My Unfinished Mandate

I have a B.A. degree in Philosophy along with four years of Theology. I have an M.A. degree with a double major in Counseling Psychology and Social Psychology. I was trained as a Psychotherapist but never practiced as one. I have held executive positions in non-profit organizations and have served as an officer or member of several boards. A professional mediator since 1992, I have over 125 hours of training in family, business, and civil mediation and have taught and practiced conflict resolution and negotiation. I still offer mediation services. I came into teaching out of the workforce. I taught all aspects of Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, and Human Relations at both the high school and college levels over a 25 year period. And yet I acknowledge and affirm that I am absolutely nothing apart from and without God and his grace.

 

In 1974, at 35 years of age, I rededicated my life totally to God. That same year I inherited a family. I have three stepchildren, one boy and two girls, the boy being the oldest. Penny and I have 7 great grandchildren. When we got married, Penny and I chose to sell out completely to God and to go wherever the God led us by his Spirit. Unknown to us at that time, God was beginning to call and disciple us for the work we gradually learned he was calling us to do. Over the years we have supported ourselves with our work.

 

Initially we ministered as a family through puppets in over 60 churches of all denominations and non-denominations. We have ministered since around 1977 as Family to Families Ministry. This is the ministry of the Family who is God to his Family. Ours is a ministry of reconciliation, healing, and restoration of individuals, families, and the Church.

 

Sacred Scripture reveals a consistent pattern and principle in the lives of all those he has chosen: God calls, God equips, and God sends.” This is God’s order for any valid ministry.

 

Late in 1980, I sensed a nudge from the Lord to go into a total faith walk as he directed, what I call an “Abraham” walk. What I heard the Lord say was, “Go where I send you and do what I tell you.” Then he said, “There are two kinds of people: those who are for me and those who are against me. Work with those who are for me.” It was during this year that I first heard the call to Spiritual Warfare that later resulted in my book Preparing the Army of God:A Basic Training Manual in Spiritual Warfare.

One major skill that God has given me is compiling and editing. Most of my books and writings are compiled and edited Scriptures and articles, though God has given me original writings as well. I did not set out to write books but to study God’s Word. I believe they were all written under the direction of the Holy Spirit, as were the seminars mentioned below. All of the teachings God has given to me for individuals, families, and the Church are contained in thesebooks. They are the result of many years of studying God’s Word and learned life experiences. I therefore consider myself as primarily a Minister of the Word.

 

According to a recent Barna study, less than 10% of Christians know what their purpose is, and of those only 5% actually do anything about it. According to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 16% of Americans say that religion is the most important thing in their lives. That doubles to 42% for white evangelical Protestants and 38% for black Protestants. Among Americans who left a religious tradition, 37% say they were formerly Catholic. I believes that this confirms what I heard God once say that you could shut down 95% of the churches and it wouldn’t make any difference. I also heard him say once, “You can’t ‘placate’ (his word) spirits who are in rebellion against the Most High God.

 

Several years ago, God told Penny that he has embedded (his word) us on this mountain, in the Appalachian Mountains where we live, to recover the Church. Penny and I have a mandate from God to prepare individuals, the Church through the families that make it up, and the world to fulfill his purpose. The key to the restoration of the Church, as I see it, is to strengthen families and organizations/businesses in biblical and moral principles in a way that they can understand and implement them. This to me is the meaning for our time of the Great Commission to disciple all nations.

 

As you know, the major battle that Satan has been waging is against families and especially children and young people, our future families and members of God’s Family. Church leaders, for example, need to warn and encourage God’s families not to support Target, The North Face, Kohls, Ben and Jerry’s and other “woke” companies that thumb their noses at God and are trying to destroy his children by marketing “Pride” clothes and toys for infants and children and to keep an eye on what teachers are teaching their children and what kind of books are made available in their school libraries!

 

After we retired and moved here to the mountains in 2003, God directed me to write the Christian Homebuilding and Planning for Marriage workbooks. These are available at www.hessionbooks.webador.com. Through them and the introductory half-day seminars I am offering, I am going to war for couples to establish God-centered marriages, with Christ as the center. You know couples in your church and otherwise who need this. I am going to war to equip young people to enter a God-centered marriage, again with Christ as the heart. You know young people, especially of this generation, and divorced people who need this before they get involved in another disastrous relationship.

 

The Church and society are no stronger than the families that make them up. In the remaining time I have left and as God opens doors, I am going to war for the Church through the families that are its foundation. Through these seminars we will retake the Family Mountain of culture and recover the Church.

 

In 1990, out of my Social Psychology major and work experience, I developed and taught what were then four 4-hour sessions in Servant Leadership. A couple years ago, I condensed these into an in-depth individual or group study. It is now a roughly 6-hour seminar on basic leadership concepts and practices, with practical “how to” supplements to assist leaders in working with those under them. It offers all the time-tested foundational tools needed to lead any organization in a cooperative environment. For the Church, I call it Godly Servant Leadership for the 21^st. Century. The underlying principle is what I call Multiplying Your Effectiveness By Dividing Your Load: Managing Results Through Total Shared Responsibility.

 

The seminars and all my books lay solid foundations on which people can build their lives and their organizations. The seminars can be done, for example, through video conferences on Go Meet, Zoom, and other platforms and through group meetings. Somehow, the power of modern technology must be harnessed to facilitate this. I have been learning how to do this at a basic level so I can multiply my effectiveness by dividing my load.

 

Since February of 2022 I have been disciplining almost 400 pastors and others by email through the almost 150 bible studies I have developed, primarily in Kenya but in four other countries as well. I am also sharing the bible studies in Cyberspace through YouTube. Godly Servant Leadership for the 21^st. Century is available on a flash drive for anyone with experience and integrity to lead for only a minimal per person fee to cover materials and shipping costs. I don’t even have to teach it.

 

So much for my background and vision. You can learn more about us through our website, www.familytofamilies.webador.com. We have always believed in and lived transparency and accountability. I am trusting God to raise up people and organizations to help me wage the war where I can. And I am trusting God to totally restore Penny in body, mind, and spirit to war along with me once again. I can be contacted at p.hession2014@gmail.com or 336-977-7360.

 

"If Mary and Joseph were to knock at my door"

Again and again, the beauty of this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is the splendor of truth. Again and again, it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him as a child trustingly lets himself or herself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: “I know that my glory frightens you and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now, I am coming to you as a child so that you can accept me and love me.”

I am also repeatedly struck by the Gospel writer’s almost casual remark that there was no room for them at the inn. Inevitably, the question arises, what would happen if Mary and Joseph were to knock at my door. Would there be room for them?

And then, it occurs to us that Saint John takes up this seemingly chance comment about the lack of room at the inn that drove the Holy Family into the stable. He explores it more deeply and arrives at the heart of the matter when he writes: "he came to his own home, and his own people received him not" (John 1:11).

The great moral question of our attitude towards the homeless, towards refugees and migrants, takes on a deeper dimension: do we really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself?

We begin to do so when we have no time for him. The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God?

The question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full. But matters go deeper still. Does God actually have a place in our thinking? Our process of thinking is structured in such a way that he simply ought not to exist.

Even if he seems to knock at the door of our thinking, he must be explained away. If thinking is to be taken seriously, it must be structured in such a way that the "God hypothesis" becomes superfluous. There is no room for him.

Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves. We want what we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within our reach, we want our plans and purposes to succeed. We are so "full of ourselves” that there is no room left for God. And that means there is no room for others either, for children, for the poor, for the stranger.

By reflecting on that one simple saying about the lack of room at the inn, we have come to see how much we need to listen to Saint Paul’s exhortation: "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2). Paul speaks of renewal, the opening up of our intellect (nous), of the whole way we view the world and ourselves.

The conversion that we need must truly reach into the depths of our relationship with reality. Let us ask the Lord that we may become vigilant for his presence, that we may hear how softly yet insistently he knocks at the door of our being and willing. Let us ask that we may make room for him within ourselves, that we may recognize him also in those through whom he speaks to us: children, the suffering, the abandoned, those who are excluded, and the poor of this world.

There is another verse from the Christmas story on which I should like to reflect with you, the angels’ hymn of praise, which they sing out following the announcement of the new-born Savior: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among people with whom he is pleased."

God is glorious. God is pure light, the radiance of truth and love. He is good. He is true goodness, goodness par excellence. The angels surrounding him begin by simply proclaiming the joy of seeing God’s glory. Their song radiates the joy that fills them. In their words, it is as if we were hearing the sounds of Heaven.

There is no question of attempting to understand the meaning of it all but simply the overflowing happiness of seeing the pure splendor of God’s truth and love. We want to let this joy reach out and touch us: truth exists, pure goodness exists, pure light exists. God is good, and he is the supreme power above all powers. All this should simply make us joyful, together with the angels and the shepherds.

Linked to God’s glory on high is peace on earth among people. Where God is not glorified, where he is forgotten or even denied, there is no peace either.

Nowadays, though, widespread currents of thought assert the exact opposite: they say that religions, especially monotheism, are the cause of the violence and the wars in the world. If there is to be peace, humanity must first be liberated from them. Monotheism, belief in one God, is said to be arrogance, a cause of intolerance because, by its nature, with its claim to possess the sole truth, it seeks to impose itself on everyone.

Now, it is true that, in the course of history, monotheism has served as a pretext for intolerance and violence. It is true that religion can become corrupted and hence opposed to its deepest essence, when people think they must take God’s cause into their own hands, making God into their private property. We must be on the lookout for these distortions of the sacred.

While there is no denying a certain misuse of religion in history, yet it is not true that denial of God would lead to peace. If God’s light is extinguished, mankind’s divine dignity is also extinguished. Then, the human creature would cease to be God’s image, to which we must pay honor in every person, in the weak, in the stranger, in the poor. Then, we would no longer all be brothers and sisters, children of the one Father, who belong to one another on account of that one Father.

The kind of arrogant violence that arises, the way people then despise and trample upon people: We saw this in all its cruelty in the last century. Only if God’s light shines over people and within them, only if every single person is desired, known, and loved by God is his or her dignity inviolable, however wretched his or her situation may be can there be peace.

On Christmas Night, God himself became man. As Isaiah prophesied, the child born here is "Emmanuel," God with us (Isaiah 7:14). And down the centuries, while there has been misuse of religion, it is also true that forces of reconciliation and goodness have constantly sprung up from faith in the God who became man. Into the darkness of sin and violence, this faith has shone a bright ray of peace and goodness that continues to shine.

