The morning began with a baby being presented to God, and Pastor Estuardo used that moment to open the message. Our freedom in Christ is not up for negotiation, for us or for our children. And however far we have come, there is still land to take. He preached it from Moses and Pharaoh, from Joshua in his old age, and from a movie clip about a man who spent a whole night praying, "Lord, help me get one more."
Our freedom is not negotiable
He started in Egypt. Israel had been slaves for generations when the Lord raised up Moses to lead the nation out. Pharaoh tried to negotiate their freedom and set his conditions: the men and the adults could leave, "but your children will remain with us." Moses answered right away. They would go with their sons and their daughters.
"Our freedom is not negotiable," Pastor Estuardo had the church say, twice. The world we live in is trying to set conditions on that freedom, he said, to mark its dominion and its limits over our generations. "The freedom in Christ is a freedom without condition."
That is why he used the baby's presentation as his example. As parents, he said, we cannot negotiate our children away. He was talking about what God has given us, a promise to bless our children and our children's children, and we have an obligation to fight for them. He turned to the grandparents and told them the child belongs to Christ. "You're not waiting for him to grow up. It's now."
Me and my house
He asked the church to rise up with the spirit of Joshua and say what Joshua said: "Me and my house, we'll serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). He called it a declaration that breaks addictions and strongholds in the name of the Lord, and he walked it all the way down the family line: me and my children, and the children of my children's children.
"The world is not going to tell us how to do things," he said. "It's Christ who directs my steps."
Then the verse on the series slide, Romans 8:37. We are more than conquerors in Christ, over every fear, every temptation, every sickness and every problem. "If you're going to leave this place and you don't remember all of the message, you are going to say: My freedom is not negotiable. I have been called to conquer. I am more than a conqueror."
My freedom in Christ is non-negotiable.
Much land still to conquer
God wants us to take hold of every promise he has for us, he said, and to experience a total victory. "Not half a victory."
Then came Joshua. Joshua had led Israel through many victories and defeated many kings, and some of the tribes had already received their land. Then he grew old. The Lord told him so, and told him something else: "There still remains much land to conquer" (Joshua 13:1).
"If you think that you already reached the place that you needed to get to, there's a great problem," Pastor Estuardo said. If you are standing today, it is because there is still something to reach. He admitted life doesn't look the same as it did at 25 ("that was just last year"), but he wanted to talk about urgency. As parents, as leaders, in your community, there is still much to conquer. So move quickly. He had a word for the young people too, the ones who finished school and decided that was their place: the Lord has something more for you.
Israel, he said, adjusted to the place where they had arrived. But faith is constant, something we have to persevere in every day, trusting God. And when we serve the Lord first, the material things are what he adds (Matthew 6:33).
There will always be higher levels
"No matter how far we've come," he said, "there will always be higher levels," and he had the church say it with him. He'd been caught by the words of a song in worship that morning, "Show me your face." It is a prayer for God to reveal himself, he said, and it isn't just any song.
He also wants us to stop saying "I'm just going to go to church." It is the Lord we seek and the Lord we serve. Church is good, because here we are together and the Lord is in the midst of his people, but he is with us everywhere, and there are higher levels and deeper dimensions in his plan for our lives. He quoted God's word, "I know the plans that I have for you" (Jeremiah 29:11), and said God has something glorious for the church in 2027.
New people are arriving, he said, and he doesn't want Living Waters to be just a place where they come and feel good. He wants them to find the Lord's direction for their lives, and he asked the church to think that way when they invite people and when the meet and greet comes around. There are wives praying for their husbands and husbands for their wives, parents praying for their children (he counted himself among them), and he declared prodigals coming home, restored, in the name of God.
Don't settle for partial victories
"Let's not be those believers that conform so quickly," he said, "and sometimes they conform with so little." We get satisfied with partial victories and minor accomplishments, but God's purpose for your life is greater than what you are living right now. "If you are conformed with what you have and with what you are, you have not had an encounter with God as you should have."
God calls us to keep advancing, keep expanding, keep conquering new territories: new homes, new families. We don't have to be afraid of the groups the Lord sends us to. And if someone says the pastor is crazy, he would like a few more crazy people to come with him. (He apologized right away. He wasn't calling anyone crazy.) God wants us to live with a mentality of progress, aware that until our mission is complete, "there's still land that we have to conquer, and glory to manifest."
