The Grace Outpouring by Roy Godwin and Dave Roberts

Ever a late-adopter, I picked this book up in Wesley Owen some time ago, and long after it had become ‘flavour of the month’, so to speak. It’s an easy read, gripping, and a book that, once I’d started, I found hard to put down!

The story begins, promisingly, with the statement: “I was desperate!” Roy Godwin, an evangelist, and his wife are sitting in the kitchen of Ffald-Y-Brenin, a retreat centre in the middle of nowhere in Pembrokeshire, and Godwin is wanting to get back into the real world where people are won for the Lord. They are interrupted by a couple knocking at the door, saying they were strangely led to the place, and wanting to know more. Godwin shows them around, and before they leave, invents a ‘tradition’ that they always pray a blessing over their visitors before they leave. A moment of intense encounter with the Holy Spirit takes place. Over the coming days, a steady flow of people turn up at the centre, uninvited, strangely drawn by an inexplicable inner prompting. Some of the people are not Christians. Each receives a prayer of blessing. Each is profoundly moved by the Holy Spirit.

Before long, the centre is becoming a place of encounter with God, conversion, and revival. The stories multiply. Prayer spreads out to cover the surrounding area and beyond. The pattern becomes established that a prayer of blessing over the visitors releases the power of God to work in their lives. During this time, Godwin, an experienced evangelist, learns some very basic lessons about  prayer. Out of this emerges a rhythm of continuous prayer at the centre. The prayer incorporates some very ancient traditions, such as the examen, and some innovations, such as prayer being modeled around the different courses of a main meal. The numbers committing to this continuous prayer for a whole year grew to 500. The scope of the prayer spreads to nations, with the centre developing a vision for being a place of reconciliation for those in conflict. A vision develops for homes across the nation ablaze for God.

In Chapter 4, Godwin tells the story of the turning point in his life which led to him and his wife going to Ffald-Y-Brenin, and taking on the job of retreat-centre director. Initially, Godwin turns down the idea and accepts a lucrative commercial consultancy position, for which he is given a ‘golden hello’ During the training week, he becomes increasingly uncomfortable, and realizes that God is not in the job; but by now he has spent some of the money given in advance by the firm, and cannot repay it. The breakthrough comes when he says to himself: “I’d rather have God than money!” When he explains the situation to the M.D., astonishingly the debt is waived and he is given the M.D.’s blessing. That evening, a phone call comes from the trustees of Ffald-Y-Brenin, again astonishingly saying that despite a completed interview process with recruits for the post, the trustees feel Godwin is the man for the job – with a word from God, even though Godwin is still not willing to consider it!

Needless to say, God soon breaks down this resistance, and with it comes a change in Godwin’s whole attitude to ministry. “Instead of talking about him and preaching about him and evangelising about him and being a pastor for him, I wanted to know him.” Out of knowing God comes the ability to bless others. The story of the arrival of Roy and his wife at the centre to take up the post then follows, and the extraordinary stories of what God does in the lives of people visiting the centre in the following days. The centre begins to connect with the very early Celtic Christian origins of Christianity in Wales. It develops a redemptive vision and purpose for the surrounding area. A vision for multiplication of local houses of prayer grows. Praying the ‘Caleb Prayer’ becomes an important part of the life and ministry of the centre. At the heart is knowing God, to underline which, Godwin quotes the line from C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Last Battle’: “Further up and deeper in.”

Godwin emphasizes that seasons of the Spirit’s intensity at the centre ebb and flow. Sometimes God does a much deeper work in people visiting during ‘ebb’ times than when the Spirit is in full ‘flow’. Since the book came out, a number of people from GCC have been to Ffald-Y-Brenin, on the strength of the story told by Roy Godwin. The stories they bring back may not be of the more dramatic kind, but each is characterized by a sense of meeting with God, and a deeper quality of relationship with him. It’s a book that everyone should read.