So, Christ is our peace, and he proclaimed peace to those far away and to those near at hand (cf. Ephesians 2:14, 17). How could we now do other than pray to him: Yes, Lord, proclaim peace today to us too, whether we are far away or near at hand. Grant also to us today that swords may be turned into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4), that, instead of weapons for warfare, practical aid may be given to the suffering.

Enlighten those who think they must practice violence in your Name so that they may see the senselessness of violence and learn to recognize your true face. Help us to become people "with whom you are pleased," people according to your image and thus people of peace.

Once the angels departed, the shepherds said to one another: Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened for us (cf. Luke 2:15). The shepherds went with haste to Bethlehem, the Evangelist tells us (cf. 2:16). A holy curiosity impelled them to see this child in a manger, who the angel had said was the Savior, Christ the Lord. The great joy of which the angel spoke had touched their hearts and given them wings. Let us go over to Bethlehem, says the Church’s liturgy to us.

Trans-eamus is what the Latin Bible says: let us go "across," daring to step beyond, to make the "transition" by which we step outside our habits of thought and habits of life, across the purely material world into the real one, across to the God who, in his turn, has come across to us. Let us ask the Lord to grant that we may overcome our limits, our world, to help us to encounter him.

Pope Benedict XVI

CHRISTMAS

From out the hoary winter night,

While sin-enslaved man

In helplessness lay groaning,

The Word of Love Incarnate

Whispered in the wind.

Then broke the dawn –

And there was hope

And peace.

-Patrick J. Hession

 

 

God's Personal Message To You

I, your God, have an important personal message to you from my heart. Therefore, I hope you will read carefully what I have to say to you in this message.

A time of judgment has begun throughout the earth. I, God, am bringing about judgment on the world and on my Church. It is a judgment that leads to repentance, that is, seeking me with all your heart, and then to reconciliation, healing, and restoration. 

There can be no true restoration without repentance and the reforming of lives. It was those who were baptized by John the Baptist for the sake of reform as they confessed their sins that were then open and ready to receive Jesus. In their acceptance of Jesus and his way, they found healing and restoration.

Judgment is the result of your freely made choices. Judgment comes as you choose either to accept or to reject my order in the world I created as revealed through my Son, Jesus Christ. Thus, you judge yourself.

Judgment comes on the basis of acceptance of my order in the individual, the family, the Church, and the world. Acceptance of and obedience to my order leads to restoration and wholeness of body, soul, and spirit. 

It is time to choose to follow me and my ways as Jesus has taught in the Gospels rather than to follow yourself, the world's, and man's ways. It is time to reform your life and to bring it into my order. Only then will you see restoration come into your life, family, faith community, and world. Only through the restoration of my life and glory in the Church will the world see and experience the transforming power and presence of your Risen Savior, Head, and Lord.

Today, I have a question for you: "What are you dying for?"

Some people say, "I'm dying for a cold drink of water" or "I'm dying for a big T-bone steak." All over the world, people are fighting or dying for a cause they believe in, whether you believe in it or not.

Jesus Christ came to live among you and even chose to become one of you. Eventually, he was executed on a cross for his efforts. What was he dying for? He was, and is, dying to reveal the kingdom of his Father God to you and all people, a kingdom of eternal joy and happiness, even in this world. Are you dying to enter his kingdom or are you satisfied with your own?

He was, and is, dying to close the gap of separation between you and your Father God. This gap was caused by disobedience and sin.

If no one has ever told you this, I want you to hear it from me. I, your God, want you to have life in abundance, both now and in eternity. If you choose to reject me, you will have wasted the very life and purpose for which I created you. And you will die separated from me and will live forever in incredible isolation and loneliness. This is called Hell. You really don't want to go there! No power, wealth, position, drugs, illicit sex, or anything else in this life is worth that. It is a condition you personally continue in even now if you choose to disobey me and go your own willful way. 

Jesus was, and is, dying to forgive all your sins and to restore you to your true position as my child, your Father God and a member of my Family, the Church. He was, and is, dying to satisfy the insult and hurt of me, his Father, that comes from continued neglect or rejection of me and of his will for you.

Are you dying to be reconciled with me, your heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ? Are you dying to live as an obedient child instead of as a spiritual juvenile delinquent? Are you dying to please me, your Father, and to accept my will for you, whatever it is and whatever the cost?

Jesus was, and is, dying to see you believe in and accept him as the only way, truth, and life. Are you dying to follow his way, accept his truth, and receive his life as the only life worth living?

Jesus Christ was, and is, dying to give you his peace, which the world cannot give. Are you dying to have that peace that surpasses all understanding, even in the midst of trials and turmoil? Are you dying to give up your struggle against him?

Jesus Christ, and your union with him, is the only hope of eternal life in the future and of true peace and joy in the present. If you are not dying to be eternally happy with your Father and his Family through Jesus Christ, what are you dying for?

Is it too much for a Savior, who died for you because he loved you, to ask you to do the same for him?  Until you have learned how to die, you have not really learned how to live! 

Be reconciled with me and turn to me today, if you are not already, or come into a deeper relationship with me. I will heal you of everything that has kept you from me and will restore you to what I created you to be and to do. If you have not yet been reconciled with the God of the universe, or if you have strayed from me, here is what you need to do.

Acknowledge your basic spiritual problem. The Scriptures tell us, "All of you have sinned and fallen short of God's glory" (Romans 3:10-12, 2). Sin pays off with death (Romans 6:23a). You may think you are on the right road and still end up dead (Proverbs 14:12). Your sins are the roadblock between you and me, your God. That is why I don't answer your prayers or let you see my face (Isaiah 59:2).

You were born in a condition of separation from me because of the Original Sin of disobedience by your first parents and are therefore a sinner both by nature and by choice. If you have not been reconciled with me, you are still separated from me. If you have strayed from me, you need to return to me and be reconciled with me.

Therefore, accept my remedy. I, God, loved the people of this world so much that I gave my only Son so that everyone who has faith or trusts me will have eternal life and never really die. They will live with me forever in Heaven. Heaven is simply where I am. GI did not send my Son into the world to condemn its people but to save them (John 3:16 & 17). My gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ the Lord (Romans 6:23a).

I showed how much I loved you by having Jesus Christ die on a cross for you, even while you were sinful. Jesus Christ died for you at a time when you were helpless and sinful (Romans 5:8, 6). Jesus died once for your sins. An innocent person died for those who are guilty. Jesus Christ did this to bring you to me when his body was put to death and his spirit was made alive (1 Peter 3:18).

There is only one God, and Jesus Christ is the only one who can bring you to God. Jesus was truly human, and he gave himself to rescue you (1 Timothy 2:5). By his death on the cross, God's Son, Jesus Christ, bridged the gulf between you and me. He became the bridge over which you can cross from death to life and thus reconciles you with me, your Father.

I implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to me. Today is your day of salvation. Turn to me, your God! Give up your sins, and I will forgive you (Acts 3:19) Respond right now to what I have provided for you through Jesus Christ. You will be saved if you honestly say, “Jesus is Lord,” and if you believe with all your heart that I, God, raised him from death. God will accept you and save you if you truly believe this and tell it to others.

Here are two things you must then do:

First. Begotten in sin in your human nature, you must be begotten from above by me through faith in and acceptance of my Son, Jesus Christ, and through rebirth by the Holy Spirit in Baptism. In this way, you acknowledge your condition as a sinner, repent of your sins, accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, and receive his forgiveness. You become my child and share in my divine nature. Thus, you become a "new creature." Anyone who belongs to Jesus Christ is a new person. The past is forgiven and forgotten, and everything is new. God has done it all! (2 Corinthians 5:17 & 18). You also become a member of his Family, the Church, which is the Body of my Son, Jesus, on earth and in Heaven.

Second. Commit yourself to following Jesus Christ at all costs through the power of the Holy Spirit who will live in you. Jesus said to his disciples, "If any of you want to be my follower, you must forget about yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. If you want to save your life, you will destroy it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find it. What profit will there be for you to gain the whole world but forfeit your life? Or what can you give in exchange for your life?" (Matthew 16:24-26).

Your desires fight against me because they do not and cannot obey my laws. If you follow your selfish desires, you cannot please me. Honor Christ and let him be the Lord of your life. Always be ready to give an answer when someone asks you about your hope. Give a kind and respectful answer and keep your conscience clear. You are better off to obey me and suffer for doing right than to suffer for doing wrong (1 Peter 3:15-17)

Read, now, this prayer and make it your own prayer of surrender.

Jesus, in your Word, the Scriptures, you have said that "it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly, impurity, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. All these evil things come from within and defile a person" (Mark7:20-23; Galatians 5:19-21).

No wonder my life is such a mess! It is full of many of those things, and I have been content to do nothing about them. But Jesus, you took all these upon yourself and died on the cross, even though you were never guilty of any of them yourself. By your death on the cross, you bridged the gulf between me and God. You became the bridge over which I can cross from death to life and thus be made right with my Father. You desire to save me from this human nature and from eternal damnation. You want to give me instead a share in your divine nature, your divine life.

Jesus, I am tired of going nowhere. I acknowledge that I am really not in control of my life at all. I have been letting all these things you said are part of my human nature control me. I confess, Lord, and agree with you that I have not made much of my life.

Jesus, I repent of my sinful nature and life. I turn around from the direction I have been going. I ask your forgiveness for my stubbornness and my unwillingness to let you be my Savior and Lord. Jesus, have mercy on me and forgive me, a sinner!

I give up my struggle to be somebody, when, in reality, I now realize that I am nothing apart from you. I surrender to you, Jesus, and to your perfect plan for my life. I receive and accept you as my Savior and Lord. From now on, I choose to follow you. Reconcile me with my Father. Fill me with the new life for which you died and rose from the dead. Make me the new creature that you want me to be (1 Corinthians 5:17 & 18).

Fill me with new life and power through your Holy Spirit, whom you and the Father have sent and through whom I also can say, "Abba, my Father, my Daddy." Bring forth in me the fruit of your Spirit: the fruit of love, of joy, of peace, of patience, of kindness, of generosity, of faithfulness, of gentleness, of self-control (Galatians 5:22 & 23).

Thank you, Lord Jesus. And when I slip back into one of the sins of my old human nature, which I will at times, help me to turn quickly to you and ask your forgiveness because you have promised to forgive me if I confess my sins to you, repent, and turn away from them (1 John 1:9).

If you have drifted away from me, your God, turn back to me now and be reconciled with me. Scripture says that if you confess your sins to me, repent, and turn away from them, I can be trusted to forgive you and take your sins away (1 John 1:8 & 9).

Now, I heal and deliver you from anything that has been hindering your relationship with me. I cast away every sickness and infirmity and every demonic influence in your body, soul, and spirit and I release my healing and deliverance according to your need.

