This sermon reflects on the speaker's 55 years as a Christian, highlighting moments of God's faithfulness and intervention in spectacular ways. It includes a personal testimony of encountering God's presence and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. The sermon emphasizes the need for believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit to operate in the gifts and ministries God has given them.

Well, Gareth, would you share with us some of the ways that God has worked in your life in these last 50 years? Oh my, there are so many ways, Greg, and so many ways, of course, that are beyond knowing. Well, I look back at my 55 years almost as a Christian with just wonder and amazement at God's faithfulness, and the many, many times that he's intervened in my life in quite spectacular ways. I think back, for example, when I came to the Lord at the age of 17. I was living in Wales at that time, a little village, and I had no interest in God, but I had a young sister who was attending a young people's meeting at her private home. One evening she asked me if I would go to these private meetings for young people, and I really was not interested, but it was an excuse to get out of the house and to avoid my homework that night. I had Latin homework, I remember, and I wasn't particularly good at that. I wanted to get out. I went to the meeting, and to my amazement, I guess, when I got into the house there were 17 young girls there my age and no boys at all. They made me feel very comfortable, gave me an armchair in the corner. There was a young man who was the speaker from a local Bible college in Swansea. You may know the Bible college. Rhys Howells was the founder of that Bible college. I don't remember what he spoke about. I remember very little about the evening. I enjoyed it, because as a Welsh boy, of course, I grew up knowing the hymns that they sang and knew the stories of the Bible. I remember at the end of the evening the lady of the house said to me, Gareth, I want to see you in the kitchen. So I went into the kitchen thinking she wanted me to carry the soft drinks and the cookies in. I was the only boy there after all, so a job for the man. She said to me, tell me, what will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ? I had no idea what she meant. What could I do with the Lord Jesus Christ? He died 2,000 years ago. It didn't mean anything to me. So I avoided the question. I had no answer. I managed to get out of the kitchen. Maybe one of the girls interrupted us. I went the following week, because I had promised the girls that if I would go, then they could bring their boyfriends. Indeed, there were several boys more there the following week. I enjoyed the evenings, and every week the lady of the house would say to me, Tell me, Gareth, I want to see you in the kitchen. I avoided it, because I knew what she wanted to ask me. I did not know the answer to the question. This went on for five weeks, avoiding this question each week. Consciously avoiding it, knowing that she wanted to ask me again. But in those five weeks, I was coming to realize something about the Christian message. It was this, simplistically, that Jesus Christ died upon the cross for our sins, and he rose again. I had lost my mother five years before that, and I constantly talked to my mother. Not in a mystical way, but I played a lot of soccer. If I scored a goal, I would say, Mom, I hope you are pleased. That kind of way. So it was not difficult for me at all to believe in life after death. My mother was there somewhere, so I talked to her, and maybe I could talk to Jesus. The fifth week, five weeks of avoidance, we all went to a local chapel, because one of the young boys in this group, his brother was a preacher in a tiny little chapel in a little village in Wales. I remember nothing of what he preached about, but at the end of the service, I was talking to him. He had been in school a few years before me, and I knew him from those days. Out of the blue, he said, Tell me, Gareth, what will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ? It was exactly the same question as I had been avoiding for five weeks. I see that as God. God stepped in, because it was God asking the question, not this woman, not this young man. Because he spoke definitively to me, because it was exactly the same question I knew I had been avoiding. I walked home that evening from the church meeting by myself, went into my empty house. My father was out, and I went to my bedroom, and I opened my bed. I asked Jesus Christ to come into my life. Basically, my prayer was this, Lord, if you are real, if you can hear me right now, please forgive me my sin and come into my heart. I was sincere. Then I said a little chorus, into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come into day, come into this day, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. I didn't know what else to say, so I said, Amen. Got up from my knees, did not feel any different, but I probably at that time went and found a Bible. I thought I must start reading the Bible. We had one in the house, of course. There's all houses in Wales. Went to school the next day, and I was in a gang of boys. Not a gang as we think of today, but a group of boys, close friends. I wasn't the best at soccer, much more. I wasn't the best at rugby. I didn't have the best girlfriend. I wasn't the best academic. But in every group of boys, there's a pecking order. You've got to find your status. My strength was I had a vivid imagination, and I could tell dirty stories. Nobody had to tell me that. If I was now a Christian, that the dirty stories had to go. If I'd been the best soccer player or the best rugby player, I probably wouldn't have been convicted in any way. But I was the best at dirty stories, so I knew it had to stop. I was in the school assembly hall, and one of my friends came up to me and said, Tell me, Gareth, have you heard this one? And started to tell a story. And I had these little bells going on in my head, saying I shouldn't be listening to this. So I made an excuse. I said, Peter, I've got to talk to John. I didn't have to talk to John at all, but I tried to get away. But I only went far enough away that I could still hear the punchline, as he told it to others. And you know that's the most miserable place in the world, is to be half way in the world and half out to the world. And I was trying to be out to the world, but I was still in the world. The next day, the same sort of thing happened. And by the Wednesday, my friends were beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Of course, I hadn't told anybody what I'd done. I prayed on Wednesday night, and I said, Lord, I can't go on like this. If you really are real, if you really come into my heart, I have to know it. I can't go on like this. Went to school the next morning, Thursday morning. And again, one of my friends comes up to me, and he asked me this question. He said, Tell me, is that right what I've been hearing about you? I said, What have you been hearing about me? He said, Have you been going to that house with those religious meetings, those religious people? You see, my friends came from a large distance around my school. It's a boarding school, and they came from long distance. And none of them knew that I went to these meetings on the weekend. But this boy found out. And I felt a cold shiver go up my spine. And I said, Oh, my friends have found out. What will they think of me? And I said, Yeah. He said, Have you got saved? I said, Yes. He said, Hey, fellas, Evans has got saved. They all came around and started making fun of me in a nice way that, you know, boys, friends do in the school. And then they started taking my finger and said, Can we kiss the ring on your finger? Say a prayer for me. And they're just making fun of me. Now, he was a 16, 17-year-old boy when his friends make fun of him. I mean, he wants a hole to open up in the ground to swallow him. And the bell rang for us to go into assembly. And as I walked into assembly, God's Spirit came upon me. And I knew that I knew that I knew that I was a child of God. I experienced God in a wonderful, wonderful, assuring way. And I was a brand-new Christian. And looking back on 55 years, that was just the first one. I have had so many times when God has broken in upon me in wonderful ways. Coincidence is the word might call many of them. God incidences, I prefer. And I feel sad for so many Christians I know. I was a pastor in my churches who cannot tell stories of the things that God has done. Because I see so many, so many times that God has intervened. And I'm delighted to tell the stories. I was once in Mexico City conducting a speaker in a missions conference. It was a three-day conference. There were four of us speakers. And I spoke maybe two or three times. On the last day, a lady came up to me. She was a daughter of missionaries. And she married a Mexican. And he was the singer at this conference. So she was there with him. She came up to me and she said, may I ask you a personal question? I said, yes. I don't promise to answer it, but you can ask me. And she said, why is it that God seems to bless some people all the time, implying me, and never bless others at all, implying her. And I guess I should have said, it depends what you call blessing, because I experience valleys as well as the mountaintops. In fact, I discovered there are no mountaintops unless you're