About the Book
"The Bridge" by Karen Kingsbury follows the story of Charlie and Donna Barton, a couple struggling in their marriage. When they decide to separate, they find themselves isolated in the same remote cabin during a snowstorm. As they confront their past and rediscover their faith, they learn to let go of their hurts and come back together stronger than ever. The novel explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the power of love.
Evan Roberts
Evan Roberts’ childhood
Evan Roberts was born and raised in a Welsh Calvinist Methodist family in Loughor, on the Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire border. As a boy he was unusually serious and very diligent in his Christian life. He memorised verses of the Bible and was a daily attender of Moriah Chapel, a church about a mile from his home.
Even at 13 years of age he began to develop a heart for a visitation from God. He later wrote “I said to myself: I will have the Spirit. And through all weathers and in spite of all difficulties I went to the meetings… for ten or eleven years I have prayed for revival. I could sit up all night to read or talk about revivals. It was the Spirit who moved me to think about revival.”
Bible College and an encounter with the Spirit
After working in the coal mines and then as a smithy, he entered a preparatory college at Newcastle Emlyn, as a candidate for the ministry. It was 1903 and he was 25 years old.
It was at this time that he sought the Lord for more of His Spirit. He believed that he would be baptised in the Holy Spirit and sometimes his bed shook as his prayers were answered. The Lord began to wake him at 1.00 am for divine fellowship, when he would pray for four hours, returning to bed at 5.00 am for another four hours sleep.
He visited a meeting where Seth Joshua was preaching and heard the evangelist pray “Lord, bend us”. The Holy Spirit said to Evan, “That’s what you need”. At the following meeting Evan experienced a powerful filling with the Holy Spirit. “I felt a living power pervading my bosom. It took my breath away and my legs trembled exceedingly. This living power became stronger and stronger as each one prayed, until I felt it would tear me apart.
My whole bosom was a turmoil and if I had not prayed it would have burst…. I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me. My face was bathed in perspiration, and the tears flowed in streams. I cried out “Bend me, bend me!!” It was God’s commending love which bent me… what a wave of peace flooded my bosom…. I was filled with compassion for those who must bend at the judgement, and I wept.
Following that, the salvation of the human soul was solemnly impressed on me. I felt ablaze with the desire to go through the length and breadth of Wales to tell of the Saviour”.
Two visions
Needless to say, his studies began to take second place! He began praying for a hundred thousand souls and had two visions which encouraged him to believe it would happen. He saw a lighted candle and behind it the rising sun. He felt the interpretation was that the present blessings were only as a lighted candle compared with the blazing glory of the sun. Later all Wales would be flooded with revival glory.
The other vision occurred when Evan saw his close friend Sydney Evans staring at the moon. Evan asked what he was looking at and, to his great surprise, he saw it too! It was an arm that seemed to be outstretched from the moon down to Wales. He was in no doubt that revival was on its way. If you are in the market for clothes, https://www.fakewatch.is/product-category/richard-mille/rm-005/ our platform is your best choice! The largest shopping mall!
The first meetings
He then felt led to return to his home town and conduct meetings with the young people of Loughor. With permission from the minister, he began the meetings, encouraging prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit on Moriah. The meetings slowly increased in numbers and powerful waves of intercession swept over those gathered.
During those meetings the Holy Spirit gave Evan four requirements that were later to be used throughout the coming revival:
1. Confession of all known sin
2. Repentance and restitution
3. Obedience and surrender to the Holy Spirit
4. Public confession of Christ
The Spirit began to be outpoured. There was weeping, shouting, crying out, joy and brokeness. Some would shout out, “No more, Lord Jesus, or I’ll die”. This was the beginning of the Welsh Revival.
Following the Spirit
The meetings then moved to wherever Evan felt led to go. Those travelling with him were predominately female and the young girls would often begin meetings with intense intercession, urging surrender to God and by giving testimony. Evan would often be seen on his knees pleading for God’s mercy, with tears.
The crowds would come and be moved upon by wave after wave of the Spirit’s presence. Spontaneous prayer, confession, testimony and song erupted in all the meetings. Evan, or his helpers , would approach those in spiritual distress and urge them to surrender to Christ. No musical instruments were played and, often, there would be no preaching. Yet the crowds continued to come and thousands professed conversion.