I am restoring you to what I intended for you from all eternity. I baptize you with my Holy Spirit and will manifest through you the gifts that I desire so that you will become a mighty witness to my love and so that my power will be manifested through you and my Glory will be seen on the earth.

If you have responded and have surrendered, you have now been reconciled with me. If you don’t have one, find and talk to a godly pastor and share with him and others what you have just done. Be baptized, if you have not been, and get involved in a church. You need fellowship with other believers.

The Journey Of A Soul In Search Of His God

 THE JOURNEY OF A SOUL IN SEARCH OF HIS GOD

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of my journey of faith in search of a God who was real and personal. Like many people, we sometimes stumble and get lost in our journey, but the important thing is that we must keep up the search because, without God, we are truly lost. I trust that this will help and encourage others on their own personal journey to not lose heart. God really does exist, and the search for a meaningful relationship with him is worth all the pain and struggle that you may be experiencing. When all is dark, and you feel helpless and hopeless, God is there for you if you will surrender your preconceived notions of him and open your will up to him as he is.

As I share my journey, I will share also my discoveries of the Truths I learned along the way and the experiences of God’s working in my life. Each of us has a unique journey, and God works with each of us differently for his own purposes. We don’t often understand many of these workings at the time, but each of them is part of his eternal plan for us, so it is important that we remain open to what he wants to do in and through us.

I tried to follow my own plan for my life for 35 years, and I was a failure until I reached the point of total surrender to God and his purposes. Life then became an exciting adventure of faith and meaning beyond anything I had ever imagined. That continues to this day. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, life in abundance.” Each day, I am learning more and more just what he means. Be encouraged!

BRIEFLY, MY LIFE BEFORE MY PERSONAL ENCOUNTER WITH GOD

It was not until 1974 that I came into a personal relationship with my heavenly Father through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit through the Baptism in the Spirit. Some would call this "getting saved." I see it rather as the normal coming into a flowering adulthood of faith, planted in infancy, nurtured in a Christian environment, and struggled with in the crises of spiritual adolescence.

I believe that true faith will grow and develop in each believer in this way, and even must, if it is going to be a lasting and mature faith. At some point in our life, each of us must, in our own way, confront the Reality of God and our own personal and deliberate response to him as he truly is: the Source and the Goal of all meaningful existence, revealed in his fullness in and through Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, and brought to our deepest understanding through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

DISCOVERING THREE LEVELS OF FAITH

Inasmuch as faith, at one level, is defined as intellectual assent to revealed truth, I had faith in God: Father, Son, and Spirit. I accepted and affirmed all the truths expressed in the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.  It was this faith that nurtured and sustained me, to the degree that I understood it. As necessary and important as this intellectual assent is, however, I found that it alone is inadequate to maintain Christian commitment, especially when that commitment is challenged through deep, personal crises that I faced.

Another level of faith I had is in Jesus Christ as he exists in his Body, the Church. While the corporal dimension of faith and commitment, like the intellectual assent, also is real and necessary, apart from a personal relationship with the Head of the Body, Jesus, it is likewise incomplete and inadequate. 

Wherever we begin our “faith journey,” it must lead ultimately to this personal relationship. This is our conversion event. Everything from then on is an ongoing conversion process. Conversion is a daily turning away from our self and the world toward a deeper relationship with the Father in and through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In this sense, we are all “converts in the process of ongoing conversion.” This is one of the Truths I learned.

GOD’S THING MY WAY

Early in my years with a Youth Services Bureau, a federally funded program, I tried to get the churches where I was working more actively involved with the young people I was seeing and prepared to pick up the funding of the Bureau after federal funds ran out. My desire to know and to serve Jesus in and through his Church was shaken and shattered as I became more and more aware of both the confusion and disunity within the Body of Christ and its failure to minister to the real needs and hurts of people, especially of the young people with whom I was then working to keep out of trouble with the Courts. After all, I thought that the churches, with the Gospel, had more to offer these young people than the Government did. I found little or no interest in this overall, however, but instead a resistance to working with "those" kids.

At this point, lest I point all the blame at others, I would be less than honest if I did not confess that, during these years of crises, some of them were self-caused, and my personal and moral life took a nosedive. Like the author of Ecclesiastes, "Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil (and sin!), and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was emptiness and striving after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 2:10 & 11).

I could relate very closely to the prodigal son in the Gospel during this time! I had made a mess of my life and didn't know where to turn! Here I was, trying to work with pre-delinquent kids, while I myself was a spiritual delinquent! With intellectual and corporal faith as the only bases for my relationship with the Lord at that time, and with these being so shattered, I had turned to man's systems for answers, knowing that they really didn't have any. It was in this pigpen of my life that my heavenly Father, in his grace and mercy, found me at my point of deepest need and began to call me back home to him.

RECONCILIATION, HEALING, AND RESTORATION

In October of 1973, while I was toiling and seeing more and more the total inadequacy of all man's systems to meet real hurts and needs, including mine, and feeling all the more frustrated and lonely, the Lord sent along someone who knew him in a personal way, a non-denominational, circuit-riding Pentecostal preacher. He ministered in love and in the power of the Holy Spirit - not with intellectual formulas and knowledge but with deeds, like Jesus did. He prayed and got results -- kids with whom I was working were healed, people on my staff found a living God. He exhibited a commitment to a Person, Jesus Christ, not to a theological system. Gently and gradually, he kept sending me back to God's own Word, the Scriptures, to show me that what he was doing was simply what Jesus did in his own ministry and what he commissioned and empowered his Body, the Church, to do through the Person and manifestations of the Holy Spirit until the end of time.

I had read that revival is not the lid blowing off but the bottom falling out. I was ripe for revival! Gradually, through this servant, the Lord drew me to himself. On April 26, 1974, in my office, the preacher and I prayed. I surrendered myself to God as my Father and to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in a new and deeper commitment. At that moment, I experienced God in the personal way I had been seeking all my life. I was filled in a powerful way with the Holy Spirit and received a new prayer language. This was my conversion event.

I met Jesus as my Savior and Lord, God as my Father, and the Holy Spirit as the power source for all life and ministry. I found what I was missing in my life. I learned that complete faith in God involves all three dimensions I have mentioned -intellectual, corporal, and personal. If any of these three is lacking, faith is yet incomplete and unbalanced. But of these, the most essential dimension is the daily, growing personal relationship with the living God through his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. This is the relationship that will endure throughout eternity. 

This is a process that begins with repentance and yielding to God's grace and leads to reconciliation, healing, and restoration. God wants to reconcile us to himself, heal us of all our hang-ups and sins that keep us from a deep child-Father relationship with him, and then restore everything he desires us to be so that we can have life in all its fullness and abundance. This is the sole purpose for which God sent his only begotten Son into the world, even to his death on the Cross. All the other dimensions of the Christian life come alive when we understand this. 

We must all be built up together in love and must minister to one another and to the world in Jesus' Name and as his Body. But fellowship with one another as the Body of Christ must be the result of followship of Christ, the Head, not a substitute for it. Another Truth I learned.

Now, it was to be some time before I would know the ministry that the Lord was beginning to lead me into. Years of preparation and breaking yet lay ahead. I had lessons to learn and had many areas where God's healing needed to take place, both spiritually and psychologically. I have learned, and am still learning, that these are never-ending processes in the Christian life.

“OLD THINGS HAVE PASSED AWAY.  BEHOLD, ALL THINGS ARE MADE NEW”

Shortly after I recommitted myself to the Lord, he brought a family across my path. My wife to be and I had met professionally through her work as a teacher and my work with the Bureau. As we got to know each other, she and I discovered that she had had an experience with God similar to mine on the same day I did but about 12 hours later at a retreat house. Later that year, my board de-funded the Bureau.

Penny and I were married on November 2^nd. 1974, and I immediately inherited a family. Penny had moved to Madison, Florida to teach in the high school, and I substituted in the local middle and high school and community college. Little did we know where our walk as a family would take us. We spent almost two years in the wilderness, literally, as we "homesteaded" on 120 acres of land. This was a precious time of building our family as a team as well as of intense study and learning the ways of God for all of us, but especially for me. During this time, we began to sense a call to a ministry to the whole Church.

In Florida, pine trees are cut to make pulp for paper. One day, I was out walking around our property where most of the pine trees had been “logged.” As I looked around, I noticed that many of the remaining trees were bent over and that others were broken and lying around on the ground. We had used many of these to build a corral for our animals and a barn. Some we used to heat the two-burner wood stove for cooking. An impression came to me that many people were like these trees. I sensed God was showing me that part of what we were to be involved in was to “prop up” people who were bent over from the burdens of life and to give new purpose to those who were broken and discarded. From the beginning, Penny knew that, whatever our ministry was to be, it was to be primarily to believers within the Church, not to unbelievers, though it didn’t exclude sharing the Gospel.

In 1977, our walk took us to Valdosta, Georgia for several months, and then to Daytona Beach, Florida to find better employment. We taught at Daytona Beach Community College for 3 1/2 years. In late 1979, we established a retail outlet for educational materials for teachers, parents, and churches. This was in addition to our regular teaching load at DBCC. We sold our business at a profit in January of 1981.

 “AN APOSTLE, NOT FROM HUMAN BEINGS NOR THROUGH A HUMAN BEING BUT THROUGH JESUS CHRIST AND GOD THE FATHER WHO RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD” (Galatians 1:1).

Sacred Scripture reveals a consistent pattern and principle in the lives of all those he has chosen: God calls, God equips, and God sends.” This is God’s order for any valid ministry.

Late in 1980, I sensed a nudge from the Lord to go into a total faith walk in ministry as he directed, what I call an “Abraham” walk. What I heard the Lord say was, “Go where I send you and do what I tell you.” Then he said, “There are two kinds of people: those who are for me and those who are against me. Work with those who are for me.” This was an apostolic call, as I later learned. An apostle is one who is called by God to lay foundations and to exercise his divine authority over particular regions or nations.

I discovered over the years that my primary call is to lay foundations, much like St. Paul did. I taught introductory courses in Psychology and Sociology over 25 years. While overseeing a GED program, I wrote a basic self-paced, self-grading English Grammar book called English Foundations. I have written seven inspirational/teaching type books that lay the foundations for marriage and the Christian life, among other things. I did not set out to write books but to study God's Word. Written over a period of 25 years or so, all of the teachings God has given to me for individuals and the Church are contained in these books. They are the result of many years of learned experiences.  Out of my teaching experience, I developed an in-depth individual or group study in Servant Leadership, called Godly Leadership. It offers all the time-tested tools needed to lead any organization in a God-honoring manner. This and my books lay solid foundations on which people can build.

