THE YOUNGSTOWN RIVER

YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO -- Driving through the city of Youngstown, Ohio, you can see the sad image of a town in decay. The once powerful steel industry is no more. The burned out ends of life is where you will find God doing His greatest work. For twenty years Dave and Kathie Thomas have labored in the harvest of this city. It has been a struggle but the last two years have been a refreshing.. Dave, a product of the early Jesus movement, found Christ and was baptized in the Holy Ghost. The once wild eyed teenager, a most unlikely candidate for the cloth, found himself at seminary preparing for his call.. "People who knew me in my teens and early twenties would never have expected me to become a man of God, but God got a hold of my life shortly after I married my teenage sweetheart."

David and Kathie Thomas pastor Victory Assembly of God today. Currently they are in a building mode as a slab for the new sanctuary is already poured, but it wasn’t always that forward until just a few years ago. It all began on Mother’s Day in May of 1996. "We had just left our daughter in California. She had married the previous year and was living there, and we had just heard that they were going to go to Peru as missionaries."

"It was one of the lowest spots of my life. I was heart broken to see her go. She was our baby and it was very hard to see her go away like that." Time wasn’t healing this situation as months went by and the feeling of depression set in. "I really resented God for sending her to South America. I felt as if I was no longer needed as a mother. When we started the church I was my husband’s right hand man; if there was anything to do in the church I was there. Finally as our church grew we hired an assistant pastor, then a young pastor, and I was finally a full time mom."

"Have you ever felt useless as a person with no direction? That is where I was at the time. We had grown to be a large church of 1,400 people. We have the best staff in the world. We call them the dream team. Every area of the church was covered and covered well. We not only had a dedicated staff but the people God was sending to the church were also filling every gap. How can a person have so much but be so empty inside? My resentment to God and my helpless prayer would be heard by God. He was going to do something new in my life."

At a time when the children were leaving home and the prosperity of hard work had brought Kathie to a spiritual low, she found an answer to her own personal dilemma and it would not just touch her life but it would touch her husband and the entire church. So many times in the move of what God is doing today people are touched when a pastor’s wife seeks renewal. When one person is touched, that touch usually moves into a pastor and the congregation like a spreading fire and that was about to happen at Victory Assembly of God.

Things started moving in the Spirit when Dave and his wife, Kathie, attended the Assembly of God District Council in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kathie continued, "At Council we found a couple who were our age and their children were leaving home but these two were glad they were gone. We had heard that the pastor of the great revival in Pensacola was at a church in Florence, Kentucky. Heritage Fellowship would become a place where we would never forget because it was going to open something up in our hearts that we didn’t know was there. God was going to do a new work in my heart."

"Dave and I went there on Tuesday afternoon, there were just a few people there at the time. John Kilpatrick had been there the night before. There were a few people there sharing testimonies. No one actually preached and at the end Cleddie Keith, whom we had never met, called everyone in the audience to come forward if they wanted to receive a fresh touch. My husband and I were the first two that came to the front. We went down in the Spirit immediately, and as Cleddie Keith stood over us I could hear him say, ‘Passion, Passion.’"

"Pastor Keith later shared with us how the current move of God was changing pastors and congregations all across America. He spoke of conservative pastors being touched to the place where it changes their congregations in a deep way. I didn’t think God wanted that for Dave and me because we prided ourselves on being conservative, but your ways will change when God does something new in your life."

"It was on a Wednesday night that God began to change us in a way we did not expect. We had been seeking God at the altar for some time in our church. I was just going to pray for a young couple — she had just been diagnosed with cancer — but God spoke to my heart to stay at the altar and seek Him."

"As I began to seek God, the Spirit came upon me in a way He had never done before and the best way I can describe it is that I felt as though I was standing in the ocean with the waves moving against my legs. They would come and they would go and then I began to hear in my spirit. It was like at the Niagara Falls — you hear it before you can see it; there is just this great rush of water. Then I began to smell a freshness like as though I was walking out by a lake, it was so fresh. And the Spirit spoke to me and said, ‘Kathie the river is coming.’"

"I began to get excited and began to laugh and cry and rejoice and to shout - not at all like me! I began to say, ‘the river is coming.’ This was coming out of my spirit because I had no idea what the River was. I had no idea, we had never heard of such a thing but I knew that it was coming."

"Dave started testimony time and I wasn’t going to let it go by unless I announced that the river was coming. This was a brand new experience for me. I had never experienced anything like it before. I was overcome with the excitement of it and although I was shaky and a little drunk in the Spirit, I went over to my husband and I told the church everyone needed to get ready because the river was coming! Get excited because the river is coming!"

"The people looked at me and this was not like me. Conservative Kathie was in the river but as I began to laugh hysterically, I thought to myself, Kathie you’re in church. Dave said, ‘that’s wonderful, now go and sit down please.’"

"As I went to go sit down I saw Margie Martin, a wife of one of our pastor’s. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and stood up and yelled from the front of the church, ‘hey Marge, the river is coming!’ Yes.’ She didn’t know what it was , but she was good and she said, Yes.!’"

"The young couple for whom I was going to go and pray said they had felt the river actually knock them over. The husband is a teacher and he said he was lying on the floor and he could not get up. He thought to himself, ‘I know how to get up’ but he couldn’t get off the floor. So they experienced the river for themselves."

From this moment on the church began to gradually move to revival. God was up to something and like most of these moves of great proportion the wife of the pastor was touched first. David’s wife was in the river and the flood would soon touch him. It is so hard to pastor a church when you are the one pastoring it. Like so many who surrender, Dave Roberts would give his church over to Jesus as the flood of what was going on with his wife began to touch him.

The church moved into a seven day fast in the first week of January. Seeking revival, God spoke to David personally and said, "You know nothing about revival." He was wounded in spirit but obedient in hope. The pastor repented and laid his church before God to do what He wanted to do with it. "After I repented, the next day was Sunday and God moved in. The power of God just filled our building and there was a move of God like we had never seen before." When Dave laid his church on the altar, God took it for Himself and began a display of glory that is still moving.

"The spirit of prophecy was birthed in the church as God began to speak over the love of the young people who were backslidden. God spoke to my heart then and said, ‘the seed I planted in your heart and that has grown over these months, the seed of the river is giving birth tonight. I want you to watch even as mother stands in awe of her newborn child, I want you to stand in awe. The water has broken and the river is beginning to flow.’"

David Thomas is now planning to extend his church because of the explosion of the Spirit of God in their midst. Families are being restored and the power of God has been seen in the sanctuary through the music of praise and worship.

Worship Leader, Joe Thomas, has been with Pastor Thomas for the last ten years. God has blessed the worship leader with several new praise and worship songs and the birth of an album from the church came forth last year. Many of the original songs of praise and worship written by Joe Thomas can be found on this work. You see, God took over the worship also and Joe Thomas has a new vision for praise and worship.

In a city where Kathryn Kuhlman displayed the healing power of God in old Stanbaugh Auditorium, the power of God is now flowing. Victory Assembly of God has witnessed the healing of several individuals during revival. "We’ve had people healed, children called into ministry and gifts anointed by God. It has been a time of great cleansing in the people’s heart.

Now every Friday night during the river meetings in Youngstown, Ohio, there is a place to come and receive the impartation of God. David and Kathie Thomas were two discouraged pastors who found favor with God as Pastor Cleddie Keith prayed for them, and now that responsibility of renewal has been given to them. Northern Ohio and Eastern Pennsylvania ministers are now experiencing revival as the river grows wider and wider on Friday nights.