One of the most intense revivals I’ve ever seen was the smallest. A microcosm of those I would later see, it took place on our country property in Victoria and lasted for about a year. In that brief time two members of my family and a secondary school Maths and Physics teacher in the local high school came to the Lord. Many others in the nearby town and district were changed as the Lord touched them personally and powerfully.
Both family members are still active in ministry, fifty years after that event and the teacher went on to become an excellent pastor and is now with the Lord he served.
My problem at the time was the awesome presence of the Holy Spirit in the meetings, which was too much for me to handle; so, one day I walked down to the creek on our property, which was a good place to spend some quiet time with the Lord. I wanted to tell Him how perplexed I was about the powerful things that were taking place. I had no one who knew enough to explain to me the unusual ways people were being affected when the Spirit of God came so powerfully.
“Lord, I’m in over my head,” I prayed. “I know these things are coming from you, but nothing in my experience has prepared me for them!” My father, an excellent teacher, had grounded me in the foundational truths of the New Testament but I needed to connect with someone who could explain to me why it was that people were being so affected when the power of God was present.
Soon after, we moved to Brisbane, where a few years later, I became Assistant Pastor to the one man able to teach me what I needed to know: Pastor Clark Taylor. Many things were planted in the seedbed of my spirit under his leadership.
The church, Christian Outreach Centre, had experienced a powerful revival and in the year that I was there doubled from 800 to 1600 in number. Much of the growth came from our weekly television program “A New Way of Living.” I came to understand that what was happening was a far greater version of the one I had experienced back in Victoria.
After a year, the Lord directed me to leave and to begin a church in what is now Redland City on Brisbane’s Bayside. The day before our first meeting, He dropped a mantle on my shoulders that empowered me for the new work. I adopted what I had learned in the large church and adapted it to the new church, and from the very first meeting, the Lord began to touch powerfully the lives of those who attended.
Between 1978 and 1985 I pastored and then, I began to minister overseas, twice in Borneo, twenty times in the Philippines, and then twenty or so times in the United Kingdom, plus the US, Japan, and Papua New Guinea. Our son Paul then led the church, which enabled Lorraine and I to continue ministering overseas.
I doubt that there are places where “angels fear to tread”, but I have learned that there are places where they do, and they are where the Gospel message is preached to those who’ve not heard it — at least with “signs following”.
In fact, I have learned a lot since praying to God for His help that day down by the creek! I have come to a better understanding of how the Spirit of God moves in power and the Lord Jesus is exalted; and to him be the glory, always!