We bought and traveled in a school bus we converted. We traveled off-and-on for the next three years, ministering as a family through puppets in over 60 churches of all denominations and non-denominations. We spent several months in Cleveland, Tennessee, and two years in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. 

In October of 1983, we set out as a family to work with a hunger program in Bolivia, South America. We were the first family ever to apply to and be accepted by this organization. However, on the way to the headquarters in Arizona, our younger daughter became ill with severe asthma and hives. We ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we spent a bitterly cold winter in our bus, parked on the City of Faith Hospital parking lot at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The real surprise and challenge came the following Spring when we discovered that the Lord was sending us back to my hometown. This was the last place I would have chosen! As we have learned over and over, God's ways are definitely not our ways! At this point, I knew for sure that God was leading us. God used this series of events to redirect us into his plan and purpose instead of ours, a lesson we learned many times.

We learned that, in God's system, understanding always comes after obedience, not before, if at all! It is important not to ask God "why" but to simply obey. If he chooses to, he will answer the “why.” Gradually, we began to understand why God took us there. One thing he needed to bring about was reconciliation, healing, and restoration within my birth family. Like all reconciliation, it required complete forgiveness all around. The process began, and much progress was made during the 10 years we spent in my hometown. Later, reconciliation, healing, and restoration occurred also for Penny with her parents and sister.

It became appropriate to us that God began to bring reconciliation, healing, and restoration within our natural families. As this continued, we became stronger in working toward the same reconciliation, healing, and restoration of other individuals and families within the rest of God's Family, the Church, and even of the Church itself. Over time, the lessons we learned through our personal experiences became helpful to others.

GOD’S THINGS GOD’S WAY - PENNY AND ME TOGETHER

Since 1974, Penny and I have been following the leading of the Holy Spirit, and what became Family to Families ministry has developed accordingly. When we married, we chose to sell out completely to God. Our only desire has been to follow him through the Holy Spirit as faithfully as we can, wherever that might lead, and to make him known to all people. It has been a fascinating journey, full of many surprises!

Around June of 1994, while still in my hometown, the Lord spoke to us about relocating to the Charlotte, North Carolina area, which we did in November of that year. Many exciting things happened. Among them, Penny was able to lead her mother to the Lord. She was 89 years old! 

Each time we moved, we wondered what we were doing in the place we were. It gradually became apparent that we were walking, and are continuing to walk, in the school of the Holy Spirit. In each place, he has taught us something more about his people, continually equipping us for the work he called us to do. When he sent us on, the lessons we had learned and experienced became important in the next phase of our journey. Looking back, we can now see that he has brought us into personal and experiential contact with the whole spectrum of the Body of Christ in its various and sometimes enriching expressions. He has dealt with any prejudices and wrong attitudes we might have had against any of our fellow Christians as well as shown us the strengths and weaknesses of each group with which we come into contact. Through ministry with puppets with our three teenage children, he gave us the opportunity to minister and to receive his love in faith communities of all denominations.

At one point during our time in my hometown, I was experiencing a bit of doubt. In my bedroom one evening, I remember asking the Lord to make it so clear to me that he had called me to the walk we were now in. I figured that at some point I might receive some kind of answer. However, immediately came the thought very clearly, “You have my word.” I teach and proclaim the Word of God. Individually and together, Penny and I share an apostolic/ prophetic call and a divine mandate to call individuals, families, and the Church into God’s order and to establish them in his order. Our ministry of reconciliation, healing, and restoration aims to bring unity and wholeness into each of these areas by walking with and encouraging those whom the Lord brings across our path. We have discovered that many times they are those whom others tend to ignore or overlook (the discarded and bent over trees) to whom we are able to bring the love and Word of God and “prop up.”

God wants unity in the Body of Christ, his Church. We work and pray for the day that the prayer of Jesus will be answered: That we all may be one, as he and the Father are one, so that the world may believe that God has sent him. The ongoing disunity within the Church is the greatest sin and hindrance to that prayer. God is not a denomination. Jesus is not a denomination. The Church of Jesus Christ is not a denomination. There is only one Body of Christ, and he is her Head. In God’s eyes, denominations are abominations! The time for denominations and division is over! The final reconciliation, healing, and restoration of the Church is yet to come, but it will come in God’s way and in his time, but it is beginning. We look forward in hope to greater things as Jesus brings us together with his Father and with one another in one accord as the Family of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Penny is an educator, artist, and author of novels, through which the readers are introduced to how God works in the lives of people. Not all of her novels are specifically religious, but her characters are real down to earth people who struggle with life’s issues, often with the help of Godly people.

Our books can be found at www.hessionbooks.webador.com. Click on the cover and on the link below it if necessary . Our website is www.familytofamilies.webador.com. I can be followed at www.facebook.com/patrick.hession.5. You can reach me at p.hession2014@gmail.com or at 336-977-7360.

Throughout our marriage and ministry, God supported us through our work. We were, in effect, "tentmakers," as Paul was.  In 2003, we decided to move to the mountains of Appalachia to write and to enjoy the mountains that we had frequently visited. Sometime during that time, God told us that that he had “embedded” us on this mountain to recover the Church. “Embedded” is his word, not ours. We are still learning what that means. We seek always to be faithful to the task to which God called us. We did not ask for this walk, but neither can we reject it. 

MY PERSONAL MANDATE

Several years ago, as I was working on my final book, “Reconciliation, Healing, and Restoration of the Church,” the Lord brought to mind many of the things he had shown me over the years. These are the foundations I stand on, and they sum up what I believe is my calling and mandate from God.

LOVE GOD COMPLETELY – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first and most important commandment. The second most important commandment is to love others as much as you love yourself. Your food is to do what God wants! He is the one who sent you, and you must finish the work that he gave you to do.

STAY CONNECTED TO CHRIST – I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does, he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. 

Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branch. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciple. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain so that whatever you ask the Father in my Name he may give you. This I command you: Love. If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.

TRUST GOD – By waiting and by calm you shall be saved. In quiet and in gentleness shall be your strength. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not rely on your own intelligence. In all your ways, be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. This will mean health for your flesh and vigor for your bones.

SEEK JUSTICE, BE MERCIFUL, AND OBEY GOD – You have been told, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: only to do the right, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. The last word, when all is heard: Fear God and keep his commandments for this is man’s all because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad.

LEAD – I have given you and all my people the entire land that you will be marching over. No one will be able to defeat you as long as you live. I will always be with you. I will never abandon you. Be determined and confident for you will be the leader of these people as they occupy this land which I promised their ancestors. Just be determined and confident and make sure that you obey the whole Law. Do not neglect any part of it and you will succeed wherever you go. Study it day and night and make sure that you obey everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Remember that I have commanded you to be determined and confident! Do not be afraid or discouraged for I, the Lord your God, am with you wherever you go.

SPEAK OUT – Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast. Tell my people their wickedness and their sins. They seek me day after day and desire to know my ways, like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God. They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. “Why do we fast, and you do not see it? Afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?” Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends with quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance, that a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed. Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. Then the Lord will guide you always and give you plenty, even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails. The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up. “Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, “Restorer of ruined homesteads.”

PROCLAIM THE WORD – I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, proclaim the Word, be persistent whether it is convenient of inconvenient, convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. The time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers, will stop listening to the truth, and will be diverted to myths. Be self-possessed in all circumstances, put up with hardship, perform the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry.

For a while, I taught a live bible study in Pakistan through the internet. In February 2021. through my Facebook page, I started getting contacts from pastors, evangelists, and others in Pakistan, Kenya, India, Malawi, South Sudan, Haiti, and Uganda. At their request, I send the bible studies to them. All of them are following Jesus Christ, and most of them are Godly pastors who love Jesus Christ and are sharing the bible studies with their people. One of our primary contacts with whom we are working closely is packaging the bible studies into booklets to train his pastors in the Word of God. He is also promoting these studies with others throughout Kenya with whom he has contacts.  I am also posting these bible studies on YouTube in order to reach more people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to disciple them according to the mandate of Jesus in Matthew 28:19 & 20. Our channel address is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKuPZMHzDzWlqU_kqRe1Ekg

INSIST ON REPENTANCE – Bear witness to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus, compelled by the Spirit. Consider life of no importance if only you may finish your course and the ministry that you received from the Lord Jesus to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace. Keep watch over yourself and over the whole flock, of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseer, in which you tend the Church of God that Jesus acquired with his own blood.

BUILD UP – Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove the stumbling blocks from my people’s path. For thus says he who is high and exalted, living eternally, whose Name is the Holy One: On high I dwell, and in holiness, and with the crushed and dejected in spirit, to revive the hearts of the crushed. I will not accuse forever nor always be angry because their spirits would faint before me, the souls that I have made. Because of their wicked avarice, I was angry and struck them, hiding myself in wrath as they went their own rebellious way. I saw their ways, but I will heal them and lead them. I will give full comfort to them and to those who mourn for them, I, the Creator, who gave them life. Peace, peace to the far and the near, says the Lord, and I will heal them. 

Joshua 1:3-9; 2 Timothy 4:1-5; Acts 20:21 & 22, 24, 28; Isaiah 58:1-12, 57:14-19; Isaiah 30:15; Proverbs 3:5-8; Matthew 22:37-40; John 15:1-5a, 7-10, 16-18; Micah 6:8; Ecclesiastes 12:13

WHAT PROFIT IS THERE FOR ONE TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND FORFEIT HIS LIFE?  WHAT COULD ONE GIVE IN EXCHANGE FOR HIS LIFE?  Mark 8:36 & 37

 

 

God's Word For Our Times

'

WAKE UP, CHURCH!

Yes, I hear the pleas. I hear people pray. Why do they pray?

Now is the time for repentance. Now is the time to repent.

I do know what I have planned

My people do not repent, they plea. They plea for my action for them. They plea for my interception.

Do they not realize that I AM? That I do nothing without purpose?

Look at my Church. It is divided against itself. It is divided even among its individuals.

Where is my Church? Where is the heart of my people? Do they refuse to acknowledge their sin, their sin(s) of complacency, self-knowledge, and pride?

Why do they think I shall overlook their self-pride?

I AM THAT I AM. My Word is true. The government is on my shoulders. I will do as I have planned.

Who is persecuting the Church? Is it not the church itself? Not the Church that is I AM, but the people who call themselves by that name; the church that destroys itself, its people, my lambs; the church that sees itself in arrogance and pride. This is not my Church! My Word is true. Test me, test me. Fall on your knees. If only my people would believe that I AM, and as I AM, I cannot lie. My Word is true and everlasting. I AM everlasting.

