniform, food, and weapons. And the problem isn’t that there’s no available weapons, and the problem isn’t that there’s no available finances, and the problem isn’t that there’s no available clothing, and the problem isn’t that there is no available food, and the problem isn’t that you can’t do anything because you got to work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

Those aren’t the problems. The problem is, do I believe enough to live what I’m reading? To shift my purpose? To answer the call? To make disciples? To unplug my plugs of the worry-world issues that I have? I started to ask myself, you know, I’ve been struggling, digging deeper into the Word. I prepare, I read, but I’m talking about just that old passion where I would sit for three, four hours and just eat and fall in love with Jesus. And I’m like, “Lord, I’m too busy for that.”

Yesterday, while I was being too busy for that, I was reading, you know, news for three hours. It meant nothing, did nothing, and changed nothing. As a matter of fact, it was the same news I had read yesterday for three hours. That meant nothing, did nothing, and changed nothing. And he’s like, “What about that six hours there, Tom?”

See, the real question becomes, do I have faith? Do I believe? Do I love the truth of the Bible enough to live it? The Bible says I need this as daily bread, that I need this to be strong and victorious, that I should meditate on this day and night, that I should love the Word, that it should be sweeter to me than honeycomb. It should be my everything. Do I believe that enough to live it? Or have I dried up, become weak while it appears that I’m strong?

“But if God clothes the grass of the field,” verse 30, “which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, you of little faith? Do not worry then,” the conclusion saying, “What will we eat? Or what will we drink? Or what will we wear for clothing?” For all the unbelieving Gentiles eagerly seek all of these things. For your heavenly Father, if you believe in Him, knows that you need all these things. But here’s your right response: Seek first His kingdom. Seek first His righteousness. And here’s the promise: all these things will be added to you.

He didn’t say you wouldn’t have clothes, or you didn’t need clothes. He didn’t say you shouldn’t eat, or didn’t need food. He just said your problem is prioritizing your life, your time, your finances, your thoughts, and your conversation. And you need to get His kingdom, His truth, His righteousness, your relationship with Him first. He says, “And you know what you’re going to find out? If you get that right, the rest is going to come, and you’re going to be like, ‘Wow, that was easy. How did that happen? Who opened that door?’ But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.”

And then I love how Jesus ends with, like, “Hey, and don’t get too excited. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” He said, “I told you all that, but don’t think that means there aren’t going to be problems, okay?” And then I’m just going to end with one thing. It’s Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 9.

It’s funny. I quoted this verse to my wife recently, and she said, “You got it wrong. You forgot the bread.” I quoted it from memory, so I said, “Today, I’m in the back, and I’m going to reread it.” So I read it before I came up, and I’m like, “Dude, there’s no bread in this text.” The other one in Matthew has bread, egg, and fish, right? As the positive. But in Luke, he leaves the bread out. It was shocking to me. It was revelational as I sat in the back room, and the other texts don’t say anything about the Holy Spirit. He left the bread out but brings the promise of the Spirit. I’m not even going to tell you what I think about it, because I’m not sure I know, but it’s interesting.

I’ll finish with this verse, chapter 11, verse 9, the book of Luke. Jesus, speaking, says, “So I say to you,” he’s teaching from the prayer—they asked how to pray. He teaches through the Our Father. He teaches through the idea of persistence and pressing into what you need. In other words, don’t ask once. He’s like, “You know, I’m telling you, the best prayer people are kids.” Or, as we say in my business world, the best salesmen are kids.

I’m working at the fair, and the kid comes to the swings we’re working on. And he says, “Can I get on?” Mom says, “No.” “Can I get on?” Mom says, “No.” “Can I get on?” Mom says, “No.” “Can I get on now?” Mom says, “No.” “Can I get on now?” Mom says, “No.” Dad and mom are trying to talk. “Mom, Mom, what?” “Can I get on?” “Yes.”

That’s how prayer works. See, to pray, you have to believe that the person you’re praying to actually has what you’re asking for. And if you bug them enough, you’ll get it. That ain’t me, that’s Jesus teaching. Because bugging Him is just a manifestation of the fact that you believe that He has the answer, and He wants to give it to you sooner or later.

And then He jumps into verse 9, and He says, “So I say to you,” Jesus said, “So I say to you, ask.” Now, in Greek, it’s a little different against a couple of things. In Greek, you would say, “Ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and stop asking.” For I say to you, ask and keep on asking, and it will be given to you. Seek and seek and seek, keep on seeking, and you will find. Knock and knock and knock, and keep on knocking.

That was the story He just told. He said, “You go to your neighbor and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got somebody who came in from vacation. They’re staying at my house. I need some food.'” He said, “Dude, I’m in bed. Stop knocking on my door. I ain’t got nothing to give you.” He said, “Even though he won’t give you anything because he’s your friend, if you just keep knocking, he will get up and give you whatever you need.” And He’s telling you how to get your prayers answered. If you keep knocking, keep on knocking, keep on knocking, it will be opened.

Verse 11: “Now, suppose one of you fathers,” us, “is asked by his son for a fish. He will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?” And I’m thinking, “Where is he going now? Why is that even a question?” It’s a rhetorical question, but the answer is obviously not, right? As a matter of fact, you go a little further, and I’ll think about it this way: If me and my son or my grandson were talking, and he wanted a hot dog at the fair, and I bought him a $27 hot dog, because that’s ridiculous, right? And I was handing him a $27 hot dog at the fair, would I let you steal the hot dog out of my hands and put a firecracker in his? Boy, I’d swat you so hard you probably wouldn’t get up off the ground. And I’m not that much stronger, but if God wants to give you something good, would He let the devil sneak in something bad?

That’s what the question is. He’s saying this because He’s smarter than the devil, and He knows the enemy is going to try to buy the church and tell you, “What if those gifts of the Holy Spirit are from the devil?” Hold on.

“For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Now, suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish. He will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?” Verse 12: “Or if he’s asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?”

Verse 13: “If you then, being evil, know how…” See, I tell people, before you’re born again, you’re the son of the devil. Everybody gets mad at me when I say that. I said, “Yeah, but they’re the children of the devil.” They’re like, “Geez, don’t say that, pastor.” Like, I didn’t say it. Jesus said it. They’re evil. I was evil. Before Jesus, I was evil. Were you evil? I was evil. I was headed to hell. I deserved punishment. Without Him, without His love, without His death, without His blood, without His rescue, without His salvation, without redemption.

But He’s talking about just humans. He said, “If then you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” That’s the end of the teaching on prayer. What’s He saying? If you want the power to be a witness, if you want the power and the gifts to be a victorious warrior, more than a conqueror in ministry, you have to ask. Keep on asking. Seek, keep on seeking. Knock, and keep on knocking. And don’t buy the lie that God your Father, while trying to give you the gift He told you to seek—the promise He promised for you and to you through Jesus—that God your Father would let something snatch that away and give you something evil in its place.