prepared to go through valleys too. But I didn't say that. I didn't think quick enough. But I did say to her, I really don't know why God blesses me with these stories I tell all the time. Unless it is that He is pleased to bless me because I tell the stories. You know, the scriptures say that we are to be to the praise of His glory. And I've got so much to praise Him for. So my stories, if they are just praising God, if they are exalting Him in the ears of those who listen to my stories, I want to tell more stories. And God gives me more stories to tell. And it's just exciting. I'm very committed to tell the truth. I'm very aware how easy it is to exaggerate in stories. And so I've been challenged. My wife is a very good one to challenge me when I tell a story. She said, there weren't 2,000 people there. You know, there were about 1,500. But you need to get the numbers right. Oh, yes. But the stories I have are true and wonderful experiences of God in my life. Let me tell you another one. Can I tell you another one? Please do. At the time when I met this young man in this church, one of the questions he asked me prior to the important question was what I was going to do when I left school. He told me he was going to go to university. And he asked me what I wanted to do in university. And I said mathematics and physics. They were my subjects. And I was then doing the advanced level. That is the requirement in Britain. It's a two-year course where you specialize in, for example, pure maths, applied maths and physics. And at the end of the two years, you try the advanced level exam. And the results of that exam in those days determined whether or not you could go to university in Britain. I applied to four universities to do mathematics and physics. Birmingham was my number one choice. Cardiff in Wales was number two. Swansea in Wales was number three. And Aberystwyth in Wales was number four. And I really wanted to go to Birmingham because it was a top university for mathematics, my speciality at the time. And all the four universities accepted me provisional upon my passing the exams with certain grades. Two As and a B or two Bs and a C, whatever it was they were looking for. I did the exams and I passed with sufficient grades to go to any of the universities. So I could go to Birmingham. They had accepted me. And they were my number one choice. And then my mind just started changing. And of course, looking back now, it's easy to see that the Lord was doing this. But of course, at that time, I was just in confusion a little bit and thinking, I'm not sure I want to go to Birmingham. It's a very industrial part of the Midlands of England. And I'm not sure I want to go there. Cardiff is too near. I only live 12 miles from Cardiff. I think I'll go to Swansea. Now, I'm thinking that I'm thinking this myself. So I wrote a letter. I decided to go to Swansea. I wrote to the university. I said I was coming. And I wrote a letter to the pastor of the Ealing Church in Swansea. Now, I'd never been to Swansea. I knew nothing about Swansea. It was only 30 miles from my home. In those days, that was a long distance to travel. I'd never been there to the city of Swansea, which is the second largest city in Wales. I wrote a letter to the pastor of the Ealing Church. That was the denomination I belonged to at the time, Ealing Pentecostal. And I said, I'm coming to Swansea University in September. Is there any woman in your church who might be prepared to have a lodger, a student lodger, for the next three years? Well, time went by. Of course, I was a bit naive. I thought he would have time to do this for me. But I never heard back from him. And then one day, I got a letter from the education board in Wales saying, Mr. Evans, we understand you're going to Swansea. Your grant, because they give us a grant then to pay our accommodation and pay our tuition fees. Your grant is available for you, but we can't give it to you until we know your address in Swansea. They didn't want me living on the sand, for example. They had to know I was in a secure address. And the deadline date is next Wednesday. And suddenly, I was in a panic because there was no way I could go to university without my grant. We could not afford to go. I had no accommodation. So on the Saturday, I took a bus to Swansea, an express bus. I got off in the middle of the city. I go into a telephone kiosk, and I look up in the book about the Ealing Church. There's nothing in the book because Ealing Church doesn't have an office in the building. And I come out absolutely lost in the middle of this big city. There are two young girls there, and they see me, and they know I'm lost. And they said, can we help you? I got to know them later because they were two fine Brethren girls from the Brethren Assembly in Swansea. Coincidence, they happened to be there. And I said, well, I'm looking for the Ealing Church. Well, they said, well, it's just up here, and they pointed the direction. I said, but why are you going there? There's nothing on this afternoon, Saturday afternoon. And of course, they would know us Christians. I said, well, I need to see the pastor. Oh, they said, he lives outside of Swansea in a suburb called Teacork, and you need to catch the number 75 bus. And they knew exactly where he lived. They gave me clear directions how to get there. So I got on the bus, ended up at his front door, knocked the door, and Pastor Cole came to the door. And I said, well, sir, my name is Gareth. I'm from Cowbridge. And I said, I wrote to you two months ago about accommodation. Oh, he said, I forgot all about it. Come in, come in. He said, I went to his desk and put out a piece of paper. He said, I wrote down the names of eight women in the church who might be willing to take a student. But he said, I haven't asked them. I forgot to ask. Come on, he said, I'll tell you what, let's drive back into town. So he gets his shoes on and his coat, and my heart sinks because I've got to be back by five o'clock at the bus station, and this is midday, and I've got no accommodation. And he hasn't asked any of these women. So we drive back into the city of Swansea. And as we pass in the university, he turns down this road. And he says, the lady down here, she's not on my list, but she's got twin boys. And one of them is going to London Bible College to become a pastor. And the other one is going to university to start in September. Maybe she'll let you take the place of the one who's going up to Bible College. And I thought, oh, come on. No mother with twins is going to let a stranger take the place of a twin. It might be that she'd have a spare woman with no children, or a woman who shouldn't have left home might have a spare woman, but not a woman with twin boys. This is impossible. And he pulled up outside the house. He goes in, and he comes out a few minutes later, and I'm sitting in the car in a little bit of a cold sweat. And he said, well, she's not really interested in having a student, but she'd like to meet you. I'm not interested in meeting somebody. I went in the house, and she said, well, of course, if you came here, we'd expect you to come to church with us. I said, yes, of course, I want to. I'm a Christian. Well, I'm going to have to ask the boys. And the pastor said, well, where are the boys, Mrs. Evans? And she said, well, Russell has gone down to the university, and Don has just got up the road. Don, I said. Yes. Don Evans. Yes. Plays cricket for the Welsh school boys. She said, yes, that's my son. I said, I know Don Evans. The only person in the entire city, I said again, the only person in the entire city that I knew was Don Evans. Because just after my conversion, two years previously, I was watching a cricket game at my school. And the locals at my school, Cowbridge, were playing Swansea. And they were both very fine teams. It was a very top-notch game. And Swansea are batting. And I'm standing watching the game, and one of the Swansea boys sees that I've got an Elam Crusader badge on me, which is the young people's work of the Elam church. He says, oh, you go to Elam? I said, yes. So you're a Christian? I said, yes. He said, so am I. Wonderful. So let's walk around the field. We walked together. I'm a brand-new Christian. And this young man talks to me. His name is Don Evans. As we come to the far side of the field, my Latin teacher sees us. He's coming into the field. He was a selector, actually, for the Welsh school boys. And as such, he knew Don Evans. As my Latin teacher, he knew me. I was one of his worst students. And our names are Evans. No relationship at all. He says, hello, Gareth. Hello, Don. Are you two brothers? I mean, how ridiculous. We live 40 miles apart. We could have been cousins. That's the question he asked. Are you two brothers? And Don, without batting an eyelid, said, yes, sir. Brothers in the Lord. Wow. I'd never heard anybody witness. He's the first man. So he meant a lot to me. And here I was, 18 months later, in his home in Swansea, by coincidence. I don't believe so. And at that moment, the door opened of the house. And the pastor is in the corridor of the hallway. He looks and says, oh, Don, there's somebody here who knows you. And Don comes to the door and says, Gareth, what are you doing here? I said, and he came over and grabbed me and we hugged. And he said, I'm looking for lodgings. And he said, Mommy, can I have my room? And behind him stood his mother, holding her hands up to