--Penny Hession 11.20.2000

A MESSAGE FROM THE LORD TO HIS PEOPLE AND TO THE WORLD

January, 1981

TO THE WORLD

There is no faithfulness or love in the land. The people do not acknowledge me as God. They make promises and break them. They lie, steal, murder, and commit adultery. Crimes increase, and there is one murder after another (1) The evil that the people have done keeps them from returning to their God.  Idolatry has a powerful hold on them, and they do not acknowledge the Lord (2).

I will bring such disasters on mankind that everyone will grope about like a blind man. On the day when the Lord shows his fury, not even all their silver and gold will save them. The fire of his anger will destroy the whole earth. He will put an end - a sudden end - to everyone who lives on earth (3).

Shameless nation, come to your senses before you wither and die like a flower, before the burning anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day when he shows his fury. Turn to the Lord, all you humble people of the land who obey his commands. Do what is right and humble yourselves before the Lord.  Perhaps you will escape punishment on the day the Lord shows his anger (4).

TO GOD'S PEOPLE

Even my people are as stubborn as mules. How can I feed them like lambs in the meadow? (5) The arrogance of my people cries out against them. Their sins make them stumble and fall. They have been unfaithful to the Lord. Their children do not belong to him (6).

My people have not listened to the Lord or accepted his discipline. They have not put their trust in the Lord or asked for his help. Prophets are irresponsible and treacherous. Priests defile what is sacred and twist the law of God to their own advantage. But the Lord is still in the city. He does what is right and never what is wrong. Every morning, without fail, he brings justice to his people, yet the unrighteous people keep on doing wrong and are not ashamed.

Look! I have wiped out whole nations! I have destroyed their cities and left their walls and towers in ruins. The cities are deserted, the streets are empty. . .no one is left. I thought that then my people would have reverence for me and accept my discipline, that they would never forget the lessons I taught them.  But soon they were behaving as badly as ever (7).

My people have lost land that was rightfully theirs because they insisted on going for help to those who had no help to give (8). My people have broken the covenant I made with them and have rebelled against my teaching. Even though they call me their God and claim that they are my people and that they know me, they have rejected what is good (9).

My people have become like any other nation and are as useless as broken pots. Stubborn as wild donkeys, my people go their own way. They have gone off to seek help from the world and have paid other nations to protect them (10).

The more altars and temples my people build for removing sin, the more places they have for sinning! I write down countless teachings for my people, but they reject them as strange and foreign (11). My people have built palaces but have forgotten their own Maker (12). So, I will abandon my people until they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps, in their suffering, they will try to find me (13).

What I want is plain and clear - I want your constant love. I would rather have my people know me than have them burn offerings to me (14). Therefore, I will destroy anyone who goes up on the roof and worships the sun, the moon, and the stars. I will destroy those who have turned back and no longer follow me, those who do not come to me and ask me to guide them (15). I will punish my people who are self-satisfied and confident, who say to themselves, "The Lord never does anything one way or the other."  Their wealth will be destroyed. They will never live in the houses they are building or drink wine from the vineyards they are planting (16).

JUDGMENT IS COMING UPON THE WORLD AND UPON GOD'S PEOPLE

The people of the world will be punished for their pride and arrogance and for insulting the people of the Lord Almighty. The Lord will terrify them. He will reduce the gods of the earth to nothing, and then every nation will worship him each in its own land (17).

Just wait! Wait for the day when I rise to accuse the nations and kingdoms in order to let them feel the force of my anger. Then I will change the people of the nations, and they will pray to me alone and not to other gods. Then they will obey me.

At that time, you, my people, will no longer need to be ashamed that you rebelled against me.  I will remove everyone who is proud and arrogant, and you will never again rebel against me. I will leave a humble and lowly people who will come to me for help. My people who survive will do no wrong to anyone, tell no lies, nor try to deceive. They will be prosperous and secure, afraid of no one (18).

When the Lord comes to shake the earth, people will hide in holes and caves in the rocky hills to try to escape from his anger and to hide from his power and glory (19).

Listen! The Lord has called out his proud and confident soldiers to fight a holy war and punish those with whom he is angry. Listen to the noise on the mountains - the sound of a great crowd of people, the sound of nations and kingdoms gathering. The Lord of Armies is preparing his troops for battle. They are coming from far-off countries to the ends of the earth.

Howl in pain! The day of the Lord is near, the day when the Almighty brings destruction (20). The day of the Lord is coming - that cruel day of his fierce anger and fury. I will humble everyone who is proud and punish everyone who is arrogant and cruel. I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place on that day when I, the Lord Almighty, show my anger (21).

Yes, a day is coming when human pride will be ended, and human arrogance destroyed. Then the Lord alone will be exalted. On that day, the Lord Almighty will humble everyone who is powerful, everyone who is proud and conceited. Human pride will be ended, and human arrogance will be destroyed. Idols will completely disappear, and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day (22).

GOD IS MERCIFUL TO THOSE WHO REPENT AND TURN TO HIM

Put no more confidence in mortal men. What are they worth? (23)  Do not join in the schemes of the people. Do not be afraid of things that they fear. Remember that I, the Lord Almighty, am holy. I am the one you must fear. Because of my awesome holiness, I am like a stone that people stumble over. I am like a trap that will catch the people. Many will stumble; they will fall and be crushed. They will be caught in a trap (24).

Yet, the Lord is compassionate, and when you cry to him for help, he will answer you. The Lord will make you go through hard times, but he himself will be there to teach you, and you will not have to search for him anymore. If you wander off the road to the right or left, you will hear his voice behind you saying, "There is the road. Follow it" (25).

When you plant your crops, the Lord will send rain to make them grow and will give you a rich harvest, and your cattle will have plenty of pasture. The oxen and donkeys that plow your fields will eat the finest and best fodder. On the day when the forts of your enemies are captured and their people are killed, streams of water will flow from every mountain and every hill. The moon will be as bright as the sun, and the sun will be seven times brighter than usual, like the light of seven days in one. This will happen when the Lord bandages and heals the wounds he has given to his people (26).

Plow new ground for yourselves, therefore. Plant righteousness and reap the blessings that your devotion to me will produce. It is time for you to turn to me, your Lord, and I will come and pour out blessings on you (27). Even now, repent sincerely and return to me with fasting and weeping and mourning. Let your broken heart show your sorrow; tearing your clothes is not enough. Come back to the Lord, your God.  He is kind and full of mercy; he is patient and keeps his promises; he is always ready to forgive and not punish (28).

A TIME OF RESTORATION AND GLORY IS COMING FOR GOD'S PEOPLE       

My people will become like the sand of the sea, more than can be counted or measured. Now God says to them, "You are not my people." But the day is coming when he will say to them, "You are the children of the Living God" (29).

I am going to take my people into the desert again. There I will win them back with words of love. Then, once again, they will call me their husband. At that time, I will make a covenant with all the wild animals and birds so that they will not harm my people. I will also remove all weapons of war from the land and will let my people live in peace and safety.

My people, I will make you my wife; I will be true and faithful. I will show you my constant love and mercy and make you mine, and you will acknowledge me as Lord. At that time, I will answer the prayers of my people. I will make rain fall on the earth, and the earth will produce grain and grapes and olives. I will establish my people in the land and make them prosper. I will show love to those who were called "unloved." And to those who were called "not-my-people" I will say, "You are my people," and they will answer, "You are our God" (30).

Yes, the days are coming when grain will grow faster than it can be harvested, and grapes will grow faster than wine can be made. The mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with it. I will bring my people back to their land. They will rebuild their ruined cities and live there. They will plant vineyards and drink the wine. They will plant gardens and eat what they grow. I will plant my people on the land I gave them, and they will not be pulled up again. The Lord, your God, has spoken (31).                                            

(1) Hosea 4:1b-2                                                              (16) Zephaniah 1:12-13

(2) Hosea 5:4                                                                    (17) Zephaniah 2:10-11

(3) Zephaniah 1:17-18                                                    (18) Zephaniah 3:8-9

(4) Zephaniah 2:1-3                                                         (19) Isaiah 2:21

(5) Hosea 4:16                                                                   (20) Isaiah 12:3-6

(6) Hosea 5:5, 7                                                                 (21) Isaiah 13:9, 11-13

(7) Zephaniah 3:2, 4-7                                                     (22) Isaiah 2:10-12, 17-18

(8) Hosea 5:11                                                                   (23) Isaiah 2L22

(9) Hosea 8:1b-3                                                                (24) Isaiah 8:12-15

(10) Hosea 8:8-9                                                                (25) Isaiah 30:19b-21

(11) Hosea 8:11-12                                                            (26) Isaiah 30:22-26

(12) Hosea 8:14a                                                             (27) Hosea 10:12

(13) Hosea 5:15                                                               (28) Joel 2:12-13

(14) Hosea 6:5-6                                                                (29) Hosea 1:10

(15) Zephaniah 1:7a, 6                                                    (30) Hosea 2:14, 15, 18-2      

(31) Amos 9:13-15

Note: This prophecy was given to me just before a Camp Meeting near Orlando, Florida during the 3rd. week of January 1981. This is the common way that God speaks his prophetic word to me, whether the word is for me or for others. Patrick J. Hession

IT IS TIME

A time of judgment has begun. God is bringing about judgment on the world and on his Church. It is a judgment that leads to repentance, then reconciliation, healing, and restoration.

There can be no true restoration without repentance and the reforming of lives. It was those who were baptized by John the Baptist for the sake of reform as they confessed their sins that were then open and ready to receive Jesus. In their acceptance of Jesus and his way, they found healing and restoration.

Judgment is understood primarily in the idea of choice that runs throughout the Gospel of John. It is the result of our freely made choices. Judgment comes as we choose either to accept or to reject God's order as revealed through his Son, Jesus Christ. Thus, we judge ourselves.

Judgment comes on the basis of acceptance of God's order in the individual, the family, the Church, and the world. Acceptance of and obedience to his order leads to restoration and wholeness of body, mind, and spirit and begins with you and me. 

It is time to choose to follow God and his ways as Jesus has taught us in his Word rather than to follow ourselves, the world's, and man's ways. It is time to reform our lives and to bring them into God's order. Only then will we see restoration come into our lives, families, faith communities, and world. Only through the restoration of God's life and glory in the Church will the world see and experience the transforming power and presence of the Risen Savior, Head, and Lord.

We must choose to come to "that perfect man who is Christ, come to full stature." (Ephesians 4:13).  "Reform your lives!  Turn to God so that your sins may be wiped away! Thus, may the Lord grant you a season of refreshment, when he sends you Jesus, already designated as your Messiah. Jesus must remain in Heaven until the time of universal restoration, which God spoke of long ago through his holy Prophets" (Acts 3:19-21).