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts”—He’s talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit—to your children. He’s not talking about the idea that your children would get the gifts. He’s saying, “Look toward Him giving good gifts to you.”

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, eggs and fish, etc., how much more will your Father in heaven give you good gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to those who are asking and asking and asking and keep on asking?”

Why don’t you stand with me as we pray? There you are, three weeks, maybe four—I don’t remember. We need another 20 hours on this subject. But the style of our lives and churches gives us three or four hours. Stir up your people. Fan the flame of the Spirit that’s within them. Give them a hunger after your truth, a thirst after your righteousness, a faith to not just stand, but to look up and receive orders, to believe, to believe so strongly, to love what they believe so much that they have to act in obedience to your truth.

Thank you that when we’re weak, you’re strong. Thank you that when we can’t make it, your Spirit dwells within us and even comes upon us to help us be more than conquerors. Thank you for overcoming the world. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, that you’ve overcome the flesh. Thank you that you overcome the devil and his cohort, the enemy. Thank you that you’re the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and there’s nothing too hard for you. We worship you. We bless you. Would you glorify yourself in our fellowship and in this last song as we spend time with each other and desire that you would build yourself up in us. In Jesus’ mighty name.

Good morning. What’s going on? We did a Vacation Bible School, and we have a video to share.

They send me stuff nonstop, and sometimes I just get busy and don’t share it. So, I wanted to take a quick look at this. This is in Compuertas.

It’s the second church we planted. The city lent us a place to celebrate, so we had some shade.

Around 80 or 90 kids showed up. What I’m really excited about is that, normally, we support this financially, right? But this time, there was no need. They raised funds by selling some stuff. Usually, we send crayons and other supplies, but the church is growing. This particular pastor went to the School of Ministry at our school in Boca del Río. He and his wife were the least likely to pastor a church. I remember him always being a problem. But little by little, he became the obvious choice, the one God was using to raise up as the pastor of the church. It’s been really good.

Yeah, I just wanted to show you—well, you can cut that. So, they did a Vacation Bible School. We have another one coming up this weekend.

Actually, not this weekend, but the last weekend of this month, is the School of Ministry graduation. We’ve definitely got some students graduating who have been there for two years. They’re either going to stay working with us or return to Guadalajara.

You can cut that if you want. Oh, I’ll let it go then. Dude, you do not understand the sacrifice that takes because it’s so hot right now, right? I’m talking, “you should die and go home” hot, that kind of hot.

Everywhere I traveled after working there—like when we went to Sudan and it was some crazy temperature—we were all sitting around, and they were like, “Aren’t you hot?” I’m like, “No, is this hot?” They were like, “Oh, it’s so hot.”

They also asked, “Are the mosquitoes bothering you?” I replied, “You mean the three mosquitoes? No, they’re not bothering me; I killed them all.” They said, “Oh, where I’m at, there’s a dark cloud of mosquitoes chasing you like in a cartoon.”

So, Boca del Río trained me for missions. We’re going down for the graduation. A few other people are going too.

If you have a crazy idea, like wanting to go fight mosquitoes and deal with the heat for a two or three-day trip, we’re going down, eating a lot of seafood, and having a celebration. We also have a trip planned for December if you’re smart and want to go when it’s nice and beautiful, not hot, and feels like a vacation—you can come on that trip too. We’re going to continue.

We’re going through Acts, but we keep hitting this thing where it talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and being born again. If you haven’t caught it, there’s a recording; you can see it on Facebook. But this is our second, or maybe third, time now looking at how the Holy Spirit’s working.

I’m struggling with whether I’m reading this or not. I think I’m not. So, we’re going to go back there, and we’re just going to start.

We did this already last week. We’re going to start in 1 John, and I know the person who’s writing the verses isn’t in 1 John—or not 1 John—John chapter 3, verse 3. So, we’re going to start in John chapter 3, verse 3 to 7. Let’s pray.

Father, we’re coming into this subject that’s so important, and we’re just trying to go slow and really understand it. We pray that Your Spirit would, as You said in Genesis, hover over Your people, that You would guide us, that You would open up our minds, that You’d take the truth of Your word and cause it to come to life in our hearts. And lead me, Lord. You know it’s easier for me to go through a chapter than do this. So, I pray that Your Spirit would lead us in a powerful way, in Jesus’ name.

One of the things that I’m going through as I watch what’s happening in Israel, in Iran, in Russia—and if you’ve done any studies on end times, you start going, well, maybe mid-trib is okay.

Because I keep looking and thinking the end of the world might be near or coming quickly. I definitely think pre-trib is the answer, but I’ve read about all of them, and I just look at the current setup, or circumstances, of what’s going on in the world stage, and I would say, man, it’s an important time to ask the question, what’s my life about? Why am I here? What’s the course or direction of my life? And what does God want for me in a time like this? Because I think we’re living in a special time. I’ve been in and out of the States most of my life, but this is different, right? Whatever we’re living through right now is different.

And to be prepared for opportunity—not waiting until you’re in the middle of it to ask, what should we do? But for you personally to be saying, is the Word of God, is discipleship, is the call to reach the world for Jesus the central core of your life? And then build everything else around that. And for a lot of us here, maybe that hasn’t been the way you’ve done it, but I’ll tell you, it’s worthwhile thinking through—how do I shift this call to make disciples, this call to affect the world? That’s what the verse I skipped says, which I’m going to just quote verbally. It says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you.” If you go back before that, it talks about, don’t worry about this, don’t worry about that, because that’s what all the worldly people are seeking.

You just be busy about your Father’s business, and He’s going to take care of the rest of that. And I’m going to tell you, living here—so if you’ve lived here all your life, when I sit down there and I think about living here, I think that’s the craziest verse in the history of the planet. You’re saying that if I would just seek God, He’d take care of the rest. If that’s true, show me where I sign. And I can tell you the weirdest thing is that I’ve lived that for 30 years, and it’s true. I didn’t get what I wanted all the time, but God’s been incredible.

And no matter where you’re at in life, shifting your life so that serving God and being a light—because here’s the problem, man. Pretty soon, it’s all going to go away. Either you’re going to get to 94 and die, and it goes away, or you’re going to have a heart attack at 52 and die, and it’s all going to go away, or there’s going to be a nuclear war, and it’s all going to go away.

