David:     The older I get, the more I miss certain friends who have gone to be with the Lord. Like this past weekend, Karen, I unexpectedly saw a photo of one such individual.

Karen:     Who is that, David?

David:     Well, I’m ready to show you the photo, okay? There it is.

Karen:     Oh, David Mains.

David:     That’s me with.

Karen:     Oh, you’re in the studio. It looks like Roy Hession, was it Roy Hession?

David:     Yeah, you remember him.

Karen:     Oh, that’s great. Yes, of course. He was from England, a strong preacher, and also a highly respected writer, author.

David:     Yes.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     There are a lot of friends who have gone now. They’re with the Lord like Roy Hession, and I’m rather lonesome for these people. I would love to see them again as well as quite a few that I could name.

Karen:     I think that’s one of the good things about aging, and there are good things about aging. It makes heaven seem a lot closer than what we experienced in our younger years. I have this phrase that keeps going through my mind – “See you soon.”

David:     Yeah, see you soon Roy. Roy was an Englishman. They had that fabulous way of speaking.

Karen:     English accent.

David:     And he longed for a moving of God’s spirit in the church.

Karen:     My memory about him was how honest, open, and vulnerable he was about his own flaws.

David:     Yeah, let’s listen as Roy Hession talks with me in this old Chapel of the Air broadcast.

One of the most popular and helpful books on this subject came out way back in 1950. Only a little over a hundred pages. It was called The Calvary Road written by Roy Hession. And Roy Hession of the West Country near Plymouth in England is my guest this visit.

Roy Hession, what has been your experience with personal revival? Can you share that with us?

Roy:        It has a very fruitful year, and many have turned to the Lord, much a bit of course, in England. And then after a certain high peak. I found a decline set in and I somehow lost the power of the Holy Spirit and the liberty in proclaiming the gospel which had once known. And what I did was to try to make up for the lack of that power by my own efforts. I prayed longer. I studied harder. I preached more vehemently. But all to no avail. That lack persisted. I little new at the time that that very state of decline was making me a fit candidate for the grace of God. It was Philly who says, “revival always presupposes a declension.” Therefore, if a man can’t own up to declension, he is no candidate for revival personally.

Well, I was experiencing the declension but as yet was somewhat willing to admit it. Then it was God sent back to England some missionaries and African leaders from Uganda, Rwanda, East Africa, Kenya, and they came back expressly to share with the Christians of England what they had been learning in revival. At that particular point, this was 1950.

David:     And that was from the East African Revival that was going on.

Roy:        Yes, yes, they came back from the East African Revival. Not merely these men to have a fellow but to share with us what they had learned. And it had been going on for years. And it still goes on today which is over 50 years.

But the beginnings had begun and already a discernable movement was taking place. And these missionaries themselves were not the fathers of the revival. They were one of its many children. And very often they were brought into the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ through the testimony and challenge of the Africans. That revival to this day is far more led by the Africans than by the missionaries.

David:      Now how did this touch you?

Roy:        Well, that revival touched me because I invited these men to my conference to be the speakers. And I little knew that they’d get more concerned for the leader of that conference than anybody else. And they really began to counsel me. They began to share the little they’d begun to see of my need. And I wasn’t a state of need. I’d come into the state of declension. And I remember one of them said, “Roy, you need to repent.” I said, “Where do I need to repent?” In all honesty, I didn’t know. I was working so hard. I was praying so much. I was preaching so hard, doing so much.

They said, “well, we don’t know where you need to repent. We could, of course, make a suggestion. You see, we’ve only just got to know you, but we’ve got to know enough as to be able to suggest at least one place where you might begin. And that’s in your relationship with your wife.” He said, “When we came on the campus, you said, fellas, get in the car. I’ve got to go to one of the other houses to make some arrangements. And in that house, we saw you, met you, talking to a young lady. We didn’t know, by the way, in which you spoke to her, whether she was your secretary or your wife. We suggest you might begin there because revival for us began in our most intimate relationship in the home.”