The meetings often went on until the early hours of the morning. Evan and his team would go home, sleep for 2–3 hours and be back at the pit-head by 5 am, urging the miners coming off night duty to come to chapel meetings.
Visitation across Wales
The revival spread like wildfire all over Wales. Other leaders also experienced the presence of God. Hundreds of overseas visitors flocked to Wales to witness the revival and many took revival fire back to their own land. But the intense presence began to take its toll on Evan. He became nervous and would sometimes be abrupt or rude to people in public meetings. He openly rebuked leaders and congregations alike.
Exhaustion and breakdown
Though he was clearly exercising spiritual gifts and was sensitive to the Holy Spirit , he became unsure of the “voices” he was hearing. The he broke down and withdrew from public meetings. Accusation and criticism followed and further physical and emotional breakdown ensued.
Understandably, converts were confused. Was this God? Was Evan Roberts God’s man or was he satanically motivated? He fell into a deep depression and in the spring of 1906 he was invited to convalesce at Jessie Penn-Lewis’ home at Woodlands in Leicester.
It is claimed that Mrs Penn Lewis used Evan’s name to propagate her own ministry and message. She supposedly convinced him he was deceived by evil spirits and, over the next few years co-authorised with Evan “War on the Saints”, which was published in 1913. This book clearly delineates the confusion she had drawn Evan into.
It left its readers totally wary of any spiritual phenomena of any kind or degree. Rather than giving clear guidelines regarding discerning satanic powers, it brought into question anything that may be considered, or that might be described, as Holy Spirit activity. Within a year of its publication, Evan Roberts denounced it, telling friends that it had been a failed weapon which had confused and divided the Lord’s people.
Evan Roberts the intercessor
Evan stayed at the Penn-Lewis’ home for eight years, giving himself to intercession and private group counselling. Around 1920 Evan moved to Brighton and lived alone until he returned to his beloved Wales, when his father fell ill in 1926. He began to visit Wales again and eventually moved there in 1928 when his father died.
Nothing much is known of the years that followed. Evan finally died at the age of 72 and was buried behind Moriah Chapel on Jan 29th 1951.
May his life be both an example and a warning to all those who participate in revival to maintain humility; keep submissive to the Spirit; be accountable to godly men and women; remain true to their calling; use the gifts God has given, but be wise in the stewardship of their body.
Bibliography An Instrument of Revival, Brynmor Pierce-Jones 1995, published by Bridge Publishing (ISBN 0-88270-667-5).
Tony Cauchi
How to Start a Conversation About Jesus
A friend of mine likes to say, “The best gospel presentation is the one given.” That’s true. And convicting. Many good books, sermons, and seminars can help us prepare to share our faith. But none of these resources can do for us what we often find the hardest thing to do: just start the conversation. We often feel helpless when it comes to our friends and their eternities. We justify the self-centeredness that ignores our neighbors. We subtly, maybe even subconsciously, question the truths that would loose our tongues and break other peoples’ chains — all in favor of maintaining a more comfortable silence. If we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we’re content to avoid our fears, accept our obstacles, and nurture our self-centeredness. So, we tell ourselves that someone else will share the gospel; or that the potential awkwardness, rejection, or persecution are not worth it; or that God is not likely to save those people anyway. God help us. “When we focus on what’s really real, then evangelism becomes utterly exciting.” Thankfully, he does help us! We need God’s help to lift our eyes and see we are surrounded by dead people who desperately need us to preach the gospel and live out the life of Christ in their midst. When we focus on what’s really real — the facts that God exists, his wrath against sin is coming, his gospel is the only way to eternal joy, souls are precious and perishing, and the lost sheep will hear their Shepherd’s voice — then evangelism becomes utterly exciting. Your Forever Neighbor Evangelism will not happen forever. It is a means to one great end. Human beings — every single one of us in history — are created in God’s image for eternal purposes and one immense goal: to bring glory to God. When we read C.S. Lewis’s words about the eternal significance and destiny of our neighbors, we get a sense of the weightiness and joy that come from sharing the gospel: It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. (The Weight of Glory, 45–46) History, and everyone in it, is going somewhere. That means that, while no two conversations, no two train rides, no two lunch breaks, and no two walks at the park are the same, they are all filled with infinite potential. And time is literally running out. Like the wind, we do not know where the Spirit might blow on our ordinary days (John 3:8) — and that is exciting. Vertically-challenged Zacchaeus climbed a