What—are you storing up treasure in heaven? Are you living as though this world is temporary, and the world we study about on Sunday lasts forever? Are we taking the call of the Word? And see, now, if I taught this eight years ago, they’d have kicked me out, told me to go back to Mexico, but I think we’re getting to a weird time where—what I like is, the more difficult life becomes, the more powerfully true the Word is. And that’s what I love about being a missionary. When you’re living in a place with mud huts and animals, this thing rings so true. When I come here, it’s harder. It’s harder not to get blurry and not understand.

And so, the things we’re talking about today are really for you and me, but then there’s the question: How’s my mom, my cousin, my brother, my neighbor, the person sitting next to me? And what are we looking at? We’re looking at what it means to be saved, which is a pretty big deal, because here’s the problem: We know that there’s going to be a lot of people who said, “Hey, Lord, I did this for You, and I did that for You, and I did that for You. I prophesied for You.” And He’s going to say, “Get away from me, for I never knew you. Depart from me because I didn’t know you.” And that scares me as a pastor. I, early on, was reading C.H. Spurgeon’s book, Lectures to My Students—one of my favorite books—and he tells a story. It’s just a story, not real. I don’t think it’s even a prayer, but it’s just a story. He talks about the pastor who dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, he walks up, and he’s with Peter—so it’s a story—and Peter’s looking through the book.

He’s like, “Yeah, Thomas Quirk, I pastored the big church there, Rancho Santa Margarita.” And Peter’s like, “I cannot find you.” He’s like, “How do you spell it? No, you’re not here. Oh, oh, it’s written real small. Yep, you get the hammock over there under the tree. That’s yours, that’s the mansion, buddy.” He’s like, “No, you must have the wrong Tom Quirk up in there. I’m a pastor, I ran a church, I gave my life.” He said, “What church again? Oh, Rancho Santa Margarita.” He’s like, “Oh, no, no, see? You see the big mansion over there? That’s Brother Johnson’s house. You probably don’t remember him. He was blind and deaf, but he sat at the staircase of your church, and he prayed for every person that walked in and out of your church for 20 years. That’s why your church grew. That’s why you got blessed. That’s why things happened. But you were doing everything for yourself, not for the people. So that’s your hammock, but if you want to see him, you might be able to get a room over there. Joe might give you a room.”

And I began to think about the motive of my heart. Why do I live the way I live? Why do I choose the things I choose? Why do I do the things that I do? Is it honestly to glorify God and to build you up, or is Tom in the middle of it? Are my needs and my wants the center of my life? And so I really want to look at some of this. We’re going to read this quote. I’m going to read it real quick, because the time’s going to go by fast. We’re in John chapter 3, verses 3 through 7. We covered this, so I’m going to go through it quickly.

Jesus responded and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” That word kingdom is so important to me. He’s talking about heaven, right? But it’s a contraction of “the dominion of the king.” So you take kingdom—that’s what it is. It’s like a contraction, right? And so you have to be born again to be submitted to the reign and the authority and the power of the king. And you don’t get into the kingdom because it’s a perfect, righteous, holy kingdom. One thing that will not be in the kingdom of God is rebellion. There will be no rebellion that stays inside the kingdom.

And He’s saying this: If you want to see the kingdom, if you want to walk with God, if you expect to live with God, you’ve got to surrender your life to the dominion or the authority or the reign of the king. And I like that because it lets me look at my life. And there’s—I don’t know about you—but there are some areas of my life that are 100% surrendered to the king. There are others where I’m struggling with surrendering to the king. And then I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of my life that isn’t surrendered at all. And that’s okay. That doesn’t make you unsaved. It just makes you in the process of growing in maturity and the process of surrendering your life. And my call is that Christianity is about continuous growth and continuous change. Are you more surrendered to the kingdom than you were last month, than you were last year? Are you growing in surrender to His will and His direction and His purpose for your life? And what is the purpose? That’s the problem I have as I talk with other believers. What’s the central purpose of Christ for you? And man, ask that question to people you know, and you’ll get a wild array of answers, most of which have nothing to do with the call of God.

But the call of God is that you and I have an impact on the people around us. That’s the call. It’s so funny. To be impacted, to be discipled, to mature in Christ, and to have an impact and to make disciples and to affect other people’s lives. And how am I doing? You’ve got to—I can’t answer that for you—but you’ve got to ask that question. How am I doing? Am I being effective? Is my life changing week by week, month by month? Am I having an effect? Do I have an effect on someone—anyone? Is their life changing because I meet with them, because I pray with them, because I read with them, because I encourage them, because I instruct them, because I say, “Hey, hold on, I don’t think that’s the right way”? Not because I think, but let’s go back to the Bible. Am I making a difference, right?

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of the water and of the Spirit”—we think that’s probably committing your life to Christ and then the Spirit of God coming into your life—“he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” That which has been born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again.

Jumping to our next verse in 1 Peter 1:23. He says, “For you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but seed that is imperishable.” What’s he talking about? So Jesus is the seed. If we go back to the parable of the sower, which is the outline that controls how we interpret other parables, we know that the sower went out to sow, and he sowed seed. And what was the seed? The seed was the word of God, or the living word of God, or Jesus Himself, right? And so what he’s saying is that you’ve been born again. If you’re alive in Christ, it’s because somebody sowed the seed of the word, which is Jesus, into your life. And you responded. It takes a couple of things going on there. You’ve got to have the word, you’ve got to sow the word, you’ve got to—you know, the parable of the sower says that the field is the world, but the soils are the hearts of men. So your job is to take the truth of Jesus and throw it at—or throw it to—or seed it into, plant it in—the hearts of other people. And then how they reject it, or don’t reject it, or obey, or don’t obey, or fall in love with it, or don’t fall in love, that’s up to them, right?

But it’s not—we have this crazy thing in America, that somebody said it, and then it became popular because it’s easy. They said, “Man, preach the gospel always, and when it’s absolutely necessary, use words.” That’s craziness, right? Because you’ve got to use words. Because it’s the word that is the seed, right? What they were trying to say is, live what you’re teaching. Amen to that. As best I can, I need to live what I’m teaching. As best I can, I need to have an impact and a change in my life before I try to help you have an impact and change in your life. But the job is to sow the seed, right? The job is to spread the word, right? He said, “For you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is through the living, enduring word of God.” That’s how you got born again. The seed comes into your heart, your mind, your intellect, your free will, your soul. You thought about it, you meditated on it, and you made a decision. And as you decided, the Spirit of God came in, connected with the word of God, and it sprang to life. It germinated. The person of Jesus was born inside of you. Because the word is Christ, right? So someone shares Jesus with you, Jesus falls inside your heart, He speaks to you, He says something to you, you think about it, you either accept it or reject it. If you accept it, the Spirit of God comes in you, and boom, you become alive in Christ. You become born again. The Spirit of God and the word of God come together, and a new creature is created in you—Jesus now living in your soul. I love this word: “through the living and enduring word of God.” As long as you keep believing, as long as you keep desiring, that word endures in you, that word grows and multiplies and strengthens. And little by little, if you’re willing to continue to surrender, it comes to your life. You start to live for Jesus until, in maturity, you can say, along with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God.” That’s the goal.