--Patrick J. Hession

WHAT ARE YOU DYING FOR?

God has a question for you.: "What are you dying for?"

Some people say, "I'm dying for a cold drink of water" or "I'm dying for a big T-bone steak."

Some say that they are dying to take a trip to Hawaii or around the world. All over the world, people are fighting or dying for a cause they believe in, whether we believe in it or not.

Jesus Christ came to live among us and even chose to become one of us. Eventually, he was executed on a cross for his efforts. What was he dying for? He was, and is, dying to reveal the kingdom of his Father to all people, a kingdom of eternal joy and happiness, even in this world. Are you dying to enter his kingdom or are you satisfied with your own?

He was, and is, dying to close the gap of separation between us and his Father. This gap was caused by disobedience and sin. It is a condition we personally continue in when we choose to disobey God and go our own willful way. Are you dying to your sinful nature and dying to be reconciled to your heavenly Father through Jesus Christ?

Jesus was, and is, dying to forgive all you sins and to restore you to your true position as a child of his Father and a member of his Family. He was, and is, dying to satisfy the insult and hurt of his Father that comes from our continued neglect or rejection of him and of his will for us.

Are you dying to live as an obedient child, instead of as a spiritual juvenile delinquent? Are you dying to please your Father and to accept his will for you, whatever it is and whatever the cost?

Jesus was, and is, dying to see you believe in and accept him as the only way, truth, and life. Are you dying to follow his way, accept his truth, and receive his life as the only life worth living?

Jesus Christ was, and is, dying to give you his peace, which the world cannot give. Are you dying to have that peace that surpasses all understanding, even in the midst of trials and turmoil?  Are you dying to give up your struggle against him?

Jesus Christ, and your union with him, is the only hope of eternal life in the future and of true peace and joy in the present. If you are not dying to be eternally happy with your Father and his Family through Jesus Christ, what are you dying for?

Is it too much for a Savior, who died for you because he loved you, to ask you to do the same for him?  Until you have learned how to die, you have not really learned how to live!

--Patrick J. Hession

A CALL TO SPIRITUAL WARFARE (1980)

The Lord is calling his people again to war -- Spiritual Warfare: "Say to the nations: 'Get ready for war!  Be eager to fight. Line up for battle and prepare to attack. Make swords out of plows and spears out of garden tools. Strengthen every weakling. Hurry all you nations! Come quickly" (1).

The Lord himself has commanded his very best warriors and his proud heroes to show how angry he is. Listen to the noisy crowds on the mountains! Kingdoms and nations are joining forces. The Lord All-Powerful is bringing together an army for battle. From a distant land the Lord is coming, fierce and furious -- he brings his weapons to destroy the earth (2).

(Satan) will use deceit to win followers from those who are unfaithful to God, but those who remain faithful will do everything possible to oppose him. Wise leaders will instruct many of the people. But, for a while, some of these leaders will be killed with swords or burned alive, or else robbed of their possessions and thrown into prison. They will receive only a little help in their time of trouble, and many of their followers will be treacherous. Some of those who are wise will suffer so that God will make them pure and acceptable until the end, which will still come at the time he has decided (3).

People who have their names written in The Book will be protected. Everyone who has been wise will shine as bright as the sky above, and everyone who has led others to please God will shine like the stars (4). Many people will have their hearts and lives made pure and clean, but those who are evil will keep on being evil and never understand. Only the wise will understand (5)

(1)  Joel 3:9-11

(2)  Isaiah 13:3-5

(3)  Daniel 11:32-35

(4)  Daniel 12:1b, 3

(5)  Daniel 12:10                                             

--Patrick J. Hession

NOTE: It has been 40 years since I received the first and last messages. Forty (40) is the biblical number signifying fulfilment of a time and transition to something else. I believe these messages are for today and God is beginning to fulfil them and to transition into a New Era!

--Patrick J. Hession

THE MINISTERING BODY OF CHRIST: A Call to Action

Exorbitant medical and housing costs - Downsizing and job insecurity - Social Security uncertainty - Limited welfare, unemployment, and Medicare benefits - Worldwide political, economic, and social instability - Terrorism - Drugs out of control - Floods - Blizzards - Storms - Volcanoes - Hurricanes - Forest fires - Crop damage - Widespread famines - Bankruptcies – Destructive viruses. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?

In 1982, while I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina, I had the impression one day of Jesus standing off to my right, hands outstretched before him. The thought came, "The Ministering Body of Christ." Jesus Christ, the Lord of Heaven and earth, has been warning us of the above events for several years in order to prepare us to be the Ministering Body of Christ in our time.

The Lord says, "I raise my voice, but who listens to me?  I cry out, but who hears my word? This is a time of building up and of washing away. This is a time when I establish my Kingdom, and every other kingdom collapses. I raise my voice to warn my people, and who takes heed? A cloud hangs over you, a shadow envelopes you. Do you not hear my voice?  There is darkness around you.

"Anything that is not built by my hands will be washed away. Anything that does not come from me will not survive. I cry out to you. Do you hear my voice? I raise my voice to save my people, and they don't listen. This is a time of building up and of tearing down. I must strengthen my people. I must prevent my people from being torn down. This is an important time for my people. This is a day of decision that cannot be passed by. I raise my voice. I call forth my people. Who will listen to me? Who will respond to my call? (1)

"I speak to you of the dawn of a ‘new age’ (new era) for my Church. I speak to you of a day that has not been seen before. Prepare yourselves for the action that I begin now because things that you see around you will change. The combat that you must enter now is different. You need wisdom from me that you do not yet have.

“You need the power of my Holy Spirit in a way that you have not possessed it. You need an understanding of my will and the ways that I work that you do not yet have. Open your eyes, open your hearts to prepare yourselves for me and for the day that I have now begun. My Church will be different, my people will be different. Difficulties and trials will come upon you. The comfort that you know now will be far from you, but the comfort that you will have is the comfort of my Holy Spirit. They will send for you to take your life, but I will support you. Come to me. Band yourselves together around me. Prepare because I proclaim a new day, a day of victory and of triumph for your God. Behold, it is begun. (2)

“My beloved, you my people who stand before me now, hear my word. I will set my house in order. I will purify my people. I will purify my Church. I will set aside the deceiver, the false prophet, and the false teacher. I will set aside anything and anyone who stands in the way of my Kingdom.

"I am going to restore my people and reunite them. I am going to restore to my people the glory that is mine so that the world will not mock or scorn them, but so that the world may know that I am God and King and that I have come to redeem and to save this earth." (3)

Jesus is the Head of the Church, which is his Body.  What Jesus is calling forth is nothing less than for the Church to be the Ministering Body of Christ in our day in a way that it has not been. The world is desperately looking in these increasingly dark days for some place or someone to turn to - some alternative that offers life and security.

Before he returned to the Father, Jesus commissioned and empowered the Body of Christ, the Church, to be this alternative. The Body of Christ was to continue his ministry, to take care of the weak ones, to heal the ones that are sick, to bandage the ones that are hurt, to bring back the ones who wander off, and to look for the ones that are lost.

It was his plan that within his Body there should be no one who was needy, nor should anyone have to go to the world's systems to get his or her needs met. The Church was to be the Ministering Body of Christ in and to the world, first to her own and then to the unbeliever. The Church was to be the sign and the prophetic witness to the world of the continuing presence and work of Christ in the world. The Church was gifted with the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit to accomplish this work. And now, once again Jesus is calling his Church to become and to be his ministering Body. This is not the work of our government or of any government.

I believe that we are moving again into the Book of Acts Church. The Book of Acts shows us a pattern that the early Church established as an alternative to the world of its day. It offers us today the pattern for becoming the ministering Body that Jesus is calling for. Here it is in capsule form:

THE MINISTERING BODY OF CHRIST SHARES ITS RESOURCES

The believers spent their time learning from the apostles and were like family to each other. (4) All the Lord's followers often met together and shared everything they had. (5). The group of followers all felt the same way about everything. None of them claimed their possessions as their own but shared everything with others, (6) and no one went in need of anything. Those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles, who would give the money to anyone who needed it. (7) People would sell their property and possessions and give the money to whoever needed it. (8) You may never have to do this, but would you be willing to do so if the Lord asked you to? Are you listening to his voice?

Jesus said, "When people ask you for something, give it to them. When they want to borrow money, lend it to them. (9) Give to everyone who asks and don't ask people to return what they have taken from you. Treat others just as you want to be treated. (10) St. John said, "If we have all we need and see one of our own people in need, we must have pity on that person or else we cannot say we love God. Children, you show love for others by truly helping them and not merely by talking about it." (11) Wouldn't it be marvelous if you responded to someone's need before he or she had to ask for help? Would that people who might be embarrassed to ask for help could receive it without having to ask! Are you that sensitive to the needs of others? To know Christ is to see him in the joys and in the sufferings of another. Are you holding all your possessions loosely as a good steward, recognizing that it is God who has provided them to you? You may not think you have much yourself, but are you thankful for his provision to you?

THE MINISTERING BODY OF CHRIST PRAYS AND WORSHIPS TOGETHER

The believers also broke bread and prayed together. (12) They ate together and celebrated the Lord's Supper, (called the Agape). Day after day, they met together in the temple. They broke bread together in different homes and shared their food happily and freely, while praising God.  Everyone liked them. (13) Do your prayer and worship translate into a life that wins the admiration and approval of the people out in your community who see you? Jesus said, "You are like salt for everyone on earth. But if salt no longer tastes like salt, how can it make food salty? All it is good for is to be thrown out and walked on. You are like a light for the whole world. A city built on top of a hill cannot be hidden.  Make your light shine so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in Heaven. (14) Do you bear the family resemblance of your Father and your Brother, Jesus? Are you letting him transform you into his image by the renewing of your mind?

THE MINISTERING BODY OF CHRIST MINISTERS EFFECTIVELY

The apostles worked many miracles and wonders among the people. (15) Everyone was amazed by the many miracles and wonders that the apostles worked. (16) Sick people were brought out to the road and placed on cots and mats. A lot of people brought those who were sick or troubled by evil spirits, and they were healed. (17 Is the reason we are not seeing this in our cities due to the lack of unity among the leaders and the people of God? Are we too comfortable with the disunity within the Body of Christ? Are we ourselves even contributing to disunity by our attitude toward our fellow Christians and toward those of other faiths who don't believe as we do? An un-Christlike attitude hinders the work of Jesus in our world. John 3:16 is inadequately quoted because it leaves off verse 17, which says, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent Jesus to save them." And, he sends us for the same purpose so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. The only love of Jesus that most people will experience for the first time is his love in us that you and I give to them. But we cannot give what we do not have.

