Hello Brothers and Sisters in Christ… Hello to future children of God!
Hello to all who stumbled onto this report of Gods grace and mercy…..
We had only one rest day after leaving Venezuela before we would fly to Paraguay.
Much laundry to clean and pack and prepare for the next two weeks to finish our South America trip.
We flew through Panama to get down to Asoncion, Paraguay. Unfortunately when we arrived we found out that the organization that had invited us was in the middle of a legal dispute. One brother suing the entire organization for power. Man is so full of pride. Jeremiah said: “the heart of man is deceitfully wicked above all things, who could know it”. We don’t even know how wicked our own heart is!! It was a small hindrance to the work of God, but God had big plans. Plans to save, plans to heal, plans to baptize in the Holy Spirit!! Steve and Carolyn met us there in Paraguay. It is such a blessing to have like-minded believers with the same burden as you. They Spend their own money and take the time for souls to be saved!
And our most excellent coordinators Oscar and Luz Gomez of Baranquilla Columbia. They are our It is Finished Ministry partners in South America. along with Pastor Alfonso who played the keys while Sister Luz sang under the anointing !! Everything was taken care of right down to the nuts and bolts.
Last but not least was Benjamin and Elias Gomez from Mexico.
Elias did all the translation and Benjamin many altar calls!
We had a couple of highlights that I want to relate to you. The second night we had a meeting with the youth. The Lord led me to teach on Romans chapter 6, The sin nature. Why do we sin, even after we are already saved and our desire is not to sin, we sometimes still have a problem with the sin nature. Romans six teaches us that we must die! Die to self, die to the flesh, die to this world. We must reckon ourselves dead indeed unto Christ! This word reckon is actually an accounting term. It means to figure it out, add it up, come to the conclusion that we must remain dead to the sin nature. Think about it, a dead man does not sin. If you pass alcohol or drugs or any other temptation in front of a dead man he does not sin. As we taught the youth that night, eyes were open, hearts were changed, the altar was full!! Brother Benjamin Gomez came to the altar and gave a call for anyone who wanted to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit . Many were filled that night as the Spirit of God went a cross the congregation in waves! Twice that evening I experienced the pride of man. First a lady came up to me and went on and on about being holy and said “what about keeping the 10 Commandments”? This was during the altar call as the Holy Spirit was delivering and setting people free from the law!! I said to her have you kept all of the 10 Commandments? She had a puzzled look on her face dropped her head and walked away!! Later that night Romans 3:19 came to me; – Now we know that whatever the law says it says to those who are under law, That every MOUTH may be STOPPED and all the world may become guilty before God!! I’ve been reading that scripture for years and never realized until that night what impact the law has on the self righteous! Her mouth was stopped!!! When confronted with the law of God, if we are honest, we must recoginize that there is none good, no not one!
The second person was the youth Pastor. He did not enter in, he did not like what was going on, you could tell that he was uncomfortable with the liberty that his youth group was experiencing. For the Lord to move in our lives we must yield, we must give up, we must die to self!! It is not easy. He obviously had not been preaching the grace of God, which is Christ and Him crucified! But giving them the law to try and sanctify themselves. You mean I can’t do anything to help the Lord? That is correct. You mean just live anyway you want to live? Of course not, but if we think we can please God by what we do then we will be bound by whatever that thing is. This youth pastor was losing control and he didn’t like it.
On a bright note there was a pastor there who had traveled from Argentina just to be in our meetings. We also met Pastor Angel from Uruguay the next night. Both of these pastors had traveled many, many hours over the mountains on busses to hear the message of the cross preached. They each stayed with us two or three days in all the meetings to hear more of the finished work of Christ and invited us to go to their respective countries next year. Already on our calendar for February 17, 2016 is Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia! The message of the cross, Christ and him crucified, is the end time message before Jesus returns! Hungry men and women all over the world recognize that we have strayed from the simplicity of the gospel. When we preach about the cross, when we sing about the blood, when we lift Jesus up, lives are changed!!! Glory to God!!!!
That last day in Paraguay was a Sunday morning. I preached out of Galatians 2:20, that we must be crucified with Christ. That nowhere in the Bible does it tell us to fight against sin but we are to fight the good fight of faith! A young man in the congregation who had been fighting the evil desire of homosexuality came to the altar repenting and recognizing where the victory was. His mother and family members were in tears along with most of the people that knew the situation. He had grown up in church, he loves God, he’s not a hypocrite, but he did not know that the victory we have over sin is found only in the cross! What does that mean? It means take our faith off our efforts, off our works, off the programs and foolish systems of men to beat the sin nature. It means that anything we try and do besides faith in Christ, any fight in our own strength will only bring defeat! Jesus defeated sin on the cross!!! When he shed his blood and cried “it is finished” the veil in the temple into the holy of holies ripped in two! So we now have access directly to the Father through the blood of Jesus!! Romans 6:14 says sin shall no longer have dominion over you for you are not under law but under grace. Hallelujah hallelujah!!
Dozens and dozens of people came to the altar that Sunday morning and stayed there for at least an hour. Nobody wanted to go home! That is a typical church service in these foreign countries! Church services last anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. There is no agenda to hurry for lunch or any other thing when the Spirit of God moves.
Please continue to pray for us as the Lord puts on our hearts these different places that we never even thought of traveling to.
Hidden in Christ ,
Brother Dan and Dorene
Preaching the cross to the lost and found