Well, I took it to heart. And I had a wonderful victorious life message which had ceased to work. And I said, I’m going to park that message. And I’m just going to respond to current light as it came. And that current light came to show me sin when but I hadn’t seen it before. And I began on a path of repentance. Yes, with my wife, my attitude, you see, I was a tense man, and a tense man is a difficult person to live with. And I had to see, it wasn’t her fault in this or that. It was me. And I began to take that to Jesus. And I, the evangelist, quite well known in England, began on a new path of calling sin, sin, and repentance. And that, of course, in turn meant I had to find a new power in the blood of Jesus Christ to deal with all the things that the light was showing up in my life.

David:     And you deal with that so beautifully in this book, The Calvary Road. Again, it’s been out many years, still continues to be a help to people. Thank you for sharing so personally. There’s a certain sense in which that transparency is a part of revival. God works with you and then you share that and he’s able to work with others. I appreciate it. We’ve started out on a good footing here. That makes me very comfortable.

In the very beginning of your book, you continue this theme, you use the word brokenness. And you say that brokenness is always one of those first parts of revival. I need you to define what you mean by brokenness when you use the term.

Roy:        I think it’s very important to do that because it does occur, of course, in scripture. There are several places where the broken and the contrite heart is spoken of. But unless we really explain what we mean, that word could become a cliche. People could get the impression of many tears and terrible experience. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a matter of the will. Brokenness is the opposite to hardness. Hardness says “It’s your fault.” Brokenness says “It’s mine.” And it’s a struggle for a man to be willing to say that. Especially when he’s professed so loudly that he’s right. The other fellows have got him wrong.

When God wins a victory in his life. he says, “Fellas, I’m the one who’s wrong, not you.” They may be wrong, but that’s not his business. He’s the one who’s wrong. And very often, the wrong is his reaction to their wrong. They may be wrong in their actions, but he is wrong in his reactions, his anger, his resentment, his jealousy, and nothing is gained by confessing the other fellas’ sins is going to be me, and brokenness is me being willing to do that.

David:     You haven’t changed this message. This is what you wrote in this book many, many years ago. Is brokenness something we take care of once and for all, or does brokenness remain a constant daily necessity?

Roy:        It’s a daily necessity. As the light shows, it talks about walking in the light as he is in the light. Light is that which reveals, darkness that which hides. And when the light of God shows up something that’s grieves him, wrong in me. My business is to say, “yes, Lord, you’re right, I’m wrong.” And that’s a daily thing. And as I do it, the blood of Jesus Christ is a daily cleansing for me.

David:     I think that’s wonderful. Here’s a short quote we use by permission from your book, The Calvary Road. It says, “To be broken is the beginning of revival. It is painful. It is humiliating, but it’s the only way. It is being not I, but Christ in a sea is a bent I.” What did you mean by that?

Roy:        Well, this whole thought of brokenness is set against the scriptures that speak about the stiff neck. Be not stiff necked comes in one or other place in the Old Testament. And when a man is accused, you could almost see his neck going stiff. “No, I’m not. You’re not right.” And you know when it lasts, this is my fault. Well, you can always see the head bow too. These brothers who came from East Africa came with a chorus. One of them composed it. And these are the words, “Lord, bend that proud and stiff-necked eye. Help me to bow the head and die, beholding him on Calvary, who bowed his head for me.”

David:     It’s wonderful.

Did you sense, Karen, that he was more open than most people? I certainly did.

Karen:     He’s very forthright about his own deficiencies. I think that’s the point of what he’s saying, is that we have to recognize that about ourselves, our human flaws. I think that’s one of the things that makes him so attractive as an interview process. One of the things that strikes me, David, is that we’ve aired a variety of people we interviewed in the past who are now dead Christian leaders. I’m struck by the quality of their faith, and I’m challenged by it.

David:     Yeah, that’s well said. Go ahead.

