Dear Praying Friends and Saints:

We have just posted two new prophecies for Wales on the Words about Wales page. Just click on the link to see them, and the whole collection.

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May the God bless and encourage you always,

Dick and Gladys

Dear Friends of Wales Awakening:

After 5 months of being kept inside sheds, the cows were turned out this beautiful morning at ParcyMarl, our friend Moira Williams' farm in Pembrokeshire. This video clip shows their exuberance as they race onto the fresh green field and frolic in the sun, jumping for joy and kicking up their heels in sheer delight. It is such a simple yet happy event, and makes a wonderful picture of our freedom in Christ.

After five months of enclosure, eating silage and processed feed, to be able to feast on fresh green grass in the full sunshine is worth getting excited about! Imagine a sweet ripe peach you've just plucked from the tree yourself as compared to a can of split pea soup or spaghetti! It's like taking out the middle man or process, and going directly to the source.

As I dwelt on this the Lord began to impress on my spirit some things about our need for direct relationship with him through the word and prayer. I love good preaching and teaching, and we are all indebted to many wonderful saints over the years that helped to establish us in our faith, especially in the early days. Receiving sound doctrine and teaching "processed" by others is vitally important.

However this is no substitute for personal time alone with God - in prayer, study and meditation in His word, and times of worship. It is in these times, when we purposefully make ourselves available to Him, that God can speak to us clearly.

These experiences of direct revelation are what really ground us into the bedrock of our faith. This should be our daily bread. It is this private, one-on-one relationship with the Holy Spirit that enables us to thrive and prosper in our soul.

Jesus said in John 14:21, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." And then in verse He adds, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

Just as these cows are delighted with fresh green grass, so can and should we be delighted in God's presence in us. He loves to reveal Himself to us, and nurture us from day to day with His truth. This is the essence of our life in Him. He dwells in and empowers us, and shows us Himself and His ways. He is the source of our joy and our strength.

Psalm 1:2-3 says, "But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper."

May each of us know the joy of His closeness each and every day.

Dick & Gladys

Dear Friends:

I love it when the Lord interrupts me in my readings and highlights things. This phrase in Job 42:7 just stopped me in my tracks and made my heart churn! "After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, 'I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.'"

And then in the very next verse, God says again, "...My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept him... You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has."

How easy it is for us to talk about the things of the Lord, and that is a good and right thing to do. But I realized that once we get going sometimes, how easily our words just seem to pour out. And more than once I've heard myself saying things and wondered, "Where did that come from? Is that really true?"

As I reflected on this in my own life, and considered how this may have been happening in God's people since Job's times, I really had something substantial to pray about. Could this be one of the reasons that the church seems to have such minimal effect in our modern society? So we can and should boldly pray, "Lord, teach us to speak your truth."

The Lord in essence says to Job's friends that He will accept Job's prayer for them because he has spoken the truth about Him. So it seems that the more accurately we learn to speak truth about Him, the more effective our lives and our prayers will become for His glory.

As so just how do we get more truth in us to strengthen our prayers? When Jesus prayed for the disciples in John 17:17, He said, "Sanctify them by Your truth; Your word is truth." God's word is our best ammunition!

Proverbs chapter 2 has some wise advice for us.
"1 My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you,
2 So that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
3 Yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding,
4 If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;
5 Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God."

On Monday we drove to Swansea to meet with some people at the Bible College of Wales. Before they arrived, we had time to meet some of the new students and get to know a little about them. What a positive delight to find these young folks from many nations with such hunger to learn God's truth! What a gift and encouragement to sense their dedication and determination to be trained and equipped to serve God in their home countries and wherever else He choose to send them from there.

This is now the fourth group of students starting their 12-week course. And what joy to see such vibrant fruit of the prayers of many saints over the years that have been praying for this hallowed place.

This property was originally acquired and consecrated through the faith and prayers of Rees Howells and his co-workers nearly one hundred years ago. And when it was put on the market several years ago, it was once again through the faith and prayers of many people on the ground here in Wales, and especially our friends from Cornerstone Community Church of Singapore who took the bold step of faith, that made this new chapter in its history and re-dedication to the Lord's service possible.

Let's pray that each one of the students to go through this precious BCW training be infused with truth about the living God in the person of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And may we all be continually prepared day by day to speak His truth in love to one another and the world around us.

