The Power of an Invitation: Facing the Canon with Paul Jones & Fiona Hendley Jones (Part Two)

welcome to my youtube channel joining us again on facing the canon are paul and fiona jones singers and [Music] performers [Music] poor fiona welcome back to facing the canon thank you thank you so much oh that that first program took us to the point where you were both performing had huge success uh just tell us again how did you two meet ah well last time fiona mentioned that she was at the national theater in a show called guys and dolls um i i i had worked with the director of guys and dolls when he was the director at nottingham playhouse um for what it's worth i did one of the smaller parts and a fellow with timothy west and daniel massey and very lots of other people who became even more famous like anthony scher and alison stedman but um i i so i i knew richard and actually had um unfortunately had to turn him down for another job that he'd offered me so he rang me up and he said uh what are you doing on what if it was the 18th of january and i said um nothing as far as i can remember he said would you like my ticket for the opening night of guys and dolls i've directed guys and dolls for the national theater and as you know i don't go to my own first nights so would you like my seat so i said i certainly would and i had the best seat in the olivier theatre at the royal national theater and i the show was absolutely wonderful absolutely stunning brilliant performances all round and i couldn't help noticing this one girl who was playing one of the hot box girls anyway uh spark i spooled forward about six weeks or so and richard air rings me again and he says my next production at the national is going to be the beggars opera would you like to come and play mack heath and i said oh not many benny and i so i joined the company uh to play mag and it was exactly the guys and dolls company so they the the two shows had to be sort of dovetailed together like that um and we started working together in approximately april of that year and um i was ever so pleased about that absolutely well what did you say when you saw me at the rehearsal oh you are mean he's going to make me say well paul walked into the rehearsal room on the day we were doing the read-through for the beggars opera and i looked i kind of did a double take because i looked at him and i thought hang on a minute oh he's a pop star isn't he from a very very long time ago and uh and so i went up okay i went up to at the sort of coffee break time and i said something like are you nervous first day of rehearsal and uh and i said you're a pop singer aren't you yes you are you're a pop singer yes you're herman from herman's hermits [Laughter] i remember that i don't know why but i just sort of saw the bit of a likeness not guilty but you were you were very kind brown you've got a lovely daughter no that was never no no no no fiona i love the story where you went to record something at the bbc yes you leave the bbc you walk past a church tell us that story i came out of the bbc as you said having you know done what i did there see all souls church laying in place now i didn't know it was called that thought it was beautiful looking church but had this overwhelming desire to walk into it and i didn't quite know why because i wasn't the lovely little girl who'd possibly would have made a commitment to the lord when i was young if only i'd known the gospel now i was a much sort of tougher harder the national theater type young woman but i had this desire to go into the church and so i did and i walked in empty beautiful beautiful portrait of jesus right at the front an oil painting but jesus standing with his hands open and you can see where the nails had gone into his flesh and i'm just sitting in one of the seats looking at that and then i noticed that there are bibles in front of all the seats and i just i just found my hand reaching for a bible and i'd never done that i mean you know except at school you know i'd never picked up a bible and just opened it and i just flipped it open and it fell open to what we probably consider as the most famous verse in the bible you've got matthew mark luke and john it was john it was chapter 3 it was verse 16. and well the amplified version of that goes like this for god so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that he even gave up his only begotten unique son that whoever believes in trusts in clings to relies on him shall not perish or come to destruction or be lost but shall have everlasting eternal life and i just i read that and i read it again and i thought god sent his son for us is his son jesus it must be jesus and what's this eternal eternal life and i was just so moved i read it i knew it was true but didn't understand it sure and i deeply knew that i have to find out what this means and i remember jumping up and i went literally i was shaking my heart was pounding i was shaking i knew this was true and i knew i had to find out about it i went straight back to the national theater but but what was amazing about that fiona is that the bible's got 800 000 words in it i know and you opened it i know at that verse i mean talk about god's revelation to you that was god you know billions of