There would be less and less of Tom and more and more of Jesus. That my mind would be transformed until I had the mind of Jesus, the mind of Christ. My body and my life would be sacrificially given over. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your whole body a living sacrifice acceptable unto God, which is your everyday reasonable service of worship unto God.” God is calling us to give everything to Him. God is calling us to live completely for Him in every area and aspect of our life—in your marriage, as a parent, in your workplace, in your entertainment, at home—where everything that you do, God is saying, “Come unto me. Live unto me. Let me live through you. Let me guide you. Let me prosper you. Let me cause you to come to the river of living water. Let me help you flow and become a fountain.” Jesus said, “If I would be born again, a fountain of living water would burst out of my innermost parts, and it would give life to those around me.”

The beautiful thing is, all you’ve got to do is surrender and say, “Yes, that’s what I want,” and God will walk you through. The next verse is Romans 8:9. It’s important because Romans is really a difficult book for the Western world. It’s a long book. It’s a legal concept or a legal document. And so, Paul goes on. So it’s good to at least have it pictured, right? We would say the title of Romans would be “Salvation Explained.” And then that would be broken up into four small sections.

Chapters 1 through 5—they’re not that small, but chapters 1 through 5—is “All Men Are Guilty.” Really, in chapters 4 and 5, it starts to shift, but the whole point of chapters 1 through 3, and the beginning and end of chapter 4, is “all men are guilty.” The Jews are guilty, the Gentiles are guilty, the men are guilty, the women are guilty, the rich are guilty, the poor are guilty. Everybody’s guilty. He just spends chapter after chapter after chapter making sure that you know you’re guilty, you’re a sinner, God’s righteous, and without a Savior, condemnation is sure. That’s the beginning of the gospel. If you don’t know that, you can’t even go on to the next step of the gospel. Once you recognize that you’re not in a great spot and you need a Savior, then the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5—but really in chapter 6—it starts to see, so chapters 6 through 8 is really the grace of God, the powerhouse of salvation, how grace works. Grace works in chapter 6, where you have to die with Christ in water baptism. That’s how grace works. If you don’t die, the act of living salvation grace—because there are different types of grace, because obviously, there’s grace because the rain falls on the evil and the just—but the salvation part of grace doesn’t happen until you die with Christ, until you surrender to God, until you say, “I don’t want to live anymore; I want you to live in me, and I want you to live through me. I’m done with me, and I want you, chapter 6.” And it builds all the way through. And in chapters 7 and 8, we see this call that you’ve got to keep growing, you’ve got to keep going. It’s about sanctification, it’s about becoming more holy, it’s about pushing into the holiness of Christ and walking with Him until the day you die, becoming more and more and more grown up in Jesus. And in that, we’re going to jump into chapter 8, verse 9, right about the middle of the end of the grace section of Romans.

Just to wrap up Romans, chapters 9 through 11, God’s plan for the Jews. You can read chapter 9, verse 1, and it sets it up that He shifts His whole direction and starts talking about Israel. Chapter 11, He wraps it up, and chapters 12 through the end of the book, 16, is how to live a life of worship, and chapter 12, verse 1, is the hinge of the whole book where it says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you live your whole—excuse me—I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your whole body, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service of worship.” That’s the response we’re supposed to have based on the grace that we’ve found in chapters 5 through 8—excuse me—chapters 6 through 8.

So now we’re back looking quickly at Romans 8:9-11. “However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” So he’s talking about a believer, someone who’s saved. You’re not supposed to be walking in the flesh. You’re not supposed to be living in the flesh. You’re not supposed to be just flesh. You’re supposed to now have the Spirit of God in you that came to life because the word of God and the Spirit of God met, and Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus, is in you—the life of Jesus is in you. That’s the new person, the new man, that’s in you, right? “However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” So he’s saying, if the Spirit of God’s not living in you, you’re not born again. If the Spirit of God’s not living in you, you’re not saved. If the Spirit of God’s not living in you and you die, you’re condemned. But if you’ve got the Spirit of God in you, my goodness, what a glory, what a blessing, what an amazing truth that the Spirit of God would dwell in me. That didn’t happen anywhere in the Old Testament. That’s why the Bible says that John the Baptist was the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets, but every one of you—any one of you—that’s born again is greater than John the Baptist because the Spirit of the living God is in you. It’s leading you, it’s encouraging you, it’s strengthening you, it’s empowering you. Now here’s the problem—you have to surrender to it. You have to want it, you have to give it space to grow. It won’t force its way into your life, but it’s there, ready. God in you, the hope of glory, is ready. God in you, the power to overcome the world, is ready, but you have to believe and step into it and say, “Yes.” “However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Here’s what he’s saying: If the Spirit of God is in you, your flesh is dead because Adam sinned, and that sin passed to all men, and therefore you’re going to die. But the Spirit of God’s in you because of His obedience, because of His righteousness, because of His holiness, and that’s going to live forever. And He’s even going to resurrect your body, and it will live forever because by His blood you’ve been saved. “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through His Spirit who dwells in you.” He’s talking about your resurrection. He’s talking about the fact that even though your body’s dead because of sin, if the Spirit of God is in you, you’re alive in Christ. And if you’re alive in Christ, the Spirit of God is going to resurrect your body from the dead, and you’re going to live in a new body. As you get older, you start to realize why that’s important. I want a new body, right?

Jumping now to 1 Corinthians 3. We’re looking at salvation, being born again, what that is. 1 Corinthians 3. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” So there’s this crazy thing—I mean, we say that so lightly, so easily. But there’s this crazy thing that no longer do I have to go look into Jerusalem, or go look into Mecca, or go look into some other city where there’s a temple, where God is there, and if I go there, I can talk to God, and I can hear from God, and I can walk with God, and I can work with God. You know where I’m supposed to go to hear from God? I’m supposed to go to you. Just like people used to travel across the nations to get to Israel, to find Jerusalem, to find the temple, to seek the presence of God, they’re supposed to find that presence in you. They’re supposed to travel to find wisdom from you, the truth from you, the power to save from you, the power to be healed through you because you have become the temple of the living God.

So, man, are we responding to that? Do you want that? That’s the greatest calling in your life. That’s the purpose of being alive—that others could come and find Christ in and through you. That others could come and hear the truth of the gospel through you. That others could receive the touch of the Spirit, the healing, the empowerment through you. The same things that used to happen because you traveled across the world to Israel, and then found Jerusalem, and then found the temple, and then got access in—that’s what they’re supposed to find in you.

