Nick Ferreiro - Hecho para Durar.

Good morning, how are you, Church By The Glade? How are you feeling this morning? Nice to see you. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nick. I'm one of the pastors here at Church By The Glade. We talked last week about this, but since I'm the student pastor and since I have the microphone, I can do whatever I want, so I'm going to talk about the same thing again. I have not been able to overcome this experience of United Knights that we had last week. It was incredible. Thank you for your generosity, for your investment and support and your service to the volunteers. We saw more than 800 students gather here in this enclosure. 150 gave their lives to Christ and 93 went publicly. Did you hear what I'm saying? 150 children gave their lives to Christ and 93 were baptized. Come on, people, that's not normal. Incredible, truly incredible. God has been teaching in our church all summer, but my favorite part is that God has not finished with that. There are still going to be experiences that change lives. This Thursday, at the First Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale, we will have Rally again. Please don't miss it. But as a student pastor, I can't quite get over all that God has done in our fields. Because I've never seen something like this as a student pastor. If you remember, we filled out a topic this year to learn how we can better develop life situations, so that people don't get tired with time, so that the storms of life don't go away and continue to spread for a long time. Because it has been built that way. And everything that God did in our fields and in a powerful way in which He moved, reminded me of a passage from Scripture that is found in Matthew chapter 7. And it's at the end of the service on the mountain. And after Jesus is teaching, instructing all those people who got together to listen to Him, He concludes this sermon on the mountain saying, All those who listen to these words of mine and put them into practice, is like a wise man who built his house.

Even if the rain comes, even if the wind blows, and it hits the house. And this is Jesus writing this. And He didn't fall because He had His foundation. What I've learned is that life is far less about who can make it the furthest, and much more about who reaches the end. And many times in Scripture, you see people who are told that they've fought the good fight, and that they've reached the end of the battle. But that doesn't happen by accident. We have to learn how we can strengthen ourselves to be able to reach the end, no matter all the difficulties that we find along the way. And according to Jesus, while He concludes His sermon on the mountain, it's not about your talents and your abilities. It's not about the family you were born into, or the community you grew up in. It's not about positivity or your perspective on life. It's not even about how strong you believe or act. It's how well you interact with the Word of God, which will determine if you live a life that is built to last, or is going to be destroyed along the way. This is a common theme in Scripture. And especially during the ministry and the teachings of Jesus, to read the Word for ourselves. Coming to church once a week is fine, but it's not enough. You can't live from what you have left from a sermon. You have to read the Word daily to yourself, understand it for yourself. You have to meditate on the Word, keep it in your heart. You'll never know when you need it. You need to obey the Word, apply the Word in your life, because that's where the power is. And Jesus elaborates, even in our need for the Word, if we want to live a fruitful and strengthened life.

Take your copy of the Scriptures and we'll go to Luke chapter 8. It'll be here on the display, 8 from 4 to 8. It says in verse 4, While a crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town to town, He said this parable. A farmer went to sow his seeds. And while he was watering them, some fell along the way, and the birds ate them. Others fell into a rocky soil, and they had no moisture, so they did not grow. Others fell between the pines, and as they grew, the plants were abused by these pines. And others fell into good soil, and they grew and gave a cultivation a hundred times larger. If you're thinking to yourself, well, Pastor elaborated, you say, in our need for the word. We're reading the same Bible, because I never heard Jesus speak here of the Scriptures or the word of God. Well, Jesus is explaining. This is a parable. A parable was a teaching tactic that Jesus frequently used to explain the truth of God in words that are recognizable to the audience. Something that you can understand, to bring a parallel to something that you're not understanding about the kingdom of God, or about God himself. So Jesus, what he's going to do, is simply speak in a language that his audience would understand. So he would speak about things that are happening in those moments, in that life. Kings in their kingdoms, farmers in their lands, fishermen in their waters. And that's what we do here at Church by the Glades. It's a parable. We're bringing the truth of God. It's not that we're taking it down or diluting it. We're putting it in a language of our culture, so that it's easier to understand, for those who are not yet called believers. Because we want to teach that the Scriptures are not something archaic, that comes without any modern application. The Scriptures can be applied today. They're applied. They're used. And they can still transform us in our modern context of 2026.

