Revival Conference 2007 - Gareth Evans - Part 1 — Gareth Evans

A couple of years ago, I was walking out with a 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, Gareth, 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?

A Welsh Testimony and a Hunger for Revival

I want to tell you a little bit of my testament. 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 quickly, you're going to have to listen quickly, okay? I like being with you, Gareth, 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 lit 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 that a God who moved in Wales in 1904, the God who moved in the Hebrides, the Isle of Lewis in the 50s, was a 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, to my 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.

A Growing Passion for the Things of God

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 filling of his spirit, a baptism of his spirit, whatever terms you want to use. God came into that room, and he lit that fire and fanned it into a blaze that, praise God, has never gone out.

There have been days when it has been the dampening of the embers, and that is why I spend time in the morning. I encourage you to be people of morning devotions, and my prayer and my morning devotions often centers around the Holy Spirit, fan the flame, fan the flame.

A Chapel Shaped by the Welsh Revival

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.

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.

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, pressed the note hard, 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. I don't know if this was the church, but many of the churches there were a little note in the pulpit that said, please finish by 10 to 7, because we have to go home to milk the cows or whatever it might be.

Repentance and the Reality of Living in Revival

I finished, and I came down, and a lady came to me who was seated just here on my left hand side with her husband. And she said 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, and 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. 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, but 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, but 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'd 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.

Remembering Revival Through Family and Community

I had a friend from Victoria pass his wife who was coming to Britain to 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 Lougha, probably the village that's most known around the world, it's the place where the Welsh revival was centred. You see I married a girl from Lougha. My mother-in-law was a child of two in the church where Evan Roberts' ministry began.

So mother knew the stories, she met Evan Roberts. So from the time I met my wife I got to know more of the stories, second hand yet but by people who'd been touched by the revival. So just four or five years ago I took my American friend, who passed his wife from Canada, two ways 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 Evan 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, of course, learned the stories. So we sat down, we drank coffee and ate waffles as Vivian is telling Karen some of the stories of the Welsh revival.

The Awesome Presence of God

Then 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 Evan Roberts preaching. What was the most striking thing about the Welsh revival? 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 Gora Sinai 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 goose bumps 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 that caused...