people in the world but he at that moment was beginning to give you an epiphany absolutely he'd been drawing me over years and now he was showing me the gospel in one verse and as you say it could have been any page but it was that and it was so powerful and i was sitting alone quiet that's when god can speak to you and that was that beautiful word straight to mike was piercing my heart and i i went to the national theater that night because we were going to do a show went straight to paul's dressing room door and i knocked on his door and i'm still he opened the door and i'd never forget what i said to him i said paul i want to tell you something but you've got to absolutely promise me you're not going to laugh at me he said well don't be silly what do you what do you mean i said no no no promise whatever i say you won't laugh and he said okay i won't laugh i said well i've been into a church and i said i picked up a bible and and and paul it says that god sent his son that we can have eternal life that we wouldn't perish or come to destruction if we believe in him but i said i don't understand it and i'm going to go to that church on sunday and i'm going to find out what it means and you said i said i'm coming with you because i had all those years ago as a little boy learned you know that jesus died for our sins and he was god's son and i'd i'd sort of pushed that under several carpets over the years and at this point well i had been sort of coming back to faith very very gradually myself and that started because when i was on tour with my band the blues band uh mostly in germany i had this habit of going to art galleries the purpose of which was to separate me from the sort of craziness of the world of popular music yeah performance and all the add-ons that go with all the stuff that goes wrong so you thought pick up go to art galleries go to art galleries stand and look at some pictures and over a period of about a year i became absolutely infatuated with a german artist called caspar david friedrich who was a very very powerfully convinced christian uh who lived about you know so from the late 18th century on into the early 19th and he he was an extraordinarily gifted painter which i don't think a lot of people had picked up on at the time but in in the intervening 40 years or so his stuff has multiplied it's now zillions of pounds and uh very very important painter but he he he helped to bring me back to the lord so when you came and knocked on my door and said that i was i was ready yes you were more receptive so on sunday you go to church and what happens when you go to church well we were knocked out for a start it was packed absolutely packed it's it all souls has a downstairs and an upstairs and we couldn't sit anywhere and they were trying to find us a seat and put us on the stairs we couldn't be seated anywhere else so that was an amazing witness to us first of all secondly there was an orchestra a wonderful orchestra and when people started to really sing the hymns and the worship songs i mean i was looking around at people and they were going for it their little faces you know were just radiant with with love and i i knew they had something i didn't have i'd said all along oh yes i believe in god but i didn't even know god i had i had no clue who god was we were so moved so touched by that service i didn't go up to anyone and ask them about eternal life at that point but a lovely lovely man called mike lawson came up to us who is one of the ministry team and he recognized us he is you know obviously recognized being performers yes and i i had a series called widows on television at that time so he recognized us and he said you know you knew here and he started asking us questions and and we said yes and he said would you like to do some private bible study with me and i thought can i can i be seen going to someone's house with you know to do bible study because i was all dressed in levers and you know all zips and studs and things like that back combed hair up here anyway but we did and it was beautiful wasn't it it was absolutely beautiful and it was wasn't it tea cake yeah and bible study yes it was it was it was it was it was absolutely so you both started going yeah yes and that helped you on that journey but then um going back paul with you you in your atheist days debated with cliff richard oh yes tell us about that well that was uh quite a lot of years i mean about 15 years before i joined the national theater and there was some sort of program where you had two people confronting each other debating um whether something's good or bad or right or wrong or whatever and the topic of that debate was actually billy graham cliff richard had been hired to stand up for billy graham and i had been hired to attack billy graham so i confess to you now all these years later i knew nothing about billy graham i scarcely knew of his existence so here i was kind of attacking him and talking about him as if he were awful and this is on television it is on television and you know when i look back on on that now i realized i wasn't i wasn't there to attack billy graham i was there to attack cliff richards yes that's what i wanted to do to kind of ridicule him yes i wanted to get the better