Which leads me to believe that if Jesus were talking to us right now, he would be teaching in parables. The only thing is that they would sound a little different. Maybe they wouldn't be about farmers and the land, but maybe about pop culture, TikTok, how you interact with each other in social media, how you drive in traffic, and what fingers you use when someone crosses in front of you. So again, this passage is about modern business, movies, and the music of the day. This passage is a parable about the condition of our heart, in which it belongs to accept the word of God so that it takes root in our lives. And if you remember, there are four different lands where this seed, this seed is in the Scripture like the word of God, where this seed was sown. Those that fell in the middle of the road, fell in rocky land. Others over grasslands, and others in good land. And each of these lands corresponds to the condition of our heart in this day and age. So the point of the parable is that if you want your life to bear the right fruit of your heart, you have to be in the right posture. I was talking to a friend recently about his journey with exercising and trying to stay consistent in exercising. And one of the things that they told me, one of the things that keeps us consistent, even if it's hard to exercise, is that we have become obsessed with closing the rings on our Apple Watch. For those of you who don't know, the way to close those rings on your Apple Watch, you have to, for example, burn a certain amount of calories a day, exercise a certain amount of time a day, and you have to be active for a certain amount of hours a day. And that takes your watch into account. So sometimes you're very busy and you don't have time to exercise that day. So in an attempt to stay consistent with your exercise,

while they were at the airport, they put exercise on their Apple Watch and they started walking around the airport to close the ring to stay active. While they were doing that, the watch would stop and give them an alert. It would say, hey, are you still exercising or should we pause it? And they'd say, hey, why? They'd ignore it and keep walking. And they kept getting notifications. Do you want the exercise to stop? Because it doesn't look like you're exercising. It was because their heartbeats were not at a height that would indicate that you're actually exercising. It looked more like the heartbeats of someone who's resting, not exercising. And like the heartbeats, No importa cuánto caminaran, ese caminata y ese ejercicio nunca registró para cerrar el anillo. Algunos de nosotros estamos trabajando muy duro, estamos laborando lo más duro que podamos hoy, pensando qué es lo que nos va a dar los resultados que estamos esperando, lo que nos va a dar la paz, que estamos buscando el poder, que estamos buscando la alegría, que estamos buscando la aceptación, que estamos buscando la fruta que hemos querido dar. But I can tell you, if your heart is not in the right position, no matter how hard you try, how hard you try, you're not going to get anything productive spiritually. We have to have the heart in the right position. And I'm praying today as I read these passages of Scripture to identify the conditions of our hearts that we don't want to have. God has given us the ability to know what the true condition of our heart is if we analyze and give ourselves the power to make the necessary adjustments to have the correct posture so that we can go forward on the path that leads us to triumph. When Jesus opens this parable, he says, the first land where the seed falls is a seed that falls on the path of the cursed.

This path is where the farmers walked, who were between the two seeds. That's thousands of years ago. They didn't have concrete or concrete like today. But this land they walked on, this path, was land. But as they walked on it so frequently, on that same path, day and day and day, week after week, so frequently, the land was densely compacted under their feet, which made it look more dense and concrete than land. The land under their feet was dense and very difficult to penetrate. It was hard. And as they walked so frequently on it, and that land was so strongly compacted, any seed that fell there would have difficulty penetrating that land because of the density it had. So people would step on it, or the birds would eat it. And he's comparing this type of land to the people who have their hearts hardened. And the question that comes out of this section of the parable is, if we have our hearts that have hardened, that stops the word of God from taking root in our hearts. When we discern this part of the parable, it's easy to identify when in our lives we have our hearts hardened, when in our lives we have grown distant or resistant to God's work in us. Some of us, we haven't even done this on purpose. Some of us haven't hardened our hearts on purpose. Some of us can hear the word, read the word, understand it, but it doesn't take root. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't transform us as it promises to do. And that's not because the word doesn't have power. The word has all the power.