Dick & Gladys

Dear Friends and Prayers:

You can imagine our surprise to have just discovered that the site of our Cilfowyr Chapel has been a place dedicated to prayer and worship since at least 1547, and probably earlier than that. I just found out about this from our friend David Pike who visited us on Monday.

He directed me to the Dyfed Archaeological Trust website which carried out a geophysical survey in late 2015. There is a lot of information in their detailed and illustrated report which you can read at this link. But what caught my attention were the few details about a "chapel-of-ease."

Their report says, "Site of former chapel-of-ease to Manordeifi, mentioned in source from 1547, when it was a free chapel of Manordeifi parish. It was a donative free chapel, established by the patron of the parish. ... we do know the building was noted in 1721 as being disused and had become the home of  '…fowles and jackdaws' (parish magazine extract)."

It happens that Tuesday morning, just by "chance", I snapped this picture of a red-legged partridge which disappeared through the hedge into the highlighted area, before I'd had time to read through this report!

According to Wikipedia, "A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish... Chapels of ease are sometimes associated with large manor houses, where they provide a convenient place of worship for the family of the manor, and for the domestic and rural staff of the house and the estate.

What I find exciting is how close this is to where we have been praying all these years. You can see Cilfowyr across the field less than 150 yards away. And people were spending time in prayer and worship here around 500 years ago! I suspect there wouldn't have been many formal services here, but it was a "free chapel", a place open for folks to come and go as they pleased and spend time with God. Back in those days when life was not as easy as we know it today, people may well have frequented this place a lot more than we might expect.

Early on in our time here while praying out in the cemetery one day, when it suddenly dawned on me that many of those buried there surely prayed many times for their own children, and also for their grandchildren, and perhaps even their grandchildren's children. And the Lord impressed on me how I could just say "Amen" to the prayers of those gone before us. I think every prayer ever prayed is still ringing around in heaven where God never forgets, resonating all throughout eternity.

Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." And at times we have clearly felt our prayer joining the prayers of those gone before us in an unending concert before the throne of God. And now we know that people have been gathering in these fields since at least the early 1500's, not in the 1680's as we have always thought. And consequently we now realize that our prayers are strengthened by another 200 years worth of prayers!

When King Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8:59 he said, "And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near the Lord our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day may require." What a glorious joy and privilege to join in with the songs and cries of millions upon millions of saints throughout the ages.

And so may we all echo the words of Solomon's heart in verse 52, "that Your eyes may be open to the supplication of Your servant and the supplication of Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call to You."

And also of course, let's add in the greatest revival prayer of all time in the words of Jesus, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven."

Dick & Gladys

Dear Praying Friends and Saints:

"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." When Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, this detail in verse 20 always stands out in a powerful way.

It seems obvious that the father has been constantly missing his son, and has always kept his eyes open for the slightest sign of his return. When he saw a movement still "a great way off" he must have watched intently until he recognized his son, and then took off running to receive him home again at long last.

This is a beautiful painting of such a precious scene. I can so clearly see myself in that most amazing of moments years ago. How about you? What a glorious and loving Heavenly Father was watching out for us! 

Last week I mentioned how Exodus 4:31 says that had visited his His people and looked on their affliction. It seems like it was more of a general observation. But in contrast this New Testament story shows a more direct and personal watching out for homeward bound individuals. Earlier in this chapter, Jesus asks in verse 4, "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?"

In the context of our ongoing prayers for revival, I found myself considering the aspect of focus. Of course we want to continually keep the "big picture" before the Lord in our intercession. But there is also a need for some specific targeting of certain individuals. Perhaps from time to time the Lord might bring to mind one person in particular, or maybe it changes as do people's circumstances.

In Rees Howells, Intercessor, there is an excellent example of this when Rees is directed by the Holy Spirit from general prayers to pray for a sick young drunkard, Will Battery. You can read the story if you just follow this link and scroll down to chapter 6, "Loving An Outcast".

We wanted to encourage you, along with ourselves, to ask the Lord to give you specific assignments to pray for individuals, and include that in your times of prayer. And may we too find the Holy Spirit travailing in us for the lost and needy.

May the blessing of His close fellowship be yours,

Dick and Gladys