Jump with me to Ephesians 1, starting in verse 13. “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed.” I really like that because he’s saying I need to hear the truth. I need to hear the gospel, but I also have to respond to the gospel. I have to believe. That root word of believe is so important. It means to love something—a truth—so much that I’m willing to live what I love. There’s that kind of belief that we call academic belief or head knowledge or mental assent. That’s not what it’s talking about. It’s about saying something is true enough, I believe it enough, that I love it enough that it’s part of what I want to live and do, and I respond in action.

He says, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed—you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” So it’s important. There’s this idea that when the Spirit of God comes into you, there’s a word there that means “earnest money,” but it’s the kind of earnest money where you put a deposit on a home, but now if you don’t go forward and buy the home, you lose the deposit. But God puts His own Spirit in you as a deposit. He can’t give that up. He’s got to pay the rest of the price, right? He’s coming back to finish the payment and take you away, right? “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed—you were sealed in Him, in Christ, with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance.” There’s something in you—the Spirit of God in you—that should give you a new light, a new ideology, a new way of thinking, wisdom beyond your norm, understanding, a tug towards truth and towards calling and towards purpose. And soon, we’re going to find ourselves in Heaven with the rest of the payments and the fullness of the inheritance and the fullness of our purpose. But you have a purpose here. The down payment—the earnest money—was paid. It’s in you. It’s Christ in you. Alive in you. A new creature in Christ. And that purpose—the purpose of that new life in you, Jesus in me—that’s what you have to figure out. That’s what you have to see. As we walk through Acts, I just wanted to stop and say, man, if you’re born again, you have the Spirit of God in you. And you need to figure out what He wants to do. You need to surrender your life and let His life live through you. You need to figure out His purpose to change you. His purpose to change those around you. His purpose to prepare you for the things that are coming.

“Who is the first installment of our inheritance in regard to the redemption,” which is that taking back of the people of God, taking back the earth, redeeming it, making it valuable again. Isn’t that interesting that—for me, that wasn’t hard—but I find people struggle with it—that prior to Christ, prior to new birth, prior to being born again, your life was not useful or valuable to God. It was valuable enough that He would pay a price to try to rescue you. But without the rescue, you were an alien to the things of the truth. Without knowledge of God. Not useful to good and kingdom things. And as He saves you, as you say yes to the gospel, and His Spirit comes into you, then you become God’s own possession. And He redeems you. The root word is deem, which is to value. He revalues you. It’s like you were pawned by selling your life into the things of Satan through Adam. You were in slavery and bondage. Not useful as a son. Not useful as a daughter. Not useful to the king. But He paid the price of the blood of Jesus to pull you out of slavery. And bondage. And set you back up as a son or a daughter. Privileged and honored and loved. Washed away the dirt and the filth. Cleansed you of all your sin and transgression. He said, “Listen, now you’re back. Now you’re valuable. Now you’re the beloved of Christ. Now you’re the family of God. Now there’s a purpose for your life. Now there’s a mission to accomplish.”

How will we respond? “In regard to the redemption,” we’ve become God’s own possession. In the life that we live now, we should live to the praise and the glory of the One who died for me. I should be worried about pleasing the God who died for me. I should be worried about accomplishing the business—being about my Father’s business. I should be worried about the gospel. I should be worried about making disciples. Now, I have to have a life. That’s where we live. But the question is, do I have a life, and I add Jesus to the life? Or do I have Jesus, and I add life to Jesus? That’s the question. What’s your purpose? What’s central in your life? What is the main core reason to be alive?

Now we’re going to jump to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In 15 minutes, we probably won’t get through it yet. Luke 24:44. So what were we trying to talk about so far? The Spirit of God walks with people and convinces them, or convicts them, of the fact that they’re sinners. That He’s a righteous judge, and that there’s eternal judgment. And that should bring me to the place where I say, “Wow, that means I’m going to hell. I’m condemned.” Then I should come to the truth, and I should hear the gospel message, the good news, right? And when I hear the truth, if I believe the truth, the Spirit of God, the Word of God goes in my heart. If I believe that word, the Spirit of God goes in my heart and joins with the Word of God, and it comes alive in Christ in me—a new creature, born again, a son or daughter of the living God. But yet, so when did that happen, right? So that was a confusing thing for me because there are other different ways of looking at this, right? So—and I’m one of those weird guys that, just because Calvary told me this is the way it is, if they told me for sure that they were right, that means I studied all the other choices for myself. Because I’ve been through too many religions in my life following people. I was a Catholic, then I was a Muslim, then I was a drug dealer. In all those cases, I was just following crazy people. And so I did not want that. So when they told me it’s absolutely this way, I said, “No, I don’t believe that. Let me go look at the Bible.” And I looked at all the other ways. And if they were right at the end of the day, I was like, “Oh, I guess you’re right.” But I wanted to come to the conclusion that I had studied it and I knew why I believe what I believe.

And so this whole conversation about the gifts of the Spirit and the baptism—so one of the big questions that brought to me is when were the disciples saved? When were they saved? When were they born again? That was confusing to me. No one could be born again until Jesus died and rose from the dead. That was key. John 20, right around verse 16 and on to verse 20, there Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That’s when the apostles were first born again. The Spirit of God went into them. They were born again. Some days later, they hit the Pentecost thing. And the third different way that the Holy Spirit wants to work with the body of Christ—and it’s locked in by the word in NASB, “upon,” or in Greek, the word is epi. It means to come over someone in like a flood. It’s to be baptized, right? The idea of putting somebody underneath the water, and the water’s completely epi, or completely over them or upon them, and then they come out. So when we see in NASB, “upon,” it’s translating that word epi in Greek, and it’s used over and over and over for that same purpose, right? And so we’re looking—we’re moving into that, and he says in Luke 24, verse 44—God said to go slow. I don’t feel like I’m going slow. I’m going to go slower. “Now He said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’” Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Of course, this is the road to Emmaus, right? Jesus walking with people who walked with Him for three years, that served with Him for three years, that did miracles with Him for three years, but when the difficult things came, they couldn’t understand and didn’t fully believe. I love that, because when things go bad and I don’t believe, I don’t feel so bad. If these crazy guys could walk with Jesus for three years and still struggle, God’s not mad at me when I struggle.

