This sermon reflects on a journey of faith spanning 70 years, highlighting the transformative power of encountering God and the zeal for spiritual fervor that can inspire others. It emphasizes the impact of personal encounters with God, the joy found in serving the Lord wholeheartedly, and the longing for true revival marked by a deep hunger for God's glory and presence.

I got saved at 14, I'm 84, almost 85. So I've been 70 years, I've seen all kinds of tragedies in the church, wars and rumors of wars, popular men going popular and so forth, but keep looking up to Jesus and reading the word and remembering these old parables that my daddy used to talk about sometimes and all the other looks like trivia. I've often said that I didn't come to Jesus as as an old English hymn that we used to sing so often. I came to Jesus, I was weary and worn and sad. I didn't because I was 14 and I didn't understand my father's zeal for God. I didn't come because I was convicted of sin, I came because of the blanks in my life, like he relished reading the word of God and he relished going to prayer meetings, even half nights of prayer and also more than ever he relished being a street corner preacher and that... Do you remember the hymn, My faith looks up to thee, thou lament'st cowardly? Well the last stanza says, May thy rich grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire and my daddy had inspired zeal. God lifted the beggar from the dunghill, he completely changed my daddy, he'd been to a certain system of religion which made him fearful and terrified of priest crap and all that and he got marvelously born again as a result of hearing David Matthews who went through the Welsh Revival, then he wrote the classic, it's still a classic on I saw the Welsh Revival. My daddy had never been in meetings like that and the fervor and the joy, particularly I remember seeing David Matthews when I was five years of age, I'd never seen anybody preach like he sang like his mouth like an oval and he had a shock of black wavy hair and he had a zeal and he had a joy in the Lord that stirred and my daddy got saved. Well as a result of that as I say he became fervent in spirit serving the Lord. I never saw him downcast, I never saw him suggesting about giving up but I mean when he got saved he tossed away his interest in professional football and everything else which of course became a style in England. After you're saved you never go to a movie, you never go to a professional match, there's so much profanity and so forth and when I saw that and I saw the joy and we lived in comparative poverty, we had much money, my daddy was a laborer and as a result of that as I say at 14 he took me to a half night of prayer, there were three other men there and they prayed and my dad is a big husky man taking his coat off at one o'clock in the morning in a room that had no heat and praying with tears and fervor from that very day. I recognized there's something far beyond what the average Christian had and then after that of course I went to the Methodist class meeting till I was 14 and I was full of the joy alone and I mean people spoke as though God lived with them all the time and he did and there was that same kind of zeal there. I mean even in those days back in the 19 well that'd be around 1912 just before world war one even there was a half hour song singing before the Sunday night service but they didn't sing choruses except choruses from hymns or they sang great hymns like and can it be and so forth and you had men who would explode in a meeting when he was singing and can it be that I said my chains fell off when old boy would jump at the tears all down his face he'd strike it up at the end there's a woman to the left of us I used to watch her because her neck would go red and then she suddenly burst with a hallelujah you know we talk about the joy of the Lord I've never seen anything like it. Well at that time Samuel Tugwick was preaching in the he had revival on the local level in Leeds and of course the conversation in our house we had they ever had a newspaper there's no talk about films of course we were just coming out then it was all about God and mysteries and so forth. Daddy took me to see Patrick Wilkes who founded the Japan rescue mission. I was about 12 I think I heard C.T. study the lecture one morning and later saw Miss Cable and Miss Francesca French that walked through China in the Gobi desert and all that kind of my daddy wherever there was a anything fervent I'll tell you at that time Doncaster was 25 miles away from us well there's a Pentecostal fellowship there and I forget the name of the Bible teacher but my daddy might have get on a bus to town another bus from town to Doncaster and then walk the rest of the way to the fellowship and stay there a weekend and come back radiant as though he'd been in the upper room which he just about had because um Smith Wigglesworth was one of the teachers there and all those guys and nobody in those days scornfully said that fake healing is fake healing I mean there were living evidences of people spontaneously getting out of wheelchairs and so but it wasn't that merely it was a transformation in personality I mean they went back to the churches and had prayer meetings and in our town we have a little man he's only I don't think he weighed about about 110 pounds and for years he fasted and prayed he was a Pentecostal which was despised in fact his wife said to hear him pray he'd be praying in another room it was like you know a man having a personal encounter with God he'd wrestle with God well then George Jeffress came along in 1927 the whole city was swept in three weeks with the Holy Ghost and the church in Israel today it's called Bridge Street in Leeds England that church is still it's in its third enlargement when other churches are going down they still have that saying they were born in the fire they maintain the fire but they maintain prayer all the time well then from there I was in a factory working in a factory one day and I heard a voice say follow me and I turned it was so real I took my tape off my neck I was a tailor's cutter put my shoes down and prayed I remember saying clearly to the Lord Lord not only will I not go back I won't even look back and that day I applied to go to Cliff College and then went Chadwick was the principal there well Chadwick Birds both had a flock together so the great character in America at that time was A.B. Simpson founder of Christian Mission Alliance and also in Scotland there was a man by the name of MacIntyre I don't know his little book Hidden Life of Prayer two of the classics it's still published better he just republished well those three men you of course across the Atlantic there was no telephone in those days and mail was slow but they corresponded all the time because they're all on one level well Chadwick went out and right opposite his church in the middle of Leeds there's an oversized statue of Queen Victoria with a big spread in front of it and men used to stand there and preach well an atheist stood there and he laughed at people coming after church and scolded them and told you a man standing in a coward's castle a pulpit he talks one way you can't answer listen to me and they listen well Chadwick went out and listened to this man scolding the bible and everything and one day he said listen I've listened to you three weeks you didn't come and listen to me you come and listen to me so I come next so he came and there's a big horseshoe gallery and right opposite the preacher was the clock and this man the leader sat behind the clock and the other 10 men sat with him and they came to the altar the first night they were there and he wiped out the whole testimony of the atheists then he wiped out all the devilry in the community at level on a on a on a local revival on the locals level and it was all prayer I mean he wrote that he wrote the book the way to Pentecost and after that he wrote the book the path of prayer and that's where he lived and that's why it rubbed on us on so many of us that we we saw a living example of a man who walked in the power of the spirit well then I could go on for long enough that I won't uh all the time I've tried to feed myself and I've gathered books out a rack of books on prayer and a whole stack of books on historic revival which we don't have anymore America hasn't had a revival in the last 70 years that I know I mean revival that closes their shops and as soon as people get home they want to get to the sanctuary and and they don't stay till seven o'clock till eight they still ate till midnight laughter when the holy ghost really comes I think very often we're praying in ignorance around the holy spirit to come but what do we want him to come for just to increase our numbers just so our kids won't go to the devil I mean are we jealous for God's glory and to me that's what revival is all about revival is an invasion of God by the spirit misery America doesn't have over the next 10 years it's going to be horrible living in this country crime is out of hand now