Introduction

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. PSALM 37:23–24

Most of the teachers in this series belong to earlier generations. Their books were finished long ago, their controversies have cooled, and the church has had time to decide what it thinks of them. Gareth Evans is different. He was born in the coal valleys of South Wales in 1938, he is still living as this book is written, and at an age when most men have long since stopped, he is still praying for his city, mentoring young believers and, by his own account, walking the streets of Victoria with people whom most churches would not know how to welcome. He is a physics teacher who became a pastor without a day at theological college, a ship’s chaplain off the coast of West Africa, and a travelling Bible teacher on five continents. He has written five books, all of them shared free in the Ochorus library with his permission, and a number of his sermons can be heard and read there too.

Why write a book of this kind about a living man? Because his books are read by people who will never meet him, in languages he does not speak. They deserve a short, honest guide to what he actually teaches, where it comes from in Scripture, and where a thoughtful reader might weigh it.

One thread through everything

Read his five books and his sermons side by side and a single conviction keeps surfacing. It is this: in every part of the Christian life God moves first, and the believer’s part is to take His hand and follow.

Evans applies that conviction to almost everything. Faith, he insists, is not something we manufacture by believing harder; it is God’s own work in the heart, answered by our obedience. Spiritual fruit is not produced by straining, as a tree does not groan its apples into being; it grows as we abide in Christ. Guidance is not a hidden blueprint we must anxiously uncover; it is a Father leading a child one step at a time, opening and closing doors along the way. Ministry is not a job the pastor hands out; it is a burden God lays on a heart and a gift He puts in a hand. Healing for wounded relationships does not begin with technique but with forgiveness, which God enables. And revival, which he has longed for since he was a young man in Wales, is not something the church can organise; it is the manifest presence of God, for which His people prepare by humility, repentance and hunger.

He has a short way of putting the thread, taken from counsel given him as a young student by an older believer in Swansea: walk with Jesus, neither running ahead of Him nor lagging behind. That picture of a walk, with the Lord setting the pace, is the best key to everything that follows.

How this book is arranged

After a chapter on his life, drawn from the Ochorus biography and his own Stepping Stones, the book sets out his teaching in fourteen short chapters. The first six belong together: what faith is and is not, the three kinds of faith he finds in Scripture, the walk of faith as holding the Father’s hand, the neglected jewel of hope, hearing the Shepherd’s voice, and the stepping stones by which God guides. The next four turn to the believer’s life in Christ: abiding in the vine, the riches of being in Him, the fullness of the Spirit, and the covenant people of the Upper Room. Two chapters follow on his most pastoral theme, the healing of wounded relationships through dealing with offence and through forgiveness and release. The last two carry his two great burdens for the church: that every believer should be released to fly like the eagle in the ministry God intends, and that the church should seek the presence and glory of God. A conclusion draws the threads together, and a reader’s guide points you to his own books.

Each chapter ends with application points and a prayer. That is deliberate. Evans taught physics for twenty years, and he has never lost a schoolmaster’s instinct that a lesson not practised has not been learned. He would be the first to say that nothing in these pages matters unless it sends you to your knees and then out of the door.

This is not a book by Gareth Evans but an independent summary by Ochorus. It quotes none of his words, and names his books throughout so that you can go and read him for yourself, which is the best thing to do; much of the life of his teaching lies in his stories, which a summary cannot reproduce.

Where to read with care

This is not a book of hero-worship, and Evans would not want one. He is fond of pointing out that the people listed in Hebrews 11 are not heroes at all but ordinary, flawed men and women whom God led. The same must be said of the teachers who help us.

So where a thoughtful reader might want to weigh his teaching, this book says so plainly and gently. Four matters come up more than once. First, Evans draws very sharp lines between faith, hope and belief, and he builds a good deal on the Greek and Hebrew behind particular words. His pastoral point is sound and much needed, but the vocabulary of the New Testament is not always as tidy as his distinctions, and some of his word studies are disputed. Second, he loves to find pictures of Christ and the Christian life in Old Testament stories, and sometimes he reads more into a detail than the text itself requires; these readings are best taken as illustrations rather than doctrine. Third, he holds, from his Pentecostal and Alliance background, that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a distinct experience after conversion; many faithful believers read the same passages differently. Fourth, his teaching on releasing those who have wounded us rests on a particular reading of Jesus’ words about binding, loosing and remitting sins; the heart of it, which is forgiveness, is plainly biblical, but the stories that accompany it are testimonies of God’s kindness, not promises of how every case will turn out.

None of these is a reason not to read him. The counsel of this book is the counsel of Scripture: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Where he is faithful to the Word, and on faith, obedience, abiding, forgiveness and the presence of God he is very faithful indeed, receive it gladly and act on it. Where he presses beyond what is written, set it aside and lose nothing.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before reading further, ask honestly whether you tend to run ahead of the Lord, lag behind Him, or walk with Him. Write down one recent example.

2. Decide on a pace for this book, a chapter a day or a chapter a week, and put the time in your diary now.

3. Name one area of your Christian life in which you have been trying to produce by effort what only God can give.

4. Resolve to test everything in these pages against Scripture, keeping what is true and setting aside what is not.

5. Choose one of Evans’s five books from the Reader’s Guide at the end and read its first chapter alongside the first teaching chapter here.

A PRAYER

Father, You have ordered my steps longer than I have noticed, and You have held my hand when I did not know it was held.

As I read about faith and hope, about abiding and forgiving, and about Your presence, keep me from admiring a teacher and missing his Master.

Where these pages are true to Your Word, write them on my heart. Where they are not, give me discernment to lay them down.

Keep me at Your side, Lord Jesus, neither running ahead nor falling behind, one step at a time, until the walk is done. Amen.