Obey & PossessObedece y posee

1. You have been called

The pattern starts with the calling. "We have all been called," Pastor Estuardo said, and he meant everyone in the room, down to the team in the sound booth. The calling comes with a purpose, a destiny, a spiritual blessing and God's promises over your life. When people feel disqualified or can't find their place, he said, it is because they haven't understood that God called them, and the calling does not end: "You are the one that is trying to put an end to the calling."

He warned that the message might be uncomfortable. "The word of God is also there to make us uncomfortable, so there can be changes in our life."

2. There is no half obedience

The second part is obedience, the condition for the calling to be fulfilled. Success and advancement, he said, depend on listening to God and following his specific instructions. Leaving home doesn't end that for a son or daughter, and being a parent doesn't end it for us.

Then he said it more than once, so nobody missed it: "There's no such thing as half obedience, or a little bit of obedience. Obedience is 100%."

3. Conquer and possess

The third part is action. "Faith is not passive. Faith is action." There will be fortified cities, walls like Jericho, enemies and giants, he said, but someone who is called and is obeying can rise up in faith and occupy what God said they could.

Darkness, and the light that rises

Pastor Estuardo turned to Isaiah 60, a passage he said wasn't in his notes: "Arise and let your light shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen on you." Darkness covers the earth, but the glory of the Lord will be seen over the people who are called and obeying.

He set that beside the book of Judges, the darkest time in Israel's history, when everyone did what seemed right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25). He sees the same thinking today in "you be you, and I will be me." Living by our own judgment, he said, creates spiritual confusion, and Christ is the light in the middle of that darkness.

Hannah's holy exchange

God's answer to that dark time started with a woman who could not have children. Hannah ran to the temple and wept, and the priest Eli thought she was drunk. She prayed for a son and promised to give him back to God's service, and when the boy Samuel was weaned, she brought him to the temple.

Pastor Estuardo called it "a holy interchange." Most of our prayers, he said, are "give me, Lord," and the better question is what we are willing to give back. Hannah shows that powerful prayer comes from a genuinely broken heart and total surrender.

Learning to hear God's voice

Eli had the temple and the priesthood, but he had lost his first love. He served without passion or vision, and his own sons were doing evil with no one to stop them. In those days the word of the Lord was rare (1 Samuel 3:1). God wanted to speak, Pastor Estuardo said; what was missing were people who could hear him.

So when the young Samuel heard his name in the night, he ran to Eli, and kept running to him, before Eli understood it was God. Samuel's answer became the prayer of the morning: "Speak, for your servant hears." Pastor Estuardo prayed it for his own life as a pastor and a father. He doesn't want to lead a church out of formality, he said, but to keep the passion of serving the Lord.

"This message is not for the people that are outside who have not known God," he said. "This message is for us."

Obedience brings blessing

Without taking anything away from God's blessing, he reminded the church of the other side: obedience brings blessing, and disobedience brings a curse. Either we serve God, or we enslave ourselves to doing what is wrong.

He closed with David, a man after God's own heart, who stayed on the roof of his house instead of going to war, saw a woman he wanted, and went on to commit adultery and murder, and lied. God sent the prophet Nathan, who told David a story about a stolen lamb. When the king said the man deserved to die, Nathan answered: "That man is you." God told David he would not die, but there would be consequences.

"Let's be obedient," Pastor Estuardo finished. "God loves us. He has called us to conquer, but we have to obey, and we need to possess in the name of God."