Barry and Denise Spor connecting you to tribal missions Growing up in Jesus
Jessi being baptized in May 2011
About a year ago three Guanano bible teachers with very little help from the missionaries taught the 68 bible lessons to evangelized those that they had invited to come. Well as fruit of that hard spiritual work six new baby believers were born into the family of God! Since then Guanano bible teachers Mario and Herman have been teaching these new believers along with the older believers through more lessons designed to ground them and now we are in chapter 20 of the book of Acts. Well one of the new believers Jessí maybe 20 years old and I were walking the 45 minutes to our mid week bible study and it came out that he had been shamed into drinking and got drunk by some old unsaved acquaintances. He shared his heart how frustrating this was to him as he felt so bad before God about it. Later when it was time to give prayer requests he shared his heart with the church here and I would like to pass that on to you to remember to pray for as well. It went something like this, “As you know Robert and Marcelena, Luis, Vicente, little Gustavo and I are new believers. Please pray for us as we fall into sin often even when we don’t want to. It is hard for us to trust Jesus to change our lives. Please pray that we would trust Christ in us to overcome our sinful ways of living.” And pray we did. Please remember these friends as well to learn to hate their sin nature driven habits and to depend by faith on Jesus and his life in them to take the sin nature’s place. Galatians 2:20. Thanks for praying!
They need to stay hungry
In the book titled “The Saving Life of Christ” by Major W. Ian Thomas he uses an illustration of HOW we are to live the Christian life, that I’d like to share with you.
This, of course, is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit – to allow the Holy Spirit to occupy the whole of your personality with the adequacy of Christ. This is the sublime (cool) secret of drawing upon the unlimited resources of Deity.
How stupid it would be buy a car with a powerful engine under the hood and then to spend the rest of your days pushing it! Thwarted and exhausted, you would wish to discard it as a useless thing! Yet to some of you who are Christians, this may be God’s word to your heart. When God redeemed you through the precious blood of His dear Son, He placed, in the language of my illustration, a powerful engine under the hood – nothing less than the resurrection life of God the Son, made over to you in the person of God the Holy Spirit. Then stop pushing! Step in and switch on and expose every hill of circumstance, of opportunity, of temptation, of perplexity – no matter how threatening – to the divine energy that is available.
With what magnificent confidence you may step out into the future when once you have consented to die to your own self-effort and to make yourself available as a redeemed sinner to all that God has made available to you in His risen Son!
Remember, He does not give you strength – He IS your strength! He does not give you victory – He IS your victory! He can not be your life without being all you need, for “For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ…” Col. 2:9, 10a
Then count upon the fact – and stop asking for what you have!
Gal 2:19b, 20 “I have been crucified with Christ. I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Col. 3:4a“ …Christ, who is the source of your [new] life….”
My vision for ministry, my energy, my personality, my dedication and commitment will produce zero lasting spiritual work for God as the source is ME and not Christ! Consciously depending on Christ every day as I live out my live, realizing that without Him I can not do a thing – is what God wants from me. His life is the powerful engine to produce the results God wants. I am invited to stop pushing the car of Christ in my own fleshly-effort and by faith sit in the car Christ is and let Him do what only He can do. What a rebuke and challenge to me. This is the kind of person I want to learn how to be, empty of me and fully depending on Him!
With that principle in mind we share what He is doing here in Brazil. For the last month Meri and her husband Sergio have made the 1 hour plus bus ride each way and a speed boat ride out to the school here two times a week to be taught the gospel starting from Genesis up to the resurrection.
We have gotten up to believing Noah and how God saved him, his 3 sons and their wives not only physically but also how they trusted God as their rescuer from Hell as well. Continue to pray that the Spirit would keep convicting them of their spiritual need, and by faith in God they would reach out and take God’s offer to forgive and rescue them. Pray they would stay hungry to be saved! Thanks!
Well with just 7 weeks until school ends things are going well here in the dorm of 5 boys. There is always lots of noise, mischief and challenges to trust the Lord for. He has enabled us to meet each need so far. Denise and I are just finishing up painting the whole outside of the dorm a light terra cota color. It really looks pretty nice!
Austin graduates May 27 from High school here at PQQ! Then we as a family will head back up river to our home up river the first week of June. We will be there six months, until January 2012 while our partners Lindy and Carol Drake take a much needed home assignment time to share what God has been doing among the Guanano through them these last 6 years since they were last back in their home church area. We will be part of the lesson revision while there and discipling and teaching will be happening as well. Pray for our transition back there.
By February we hope to be heading back to the USA to help Austin get started on his life after High school. We are not sure where we will be just yet, and for that we ask you to pray along with us for us to know where would be best to set up home and all. Thanks for praying! It means a lot having friends who care backing us!
Barry, Denise and Austin
Blog http://ntm.org/barry_spor
E-Mail: Barry_Spor@ntm.org
Skype name: Barry and Denise
Phone: 011-55-97-8113-6818
Not willing that any should perish
Kiristina enjoying a moment of rest
Another person I made it a point to visit to see how they were doing spiritually was a fairly mature believer Kristina, Mario’s older sister. It is always a joy to visit with her as she has good spiritual things to share from her own perspective. She is in her late 30’s early 40’s has a 14 year old daughter and adopted another girl who is 3-4 now. We hadn’t seen her in 6 months and I wanted to hear how things had been going for her and where she felt she was in her spiritual life with Christ. She shared for a while as I listened and then at the end of her sharing she shared this prayer request.
“Barry, you know how I am a person who often likes to share the gospel with people that come to buy my chicken or with a neighbor. You know that’s what I do. I feel like this last year that desire has grown weak and I want to ask you to please pray to our Father for Him to give me that strong desire back again to share the gospel where ever I am.”
So I invite you to be praying for her in this till we hear that she is faithfully back at it again.
Pray for Irlei to find Life!
Irlei is on the lower left in the red top
As our time in the town where we work was coming to an end, Barry and I were trying to visit some people to see where they were at spiritually. I sat and spoke with Irlei (ear-Lay), Moise and Delfina’s oldest daughter.
I wrote a little about her asking for prayer earlier. Irlei has had a rough last 2 years. Some rebellion towards her folks, then a softening and this cycle has repeated itself a few times.
Irlei was one of those that wanted to share her testimony of salvation last month Lindy and Carol said, but when she stood to share she got so nervous she wasn’t able to speak and after a little while she sat down without saying anything. She has heard the gospel claims many, many times. She is having some major and bitter confrontations with her folks and is in a kind of dead lock for control of her life.
She was able to express herself very well, but it was sad as she said that since that time of almost publically expressing her faith till now she has changed her mind and does not want to trust Christ for salvation anymore.
She says the desire has left her to be saved – that it doesn’t bother her that she will go to hell like it used to any more. Satan has blinded her mind!
We share this to get you to pray for her soul — that the conviction would return, the desire to trust Christ to save her and make her his own would return and she would get saved soon!
2 Cor. 4:3, 4 NTL “If the Good News we preach is veiled from anyone, it is a sign that they are perishing. Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, so they are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News that is shining upon them. They don’t understand the message we preach about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.”