jorge-marsano_profile

I have had many opportunities to share the gospel this month in the mountains outside the city of Oxapampa. Several families invited me into their homes where I was able to speak to them about the Scriptures.

Among the different families, four people have turned to Christ and now confess Him to be their Savior. The Holy Spirit has worked in these four new believers in a way that I have rarely seen. On separate occasions, they have each been in tears and brokenness over their sin, repenting and confessing faith in Jesus Christ as their only Lord and Savior.

One of these new believers is named Hector. As we were sitting in his home the first thing Hector did was to make very clear that he was anti-Christian: ‘Pastor, I am not a Christian nor do I ever want to be a Christian.’ Hearing him make such an antagonistic statement, my first inclination was to leave him just as he wished to be—if he doesn’t want to listen to me, then I won’t speak to him.

But the Spirit of the Lord seemed to give me such an unsettledness on his behalf that I couldn’t do what humanly speaking I wanted to do, which was simply to leave him in his need. Instead, I was moved and felt the absolute necessity of speaking to him about the living and true God and about the risen Savior.

So I began telling him and his family about the gospel and I urged him to go to Christ for life rather than dying an eternal death in hell for his sins. Also, in light of what he said about not wanting to be a Christian, I explained to him that Jesus doesn’t just give us an invitation as if we could either take it or leave it, but rather commands us to obey His call to repentance and come and receive life from Him.

Up until that point in our conversation, I didn’t know what was going on in Hector’s heart. It wasn’t until I saw his eyes filling up with tears that I realized the Lord was doing something. He said, ‘I want to be saved, but I can’t.’ And so I assured him of the glorious promise of the gospel: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.’ That truth became a reality in this man’s life. The Holy Spirit brought new life and salvation to his lost soul.