I see how Jesus interacted with these guys who had given up and went home. They’re like, “I guess it’s over. He died.” And Jesus showed up and ministered to them, and at the end, He did something spiritual for them. It says, “And He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” That should be your prayer today. “God, would you open my mind to understand the scriptures? Would you make me hungry for Your Word, Your truth? Because I can’t do it all on my own. I need You to draw me to You. I need You to help me. I need You to forgive me. I’m weak. I don’t have it all figured out. I’m scared. I can’t do what You’re calling me to do. I’m trembling.” Sounds like You’re saying, “Abandon everything and serve Me.” And every pastor in Orange County wants to dumb that statement down so that you don’t get scared and run. Yet, let me tell you something. All He’s saying is, “Give up everything and serve Me. Put Me first over everything, and I’ll take care of you. Give Me everything. Give Me your whole heart, your whole mind.” Here’s what’s funny: I preached to a very rich friend. We grew up together. We went into business together. I preached to him my whole life. He was a Christian—let me change that—he went to church when I wasn’t a Christian. His mom prayed the first sinner’s prayer with me, which didn’t take, but God said He believed me even though I didn’t believe Him. And I remember years and years and years of preaching and discipleship and Bible studying. He said, “Tom, God said I have to give up everything—all the houses, all the properties, the business, all the money—and I’m scared to death.” I’ve been telling you that for 20 years, I said. He said, “Pray for me because I’m scared to death. I can’t do what you’ve done. I’m scared to death.” So we stayed and prayed. He talked to God. A few days passed, and he came down with a big cup of coffee from upstairs, smiling and bouncing around. He goes, “You know what He said? You know what He said?” I said, “What’d He say, bro?” “I got on my face, Tom, and I cried, and I said, ‘I’ll give it all to You. I just want You to take the company, take the businesses, take the houses, take the property, take the money. Take my life if You want to, but I want You.’” He said, “And He let me sit there for about one minute, and He said, ‘Good, now that it’s all Mine, would you steward and manage it all for Me, for My kingdom?’” That’s real life. That’s all God wants from you. Surrender it all, and then get about His business. That’s the call to be a Christian—not to be a leader, not to be an apostle, not to be incredible—it’s just the call to be a believer.

Read it again. “Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’” Verse 45: “Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures. He said to them, ‘Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem.’” Two things super important—Jesus Himself teaching. He’s saying that repentance is required for the forgiveness of sin. Repentance is not a 180-degree turn from your sin, although I’ve heard that taught a hundred times. I almost left Christianity over that because I was talking to a pastor. I said, “So what is repentance?” He said, “You’re going this way, you’re chasing sin, you’re chasing sin, and now you’re going to make a 180-degree turn, and now you’re chasing God, you’re chasing God.” I went home and thought a lot about that. I said, “Okay, you know what I figured out? I wasn’t doing that. There was still sin in my life. I imagine there’s still sin in your life.” And I thought, “Well, if that’s repentance, and repentance is required for salvation, I’m going to hell.” So I decided to man up and try as hard as I could not to sin. I did that for like three weeks, and I’m like, “Yep, that’s hopeless.”

So then I went and asked again—and me, I’m a little bit of a mouthy kind of kid—so in the middle of the conversation, I just asked the pastor, “I’ve got a couple more questions.” I said, “You’re absolutely sure repentance is a 180-degree turn from your sin?” He said, “Absolutely.” “And you’re sure that repentance is required for salvation?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “Can I ask you one more question?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Have you repented?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “So you don’t sin anymore?” He said, “No, I still sin.” “Then how is that a 180-degree turn from your sin? Or is it like a 360-degree turn? Like you sin, then you get dizzy—is that what you’re doing?” And he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

See, that’s the struggle when you don’t have answers. I went to three other pastors and got even wilder answers. And finally, I hit one. And he’s like, “Do you have a Greek dictionary?” I’m like, “A Greek dictionary? No, I’ve got an English dictionary.” He’s like, “Here, let’s go to the store.” He bought me a Greek lexicon. I still have it in Mexico. He said, “Read that. Figure out what it means. Figure out what the word means—repentance.” So I started to dig. You know what it is? It’s a change of mind. It’s not a change of action. It’s a 180-degree change of mind. I used to want to serve myself, live for myself, love myself, do what I wanted. And repentance is to decide, “I don’t want that. I want to live for God, love God, serve God, and do what He wants.” That’s what I want. I don’t always walk it out. But even when I’m not walking it out, I’m frustrated with my flesh because my flesh is dragging me in this direction. But I still want to serve God. And when I get through this dumbness that I’m stuck in, I wake up in my head and I go, “What an idiot. Let me get back on track and try to go after pleasing Him.” And that seems to be a battle that’s daily in my life. The question is, are you even in the battle? Or is it—see, because the other pastors said crazier things like, “It’s okay to sin.” And I thought, “Man, tell me that again. I mean, if you tell me that 20 more times, I’m about to go back and have a party.” Because I liked to party back then. I was new in Jesus. I was like, “Dude, if it’s okay to sin, I know a club.” And to struggle through that struggle of the fact that God doesn’t want me to sin because He’s my Father, and He wants me to be like Him. But He’s paid the price so that there’s no legal consequence when I fail in my sin and I mess it all up and I’m stuck there. His blood covers all that, and it leaves me free to stand back up 20 times a day, look back at my Father and say, “I’m sorry. I want to press in. I want to touch You. I want to walk. Help me. I’m weak. I’m a mess. Love me. Cause me to come. I need You.” And yet, we’ve got to preach this gospel because I’m telling you, there are so many people that I talk to that don’t got it all like that. They just don’t got it. They’re either on the side that they’re scared to death, that if they fail God, they’re going to hell because they’re still under the law. Or they’re over here so far under grace that they’ve done what Paul said should never happen, that they’ve decided that grace is a license to sin. And God wants you to grow. That’s all. No legal consequence. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The blood of Jesus has set me absolutely free. I’m never in trouble with God on a legal deal, but I’ve been born again into the family of God, and I’m in love with my Father, and He’s in love with me, and I’m trying to please Him. When I fail, He spanks the daylights out of me, but never sends me to prison. When I fail, He corrects me and rebukes me and instructs me, but He never condemns me. And little by little, I learn that His correction and His rebuke and His instruction and His spankings and His discipline—they’re because He loves me and He wants the best for me. How are you doing? How are we doing? How’s the church in America doing?

Let me tell you, we live in a mission here. The people around you are in desperate need of the truth. We don’t even have to go far. You know, there’s a book called Around the Wicked, not wicked, but the Wicket Gate by Shakespeare. So it’s the idea that standing in the foyer of the wicket gate is enough people for all of you to be busy discipling, winning people to Christ for a long time. We don’t even have to go out to the highways and the byways—right here in the house, there are people that aren’t walking with you. There are people that need a prayer partner. There are people that can’t unpack the gospel and don’t even know the definition of the basic ideas of Jesus. And heaven help if you step out the door. Wednesday nights, I have more interaction with people. It’s so interesting that I sit here on Wednesday nights and there’s a lot of dialogue—it’s almost all dialogue. What I hear is, “Man, I went to church somewhere else, Tom, for 10 years, 15 years, and I didn’t learn any of this.” There are a lot of people like that. I was in and out of churches before I became a Christian, I didn’t. We’ve just got to grow. You’ve got to grow. I’m begging you, you’ve got to want to grow in knowledge of the truth. You don’t have to be a theologian; you just have to know basics. But you’ve got to know enough to share. Because otherwise, why are we here? What’s the purpose of it all?