The reason this happens is because sometimes it has difficulty penetrating the walls that we've put around our hearts. Maybe you don't even know that you have these walls up. These farmers would simply walk on this land day by day, month by month, year by year, and only through a long time, walking on these paths frequently, that this land hardened. Listen to me. Sometimes it's not the big mistake. Sometimes it's not a monumental failure, but the little commitments you make day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, that ends up breaking you and getting you out of the battle. It's the little lies here. It's the little gossip there. It's the wife that's not your wife that you have in text. It's that encounter you have with people you're not supposed to have encounters with. And you do all these things. And typically, I've noticed that you experience a little bit of guilt at the moment. You feel like you've done something wrong. You feel like something's not right. But what I want you to understand is that that's not condemnation or shame coming from God. That's what's called conviction. God's going to convince you. He's going to teach you that you're getting out of the right path. And he's going to try to correct you. It is an invitation to the true path that truly leads to life. And what we end up doing is ignoring that conviction that comes from God, and we continue doing what we want to do. But if you keep doing this, and you keep ignoring God's convictions, and you keep doing what you want to do without God's instructions,

what happens over time is that you fall asleep to the teachings and the voice of God. And there comes a time when you can't even hear it. And our hearts become impenetrable to the transformative power of God's word. And I don't know about you, but if you really want to live a life that is made to last, a life that remains firm when things are happening around you, I don't know about you, but I desperately need God's instructions. I need his voice, his word, his instructions. The only thing you need to transform yourself in an instant is a word from God. But why is God going to keep talking to someone who knows he's not going to keep listening? That's why every time you receive God's word or conviction, you need to act immediately, immediately, because we need God to speak to us, for God to believe in us, for God to believe that we're going to do what he's asking us to do. But you have to act immediately so you don't fall asleep to his conviction and his voice. When you hear God's word, act immediately, so you can prevent your heart from hardening or building walls. It's not that we ignore God's conviction, what hardens our hearts. Some of it is because of our experiences. My wife and I have been regulars in this restaurant called Sicilian. This is not advertising. They don't pay me for anything, but we love the restaurant. It's good. And since we go so often, I've always eaten everything on the menu, really everything. And there was nothing for me on that menu other than the chicken wings. The chicken wings are incredible. They're not typical. They don't have a lot of sauce, no. They're cooked in a wood oven, and they come out juicy. They're made like an incredible satay. You have to try them yourself.

But I remember this day, I was there, and I ordered my typical order of chicken wings and french fries, and I ate them all. But what I didn't know is that while I was eating those, I also had a stomach upset. And since my kids are taking care of the kids, they bring all this from there and take it home. I was eating, and I didn't know I had this stomach upset. I got home, I brushed my teeth, I went to bed. And then at like 2 and a half in the morning, because it's always at 2 and a half in the morning and not 2 and a half in the afternoon. But well, I have this stomach upset. And I know there's something wrong. I don't feel good. This is not good. My stomach hurts. I have an incredible headache. And I knew something was going on. And I'm going to save you the details, but I want you to know that for at least an hour, I could taste the chicken wings again. And it left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that from that moment on, I haven't been able to eat Sicilian chicken wings again. Is it possible that the same reason why I haven't eaten the chicken wings from that place again is because of the same reason why you don't believe in God? When we face difficulties or we have a bad experience, if we're not careful, it tends to harden our heart. It tends to keep us away from what caused the bad experience. And what we do is we put the problem where the problem is not.

The problem for me was not the chicken wings. It was the discomfort. It was the bacteria in the stomach. But since that was causing that problem, I think I have a problem with the chicken wings. Maybe you've been here and you've had a bad experience with someone who claims to be a Christian. And they left you with a very bad taste. They were horrible to you. And since they left you with such a bad taste, you have this diversion, not just the church, but even God himself and all the Christians. Is it possible that you're putting the problem where the problem is not? For some of us, maybe we go through something else. A divorce or financial problems. maybe a health scare. And like now, you start to question God, to see if He truly loves you, or if He can really do something in your situation, or if He has the power to do it. And if we're not careful, we can let these things take us away from God and from a relationship with Him. God never promised us to have a life without pain. He never promised us a desolate life, but He did promise us that we could live lives that would teach the world, that no matter what difficulties we're going through, we serve a God who doesn't cause those problems,

but He can use those problems to develop us, to configure us, to strengthen us, to favor us and bless us, even with the problem we're facing. But we have to have the right perspective about those bad experiences, because God is not the cause, nor is He that problem. God is the cause of what can come out positive from those bad experiences. You have to know who we're talking about. God is not this abusive, bad-tempered person. No, it's the God who left heaven, the happiness and tranquility of heaven, to come down here, to live among us and save us while we were not perfect, while we were doing everything wrong, while we were sinners. This is the God I'm talking about. We have to remember what He did, the experiences we've had, the evidence He's taught us. It's been proven to be true. Don't let a bad experience cause you to not be, to not forgive, or to become someone who is bitter. Someone killed you, someone hurt you, someone hurt you. But that Christian is also imperfect. And so, God tells us that He will take this heart and He will place it with our hearts.