me. I had a most godly home for four years. I was in university for my teaching diploma and my degree. I got a far better degree than was ever anticipated, because that home and his twin brother helped me through. It was a home sent by God. But God had planned that. All the time while I was negotiating with Birmingham and Cardiff and Aberystwyth, God knew exactly where I was going to go. And He set that up 18 months before. Because the only person, I repeat, that I knew in all that city, big city, was Don Evans. And the pastor didn't even write down the name on his list. We're driving back in coincidental thought. The pastor had to be good on this road. It wasn't coincidence. It was God. To see a brand new Christian, a young Christian, that is the way he was leading. And my life has been continually stories like that. And so experiencing God has been a very prime time of my life. I remember those days again. I had a good friend called Roland. And every Saturday night, as a very young Christian, I would go to Aberkentwick, the little village where Roland lived, to a young people's meeting. It wasn't the one that I came to know the Lord in. It was another one. And after the young people's meeting, all the rest would leave, and Roland and I would stay together as good friends. We developed a close friendship. We stayed together for another half an hour or so before I had to cycle home. One night we were walking through the village, and there's a sign outside another church advertising an evangelistic rally, a meeting for a week. Roland says to me, See, why don't we go back to Beulah, the little chapel, and pray for this meeting? We were both 17 years of age. So we went back into the little chapel, and we knelt. We were in the kitchen, the only place, a small kitchen, and so we knelt. And the only way we could kneel was facing one another on the floor. And I got my head down, and he's praying, and I'm praying. Again, I emphasize, maybe two or three months old Christian. And I had the impression that somebody walked into the room. Now, you must understand, Greg, that I'm a physicist. My mind is that of a scientist. I think in that kind of way. I'm very rational in much of my thinking. My wife says I'm too rational at times. I'm not given to imaginations and, you know, mystical events. I don't think. And into the room, somebody walked and stood between the two of us as we were on our knees on the floor praying. And I thought if I reach out my hand, I can touch his feet. But I didn't want to do so because I imagined, I felt it was Jesus. Not just a stranger. When we got up off our knees, of course, this was too silly to tell Roland about this. It was just too silly, you think, to even imagine that Jesus could walk into the room. Many years later, many years later, I came back after being overseas. I was a schoolteacher. I can tell you more about that. But I came back many years later, and God used us to start a youth work in that same town. It grew large and prospered quickly. And then in 1975, that would have been about 1957, I was telling myself. But in 1975, we emigrated to Canada, my wife, myself, and our three daughters. Three years later, we went back on vacation. And on the Sunday evening, I went to the YMCA in Bridgend, where they were holding after-church meetings for all the churches, which I had instituted five years before. And now I'm a guest in the meetings that I had started. And so one of the other young men is now leading the meetings. And there are 100-plus people in the upper room of the YMCA on a Sunday evening, seated right around the walls of the room. And the discussion that evening was on prayer. And so at an opportune time, I said, I'd like to tell you a little story. And I was going to talk about intimacy with God and knowing God and how my prayer life, as a result of that experience, when I kneel and pray, I always think of the Lord as being just there. By the reach of my hands, I can tell. I don't need to shout in my prayer. That's my prayer life, talking to God who's just there, because of that experience in that room, I guess. So anyway, I'm going to tell them this story at the YMCA. Only this night in 1978, Roland is in the room, seated at the other side of the room, and he's now an elder in the church. So I said, I'm going to tell you a story. Roland, you won't remember this, but back in 1957 or so, when we were at Beulah Chapel in Abercanfield, in a little village, there was a night when you and I went together into Beulah kitchen to pray. And Roland jumped up. He said, I know what you're going to say. I said, what am I going to say? He said, the Lord came into the room, didn't he? I looked across this room in the YMCA in 1978. I looked at him and said, you knew. He said, I didn't know you knew. We both had experienced the Lord walking into the room. Now, was it an angel? Was it an experience? I don't know, but both of us knew somebody had come into the room. And it was of the Lord, because it was one of those precious moments. So when you experience those kind of things, you imagine everybody else experiences them too. And it molds your thinking. For example, my prayer life, I've just said to you, my prayer life has always been, when I kneel, the Lord is just there. I never find myself shouting into the heavens. When I'm out walking, the Lord is walking behind me. I just talked to him as a friend who's there. But it's built from those kind of experiences. For me, intimacy with God is something very easy, because I've experienced God. I teach on intimacy with God. I preach on intimacy with God. And it's hard for me to reconcile my experiences with what appears to be the reality that many other Christians have never experienced God in these ways. And I'm no different. I came to the Lord at 17. I had a dirty mind. I wasn't a saint that God should reveal himself to me. And yet God has. And there are many, many, many stories down through the years. I've just given you several, three of them right now. Gareth, this is a controversial, I guess, thought, but can you share with us a story that you shared with me before about the baptism in the Spirit and speaking in tongues? I would love to hear that. Sure. Let me say to you first, Greg, in answering that question, that in those days I was Pentecostal in the church. And so when I sought the fullness of Spirit, I sought the Pentecostal experience. My theology has changed a little since then. But the essentials are still true. For example, do I believe in tongues? Yes, I do. I speak in tongues. In my prayer time, I speak in tongues. I have a lot of problems with people who stand in pulpits with microphones speaking in tongues. I find so much misuse of the gift in the Spirit. I find so much controversy. 1 Corinthians chapter 14 is all about exercising the gifts of the Spirit. Chapter 12 is all about the giftings of the Spirit, the charismatic and concerning charismata, brethren. I don't want you to be ignorant. And then comes that wonderful chapter, chapter 13. Then comes chapter 14. They can't be divorced. They are three chapters together. The reason chapter 13 is there is because the gifts have been misused. And Paul talks about love. There has to be love in the church. And then chapter 14, he talks about how it's misused, though, when it should be by one or two voices and if there's no interpretation, et cetera. And when I come to pray, I'd rather speak five words in a known tongue than in an unknown tongue that nobody can say amen. And he talks much about this. Yet I look at so much church and there's so much abuse. But back to your question. I was in university at the time. And Don, who was in Bible college in London, had come out of Bible college and was now a pastor, an associate pastor, assistant pastor, in the city temple of Cardiff, which was the largest Pentecostal church in Wales with Pastor Percy Brewster, the well-known pastor who was the chair president of the World Council of Pentecostals later, I believe. And I'm in my fourth year in university, 1961, May the 4th, 1961. And I was doing my diploma then, teaching diploma. I had obtained a upper two honors degree in physics and I was now going to become a teacher. And Don came home to Swansea from Cardiff for his 21st birthday. And it was lunchtime. And Auntie Mary, as I called his mother, she was a surrogate mother to me, very much blessed by her and her husband Aubrey. She was cooking the lunch at the time. And Don and I are in the kitchen with her. And he's telling her the story of a man in their church the previous night in the evening meeting who had given a message in tongues, which is very, very unusual because the evening meeting was an evangelistic meeting and the pastor never would have this. But there was a remarkable result from this. But in the conversation, I turned to Don and I said, well, Don, I said, when a man gives a message like that, does God put a thought in his mind and he speaks it? Or does God speak through his tongue? I don't know. I wanted, I was asking about the mechanics of it. And Don said, well, God, it's the same He says when you receive the baptism of the Spirit. You have, haven't you? And I said, no. Now, if Don had known the hours, the multiplied hours, the days, the nights that I spent in prayer longing for the Pentecostal baptism. All the young people in our church spoke in tongues except me. I went to meetings where they said, say this after me. To me, that was hypocrisy. I wanted reality. I wanted the real thing or nothing. I wasn't prepared to say what somebody else wanted me to say. I went to meetings where people said, Jesus, say Jesus, Jesus, as fast as you can. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And they went off into town. I said, this is nonsense. This is hypocrisy. This is abuse. This isn't reality. I wanted reality. But I've been many, many hours. I can remember, Greg, kneeling by my bedside in that home in Swansea one o'clock in the morning pleading with God to fill me with His Spirit. Afraid to go to bed because at one minute past one He was going to fill me. And I'd been like that from 11 o'clock. And finally at one I'd get up into bed disappointed yet again. Many, many times. And now God says to me, you have been filled with the Spirit, haven't you? I said, no. He said, why on earth not? I said, I don't know, God. See, forgive me. Oh, come on, He said. Let's go now and receive the Holy Spirit. He walks out of the kitchen to the next floor which actually was the ground floor of the house. And I followed Him. I thought, oh, here we go again. And in the front room of the house was nice armchairs. He said, let's worship the Lord. So I knelt by one of these armchairs. And Don is back standing up. And we just started worshiping the Lord. Lord, You're lovely. Oh, Lord, You're beautiful. Thank You, Lord, for dying for me. Thank You for all that You've blessed me with. Thank You, Father, for Your love. Send me a son. I started worshiping the Lord. And then I said, oh, God, fill me with Your Spirit, please. Don said, hey, hey, hold on. What are you doing? I said, I'm asking God to fill me with His Spirit. Come on, He said, let's just worship the Lord. So again, we started just worshiping Him. Lord, we started singing some songs. Then, oh, God, please, I just long to be filled with His Spirit. He goes, oh, here, hold it. You're doing it again. He comes over by me. He said, listen, Garrett, listen to something very clear. God is far more anxious for you to be filled with His Spirit than you ever are. The problem is not with God. If a son asks his father for bread, will he give him a stone? Or he asks him for fish, will he give him a scorpion? How much more is the Heavenly Father willing to give the Holy Spirit to them than ask Him? The problem is in you, Brian, not in him. But he said, but there are three people involved here, Garrett. There's you, there's God the Holy Spirit, and there's Satan. And Satan will put all sorts of thoughts and all sorts of doubts in your mind. He is determined to stop you being filled with His Spirit. There's only one way that you can defeat Satan at this moment, and that is by worshiping the Lord. Because there's one thing Satan cannot do. He cannot say, oh Lord, you're wonderful. Oh Lord, you're worthy. Oh Lord, we praise your name. He can't do it, Garrett. So the moment you're praising God, he is sitting on the windowsill gnashing his teeth. He cannot do a thing about it. But the moment you start praying, he jumps up on his feet and he puts thoughts in his mind. I wonder if God hears me. Why doesn't he fill me with all those questions and doubts? He said, Garrett, this is a young man, 21 years old at this day. He said, tell me, if God put a word in your mind, you wouldn't say it, would you? Because you probably think, well, it's me thinking it. It's not real. But how are you going to know if that word came into your mind from your own self or from God? The only way you're going to know is to speak it. And if it's of yourself, it will die in the wind. But if it's of God... I don't know if Don knew, but from the very moment I'd entered that room 15 minutes before, there'd been a word in my mind. I couldn't even tell you what the word was. It was Karan. I don't know what language it's from. I had no idea what it means. But as Don was talking to me, I said, yeah, I know there's a word in my mind. And all these reasons he gave, I wasn't going to say it because it was my self. I was trying to speak in tongues. I was going to force tongues. All these excuses. Don't challenge them. So I'm still on my knees at this armchair. He said, let's just worship the Lord. He said, if God puts a word in your mind, speak it. Oh Lord, I love you. Thank you Lord, I worship you. Thank you so much. Praise you Lord, I love you. I long to serve you. Oh Lord, I'm your child. I love you. Be worthy. Karan. And I exploded. I just, ha! I just flowed, poured out to me in tongues of worship. And I raised my arms to the chair. And I said, please don't brag now. This is my story. This is not doctrine. This is not theology. This doesn't need to be yours. This is my story. And I'm telling it as honestly as I can what happened to me. And as my hands touched, an electric shock feeling went all the way through my body. I was crying. I was laughing. I was totally conscious. Dawn walked out the room past me. I'm crying. I'm in heaven. I'm just worshiping. I'm just pouring a tear stream into my face. And I'm just exalting the Lord who is so, so precious to me. My arms locked. And I'm just shaking. And, oh, heaven, heaven, heaven. I'm sorry, Greg. Nobody can ever dispute it. They can talk all they want to say, oh, the Bible didn't teach that. I experienced this in God. And it transformed my life. For the better. It transformed my life into a deeper love for Him. Satan doesn't do that. At maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, I don't know, I got up off my knees. I walked down to the stairs, and Mary looked at me. She just threw her arms around me and cried. She knew what had happened. A month or so later, I went to Cardiff, as I sometimes did. I went to the City Temple, Cardiff. And there were three men there who used to come out to the little chapel where I gave my life to the Lord. And they always used to talk to me about, have you been filled with the Spirit yet? Are you seeking the fullness of God? They were the ones who initiated in me a hunger for this deeper experience of God. I went to the Cardiff City Temple a month or so later. I came in before the service, and there's a slope in church. One of these sits going back. And I could see Ted Price down there, one of these men, talking to another man. I began to walk to him, and I glanced up, and I'm still 15 yards away. And his face breaks into a smile. And he leaves the man, and he walks to me. And he tells me, Hallelujah, you're received. And he knew I was transformed. And I look back on that day as my mountaintop experience of God. You know, Moses experienced God in the burning bush. That was my burning bush. Since then, I've seen many, many times that God has led and done miracles. But that was my burning bush. And in my prayer time, I often go back to that place in my worship, seeking to continue to be filled as the Scriptures teach us to be, continue to be filled with the Spirit. And I believe what God did there. He took me from the struggle of the wilderness. I came out of Egypt. I crossed the Red Sea. I was now into the wilderness places, seeking the promise of God. He took me from there into my canyon. He took me to the place where I'm feeding on milk and honey. I'm not feeding on manna. I listen to Christians singing about we're feeding on the manna from a bountiful supply. I give the manna up then. I came into Canaan. I've had giants in my life since I've had the defeat. I've had walls that have had to fall down. I've had defeats like a day. I've had all those experiences. But I'm in Canaan. And while I'm trying, whereas now God has taken me up, my life now needs to keep on being filled with Spirit. Yes, I get drained with the circumstance of life. But my prayer time, I come back and I'm filled with the Spirit again. I've never had that experience again. But I know the intimacy of a deep experience of God in my life. That's the story I would tell about my fullness of Spirit. Do I believe that tongues is the evidence now? No, I do not believe. But that is my testimony. I believe tongues is a gift, the least of the gifts possibly for today. But no, I know people who have received a fullness of Spirit experience that did not involve tongues. But I do believe desperately the church needs today, desperately needs men and women filled with the Spirit. Not saying, not believing they've been filled and they haven't. But coming into the Canaan experience of God instead of the general walk of many, many Christians, which is a wilderness walk. It is not God's purpose for us to walk in such ways. Oh yes, they're out of Egypt. But they've not yet come into the promise. There is a promise, a rest for the people of God. Strive to enter into that rest today, says the Hebrews. Strive to enter in. What is the rest? It's a land of giants. But it's a land of victories. It's a land of resting from where God rested after His creation. It's a land where we came into God's rest, where He does the battle and the wars of Jericho fall. And I long, Greg, to see churches getting back to the place where God is allowed to do His work in the church. It's His church after all. But men have taken ownership of it and trying to do everything by the way of the world. They've got programs that are wonderful. They pay big money. It's wonderful. They build big edifices, but God is not even there sometimes. I'm reminded of the Chinese man who came to North America. He goes back to his homeland, as the story is told. And his people back there asked him what he thought of the churches