tree because he felt he needed to see Jesus for some reason (Luke 19:1–8); the Ethiopian eunuch was “randomly” pondering Isaiah 53 during his commute (Acts 8:26–40); Sergius Paulus, a highly educated official, asked Paul to bring him God’s word (Acts 13:7–8); and a Roman jailer was set free after he begged Paul to tell him what he must do to be saved (Acts 16:25–34). How would these people call on him in whom they have not believed unless someone tells them (Romans 10:14)? Could it be that the Spirit is already at work in the lives of the people around us in ways we haven’t noticed yet? Embrace the Awkwardness If we want to take advantage of opportunities to share our faith, we have to learn to embrace the so-called awkwardness. In some cultures, it is deemed awkward to raise the issue of spiritual matters in conversation. But take heart: in whatever culture you live, God has already raised the issue. If he has raised your soul from the dead, the conversation has begun. “No two conversations are the same, but they are all filled with infinite potential.” You sit next to your coworker as the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. You stand among other travelers in the queue as a sojourner whose citizenship is in heaven. You interact with people in this age of intolerance and virtue signaling as one who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at God’s word alone. You supervise children at the park as one who has been born again to a living hope. You drink water with your hiking club as one whose heart overflows with rivers of living water. You lay on a bed in the hospital as the recipient of a spiritual heart transplant — your stony, dead heart for a living heart of flesh. Your family members watch you live out a thousand deaths to self (and eventually death itself) as a new creation in Christ. If our chief concerns are about avoiding awkwardness, it would be more awkward not to talk about eternal things. You and I never know those who have been, who are, and who will soon be wrestling with these weighty spiritual issues, waiting for someone to bring them God’s word. Believe that God is both willing and able to give you what you need in order that you might joyfully spread the word about his Son in any and every cultural scenario — however seemingly awkward it may feel at first. Everyday Examples God governs the cosmos in such a way that your everyday life shines the light of the gospel in all the strategic places and relationships in which he places you. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1), and Jesus is with you as you go and make disciples in his world (Matthew 28:18–20). A coworker of mine has a practice of sharing what she read that morning in her Bible with the people she encounters as she goes about her day. This is intentional on her part, but I also think she can’t help herself — she simply overflows. Another coworker pays for her lattes and chocolate croissants at the cafe she frequents, sits down at a table, and then, when the server brings out her order, explains that she is about to pray for her meal and asks, “What can I pray for you?” “How was your weekend?” is a question that another friend asks at work every week. And when the person returns the question, they talk about the sermon they heard at church. Another friend asks people to listen to her Scripture memory recitation for the day to help double-check her memory (and spread the word!). Talking about the word that is our very lives (Deuteronomy 32:47) is, naturally, something the Spirit leads word-dependent, word-filled people to do. The Most Effective Place to Start Perhaps you are praying that God would open for you a door for the word, so that you can “declare the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3). And you unashamedly believe the gospel is indeed God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). But you’re still not sure where to start when God puts someone in your path. “‘Hello’ is a small word, but it says to someone, ‘I see you.’” My friend led a training session about how to share the Christian faith. In one especially valuable lesson, the group has some volunteers don a traditional outfit of someone from a different cultural background. They acknowledge how it might feel intimidating to talk with people who look different, eat different foods, speak different languages, and believe different things. But beyond all of the potential hurdles, there is one thing you could say to start a conversation (and friendship) with anyone from anywhere. Across the globe, this is the most effective thing you can say in order to start a conversation: Hello. In whatever language you speak, your hello could initiate the first conversation among many that God uses to draw someone to himself. Maybe the first conversation becomes the conversation. “Hello” is a small word, but it says to someone, “I see you.” And that means something to everyone, no matter where they’re from in the world. For hello to pass over your vocal cords, it requires only a mustard seed of faith in our great God. In addition to your faithful prayers that God would open a door for his word, the gospel, also ask him to give you everything you need to greet people in his name and be a blessing to whomever he puts in your path. Article by Gloria Furman
