Revival Conference 2007 - Gareth Evans - Part 1

A couple of years ago, I was walking out to the pastor friend of mine, the leader of the ministerium in the city of Victoria, where I live, in Canada. He's a delightful brother, I delight in him, he's a fine, godly man. He made this comment to me, he said, Garth, I love being with you because you've got a fire in your belly. He meant that as a compliment, but immediately through my mind went a question, why doesn't everyone else? I want to tell you a little bit of my testimony, I want to walk you through my testimony of what God has done in my past a little bit, and then to tell you the passion of my heart now. I was born in the country of Wales, you can probably tell that by my accent. Everywhere I go, people comment about my accent. I tell them I haven't got an accent. Everybody in Wales speaks like this. The problem is, with Welsh people, when we get excited, we tend to talk very, very quickly. And if I talk very, very quickly, you're going to have to listen very quickly. The trouble is, when I talk about the Lord and about the good things he's done in my life, I tend to get excited. And so if I get too quick, you're going to have to listen quickly, okay? I like being with you, Garth, he said, because you've got a fire in your belly. I came to the Lord when I was 17 from a non-Christian background. My pastor in Wales was a young man who had been birthed in the stories of the Welsh Revival. He had a desire in me to know something of that experience in my own life. In my very early days, I was taught the stories of the Hebrides revival in Scotland. And I hungered to hear more of these stories. I loved to hear these stories. This is what I was birthed on as a Christian. That pastor lit in me a fire, a desire for more of God. I wanted to see those things happen again. I never questioned the God who moved in Wales in 1904, the God who moved in the Hebrides, the Isle of Lewis in the 50s, was the God who could move in my life and in my circumstance and in the cities where I was dwelling and in the countries where I go. I believe that. I'm still convinced of that. I believe God wants to bring revival to this nation, Jamaican nation of Canada. I believe He's able to do that. I hungered for God. When I went to university, I went to study physics. I became a physics teacher and I taught physics in secondary schools in Wales. In fact, I emigrated to Canada in 1975 as a physics teacher. But all that time, the passion in me was growing for the things of God. I remember when I was in university. I remember that day so well when I met in the living room of the house where I was in digs. It was midday. It was May the 4th, 1961, five years after my conversion. I was pleading with God. I needed to know Him more. And God visited me in a wonderful, wonderful feeling of His Spirit, the baptism of His Spirit. Whatever terms you want to use, God came into that room and He lit that fire and sanded it into a blaze. The praise of God has never gone out. There have been days when it has been the dampening of the embers. But that is why I spend time in the morning. And I encourage you to be people of morning devotions. And my prayer in my morning devotions often centers around the Holy Spirit. Fan the flame. Fan the flame. I remember going to preach in a church in Wales back in the 70s. I was leading a youth work in Wales at that time that God was blessing. It was growing very rapidly. I was a layman, a physics teacher. I went to preach in a little chapel in Wales or a big chapel in Wales. There was lots and lots of opportunities for lay people to preach. I probably preached 200 times before I became an ordained pastor. And this church in which I was invited to speak had been built during the Welsh Revival to seat maybe 1,000, 1,500 people. The night I was there, there were 25 people in the congregation, scattered different places through the building. And the elevated pulpit that was there for the preacher, because in those days they didn't have PA systems, there was an elevated pulpit, all the seats surrounding two levels. Behind me was the organ that had been electrified, so I pressed the note for the first hymn. Let us sing together. I pressed the note. Ah, we sang a cappella. I had to do everything during the service. I opened in prayer, came finally to preach the word, and I finished. And I don't know if this was the church, but many of the churches, they would have little notes in the pulpit that said, Please finish by ten to seven because we have to go home to milk the cows or whatever it might be. And I finished, and I came down, and a lady came to me with seated gesture on my left-hand side with her husband. And she said the first words, Thank you, Mr. Evans. I need to apologize for my husband. She didn't realize that her husband was standing right behind her. He said, It's okay, Mary. I can apologize for myself. Mr. Evans, please forgive me if I appeared to be asleep. I was not asleep. But when you opened in prayer, I was taken back to that day in 1910 when sitting in that same pew as a 16-year-old boy, I gave my life to Christ. I remember so well when Elder Lewis prayed for me. Tell Mr. Evans I have not lived for him as I ought. And while you have been preaching this evening, I have been making myself right with God. Then he said, I do not know what it was about your preaching or your prayer that caused me to be taken back to those moments. And then he stopped. Oh, yes, I do, he said. Yes, I do. It is obvious to me that you, like he, old Elder Lewis, are a child of the revival. I wasn't born in the Welsh Revival, but I knew the reality that I can live in revival today. You can live in revival, brothers and sisters. I drove down the valley that night singing at the top of my voice that I should be considered a child of the revival. I went back to Wales a few years ago. I was doing a series of preaching in London. I had been invited by Christians of the National Westminster Bank, speaking to the chapters of the Christian believers in the bank on releasing your gifts into the secular marketplace. I had a friend from Victoria pass his wife, who was coming to Britain for the wedding of her daughter. And Karen had just booked for five days in Britain. You can't go to Britain for five days. It's too much to see. I persuaded her to extend a holiday, and I met her when she came just after the wedding. And I took her down to Wales, and I took her around the valleys, and I showed her some of the beauties of my homeland. And we ended up in the village of Lough. Probably the village that's most known around the world. It's the place where the Welsh Revival was centered. You see, I married a girl from Lough. My mother-in-law was a child of two in the church where Eben Roberts' ministry began. So Mother knew the stories. She met Eben Roberts. So from the time I met my wife, I got to know more of the stories. Secondhand yet, but by people who had been touched by the Revival. So just four or five years ago, I took my American friend, who passed his wife from Canada, to Wales, and I took her to the home of my in-laws, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Betty, of course, her mother, as I mentioned to you, was a child there at the time with Eben Roberts. Vivian, my brother-in-law, his grandfather was converted during the Revival. He was one of those men who built the local chapel. His father grew up with those stories. His father was a teenager during the Revival. And Vivian, my brother-in-law, of course, read the stories. So we sat down and we drank coffee and ate waffles as Vivian is telling Karen some of the stories of the Welsh Revival. And I said to Vivian, Vivian, what was the most striking thing about the Welsh Revival? What was the major characteristic? Was it the hymn singing? Because many wonderful hymns came out at that time. Was it the preaching? I knew the answer to that. We have no preaching record of Eben Roberts preaching. What was the most striking thing about the Welsh Revival? And my brother-in-law and sister-in-law in unison said together, Oh, Gareth, it was the awesome presence of God. Both sinner and saint came into the place. F.B. Mayer came down from London to visit this place and he says as he got off the train in Swansea, as he's coming out to the village of Dorseinen in Lacha, he said, Oh, I felt the awesome presence of God. When was the last time you sensed the awesome presence of God? When was the last time that you can remember being in a place, maybe walking a beach, maybe in your private closet, maybe even in a meeting, when you sensed the awesome presence? I'm not talking about feeling goosebumps because you enjoyed the singing. I'm not talking about getting emotionally wound up because of the Christian karaoke that has just been up on the platform. I'm talking about the awesome presence of God.