in America. In Canada, probably. He said, I'm amazed at all the things that they can do without the Spirit of God. How tragic. I want to see walls fall down at Jericho. Why did the walls of Jericho fall? Was it the loudness of the blast? No. Was it the fact that He walked all of a sudden? No. The walls fell because God did it. And God wants to be operative in His church. That's why I cry for revival. I want to come back and take possession of His church. Oh God, will you not come and do it now? You've got to be passionate, Greg. It's my passion, brother. The passion, I guess, was birthed many years ago when my first pastor lit a fire in me. I had those mountaintop experiences with God that have continued down through the years. I've got a fire burning in my belly. In fact, I was out walking with a dear friend of mine here in the city, oh, maybe eight years ago. In fact, the pastor, he was then the leader of one of the ministerium here. And as we were out walking, he said, Gareth, I love being with you. You've got a fire in your belly. It meant to be a compliment. And my heart just said, how sad. Why doesn't everyone else? I just don't understand why people who were born again have had their sins forgiven, claim to know God. And the writer John in his letter said, he said, write these things you believe that you might know. They might know. They claim to know God, yet there's no fire in the belly. And it just, it's so sad. So sad. Gareth, would you share some stories of the youth work in Wales and some of the revival that you experienced there? Let me go back to a few years before that. I went to teach. I was a teacher, a physics teacher. And I was invited to teach in the British Army. And I went to Germany for four years and Hong Kong. And I remember being in Germany. I was very conscious of my limited ability as an evangelist with the students in my school. I was very good at defending the Christian message, but not very good at initiating the conversation to try to lead somebody to Christ. And there was a person in our school who was a godly man. And he and I and one of the students used to meet for prayer weekly. And I remember in one of those prayer sessions, praying this, Oh God, give me a burden for youth. I want a burden for youth, Lord. Please give me a burden for youth. And I prayed with God for a bit, thinking that a burden would be sufficient motivation for me to be witnessing to these girls. And I did have the joy of seeing a couple go on and working at it. But that prayer I saw fulfilled some years later. After Hong Kong, I came back to Wales. And I was the head of a physics department in a local grammar school up the valleys from the town of Bridgend, which is where we lived. We were four girls. We actually lived just outside Bridgend. We were four young girls, teenage girls, who used to come to our home, on their way home from school every day, what I taught, the school I taught. Because we were little girls with little daughters, and they wanted to play with my little daughters. And my wife one night said to them, look, she said, if you're going to come here four nights a week, why don't we do a little Bible study or something together? Oh, yes, please, they said. They were from our church, and so we started this. My wife started a little Bible study with four girls. But of course, then they wanted to bring their other friends, and then their boyfriends. And soon it grew pretty large for my wife to handle. And she said, oh, can't you help me, please? And so I started developing Bible quizzes, and little treasure hunts where I'd walk around the district trying to find signs and things. That kind of thing. And soon it grew into maybe 25 young people in our home coming from the neighboring town of Bridgend and from the neighborhood where we were, from other churches. So much so that one leader of the youth work of a large church, the apostolic church, from that whole area, came to my door one day because the elder from the local church sent his children to my home instead of to the apostolic work. And because they so highly regarded this elder, they felt they didn't want to oppose him and send his children to my home. But the district youth worker said, I'd like to come and meet you. And he and I became very, very close friends. And later, the whole apostolic young people came under my umbrella as well. I then got a telephone call from the local Elim church in Bridgend, which is not where I was now attending. I was living outside in another village, asking me if I would come in. And we met to the pass. And we walked along the river bank. And he said, I have a burden to reach the young people of this town. But the elders tell me the only young people who work in the district is the one you have at your home in this village six, seven miles away. So we started talking about this youth worker and about the different youth. And at this time, I had now, sorry, I'd left the teaching at the local school where these girls came from. I was teaching at the grammar school up the valleys at this time. And he said to me, any chance of you coming to work with me in the church? Now, unknown to him, we were already in the process of moving into the town to be nearer my school. So I said, yes, it is. Now, that is maybe a coincidence. Again, a God incident. So we were moving at this very time that he's asking me to come and work in the church. So I came to work with him in the church. And the work progressed well in the church. And we still have the home meetings. We're doing it in a different home now. I'm still at these meetings. And then suddenly he had to leave the church because his wife was not well and he had to move away from that area. And a new pastor came. And the first night, the first day, the Sunday, the pastor's in the church. He announced that tonight I would like to have all the young people to my home for a barbecue. I went to the pastor and I said, oh, I'm sorry, pastor. I've already arranged a meeting. We're going to be going to Barry tonight to take a meeting, my whole young people's group, which are from several churches. But it included the half dozen or so young people from our church, this Heathen church. And the pastor said, well, they can't go. And my back went up. Now I say this not to speak against the pastor because you'll see later this man became one of my greatest friends and supporters. And my back went up. And Greg, I don't commend myself, please, for this, but I'm telling the story as it was. Our church elders board used to meet once a month. And the custom was if you wanted to address something with the elders, you went to the elders' meeting half an hour early, like at seven o'clock, the meeting started at 7.30. And you raised your concern and then you left. And if they wanted to put it on their agenda, they would. So I went to the home. And of course, I was still a young man. What was I, 30, something like that, years of age? And the pastor was there and the four elders. And the pastor said, what did you want? And my back was up. And I said, I want to know who is responsible for the young people's work in this church. I want to know who's in charge of the young people's work in this church. The pastor said, I am. And of course, that shows a proper way because he is always responsible. As a senior pastor, he's always responsible for work. But there needs to be delegated leadership. So one of the men said, what are you asking, Gareth? In short, I mean, because I was uptight. And I blurted out, I said, I'm asking if I can't plunge around the youth of the church, I know more about youth than you five men put together. I don't commend myself, Greg. It was an offensive thing to say. That's what I said. And there was a bit of a stunned silence. One of the elders, Mr. Morgan, said, Pastor, do I need to wait for the meeting at half past seven or can I make a motion right now? I said, oh, you can make a motion now, isn't it? He said, I move that we give Gareth a carte blanche to run the youth work of this church. He knows more about youth than the five of us put together. And the pastor and I looked and gulped. The pastor looked at the other men and said, what do you think? And I said, yeah. And they gave me carte blanche. Carte blanche means total authority. That's a very risky thing to do is give total authority. I must say, I went to him the following Sunday and I apologised for my attitude. And he became my biggest supporter. He was either supporting or withholding. Two months later, I got a telephone call from the local YMCA, which is a very, very large YMCA. Very large sports club and very, very prominent YMCA in Wales. The boy said, did not know on the phone, and I said, Mr Reverend, I'm sitting on the board of the YMCA. We're looking for young blood, new young blood, to be on the board. We're getting old, the board. And your name has been given to us as somebody concerned about youth work and a teacher and the other. Would you be prepared to sit on the board? I said, how much, what time would it involve? He said, just one night a week, one night a month we'll meet in. Okay. I went to the next meeting and I'm half the age of all the other men on the board. And there's about 30 of them there. Big, big board, big, big YMCA. And in this facility, they've got weight rooms and table tennis rooms and big lounge rooms upstairs and big auditorium, a coffee bar that has booths, seating six in each booth for about six coffee bar