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.
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.