Sermonindex.net

We returned home to Canada at the end of June 2007, unaware of the new doors God was about to open for me. This story would begin in 2004 when I had met with a dozen or so pastors from Washington and Oregon, who had come to Victoria for two days, to fellowship and pray with the local pastors. I was ashamed as much as they were probably dismayed with the few local men who came to meet them.

However, we spent quality time together, but the highlight for me was at the end of the second day, as they gathered to pray for us. Their leader was Rev John Roddam, rector of St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Seattle and it was he who, during this prayer time, knelt before me and asked me to place my hands in his. “God has given you many sons and daughters” he said, adding “and He is about to use you in releasing them into His anointing!” I was thrilled and amazed, as I do indeed have many whom I call ‘my sons and daughters’ and for whom I pray most days.

There is no way that John could have known this, so I was eager to take this as ‘a word from the Lord.’ I remembered well what Floyd McClung had taught us about receiving ‘a word from the Lord’ when he once visited the Anastasis. “It is not given to you for direction, but to support your faith when you see it come to pass.

Put the word in the bottom drawer and lock the drawer until the time that God reveals its fulfilment to you.” I now knew what I should do with my ‘word from the Lord.’ I told no-one about it but prayed regularly that, if this was indeed from the Lord, He would prepare me, as I sought to be available, to bring this about. I believe God was about to bring this into fruition.

I had been ‘turned-on’ to a webpage by the passion of four young men with whom I had been privileged to pray each week for several weeks during my prolonged sickness. I had found www.sermonindex.net to be full of wonderful sermons, especially those that thrilled my heart on the subject of ‘revival.’ I had heard and read about the wonderful dealings of God with the people of Wales, my homeland, in the great revival of 1904/5 and I longed to experience the same.

I had had my personal revival in my lodgings at Swansea University when God had graciously baptized me with His Spirit; had had the joy of being called ‘a child of the revival’ when preaching in the valleys of Wales; had always hungered after ‘the deeper things of God’, but now I could saturate myself on hearing sermons from leading men, with a like passion to mine, for God to break in upon His church, revive it and bring glory once again to Himself.

Each week, I would spend time on that webpage until one day while pastoring at Departure Bay Baptist Church, I found myself being ‘lost in the woods’ as there was getting to be too much material on the web for me to easily find the speakers and topics that I wished to hear.

I decided to write an email to the web page, asking if it would be possible to index the speakers and messages, so that if one had a passion for the deeper life and revival, he did not have to search through a lot of sermons with interesting titles but differing content, before he would find one to his liking. Without being disrespectful and naming names, I really am not interested in listening to men who tell me that the day of miracles is past, or that we receive all there is at conversion with no such thing as a ‘second blessing’ where the Spirit of God comes on a man to empower him, as at Pentecost. Nor am I interested in a message with a denominational bias or a KJV only viewpoint. Many of these are godly men, deserving to be on sermonindex, but I am not particularly interested in some of their messages.

Of course, a web page may have its home anywhere in the world so you can imagine my surprise when, just a week later I received a reply from Kelowna, just a day’s drive from my home in British Columbia, saying that the originator of the web page, Greg Gordon was moving to Victoria at the end of the month and asking if I would mentor him! What a privilege! I readily agreed. So it was that a few days later I answered the doorbell to meet this giant of a man and welcomed him into my life and home.

Greg was less than thirty years old but God had given him a passion for holiness and revival since his conversion just ten years earlier. What a privilege it was to fellowship daily over our Bibles, cups of tea and Welsh cakes.

In July of 2007, Greg had written on his web page that he longed to see a conference on revival that would be different to all the others. There would be no big music groups to lead worship, no books or music for sale, no charge for admissions and offerings. The speakers would come at their own expense with no promise of remuneration. It was to be ‘a solemn assembly’ of speakers and attendees with one passion – to seek the Lord for revival, both personal and national.

A small church in Canton, Ohio wrote saying they would be willing to host such a conference and would do all the advertising and arrangements. Greg agreed and started to contact men to speak, knowing them only through listening to them on his own web page. To my amazement – maybe not to his – everyone whom he approached to be a speaker, agreed to come on these terms! These were men of great honour in their own right and here they were, agreeing to come to a conference arranged by an unknown young man with few references.

Unknown maybe to men but well known to God! This surely was the first sign of God’s anointing. Thus, the conference was arranged, with speakers from UK, South Africa, USA, and Canada and attendees from as far afield as Australia and Europe.

As applications came in, the small host church realized it was getting too big for them, so they approached the largest church in town under the leadership of Pastor ‘Dave’, an elder of high standing in that area. He went on-line to examine sermonindex for himself and then proclaimed, “This is of God – we will host it.” Thus, it was that we were given the wonderful facilities of his church, with full cooperation from all his staff, for the three days of the conference. What a blessing they were to us! There were television cameras to broadcast the meetings live over the web so that Anne could watch all the proceedings at home in Canada.

Anne had suggested I attend to support Greg but, when we arrived with so little planning for the meetings, it fell on Don Courville and myself to become the moderators, by default. We have become so blessed as we have seen these conferences grow, and how God has led Greg in favour with Himself and with godly men all over the world. I have been so privileged to sit in the company of men who have experienced the sovereign move of God in revival and to listen to them share of those times. It is a sure thing that once a man has experienced revival, he is never the same again! One can listen to all the speakers from this and later conferences on Greg’s webpage www.sermonindex.net.