booths plus other places. A lot of facilities. Place never used on Sundays. So I said to the man next to me, I said, what would it cost me to rent this place for like a Sunday evening? He said, nothing, you're on the board now, you can have it free. You have a key, don't you? I said, no. He said, go and ask the secretary for a key and tell him what you want it for. So I went to the secretary and I said, could I use these premises on Sunday night for a church meeting after? He said, sure. He said, it's not used. He said, that's a good idea, I'd love to see it used. Do you have a key? I said, no. He said, well, look, let me give you a key. Very first night I was in the meeting. So the following week I sent, by this time I was writing a one-page newsletter for all the local churches, all youth, and I was getting gleaming information from the Baptists and the Apostolic and the Methodists and the Pentecostal, all these churches, sending stuff in for my newspaper. I was teaching guitar to a group of boys, I had an outreach group and all of these small groups. And now we had Sunday night in the YMCA, eight o'clock after church club. And all these people came together. And we just saw miracle after miracle after miracle. We saw, I'm going to say, maybe a hundred young adults, not young people, not teenagers, young adults, a hundred came to the Lord in the next two years in that town. And several of them are now in ministry. We had summer camps that came under my umbrella. Every summer camp we took teenagers down to 10B. And I wasn't, I was the over-pastor, if you like, for this, but I had two young women organizing the summer camps. Every time we took 70 or 80 teenagers, every time there would be a dozen come to the Lord. I had a caravan parked up near 10B, certainly in North Wales, and we used to send young people away there for coming to the Lord. There were just so many things going on. I ate, slept, and drank youth work. I was a highly paid school teacher, but my salary, my pay, was simply enabling me to do my youth work. I never dreamt of having a paid salary, never dreamt of it. I look at the youth workers in churches today that are nothing more than babysitters, getting paid a big salary. What was the difference? Well, I had a burden from God, but above that, God put His anointing upon that work. Did I lead people to the Lord? Greg, I probably prayed for five of those young people who came to the Lord because their friends brought them to me and I did the final closure, if you like, on their prayer and acknowledgement of Jesus, but I didn't lead the rest of the hundred. Sheep produce sheep. I remember two brothers who were both in ministry by the way now. One has travelled over here to North America with a guitar he played in California and his brother runs a church back in Wales. They came to the Lord one Sunday night in that youth work. Very fine-looking young men, early twenties. The following week, I'm driving through our town and there's a pub in the middle of town with a beer garden. These two brothers were on the wall of the beer garden, beer in hand, with their friends. Now in those days, less so today, but Christians didn't touch alcohol. We didn't smoke or drink or any of these vices because we drank a lot of coffee, which is just as equally a vice. We still had grumblers and mourners and prideful people in churches, of course, and spiteful people not talking to us. We still had all those things. They were acceptable, but drinking and smoking wasn't. Dancing and going with people who did those things, they were the five cardinal sins in those days. These two boys were drinking alcohol. Now whereas I'm a bit of a rebel and I didn't hold to some of these other vices, I felt I needed to talk to them because they tested me. Brand new Christian boys. And the following Sunday, I see them in the club and they come up to me straightaway and they've got these three or four other guys behind them. Before I could say a word to them, they said, Gareth, we want to introduce you to our three friends. I said, oh, wonderful. Yeah, he said, they gave their lives to the Lord last week in the pub. These guys were in the pub leading people to the Lord. That was always happening in our town. And we saw many, many people in 1973, 74, 75. We saw miracle. In fact, that young man I said is in California came and stayed at my home just a few years ago and he said, Gareth, we were in revival. We didn't know it. It was just so normal to us to see young people coming to Christ, to see them filled with the Spirit, to see lives transformed, to see homes transformed. It was just normal. I mean, open-air meetings in the middle of the town, right in the middle of the busiest part of the town. I would have 25 young people out every Saturday in open-air meetings. And all my students from the school would be walking past. Hello, Mr. Evans. Hello. And then other people coming back and they knew these young people from our schools and from the different schools in the town. But one young man came to the Lord. His name was Steve. And Steve had a mop hair, you know, like an afro cut, in all the colors of the rainbow. Steve was well-known in our town because he was the only mainline heroin addict in our town. These young people witnessed to Steve. He gave his life to Christ. He goes home as a brand-new Christian. And the next day he's stopped by the police. They check him out for syringes and whatnot. And he's taken to the police station. He's laughing at them. You've tried for years to get me off drugs and you failed. But Jesus did it last night. And they wouldn't accept his death. But he genuinely, genuinely said, tonight, today, he's a counselor. He's in a worship team in a church in Wales. And he's a counselor of drug addicts today. He often got flashbacks from his drug abuse, but he was delivered by the Lord right then. These are many, many such stories. And then at those times, because God was putting his anointing on the work, I got to know people. For example, I knew Tony Stone, a youthful Christ leader in Britain. And through him, I got to meet Cliff Richard. I got to meet Terry Dean, who used to be Britain's answer to Elvis Presley. And Terry came and stayed at my home and witnessed in the area. He came and sang. We put on big functions for him. He came and sang there. And other anointed people came down to Wales. And this was the first invasion, if you like, of these people into the Welsh Christian scene. And it wasn't because I had a business acumen or an ability. It was simply that God was putting his anointing on. One of the things, like you asked me, Greg, before about anointing. I long to see men and women today operate in the anointing of God, by which I mean the manifest evidence of God's involvement in their life. Because I look back on those days, and I go back to Wales even now, and they all remember those days. People all talk about those days, not just in Bridgend, but in Cardiff and Swansea. They all remember that work in Bridgend in the 70s that God was doing and my involvement with it. But I look back, and I know that it had to be God, because it was far, far bigger than anything I could have planned. But part of what I mean by anointing is this. I remember, I prayed for this burden for youth, and I had a burden. I just lived, ate, slept, drank youth work. The scripture said this, that Jesus said, take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. And I was yoked with Jesus in those days, a custom-made yoke for Gareth. It wouldn't fit your shoulders, but it fitted my shoulders, because it's custom-made. And the burden was easy and light, because he was the one actually doing the burden. Just like it was God who overthrew the walls of Jericho, it was Jesus who was doing the work through the Spirit in Bridgend. And I was simply yoked. I remember on two occasions, a telephone call, early hours of the morning. I won't give you the names of these people, because they were quite... One of them called me a young man. She said, Gareth, he said on the telephone, say goodbye. I said, what do you mean goodbye? Where are you going? He said, I'm just taking an overdose of drugs. I'm just fed up with life. I can't do any more. But I appreciate you, and I just want to say goodbye. Bye-bye. I said, where are you? He said, you won't find me. I'm down at the beach. It'll be too late. Too late. Bye-bye. On the phone one day. One o'clock in the morning, I grab my trousers, put them over my pyjamas, jump into my car, drive down to the beach, and there's a lot of beach. And I walked the beach, and I found him. He'd, in fact, overdosed on speed. It wasn't a killer, really. So we got him vomited up, and he was just trying to get attention, just trying to cry for help. And I walked him, and I tell you, it was pretty safe. Brought him back home. He had a horrendous home life, that young man. And then, six o'clock in the morning, I crawled into bed. Back up to go to school. Went to school. Came home from school, and had my supper. And then Anne said to me, she said, Are you going to bed early tonight? I said, What for? She said, You were up all last night. I never felt tired at all. Whereas, normally, if I'd been marking physics or maths papers till ten o'clock, I'd have been exhausted, brother. My constitution is not a strong constitution, so I need my sleep. Didn't sleep all that night. Did not feel at all tired. Why? Because the burden was light. Another time, a young pastor