of cliff richard because i was fed up with him he was just too successful and too nice and clean far too nice and clean yes so um i don't look back on on that with anything uh good at all but um but what what's interesting after that uh cliff richard actually with two friends prayed for you and what's interesting is years later cliff calls phones you both and invites you to go with him to hear an evangelist yeah tell us about that well we weren't at the national then we'd finished all that um we were living together we were doing other things but i think unless i'm very much mistaken i was in a a show called pump boys and dinettes yes at the piccadilly theater um and the phone rang this after that particular afternoon and uh it was it was cliff and he said um i want you to come and hear an evangelist called louise palau at white city stadium in west london and he said you can pick your knight because he's there for a whole month and i remember i said well whoever he is he's got delusions of grandeur because queen's park rangers can't fill it on a saturday afternoon and it it that was true as well in fact they'd they'd given up trying to fill it at that time but actually luis pallard didn't fill it for a month he filled it for six weeks in the end and uh cliff uh i think it's true to say that god had told cliff to get as many people in show business to go and hear luis palau as he possibly could and cliff did it and he promised us dinner if we would go he promised to buy us dinner after evening thank you yes and i think he promised that to a hundred and something other people in show business as well and in other words cliff was being a very very diligent servant of the lord absolutely so you both go yeah you hear louise palau just an inc i knew louise he's promoted to glory now what an incredible man and an evangelist okay tell us what happens okay so we're sitting there and he just preaches the gospel brilliantly he tells us about this heavenly father who sent his son jesus christ to love us to heal us and he he finishes telling us the entire gospel about how jesus came for one sole purpose was for us that we may have eternal life and that we may know him and have an intimate loving relationship with him and that jesus will bring us to the father we will be no longer estranged from the father not separated anymore and then he said would you like to know this jesus and i remember him saying he's knocking on the door of your heart are you going to pretend you're not in he said i'm going to pray a prayer for you now and he said i want you to come down and he said if you come down here in front of the where we are now onto the you know where the grass is he said you can receive jesus christ into your heart right now he'll come right now he loves you he's he he wants to forgive you well i mean i just i couldn't stand it anymore i just jumped up i just and i wasn't like that at all but i had to get down there i had to pray this prayer my eyes were pricked with tears i had i was choked and i got up and i started to walk towards the front and paul grabbed hold of my arm didn't you scaredy cut yes grabbed hold of her i'm not going down there huh well i said to her what are you doing she said well i'm doing what he just said i said great where am i sleeping tonight we were living together we were living in sin so so but he didn't say anything about that it was like god had pierced your heart about that yeah well i mean i knew for some reason whether it was something i'd heard before or whatever i just knew what i'd just heard but it's interesting that in those days living together was known as living in syria oh absolutely yes absolutely so you said well if fiona's gonna go down there where are my kids where am i sleeping tonight yeah so i gotta go and find a hotel or something so uh she said we don't even need to worry about things like that that will sort itself we would be mad not to accept this wonderful future while it's right here in front of us and i said great well will you marry me then so you propose i propose to her in that moment when you were going to go down yes and then you responded i it was almost as if we were looking at each other and this sort of time was going by and i was just looking at and you know i'd come from this broken home i had decided i'd never ever in my life get married why would i get married what's the point of it but i knew i loved this man but the most important thing john is that here we were in the presence of the lord i just heard the gospel we just heard the gospel we just heard that if we come to our lord jesus the father in heaven is going to look after us it's going to be different and suddenly all the fears of what my lovely mom went through and the divorce and the unhappy marriages suddenly just left me and i thought he's going to be all right praise god and i just looked at paul and i just went yes yes yes i'll marry you yes i'll marry you so we both burst into tears at that point and by then luis had just begun the prayer so we we couldn't move and we began to pray the prayer to receive jesus into our hearts right there and then where we were seated still up in the bleachers um and we just we wept with joy we felt so clean when you said jesus come into my