And He's going to soften our hearts. He's going to do it. He says in the Bible that He's going to take this heart of stone and He's going to soften it. And He's going to say the soil had rocks or pebbles in it. And then He's going to say, from the very surface level, it looked like good seeds that fell on it. And it's not to say that this land had rocks or pebbles. No, no. It looked like good soil. But just beneath it, there was this hard rock plane that prevents any seed from developing roots and entering and penetrating to be able to drink the water. And this is what Jesus was referring to as when we, in our lives, we have shallow hearts. We have shallow hearts. We have flat hearts. My wife and I have been able to travel a little bit around the world. And we found that in our life, the best place to go for us was Italy. My wife is incredibly good at traveling and spending little money. And it's a great experience. But she's very good at doing it. And we got there on our honeymoon and we loved it. And I want to go back one day

because I would like to go back to this little town called Pisa. And if you don't know, Pisa is very well known touristically for one reason only. There's this tower that's in Pisa that's known and is very famous for its structural dynamics. It's called the Tower of Pisa. What's fascinating is that people come from all over the world to see this tower and to be on the side. It's not an operational tower. It's simply a tourist attraction. All because it's not operational. It's simply an attraction. It's simply a tourist attraction. It's simply a tourist attraction. It's simply a tourist attraction. Simply because it's laid out. And this tower, it's a little bit fascinating. And I looked up the history and I found that when the architects tried to understand when they were doing the foundation they didn't do it deep enough

in the ground so that it could withstand the pressure of the marble that was being used to build it. And since that foundation wasn't deep enough when this weight of this marble was applied, the foundation began to flake and caused this lateral movement and it flaked. It wasn't a storm. It wasn't a strong wind. It wasn't an earthquake. But what caused this was a flat foundation that wasn't deep enough. that you are sluggish, you're bending, and you don't feel all this pressure. It's not simply because of the pressures that you're facing in this life. Maybe the reason your life lacks all this pressure in your life is because your foundation is flat, shallow foundation. Maybe your life doesn't have the power that you think you could have acquired because maybe it seems like your foundation on the outside seems to be fine, but it doesn't have enough depth to sustain the pressures and the burdens

that you're facing in your life. Maybe even the burden of the blessings that you're actually meant to have in your life. Because we're called to be salt and light to the world. Sometimes we want to teach the world that we have everything under control. No, no. God has called us to be the salt of the world, to be beneficial to the people around us. But the only way to do that is if we have a firm, a firm and strong relationship with Christ Jesus. Jesus then explains what this parable means because the disciples ask him. And he says what it means in verse 13, what it means to have a rocky land. Those who fall into rocky land are those who receive the word with joy, but they have no roots. They believe for a moment, but in the moment that the tests come, the people who are like that are filled with joy when God does something new, when God answers his prayer and the miracle happens. But then when a period of waiting comes or the tribulations or the tests come, then they start to wonder if it's in God. And maybe they even get out of faith. And this happens because many of us have this tendency to praise the gift instead of praising who gives it to us.

We have this tendency to focus on the things that God gave us instead of focusing on him who gave them to us in the first place. But what I've realized is that the things that God gives us are not really about the things. They are related to focusing on who gave them to us. In reality, this is the theology of God because the relationship with God is not just his blessings. If it were so, then when temptations and tribulations and hard things come, we're going to get frustrated and we're going to feel frustrated and we're going to feel high water. But when we understand that the relationship with God is not about the blessing, but an intimacy with him, then no matter what comes, storms, earthquakes, lightning, tribulations, we're going to be happy because the one we walk with during all of those tribulations is with us and has overcome all of those things. If he came out of the grave, what is a little storm for him? What is a little tribulation or a little change or a chain for someone who can break it? What is a bad land for someone who can soften it? Are you listening to what I'm saying? I'm saying that nothing is impossible with God by your side. It's not about receiving from God, it's about being with God.