called me, and his fiancée had just broken her engagement off. And this was again, one o'clock in the morning. And he was very distraught, and she demanded he drove her back to Cardiff, which is 20 miles away. And would I go with them? So I sat in the car, in the front seat, the three-seater, between these two lovers, former lovers. And trying to bring ease to the tension. And then when we dropped her off at the university in Cardiff, I walked again with him. Till early hours of the morning. Well, it was already early hours of the morning, till six o'clock, got back into bed. I don't know if I even got to bed that night. Same thing that evening. I wasn't at all tired. And it's a wonderful experience. And I've had that experience many, many times. But those days of the revival among the youth in Wales. Many times since then where I've been in ministry, I've normally and naturally I should have been tired. But God gives you that spiritual adrenaline. Which is called the mountain. It's part of the mountain. Precious times. Yeah, I still look back to those times in Wales with longing. But it's all part of my the burning fire within me for revival. I've tasted, Greg. And when you've tasted revival, nothing else satisfies. When you've seen the burning bush, nothing else satisfies. I mean, Moses, he saw the burning bush. What was he? He cried out. God, I've seen the miracles. I've seen the burning bush. I've seen the miracle of the rod touching the waters. The parting. I've seen the miracles. The plates. I've seen all these things that you can do. I've met you face to face. I've heard you talk to me. But oh God, please show me your glory. He wasn't satisfied. And my heart cried. Even as I'm telling the story I'm burning right now. Crying, oh God, show us your glory. You're in Victoria. I've tasted. I've tasted and I know that nothing else touches. I've been in churches. I've been blessed by wonderful preachers. I've been blessed at times with some lovely worship times where I've been brought in the presence of God. But I've drunk of a deep well and I long for others to see that well. And God to be glorified. And God to be honored. As we saw in Bridgend. We had people everywhere singing on the buses. We had people talking about God in all the schools. The Christian unions in the schools are dynamically impacted because God was there. And I long to see that. I long to see that. Oh God. Brother, can you share more about Revival and maybe your thoughts about Duncan Campbell and some of these other men that are used by God in Revival. And just your personal readings in Revival. Maybe some resources and things that have impacted you. Well first of all I need to define Revival in my way. You need to understand Greg that there are many many kinds of Revivals. I mean looking back on history there has been a time when there's been a great Revival of the Word of God. There's been a time when there's been a great Revival of impacts in the social world where the churches become dynamically alive again because someone's vision or through some instrument that God has taken. There have been many different kinds of Revival. But from my experiences therefore I have a particular way of looking at Revival. And if you ask me for a definition of Revival I would say yes the manifest presence of God. When God breaks into a circumstance or situation. Now I long for Revival. Why do I long for Revival? Because I need Revival Greg. I need constantly to for God's touch in my life to deal with those struggling areas in my life to deal... I'm a human being still. And I need God. I need daily. I said earlier about the baptism of Spirit but I need daily to keep on being filled. Daily Revival. That's why I have my devotions. That's why I read Spurgeon and Tozer and Simpson every day because those are men who experienced Revival. Those are men who knew what it was to walk in the Spirit of God. And when I read their writings daily it stokes the fire. But then my church needs Revival. I'm by nature a melancholic animal. One of the positives of being melancholic is they can be very discerning but they see things in black and white. That's the problem. That's one of their problems. They can be very critical and judgmental. And I know that I go to serve churches and sometimes it's very hard for me to be graceful when I listen to the pathetic tripe that's been preached in the pulpit by men I love. And then I go to the worship and I say Christian karaoke so often. Not always pleasing but it's done. And I will not get into the offensive situation where I will hold offense about these things and by my offense be a hindrance to the work of God. You know it's amazing how many of us spiritual men and women we get so offended by the lack of spirituality around us but our offense becomes a barrier to God then. I refuse to be offended by this but my heart aches so often. My church needs revival. I don't mean my I mean their church needs revival. Thirdly my nation needs revival. I pray regularly for Vancouver for Victoria for Canada my nation. I pray regularly for Wales for Cardigan the town in Wales that I was in last year and for Jen my hometown that God will make His manifest presence there again. But fourthly I pray for revival because He is worthy of revival. My Savior died on the cross for all mankind. He died on the cross to cover the sins of all mankind. He purchased salvation for all mankind and the vast majority of them do not acknowledge Him for it. They do not worship Him for it. They do not praise Him for it. They are totally opposed to Him. And I long for revival so that my neighbors my city will have people who can become alive to the reality that Jesus loves them and died for them and they will begin to worship Him for that is His worth that is His deal. He is worthy of that. He is worthy of revival. That's why I long for revival. My experience in the revival well let me start by saying this that I married a girl who was from Lougher, Wales. Many of my listeners may not know Lougher but Lougher is known around the world as the place of Evan Roberts in the Welsh revival of 1904. My mother-in-law was a child of two in the very church that Evan Roberts was in. So as a young Christian caught in this girl and I married this girl of course I grew up with the stories of the Welsh revival. You can't hear the stories without the stoke and the fire. And my pastor was born my pastor in my first church in Wales he came from the areas of Wales that had been touched and his background his family so he was preaching the revival when Lewis who became later one of the leading pastors in Wales so I was I was spoon-fed revival as a young Christian and it lit a fire in me. Then of course that was in 1957 I came to the Lord well shortly afterwards you had the wonderful outpouring of the spirit in the Hebrides so everybody in Wales was talking about the Hebrides I heard the stories about Duncan Campbell and he came down to Wales and told the stories how God poured out the spirit and those islands there in the Hebrides in amazing amazing ways. So I've never believed in a church that can can go on its own way and have all the blessings of God but I've always believed there have got to be those times of anointing where God breaks in. Last year Anne and I had the wonderful joy of going back to Cardigan this little town in West Wales we attended a Baptist church what a joy the pastor there has a heart like mine he and I are soul brothers I just love Steve Evans in Wales more relationship but the same name he's a passion for revival he preached while I was there on the Valley of Dry Bones what a message on revival I'm just so thrilled to be there but one of the joys was that Steve took me around some of the sites of not only the 1904 revival which I knew about Blaenannach which is close by Cardigan where Evan received his own baptism of the spirit Evan Roberts but he cried out bend me bend me bend me in Blaenannach just outside of Cardigan but he took me to the sites of the 1859 revival and the 1849 and the 1839 and the 1750 and all the many places that were impacted by God in remarkable ways you know my country has been maybe among the most blessed countries in all the world in the visitations of God I'm convinced you know that the Lord Jesus when I get to heaven speaks Welsh he's been to Wales so many times he must speak Welsh but it really was quite an eye-opener to see those wonderful wonderful visitors in my country Wales and yet between those revival times the country just drifts into the common religion of secular humanism which is the religion of Canada my country here where man has put himself on the throne instead of God and I'm longing for God to reign again on the thrones of men's hearts come again Kerith would you share with us a few of the stories of the Welsh movement of the Welsh revival oh my that I can remember that others were better at me than telling it but for example you will know the story that the judges were issued with white gloves because there were no cases to try there were no criminals being arrested you're aware that the police because they had no cases to try they would form quartets male voice quartets to sing in the churches the pit police people know about this one because this is so stopped working because their drivers were no longer swearing at them they didn't understand the new reformed language all the miners went down the pits an hour early in order to appraise and worship time