One of the most significant factors of my ministry since 1984 has been my poor health. This has governed to a degree what I have been able to do and not able to do. Up to this point, I had never been in hospital and had rarely been ill. I had only lost two weeks’ preaching through illness and that was when I had a bad dose of ‘flu’. But in 1984, everything changed. I had two operations and the following year I had my first heart attack. From then on I have been in hospital at some point nearly every year-in fact, in all I have been in ten hospitals. I was feeling very pleased with myself when 2007 came to an end and, for the first time in many years I went a whole calendar year without having to be hospitalized. Then I came down to earth with a bump when in January 2008 I was back in again.

All this has obviously had an effect upon my ministry, the main one
being in 1995 when my cardiologist told me that I had to retire from full time work after I had my second heart attack. This came three years after I had had a quadruple heart bypass operation and the news came as rather a shock. I did not want to retire and felt I had a few sermons left in me yet. In fact, all that retirement meant was that I did not do any more pastoral visitation; the preaching and writing went on much as before.

The problem was that the condition of my heart and the medication I
had to take every day was slowing me down considerably. But I am running ahead of the story a little. An angiogram in September 1991 showed that I had a serious heart condition and that I needed surgery. Heart problems in Wales are common and the waiting list for surgery is huge. The surgeon told me I was ninety-fifth on his list and that he was doing two operations a week. So I decided to preach right up to the time I was to go into hospital. That only lasted a couple of weeks because I was taken ill in the pulpit at Sandfields and finished up in intensive care. So I had no alternative but to sit it out until the following January when I had the bypass surgery.

During those months, I was only able to attend church on Sunday
mornings.  I was relieved when at last I had the operation in January. A heart bypass operation is no small thing and, when I came round from the anaesthetic, there were so many tubes sticking out of me and I was so sore that I wondered why I had bothered! But within a couple of days I was much better and out of hospital in a week. I was amazed at how good I felt and I was preaching again within three months. As far as I was concerned, all my stays in hospital and all my operations were for one reason-to get me back into the pulpit.

In January 1995, I had a second heart attack and I realized that my heart condition was not going to go away. The third attack came in August 2005 and confirmed the problem. The cardiologist told me then that I could not have another bypass because I would not survive it. Apparently I only have one good artery working.

My condition at present is that I get so tired and breathless that everything is an effort to do. I have not preached for nearly a year and don’t get to church very often. But I started preaching when I was eighteen years old and am now seventy, so there is little to complain about!

Poor health is obviously not pleasant to live with, but it is no excuse for idleness. I think we have to work within the limits God puts upon us and those limits can be very flexible. After my first heart attack, family and friends made the point to me that I was doing too much and needed to cut back. Such talk is good for the ego but one has to be wary of it. During one Sunday in hospital, I decided to read Ecclesiastes and was reminded again of verse 10 of chapter 9: ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ Your might may not be as much as it used to be, but still you work for God with nothing held back. One old preacher put it like this: ‘It is better to burn out for God than to rust out.’

Taken from the book Chains of grace, published by Day One.