I love you guys. I want to get back into the Holy Spirit next week. I don’t mean to take so long. If you’re new, we’re working our way through a book of the Bible, chapter by chapter. That’s what we always do. I never—you can ask around—unless it’s a Mother’s Day or something, I don’t bounce around verses like we’re doing today. But I just feel like this particular topic is so important, and we’ve been talking about it in Acts, and we’ve read about it over and over, but I just want to make sure that we’ve got a solid foundation of what it means to be convicted by the Holy Spirit, to be born in the Holy Spirit, to be sealed with the Holy Spirit, and next week, to be empowered for ministry by the Holy Spirit.

Are you afraid? Sad to say, and it’s rebuking, and it hits me hard—fear is the opposite of faith. If I’m afraid, it’s because I don’t believe. Because if I believed, why would I be afraid? I keep thinking of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, and they throw them into the fire. And I’m thinking, I would’ve been brave until they got me close to the fire. Then I’d be like, “Hold on, I might be able to bend one knee.” But they had real faith. It caused them to have no fear. And it shocks me what these three young men said. They said, “Listen, whether God saves us or not—but He’s able to save—but whether He saves us or not, and He’s able to save—but whether He saves us or not, we will not bend a knee to your idol. We won’t do it.” Really? “Bind them up, throw them in.” I’m thinking, “Man, now comes the test, right?” I’m thinking, “I’m good.” They tie me up, they pick me up, they carry me toward the oven. I’m waiting for God to strike them dead or take the ropes off me or something. But it doesn’t come. And I imagine it’s a big fire. They go, “One.” And I’m like, “Hold on, hold on, hold on.” “Two.” “Hold on, hup, hup.” I don’t know if they screamed or yelled or not. All I know is they tossed them in the fire. Jesus appeared with them. One like unto the Son of Man, walking with them through the fire.

Do you know that’s what God wants to do with you right now? Walk with you through the trial. Walk with you through the fire. Walk with you in your difficult marriage environment. Walk with you as you fear for your child who’s not saved. Walk with you as you go through difficult economic situations. Walk with you as you’re not sure how to share the gospel, but you know you’ve got to share the gospel. He wants to walk with you through the fire. Strengthen you in the walk. He’s already living in you. He doesn’t have to show up. He’s already there. It’s just that you’ve got to say to Him and invite Him into the battle. “Lord, I can’t do it without You. Won’t You do it with me? I invite You into the process. You lead; I’ll follow. But unless You go before me, I’m not going.” But you can’t—see, we’re not like the Old Testament saints. He’s already going before you because He’s already in you. So now we just have to believe that He’s in you. Believe that He’s going with you. Step out by that faith.

Why don’t you stand as we close?

Lord, as we look at communion this morning and we think about what we’re studying—the craziness that You sat with Your apostles and You took some unleavened bread and You broke it up and You handed it out, just like You had done many times—and You said, “This is My body broken for you.” I don’t think they had a clue what that meant. I don’t think they caught it. I don’t think sometimes I get it. We take communion over and over, and sometimes I don’t get it. He gave up His body to be broken for me. He paid the crazy price to set you free. He said, “Listen, in your dead, in your sin state, I love you so much, I’m going to take your place and die for you. And you’re going to come to life. I’m going to open a door where healing can flow. I’m going to open a door where ministry can flow. I’m going to make you holy so My Spirit can dwell in you. I’m going to use you as the temple of the living God. You’re going to be the actual hands and feet, the body of Jesus Christ.”

It’s funny how we do it because—I don’t know, COVID or something, we’re weird. We’ve got our little bottle, everybody’s separate. But in Mexico, we still do it. We take one big piece of flatbread, and we all put our grubby hands on it, and we rip it up, and we all share. And you know how you feel? You feel like we’re one with you. And then we’ve got a cup, right? They don’t do it anymore down there either, but we used to. They’ve got the cup, right, with the juice in it, and everybody’s slobber on it, you know, right? And we just keep handing it around. And when you get done, you’re like, “Man, I am really one with them people because I wouldn’t do that with nobody else,” you know what I’m saying? And that’s the idea of what we’re doing. Is that when the Jew said, if we eat of the same bread—that’s why you wouldn’t eat with a Gentile, an unbeliever—because it made you one with them. And the same thing that’s in you is now in them, right? But that’s what we’re saying, is that we’re one with each other because we’re all one in Him.

Is that true for you? Do you want to be more one with each other? God wants you to be one body, one family. He’s calling you to that. The Spanish family that comes before you—do you know them? Have you ever showed up at 8:30—just—I know I’m preaching, forgive me. If you ever—and just mingled with the Hispanics, or stayed late and mingled with the people from the Farsi ministry and hung out in a language that you don’t understand, and just went, “Wow, these people are popping’. Don’t know what they’re saying, though.” Every once in a while, you hear a tune that you know because they copied it and just translated it, right? You’d be like, “Oh, I know that song. Don’t know these words, but I know that song.” Are we one in Him? God wants to make you one with each other.

Lord, we lift up this bread to You, and we’re so encouraged that You would die for us, and we’re so encouraged that You would choose us to live in us, that You would make us holy before Your throne by Your blood. God, we’re overwhelmed by Your goodness and Your grace. We’re overwhelmed by the love that You put in us for each other. Make it grow. We’re overwhelmed by the power and the truth of Your Word. As we take the symbol of this bread, that’s the image that we’re taking You, the real Word, the living Word, into us, and it’s bearing more fruit. It’s bearing more life. We recommit our lives to You. We want to repent from our sin. We want to please You. We want to honor You. We want to follow You. We want You to open our minds and give us understanding of the Word so that we could be useful for the kingdom, a blessing to the house of God. Help us, God. Bless this bread, Lord, a symbol of You in us. In Jesus’ name.