before they started work all of them they'd come back home and they'd march along the streets singing hymns as they were walking along the streets with their faces black before they got home it was normal you know and just so many things I get people talking about going to the meetings you couldn't get into the meetings souls being saved out on the streets just suddenly kneeling in the streets crying out to God for salvation I remember reading F.B. Mayer told a story I have no idea where I found this maybe even on your own webpage I read this and he heard about this wonderful movement that was happening in Wales this young man 23 years of age and his close friend Sid Evans 26 years of age and as they began the meetings they had 4 young women 16, 18 years of age singing and ministering in the meetings and F.B. Mayer told a story about this in London even in London they were publishing the number of converts throughout Wales that were being converted and he took the train down to Wales as a godly man with the intention of supporting these young people and mentoring them helping them and as I recall the story he got off the train to Swansea took the train to Lougha which is about 6 miles away and as the train came into Lougha he got out of the station and he felt the presence of God even in the streets and he walked to the hallway where he heard that Evan Roberts was speaking and he managed to get into the room sitting in the back seat and he says this I sank lower and lower in my chair forever daring to think that I could do a better job than the Holy Spirit was doing in mentoring these young people. Greg there's a warning there for you it is so easy to be caught up in a ministry that we become too busy for the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit is allowed His way in your life that God will lead and Evan at that time was earnestly passionately crying for the Holy Spirit to take control we read none of his sermons very little of his sermons nothing much but God the Holy Spirit was in control and F.B. Mayo was sensitive enough to see that and wise enough not to hinder it I said to you that I believe there's God's anointing on you at this time but upon you as a person and I challenge you brother you make sure that you keep close to the cross and the Holy Spirit because one of the evidences of anointing upon your life you're not an ordained minister you're not a pastor of a church but you have a remarkable ministry and one of the evidences of anointing is a godly man going to come and undergird you and that's happening but be very careful because though we are godly men we seek to be godly men it is so easy to then start manipulating controlling directing and soon you become subject to the directions of good men let me emphasize that good men you become subject to their directions instead of subject to the Holy Spirit it is so easy to do and I keep God upon myself because you give me access into your life I keep God upon myself because I will not direct I will advise I will guide but no way I fear I fear ever hindering the Holy Spirit what he wants to do in your life and Evan maybe there are people who directed him I don't know I don't know what the cause or the end of that revival was and many many people have written books about it and speculated about it I don't know I do know that God often uses a man for a season and then moves aside but God did a wonderful wonderful work in my country in 1905 and there is a hunger there right now and a growing anticipation right now in Wales there is a growing eagerness and anticipation which is palpable you can feel it when you go there that there is a whole undercurrent of prayer and passion and in fact when I went to church in Cardigan a year ago now I don't think I have had the imminence of revival so much as I sensed it there that God is about to do something in my land of Wales and I'm excited and I long to see him do a work here in Canada too Would you share with us Gareth some relationships you've had over the years come to mind right now Keith Price and maybe the woman that was in Hong Kong for missions and a few of those people just shortly just a few of the stories Would you mention Keith Price for those who do not know Keith is with the Lord now Keith was an itinerant Bible expositor who lived here in Victoria who was with the brethren in churches but he ministered way, way outside that group all over the world he was a highly regarded man he was on the Luzon committee Billy Graham committee in Luzon but a Bible expositor a very genuinely humble man and he and I had the privilege of being a close friend of Keith's with a couple of other brethren men also in the city and the four of us are experts and there was a fraternity the four of us are very, very close fellowship still do with the other three now we talk about Keith with great honour when he died they had a memorial service for him there were 800 people I think it was the biggest since I've ever been in the city and also in Montreal and also in Vancouver they had three memorial services for him he was held in such high esteem the Bible exposed him he I can tell you lots of stories about Keith he's written a book he was mentored by Toza he was in Toronto when Toza was passing in Toronto as a young man Keith was there and every Wednesday he'd pick him up in his car and take him out for three or four hours and Toza would speak into his life and a lot of what Keith shared with me came from Toza which is very very precious and he wrote a book later called Thirsten After God I've got mine shelf up there which was published by Christian Publications but the mandate to write it was to speak of his time with Toza but he felt in writing it that Toza impacted all this material which he now teaches and he felt it would be far more appropriate to teach what Toza had said into him and how God had taught him Thirsten After God very lovely book devotional book Keith is out one day with me and we're driving up Ireland he's taken he and his wife had taken my wife and I for dinner of Ireland at a lovely place at Shaunigan Lake as we're driving up the Malahat Mountain Keith turns to me and he says tell me Gal you're Pentecostal aren't you I said no I'm not Pentecostal and he said well you're charismatic no I understand it's a close friend and yeah I'm charismatic why and I'm grinning a bit at him has he been baptised in the spirit I said yes he said have I he said he said have I that's right I said you're going to tell me a story aren't you he said yeah I'll invite you to speak in Minneapolis oh go back sorry he said I was in charge of the pavilion Sermons from Science at the Montreal Expo back in 1950s 60s whatever and he said during the time of the Expo tens of thousands of believers came through the tent and it was my privilege to host them there but I became aware of all these people coming through that they were lovely people most of them because I'd never met before but there was lovely people but there was some people that were radiated what I can only call love I thought it was love it was a difference some people came through and it was a difference a marked difference so I began to search after God for this love I want to be like them I wanted my life to radiate a little while later he said I was invited to Minneapolis as a speaker at some meetings there but the one night and in going to Minneapolis I have the sense that this is to be my time of appointment to meet God for this love one of the evenings another speaker is speaking and he's speaking about the love of God being shared abroad and I felt God's presence come there in the pew where I'm sitting and he writes in his book and he says these were pre-hugging days but it was as though Jesus held his hand up to me but these were pre-hugging days it could have been almost as though he was hugging me in the seat I left the building to go back to my motel room and I just wanted to walk with God and as I walk I said Lord if this is of you I want to wake in the morning with the same sense of your closeness but if this is simply my Welsh temperament let it die and win I slept like a baby that night and I woke in the morning I found my whole being I was shaving at the minute I found my whole being was singing my spirit was one of my mind one of my spirit was singing within me I knew that day was a very special day so was I baptised was good I said let me ask you a question Keith I said did it change your ministry in any way oh yes he said he said noticeably he said I found it so much easier to spend time in the word after that and the word seemed to speak much more to me and that's when my ministry was basically birthed in a sense from that though I had ministry a lot before he said many many times in my life he said I look back at that mountain top in Minneapolis where I met God I said absolutely brother as you were baptised as a spirit so as I'm concerned you never spoke in tongues but I believe in you as filled with the spirit because the purpose of the filled with the spirit is to give us power to be witnesses power to minister in what God wants us to do power to be fully operative in the giftings he's given us in the ministry he's given us and what saddens me so much is that I see so many men in our pulpits who lack the power of a divine inspiration through their preaching and desperately need the fullness the filling of the Holy Spirit and Keith was one of those just a delightful brother