GOD INCREASES HIS FAMILY

Each day the Lord added to their group others who were being saved. (18) Many men and women started having faith in the Lord. (19) Note: it says, "in the Lord," not "in my church" nor "in my church doctrine." We need to be very careful that we are bringing new believers into a personal relationship with the personal God with whom they will spend eternity, not merely into a system of doctrines and traditions. Doctrines and traditions and rituals are not wrong in themselves. God himself established them for his people after he freed them from the bondage of Egypt to give them a way to establish a personal relationship with him. Those that do not encourage and develop a personal relationship between the believer and his or her God need to be questioned and, perhaps, discarded lest we be like the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

People, especially young people, are increasingly disillusioned and skeptical. Fewer than 40% of people attend church, and many of them do not attend on a regular basis at that. Is the Ministering Body of Christ not an alternative that they might be looking for? It is, if we will but accept and follow the call of Jesus. It is a radical alternative because it is so contrary to the world's, and even the Church's, present systems. But, is there any other?

"I have looked into your hearts and I have seen my image there. Therefore, I declare you a spiritual sacrifice fitting unto me and accept you and welcome you more deeply than ever into my heart. I see your will. I see your willingness to serve me and rejoice as I show you to my Father. As you yourself, in your own heart, say 'yes' to every word that I have spoken to you here and to every sign I have shown to you of my plan and of my will -- as you say 'yes', so now do I anoint you with the precious oil of my Spirit and send you forth armed, equipped, strong to serve me in the days to come. Therefore, cast off every gloom and fear and rejoice for I, the Lord, am leading you against the foe. I am with you. You belong to me. Therefore, rejoice, even in the darkness." (20)

(1)   Notre Dame - 1976*                                                    (11) 1 John 3:17-18                     

(2)   Rome - 1975*                                                            (12) Acts 2:42a

(3)   Kansas City - 1979*                                                   (13) Acts 2:46-47a       

(4)   Acts 2:42a                                                                  (14) Matthew 5:13-16

(5)   Acts 2:44                                                                    (15) Acts 5:12a

(6)   Acts 4:32                                                                    (16) Acts 3:43

(7)   Acts 4:34 & 35                                                            (17) Acts 5:15a, 16

(8)   Acts 2:45                                                                    (18) Acts 2:47b

(9)   Matthew 5:52                                                               (19) Acts 5:14

(10) Luke 6:30                                                                   (20) Notre Dame - 1976*

*Prophecies given at Charismatic Conferences.

-Patrick J. Hession

NOTE: It has been 40 years since I received this message. Forty (40) is the biblical number signifying fulfilment of a time and transition to something else. I believe this message is for today, and God is beginning to fulfil it and to transition us into a New Era! 

It was 300 years before people met in church buildings. In the early Church, people met in small neighborhood house churches or assembled in catacombs. What are you going to do when the coming worldwide Great Awakening breaks out and hundreds of new believers seek you out? There will be a need for loyal Godly pastoral leaders to help you shepherd them as the early apostles did.

If you are a Pastor, I ask you to seriously pray about and consider this and how it may be implemented where you are. Please read especially A CHARGE TO PASTORS below. I have attached Standards and Procedures for Pastoral Leaders, Home Group Leader Couples, and Teachers and offer low cost training for them.

A CHARGE TO PASTORS

A fire like a wildfire is coming. It can do several things, depending on the readiness and reception it receives. 

• It can cause total confusion and disruption,
• Self-centered ministries can rise up,
• It can cause undue fear and worry,
• It can breed false awe, better known as pride,
• It can result in orderly growth and acceleration toward what God is doing.

The choice lies in the leadership of the pastor.

Whether a wildfire, firestorm, or tongues of fire, any way it comes, a pastor must be in charge. His support needs to come from tested ministers, those trained by God and proven. God needs only a pastor (shepherd) at this time. All others are sheep learning how to hear God’s voice through the pastor. This is not a time for “lone rangers.”

God will put in place and remove. God will correct. God’s requirement is tight reins to be held by the pastor. What God wants is security for the Church, both in the physical and the spiritual sense. He wants obedience and humility. He wants order in the church structure, business aspects, and people.

Which way will it go? Will you accept and assume leadership, protecting and guiding the sheep, or will you step back as the sheep rise up and run to and fro, like sheep without a shepherd?

Can you wield the shepherd’s crook to protect the sheep by not allowing them to scatter and “do their thing?” Oh, they will have well-justified reasons and will cajole you until you grow weary, if you let them. That does not make the sheep right or make them leaders.

Oh, yes, they are sincere, but you also know a person can be sincerely wrong or mistaken. They are misguided by every wind that comes along to tickle their ears. Many will respond to guidance, but a few will have to be led “kicking and screaming” until they discover that they haven’t given up anything except the sin of pride when they yield.

The question still remains, gentle and kind pastor. Will you shepherd them through the wildfire into the new dimension, or will all flounder? Peace be with you.

A prophecy given to Penny Hession, 2.08.2000 but extremely relevant to the coming New Era.

A CALL TO GOD’S PLAN AND PURPOSE

In a time such as ours, with its constant clamor for your time and attention, God wants you to listen to what he is trying to say to you and to his Church. God is calling for greater unity in his Body, the one Church that he established. Unity brings growth that leads to establishment.

The Church is called to be and to be seen as the Ministering Body of Christ to its members and to the world around you. This is to be done through reconciliation, healing, and restoration. God wants to reconcile people to himself, heal them of whatever has kept them from a relationship with him, and restore them to what he has desired for them from all eternity. You are an important part of this.

The element that brings about reconciliation, healing, and restoration of the Church is Jesus Christ and his love and compassion as you allow it to be ministered through you. He is the only true Foundation on which the Church can be successfully established. Jesus alone is the center and foundation of what it means to be a Christian and a part of God’s Family in the fullest sense.

He alone shows the Father and what it means to be and to live as a child of God, spiritually begotten of the Father through the Holy Spirit and Baptism. With the Father, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to bring to our minds all that he has taught and to empower you and your members for his ministry through them to the world around them, beginning in your church and in your community.

The key to reconciliation, healing, and restoration of all things in Christ is to be “Christ where you are.” “Christ where you are” means CHRist In Service To where you are. If you function with this attitude and on this foundation, you will see more and more of the Family of God coming together in unity as the sign of hope that the world can believe and accept. The world needs to know that Jesus isn’t an ism or a label or a denomination but is a Person who is alive and active today in all who bear his Name and are CHRISTened, or anointed, with the same anointing of the Holy Spirit that he was. What a call! What a challenge! Old foundations are crumbling around you. God is laying a new and surer foundation, if you will let him.

The blood of your natural family flows through you and gives you the right to reconciliation, healing, and restoration with the members of your own family. Stronger than that is the Blood of Jesus Christ that flows through you who have been reconciled with the Father and have become his Family because Jesus shed his Blood for you. It is this Blood relationship that makes you truly one in Christ.

You do not always agree with your natural family member, nor do they with you. You do not always understand each other, though you must make every effort to do so. What is important is that you are family!

That is more so with God’s Family. The time for denominations and divisions is over. It is time to acknowledge that a denomination cannot save anyone. Christ is not a denomination! Only Jesus Christ can save people. A denomination may or may not emphasize some part of Christ’s revelation, but not all of it. A denomination may lead people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But if people come to acceptance of and commitment to Jesus as Savior and Lord through your denomination and are baptized, they become part of his one Church, not of a denomination.

Baptism is the means of entrance into the community of the risen Christ, the Church. It also brings about the union of the one baptized with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is why all your members need to be baptized, even infants, so they can grow up into Christ through his Church. It does not require a personal profession of faith for infants at that time but is the saving action of Christ (1 Peter 3:21). When a person comes to a proper understanding of who Christ is and what he did, it does require an acceptance and confirmation of faith in Christ at some time in that person’s life. But no one should be excluded from or deprived of Baptism based on their age.

Likewise, if you truly believe that God has called you to be a pastor, you are a pastor of his one Church, not of your denomination. The ministry gifts that God gave in Ephesians 4 belong to his Church, which is one Church. You are accountable to God for your call, not to your denomination!

What the world needs to see is that, beneath all the labels that Christians use to distinguish and sometimes isolate one another, there is a Family moving and ministering together in unity as the Family of God, made one under God your Father, in Jesus your Brother, and through the Holy Spirit, the Bond of Love, Power, and Unity who holds everything together. The following article shows you how your Lord wants you to shepherd your people.

PASTORAL LEADERSHIP FOR WHICH THE LORD IS LOOKING

You know that the rulers of unbelievers lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority known. It will not be so among you. Rather, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  (Matthew 20:25-28)                         

The Good Shepherd has been speaking and continues to speak to us today about what he is doing and what he wants for his Church. "I will renew my Church I will renew my people I will make my people one. I am calling you to turn away from the pleasures of the world/ I am calling you to turn away from the desires of the world. I am calling you to turn away from seeking the approval of the world in your lives. I want to transform your lives I have a word for my Church I am sounding my call. I am forming a mighty army My power is upon them. They will follow my chosen shepherds. Be the shepherds I have called you to be. I am renewing my people I will free the world." (1)

How are you to respond? How are you to be the shepherd that Jesus calls you to be? As always, you must look to Jesus. The secret of Jesus' success in ministry was that he only did what he saw the Father doing. In the same way, you need to keep reminding yourself that it is Jesus who is the Good Shepherd. He is doing the work through his Spirit whom he has sent into your heart. your response is to surrender to the Holy Spirit and to do what Jesus is doing - what you see him doing. And you must work together in unity with other shepherds. Pastoral guidance is and will be found at https://www.facebook.com/patrick.hession.5 Click on my name on the left.