You took that cup. It’s so funny because You said not to drink the blood of an animal because in the blood was the life of the animal. What a thought. Don’t eat anything strangled because the blood would stay in the meat, and you shouldn’t eat blood because in the blood is the life of the animal. You said that Your blood poured out in the murder of Cain and Abel—and Cain kills Abel—and his blood cried out from the ground to You because the life is in the blood. Then You said, “Take this. This is My blood. Drink it.” And they’re like, “Hold on.” Every Jew in the room went, “What? Can’t drink the blood.” But You said, “This is My blood poured out for you in a new promise, a new commitment, a new pact. This is the life of Jesus.” And as we drink it, we symbolize receiving the newness of life from Him in us. And we drink it—we should be drinking it from the same cup, right? But we drink it all together to say we all have the same life in us from God. And that’s why you’re my brother and you’re my sister because we have the same life in us from our Father. New life—not the old life, not the life condemned to sin, not the life condemned to hell—but life set free, life made holy by His sacrifice. We become holy, and we celebrate that holiness as we receive a cup that’s just an image, but it’s the picture of the oneness of the body of Christ, for the power and the truth of His life.

I pour it out for you.

Father, would You bless this cup? Would You bless Your truth? Lord, we’re thankful that we’re one with You, flesh of Your flesh, bone of Your bone by the bread. But, Lord, more overwhelming is that all my rebellion, all my transgression, all my iniquity, all my weakness, all my failure is made pure and holy and white as snow because You died and made me clean. We’re overwhelmed at Your goodness. We ask that You’d wash us afresh today, that You’d bind us together in Your truth and in Your love and in Your Spirit and under Your blood, that You would be glorified in this place. In Jesus’ mighty name.

God bless you guys. Have a wonderful Sunday. Amen.

Recently, we gifted them a “Proclaimer,” a special device that plays the entire Bible in audio. They listen to it constantly, filling their days with the Word of God. Our meeting took place at their business by the river, with the soothing sound of the waves and the magnificent view of God’s creation around us.

During our time together, we studied a lesson from the book “The Jesus Style.” We reflected on how Jesus urged us to consider ourselves lesser than others—not to belittle ourselves, but to let go of our self-centeredness and embrace sacrificial service to our neighbors. It was a beautiful and blessed time of sharing opinions and anecdotes around this theme.

Sister Armida shared a touching story about how she helped a young man who was being chased and beaten. She fed him and gave him new clothes. Though the young man, who struggles with his mental health, did not stay with her, Armida and her husband Aristeo plan to find him again and at least help him cut his long hair.

While listening to Sister Armida talk about her intense desire to help those in need and seeing how Brother Florencio and his wife always open the doors of their business with such generosity, I felt many emotions. At first, I felt guilty for not doing more for the people around me, but that quickly turned into a sense of challenge, knowing that with God’s help, I can do more. Certainly, not all of us have the same calling, but I believe each of us has many ways we can sacrifice for others. Jesus set the example, and after Him, many of His disciples have shown us how to live this way. Perhaps someone sacrificed their time to counsel us, opened their home to us, or did something even more significant.

These days have been a time of reflection for me, a time to take steps towards serving this community with the gifts God has given me. I encourage you to do the same. Pray to God and ask yourself: Are you sacrificing yourself in service to others for God? Take heart, God does not ask you to do it alone. I encourage you to share how you are or will be serving so we can encourage each other.

We ended our meeting with joyful singing, led by Brother Florencio on the guitar, lifting our voices in praise to God. It was a time filled with the Holy Spirit, strengthening our bonds and renewing our commitment to serve one another in love.

With love and gratitude,

Efraín & Vicki

This week, we want to introduce you to a family that has touched our hearts deeply: Alicia and her two daughters, Alexa and Zuri. They joined us a year ago, arriving with Sara and Jesús. Sister Alicia has known Christ since her daughters were little, but when they first came here, Alexa and Zuri didn’t have a relationship with Jesus and didn’t want one. They joined the School of Ministry just to follow the rest of their family, but God had amazing plans for them.

Sister Alicia is a beacon of faith and prayer. Every day, without fail, she wakes up at 3 a.m. to pray. This incredible commitment started one sleepless night when she felt God calling her to pray. Since then, she wakes up at that hour without an alarm, dedicating her time to interceding for others. Alicia is also a compassionate servant, always ready to help those in need. She has built beautiful friendships with the women in our town, offering them guidance, prayer, and a listening ear at any time.

Through their time at the School of Ministry and deepening their understanding of the Word, Alexa and Zuri have experienced a profound transformation. They have turned to God and are fighting the good fight of faith, striving to overcome their old selves each day. They are growing in their walk with Jesus, and it’s been a joy to witness their journey.

As the end of the year approaches, Alexa and Zuri are seeking God’s direction for their future. They ask for your prayers for strength, wisdom, and protection from the Holy Spirit. These decisions are significant, and they want to follow God’s will with all their hearts.

We also ask for your prayers for Alicia’s husband, who remains in Guadalajara. Recently, he has started attending church, which has brought immense joy to the family. They are hopeful and excited but also praying fervently that he continues to seek Jesus and allows Him to transform his life completely.

Dear family in Rancho Santa Margarita, we cannot express enough how much your prayers and support mean to us. Your love and generosity enable us to walk alongside wonderful people like Alicia, Alexa, and Zuri, witnessing the incredible work God is doing in their lives.

Thank you for being a vital part of this beautiful journey. Together, we are bringing the light of Christ to every corner of our community.

With all our love and gratitude,

Vicki and Efraín

P.S. You can read their testimonies on our School Of Ministry page.

This week, we want to introduce you to Jesús and Sara, a dedicated husband and wife in their second year at our School of Ministry. They originally studied their first year in 2020 and have been faithfully serving God ever since. After facing a difficult family crisis, they returned to the School of Ministry, now accompanied by Sara’s mom and two sisters, who are in their first year.

Jesús has a passion for learning and a gift for teaching, and he is eager to continue serving the Lord in this capacity. Both Jesús and Sara have been praying fervently for God’s direction as they approach graduation, seeking His guidance on their next steps.

This week has been particularly challenging for them. Sara hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of days, and on Wednesday, Jesús nearly drowned while swimming in the river. The waves were unusually strong, and at one point, Jesús cried out to God for help. Miraculously, the waves began to work in his favor, and he was able to make it to safety.

That same night, Sara’s condition worsened. She experienced severe abdominal pain and blacked out, fearing for her life and calling out to God. She was taken to the hospital the next morning and received immediate care, miraculously without any cost. Sara was diagnosed with a severe intestinal infection that led to a UTI and liver problems. She is now recovering but must adhere to a very strict diet from now on.

Dear brothers and sisters, we ask for your continued prayers for Jesús and Sara. Pray for Sara’s healing and strength, for Jesús’s safety and resilience, and for God’s clear direction in their lives as they prepare to graduate.

Your prayers and support mean the world to us. Thank you for being part of this journey and for lifting up our students in prayer.

With much love and gratitude,

Vicki and Efraín