What we leave behind
He gives God the glory for the people who marked his life, he said, people whose words he didn't always understand at the time. Then he told the church about his father's last moment, when he came to say goodbye. What he had to do, he had already done, and now he had to go. "What an assurance." Not that he wants to go now, he said, but Pastor Estuardo wants to be able to tell the Lord the same: I know where I'm going, and I know I did what you sent me to do.
At camp, he reminded everyone, they were told two things that should motivate us. One is how we will be known when we are no longer on earth, the legacy we pass on. The other is what heaven will say about us. He hopes it is "good and faithful servant," and "enter into the joy of your Lord."
He also shared the three stages that the president of the Foursquare church has laid out for his next five years, and said they fit this teaching well: pursuing his presence, passing on the fire, possessing the land. "This is nothing if the Lord is not in the midst of us." He wants to leave a legacy of the fire and the presence of God, so that people can know we serve a living God.
Help me get one more
Being called to conquer implies war, he said, and in a war there are falls, and soldiers who get hurt. We are living in a season when we have to rise up and know there is still a lot to do.
To close, he showed a short clip from a movie. He apologized ahead of time: it was a little strong. It fit something he had been praying one of those mornings: "Please help me, Lord, to lend a hand to somebody that needs it."
The man in the scene was Desmond Doss. As Pastor Estuardo told it, without using a weapon or firing a single shot, Doss spent the whole night searching for men and rescuing them, on ground the Japanese army held, and under all that fatigue he kept praying, "Please, Lord, help me get one more." When the night finally ended, he had rescued seventy-five men.
"We are in a war, spiritually speaking. We are soldiers of Jesus." Battles get hard, with wounds and falls and pain, and this was the hour, he said, to reflect and tell the Lord the same thing. Help me get one more. Maybe it is "give me one more chance," for children you gave up on. One more group of my friends. One more group of young people.
When he saw Doss's bloodied hands, he thought of Jesus on the cross. He doesn't think Jesus was saying "Father, give me one more." "He was saying, give me the world." To serve the Lord you have to surrender all, he said, and he couldn't tell anyone what that would change in their time or their friendships, "because you are the one that's going to influence them, and not them influence you."
"We are called to conquer," he finished. "Let's not forget what's around us, where God has placed us, and what we have been called to reach." With eyes closed, the church prayed it with him, "Please, Lord, help me get one more," and he added: "And I know he'll do it again."
Questions for this week
For your time with God, your family or your group.
- Where is the world trying to set conditions on your freedom in Christ, or your family's?
- Is there a place you settled into as if it were the end of the road?
- Which partial victory have you been calling enough?
- Who is the "one more" God is putting on your heart this week?
Common questions
What does "still much to conquer" mean?
It comes from Joshua 13:1, where God tells Joshua, old and after many victories, that much land remains to be conquered. Pastor Estuardo applies it to us: however far we have come, there will always be higher levels, and God wants a total victory for us, not half of one.
What did Pastor Estuardo mean by "our freedom is not negotiable"?
When Pharaoh offered to let the adults go and keep the children, Moses refused. The freedom we have in Christ comes without conditions, and parents and grandparents don't bargain it away for their children, because the children belong to Christ.
What was the movie clip near the end?
A scene about Desmond Doss, who, as Pastor Estuardo told it, spent a night rescuing men without using a weapon or firing a shot, praying "Lord, help me get one more," until he had rescued seventy-five. Pastor Estuardo made that prayer the church's own.
What Bible passages does this message use?
Exodus 10:8-11, Joshua 24:15, Joshua 13:1, Matthew 6:33, Jeremiah 29:11 and Matthew 25:21, in the Called to Conquer series, whose slide carries Romans 8:37.
Was this message preached in English or Spanish?
Both. Pastor Estuardo preached in Spanish with live English interpretation, as every Sunday celebration at Living Waters is in both languages.
Where can I watch it?
The sermon is on the Living Waters YouTube channel as part of the full Sunday service, with worship. Sunday celebration is at 11 AM at 251 Stillwater Rd in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and you are welcome to come in person.