heart fill me forgive me i i turn fully away from this darkness and my selfish way of living and i turn fully to you lord there's just this cleansing that he does isn't there and we just left that stadium tears laughter liberated yes or is the hymn writer put it ransomed healed forgiven it was just the most wonderful thing and we knew we were starting our lives all right yes and we walked out of that stadium and we walked to the place where we were to have dinner with cliff richard and luis palau yeah did you know that no no can you imagine how that felt for us the man who'd brought us the gospel message that night that we just got saved was there was so precious to us the next thing that happened was that i telephoned all souls lying in place and said may we please be married we had to have a civil ceremony in a way thank you and uh that we'd had that on the saturday and then on the sunday we had a service of blessing as all souls and we had uh many of the cast of guys and dolls and the beggars opera including the director as well and so we we had we had people from pump boys and dinettes the show i was in and we had as many family as we could assemble and we had we had a super the choir that had won the um choir of the year that year for the gospel choirs was an outfit from an adventist church called the meribel gospel choir yes and they sang at our wedding boy they were good they were glorious afterwards richard air came up to us and he said i really enjoyed the show we just wanted to witness to them we said we said to mike lawson do a sermon and just preach the gospel we would just in instantly you know i don't know if this happened to you but the moment we received jesus into our hearts we wanted everyone to know that islam same for me yeah yeah absolutely what would you fiona paul what would you say to our viewers who've not yet received christ haven't yet opened at that door what would you say to our viewers go ahead please you know the bible says taste and see that the lord is good you know you might hear other people saying what a wonderful change it's been in their lives to know this loving loving lovely savior but it's only you will know if you taste and see so you just say jesus i want to know you too jesus come into my heart just just come into my heart reveal yourself to me make yourself real to me i want to know you i want to know you i want to know your person and you know what you'll never be loved so much you will never be loved so much he is the great lover he's not angry with you he's not fed up with you but he does want you to come because no matter where we are in life if you're struggling right now do you know he doesn't want you to struggle if you're rebelling from him right now he doesn't want you to rebel he just wants you to come as you are and he will make you whole and he will just fill you with his love that is so true come as you are and if you haven't yet opened that door but you'd like to open that door to jesus then do that now just pray this prayer echo this prayer that i'm going to pray now thank you jesus for dying on the cross for me i bow before you i acknowledge you as lord and god and i now acknowledge you as my lord and god i know i have done many things wrong and i ask you to forgive me cleanse my life set me free from the past i invite you now into my life come in by your holy spirit fill me with your power your presence your peace help me from this day on to build my life on you thank you jesus for hearing my prayer amen amen a prayer for you lord for every person that's prayed that prayer in the name of jesus christ i announce and i pronounce his forgiveness over you may you know his cleansing may you know his presence may you know your heart being warmed your mind being illuminated and may you know christ's protection as you build your life on him in jesus name amen amen you're a man of many talents what both of you are uh paul many talents including the harmonica can you play us a gospel song with your harmonica yeah that will be wonderful [Music] right [Music] me [Music] i woke up this morning with my mind resting on jesus i woke up this morning with my mind [Music] resting on jesus i woke up this morning with my mind [Music] you can't eat your neighbor with your mind resting on jesus can't hit your neighbor with your mind [Music] resting on cheese resting on jesus hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah [Music] absolutely beautiful you're a tonic and you exude the grace and the aroma of christ and it's just been so enjoyable talking to you both and we pray god's blessing upon you both and the future uh and the ministry that god has called you to thank you so much fiona paul for joining us on facing the canon thank you thank you great pleasure we've loved it thank you oh fiona henley paul jones wasn't that inspiring it really is all about jesus let's fix our eyes on jesus the author and the perfecter of our faith thank you so much for joining us on facing the canon please join us again [Music] [Music] you

Channel: J.John

Views: 1,520

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: j.john, jjohn, philo trust, philo, Christianity, Christian, Jesus, God

Id: YOyzZn8p6R0

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021