Your relationship with God is about intimacy with him. And the only way to do that is to spend time with him, spend time in prayer, spend time in his word, read it, understand it, meditate on it, spend time in the company of other believers of your way of seeing and being to start depending on God in the good and the bad. And that's how we try not to have a flat heart. And the last seed and the last fruit was not good. It's speaking to people who have cracked seeds. And I'm speaking to people who have conglomerate hearts. There's a lot of things in those hearts. The seed is born and it comes out and it's not good. But these bad seeds are sucked out. So if you've done any kind of gardening, you're going to know that all those bad seeds that remain embedded, you have to get rid of them, pull them out, but you can't count them. If you pull them out, they leave the root. Even if you pull them out from the top, the roots remain. And these bad herbs are going to grow again and they're going to drown the good plants that are up there and they're not going to bear fruit. This describes what can be for us in our lives. In verse 14 it says that the seeds that fell on the bad herbs grow, but as they come out they become food for the problems of life, for the riches, or for the pleasures. Many of us are making the relationship with God about Jesus and something else. Jesus and money, that's what we're looking for, Jesus and money, that's what's going to bring us happiness. Jesus and triumph, that's what's really going to take the place for us. But what Jesus is trying to identify in this passage is that anything that is still in

your heart, that you try to take the place of what God can do in your life, is going to drown the real relationship with you. And what we have to do is start all those things that we've been looking at to be satisfied, because only Jesus can fill you, money will not satisfy you, fame will not satisfy you. But what you have probably recognized by now is that at some point, sexual encounters will not satisfy you, maybe for a moment, something in your life, but what you have probably recognized by now is that in the long run you're going to feel worse, that you have been looking for the real things in your life. But there is only one source that can provide you what you've truly been looking for, your true desires in your heart. And I don't believe in fame, fortune, money, power, no. I'm talking about your desperation to belong to something, that hunger that you have inside you, that desire to be loved, to be seen, to be loved, without any condition, even if you've done things that are not right. And there is only one thing, there is only one source that we can lay our foundation on, so that we can live a solid life. And this is not something, it is not really something, it is a person, and his name is Christ Jesus. And I pray for all of us, that as the word of God is being sown, read it for yourself, and that we don't have hearts anymore, that we don't have hardened hearts, that we don't have hearts filled with things that don't have to be there, but that we have hearts where that seed falls in good soil, so that it produces these strong and deep roots, so that the fruit that it gives is a hundred times better than what we have imagined, that we have receptive hearts, receptive hearts to the message of the gospel, to the truth of Christ Jesus, to the word of God, because the truth is that our ability to have faith in Jesus depends on our ability to interact with the word of God, the word of Jesus. And his word is completely correlated with applying it, understanding it to apply it. Let me put it this way, consequently, faith comes from listening to the message, and the message is listened to through the word of Christ. If you want to live a life that is not shaken, a life that is filled with power, filled with

life upon the standard of knowledge, you have to respond for yourself, who is Christ for you, and understand what you are going to get in his word. At various moments there will be speakers that can help you navigate what it means to give your life to Christ, the God who left heaven to walk among us in the flesh, and to live, the only one, a perfect life, because it was the only way to reconcile ourselves again with the Father, because we had separated in such a way that it was impossible. Christ became our mediator, and if we put our lives in his hands and give them to him by faith, we will have abundant and eternal life. This is the Jesus I am talking about, so you have not given your life by faith to him, you do not really know what it is to have a receptive heart. Remove the bad herbs, remove the unnecessary from your heart, soften it, and let it be deep, so that the roots of Christ can take strength, which is Jesus. His strong foundation, Jesus and His Word, is the only way we can do it. Father, we ask you for your power today. We ask you for the strength to walk in what you have taught us. Help us apply this Word, obey it, read it. Help us put it into practice so that we can be like the wise man who built his house on a rock foundation, where no matter what happens, wind or storm, it would remain and last. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for not doing this alone. Come with us, fill us with your power. In the name of Christ Jesus, we pray.