Karen:     I think that after we listened to these interviews earlier, why do we have such sort of a superficial Christianity? And maybe I’m being too judgmental. Maybe it’s I who have a superficial Christianity, and I think so much of our time has spent in front of this screen world. We have technological tools available to us, and that detracts from the amount of time we spend in the Word, letting it convict us and mold us and move us. And when I hear these people from the past with their deep, passionate faith and more efficient, with his honest evaluation of himself, it makes you want a weep of over your own lack. I think that’s a good thing to feel that way.

David:     I have that same response. I’m looking back and I say, “God, how grateful I am to you that I had an opportunity to meet these people.” And the interesting thing to me, Karen, is that after the interviews were done, often I would have the opportunity to speak with these people.

Karen:     Just chat, sit and chat.

David:     They were as straightforward as you could possibly imagine. They were people who didn’t revel in saying, these are my problems. I mean, for him to say, “I was a very tense man.”

Karen:     Yeah. And it’s hard to live with the tense, man.

David:     Yeah, and here these leaders said that I wasn’t treating my wife in a way that would…

Karen:     And they needed to repent.

David:     Yeah, those were remarkable words.

Karen:     You know, it reminded me how frequently the international Christians that I’ve had the privilege of meeting and getting to know have challenged me so much just by their lives. They don’t take Christianity for granted. They come from places where there have been sweeping movements of God. We need to bend our knee to the learning process that goes on by learning from our international Christian brothers and sisters.

David:     One of the things that I liked about Roy Hession was also he was not hesitant to use phrases that seem dated. We don’t like to talk about the blood of Jesus.

Karen:     I don’t know anyone who does that. We may not be in the church groups that use that kind of terminology and understand that kind of theology. We did. We used to be. I used to be in them. I don’t hear it much in the church world where we land. So, it may be just a lack.

David:      I don’t hear it as much in the way I talk.

Karen:     In the way I talk, right? Hearing that made me say, Karen, where are you? You need to go back to the Lord and say, give me an understanding and a desire and a hunger to be a passionate Christian that maybe I was earlier in my life. But it’s become not mundane, but I’ve worn this garment for so many years that maybe it’s become too familiar.

David:     I had opportunity to listen to him over and over as we were preparing this podcast where I knew he would be featured. And I had the same experience. You thought, “Where am I, David”? I’m such a shallow person compared to these individuals. “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for the opportunities to be able to be around individuals like this.”

Karen:     I recall Roy Hession saying to you that he was 80 when these visits were recorded. Now, your wife is 80.

David:      Golly, the time goes fast.

Karen:      And I believe I should get to pick someone I want to review again as far as people who are in our past broadcast.

David:     You’re more than welcome to do that. I can’t fit it in for the immediate future, but we’ll keep it in mind. And you just tell me when you’re ready okay. Don’t get up. Just this word friend in closing. We love it when people send us an email for whatever our needs. Maybe it’s just that we wonder sometime if anybody’s out there.

Karen:      Is anyone listening?

David:     Yeah, can anybody hear me? Sounds like one of the tails. Okay you know we do get that, an overwhelming number by any stretch of the imagination, but we have wonderful correspondence from people and a lot of them are people we remember.

Karen:     Right.

David:     And it’s just this wonderful connection and that warms the cockles of my heart anyway. I’m no good with cool cockles because I don’t even know what a cockle is. Anyway, I think about the people who wrote and said you know that wall art…

Karen:     Hospitality it was. In the hospitable world a Christian home is a miracle to be shared. We sent out a whole bunch of those and that was delightful to do.

David:     Yeah, it really was. But we wouldn’t know that you received one unless you purposely went out of your way to send an email. I’m thinking that I’m like a lot of people is. I don’t know where to send an email. Okay that’s why we have a good friend named Dean Wilson who can explain better than we can as 80-year-olds plus how to do it. Your time, Dean.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters hosts@beforewego.show.  If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2023 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187. Visit Mainstay Ministries for best-selling titles, and other resources authored by Karen Mains.