What is it that the Good Shepherd is doing that he wants you to do? He tells you in his Word:

1. Isaiah says, "He will gather the lambs together and carry them in his arms." (2) Jesus wants you to gather together the new believers the Lord brings into the Kingdom where you are and to carry them in your arms until they are strong enough to walk on their own. This speaks of aggressive and committed discipleship. 
2. "I shall guard them as a shepherd guards his flock." (3) Jesus wants you to be more protective of those whom he has placed under you. 
3. "I myself shall look for my sheep and take care of them. I shall bring them back from all the places where they were scattered." (4) There are many who once were in churches and who once followed Jesus and no longer do. You must go looking for them and bring them back from the world.    
4. "I shall lead them back to the mountains and streams and feed them in pleasant pastures." (5) Lead your people to the heights of praise and worship and give them good, refreshing spiritual food and drink from God's Word.    
5. "I shall let them graze in safety." (6) Protect your people from the values, ideas, and philosophies of this world that do not provide healthy food for their minds and spirits. 
6. "I shall find them a place of rest." (7) Help your people discover God's will for their lives because in doing his will they will find rest.      
7. "I shall look for those that are lost, bring back those that wander off, bandage those that are hurt, heal those that are sick; but those that are fat and strong I will destroy." (8) Evangelization, reconciliation, healing, restoration, and ministry of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are essential, not optional. 
8. "I shall judge between strong sheep and weak sheep; I shall judge each of my sheep and separate the good from the bad." (9) Discern the spiritual condition of your people and protect the good ones from the influence of those who would stray and go off on their own or do their own thing. 
9. "I shall rescue my sheep and not let them be mistreated anymore." (10) Protect those under your care when they are being criticized or attacked either by the world or by other Christians.
10. "I shall make a covenant with them that guarantees their security." (11) Commit yourself totally to those under your care, even if it means dying for them. Do not be afraid to discipline them with the rod of correction and the staff of the authority that God has given you. Their security requires that they know you will do this, even if they don't like your correction or discipline. Do it because it gives them security but let them know that you are doing it in God's love, not in human anger.
11. "I shall get rid of all the dangerous animals in the land so that my sheep can live safely in the fields and sleep in the forests." (12) Intercede for your people and stand against all the forces of Satan that would attack or infiltrate your faith community.
12. "I shall bless them with showers of rain when they need it." (13) Share what you have with your people when they need it - in abundance, if necessary. There should be no one in need among you, nor should any of your people have to go to the world's systems to get his or her needs met. You are to be the Ministering Body of Christ. This may mean a radical reordering of your budgeting priorities and resources, but it is the Church's responsibility to take care of her own people. If you don't have resources to give, go to other shepherds.

The Lord said, "I shall give the fertile fields and put an end to hunger in the land. The other nations will not sneer at them anymore. Everyone will know that they are my people. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. You, my sheep, the flock that I feed, are my people and I am your God, says the Sovereign Lord." (14)

Jesus is echoing this same word to his Church throughout the world today. "My beloved, you are my people who stand before me now; hear my word. I shall set my house in order I shall purify my people. I shall purify my Church. I shall set aside the deceiver, the false prophet, and the false teacher. I shall set aside anything and anyone who stands in the way of my Kingdom." (15)

"Mark down this day and remember it...call it to mind; declare it publicly. Have no fear because I am faithful to my Word and shall fulfill it. I am going to restore to my people the glory that is mine so that the world will not mock or scorn them but might know that I am God and King and that I have come to redeem and save this earth.

"I am restoring my people, bestowing upon them honor and glory, bringing back to them the glory that is proper to my people, and making them look again like a kingdom, the kingdom of God on this earth." (16)

Jesus is going to do this through the shepherd/leaders who will listen closely to him and do what he is doing. The Lord says, "I raise my voice, but who listens to me? I cry out, but who heeds my word? This is a time of building up and washing away. This is a time of unraveling. This is a time when I establish my Kingdom, and every other kingdom collapses. I raise my voice to warn my people, and who takes heed? A cloud hangs over you; a shadow covers you. Do you not hear my voice? There is darkness around you.

"Anything that is not built by my hands will be washed away. Anything that does not come from me will not survive. I cry out to you. Do you hear my voice? I raise my voice to save my people, and they don't listen. This is a time of building up and tearing down. I have to strengthen my people. I have to prevent my people from being torn down.  This is an important time for my people. This is a day of decision for my people. This is a day of decision that cannot be passed by. I raise my voice. I call forth my people. Who will listen to me? Who will respond to my call?

"I tell you, my people, there are some who need to understand this. Ways you have responded to me in the past, that have seen you through and brought you thus far, will no longer see you through. What if I call you to something new, something totally new?

"Where there is resistance in your heart and in your groups, lay that resistance down so that I might bring you further along. I see each of you where you are. I know where it is hard for you to change and cannot promise you that it won't be painful for indeed it will cost you. I can promise you this: I shall be with you always, and the pain is nothing compared to what I shall give you in return. What you need to lay down, what you will give up, and what you think it will cost you are nothing compared to the strength you will have when I am finished with you.

"I have looked into your heart and have seen my image there. Therefore, I declare you a spiritual sacrifice fitting to me I accept you and welcome you more deeply than ever into my heart. I see your will. I see your willingness to serve me and rejoice as I show you to my Father. As you yourself in your own heart say 'yes' to every word that I have spoken to you in this place and every sign have shown to you of my plan and of my will - as you say 'yes', so do I anoint you with the precious oil of my Spirit and send you forth armed, equipped, and strong to serve me in the days to come.  Therefore, cast off every gloom and fear and rejoice for I, the Lord, am standing at the head of my company. I, the Lord, am leading you against the foe. I am with you. You belong to me. Therefore, rejoice even in the darkness." (17)

(1)    Rome – 1975*                                              (10)  Ezekiel 34:22b  

(2)    Isaiah 40:11                                                  (11)  Ezekiel 34:25a

(3)    Jeremiah 31:10                                             (12)  Ezekiel 34:25b

(4)    Ezekiel 34:11 & 12                                      (13)  Ezekiel 34:26

(5)    Rome – 1975*                                              (14)  Ezekiel 34:29-31

(6)    Ezekiel 34:14                                                (15)  Notre Dame – 1996*

(7)    Ezekiel 34:15                                                (16)  Kansas City – 1997*

(8)    Ezekiel 34:16                                               (17)  Notre Dame – 1976*

(9)    Ezekiel 34:20b-22                   

*Prophecies given at Charismatic Conferences.          

 

 STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES FOR PASTORAL LEADERS

QUALIFICATIONS:

Pastoral leaders should exhibit an active personal relationship with and commitment to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Pastoral leaders should be of spiritual maturity, with teaching and leadership abilities, tested and proven in their own families, that will allow for growth and maturity in those under them.

A male leader should be a good father model. He should be serious, straightforward, truthful, just, holy, modest, a lover of goodness, irreproachable and blameless, of steady, even temper, a man of peace, self-controlled, gentle and not violent, not contentious or self-willed, not someone who loves money, not given to greed, hospitable, a good teacher who holds fast to authentic doctrine, well thought of by those outside the community of believers. If married, he should be a faithful husband, a good manager of his household, able to keep, or to have kept, his children, if any, under control without sacrificing his dignity, a father of children who are believers and who are, or were, known not to be wild or insubordinate. 1 Timothy 3:2-7; Titus 1:6-9

A female leader should be a good mother model. She should be serious, temperate, not a slanderous gossip, entirely trustworthy, one who knows the value of everything she makes or buys, generous to the poor and needy, strong and respected and not afraid of the future, one who speaks with gentle wisdom, a woman who honors the Lord. If married, she should also be subordinate to her husband so that, even if he disobeys the Word, he may be won over without a word by her conduct when he observes her reverent and chaste behavior. Her adornment should not be an external one but rather the hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God. She should be one in whom her husband puts his confidence, one who does her husband good and never harm, one who looks, or looked, after her family's needs, one to whom her children, if any, show appreciation and whom her husband praises. 1 Timothy 3:11; 1 Peter 3:1-4; Proverbs 31:10-31

These are the Scriptural qualifications for Spiritual leaders in the Church. No one should be in a responsible position of leadership who does not meet them or is not striving for them. The training ground for leadership in the Church is the family.

These qualifications should be goals for parents as they provide leadership over their families.     

PERFORMANCE GOALS:

Pastoral leaders are responsible for the effective performance of all general and assigned responsibilities.

Pastoral leaders are obligated to those under them, to recognize and understand their God-given nature and abilities, to promote their worth and dignity, and to strive for their successful formation as Christians.

Pastoral leaders will perform these duties in such a way as to enhance and maximize the spiritual and formative opportunities and benefits available to each person under their supervision.

Pastoral leaders will work as necessary to achieve the overall mission of Christian formation.

PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES:

1.0  Pastoral leaders are responsible for the spiritual formation of those under them.

• Pastoral leaders must exhibit a personal commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their own lives.

1.2 Pastoral leaders must be convinced of the importance of prayer in their own personal life and in the life of each person under them.

1.3 Pastoral leaders must be enthusiastic and consistent students of the Word of God.

1.4 Pastoral leaders must possess a thorough knowledge of and commitment to growth in their understanding of Biblical truth and Church doctrine.

1.5 Pastoral leaders must undertake, as God gives them the strength, to live in full obedience to God's will as set forth in the Scriptures and Church teaching and to be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.

2.0 Pastoral leaders are responsible for developing and nurturing those under them spiritually and socially. They will remain sensitive to the spiritual and social development of those under them.

2.1 Pastoral leaders must see themselves as an extension of the Ministering Body of Christ. To that end, they should encourage or develop the following:

2.1.a Andrew Evangelism - 1 Peter 3:15 & 16; John 1:40-42. Be a witness and model, reconciler, restorer, and open to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, which are essential, not optional.

  2.1.b Nurture - Gather the believers together and carry them in your arms until they are strong enough to walk on their own. New Christians must be introduced gently and gradually into their new life and relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  First, give milk, then meat.

  2.1.c Protection - Protect those placed under you from the philosophies, ideas, and values of this world that do not provide healthy food for the mind and spirit. Protect those under your care when they are being attacked or criticized, either by the world or by other Christians.

 2.1.d  Reconciliation - many were once in churches and no longer are. You must go looking for them and bring them back from the world.

 2.1.e  Praise and Worship - Lead those under you to new heights of praise and worship and give them good, refreshing food and drink from God's Word, especially as it has influenced and developed your own personal and spiritual life.

2.1.f  Discipleship - Help those under you discover God's will for their lives because in doing his will they will find rest.

 2.1.g  Discernment - Discern the spiritual condition and gifts of those under you and protect them from the influence of those who would stray and go off on their own or do their own thing.

 2.1.h  Discipline - Don't be afraid to discipline those under your care with the rod of correction and the staff of the authority that God has given you. But be aware that it is God's authority that you are exercising and be careful not to abuse it. You are a leader, not a dictator. Discipline is to be carried out according to the principle in Matthew 18:15-17.

2.1.i  Intercession - Intercede for those under you and stand against all the forces of Satan that would attack or infiltrate those under you.                        

2.1.j  Share Resources –

1) Pastoral leaders should provide encouragement but not become enablers. Teach those under you to seek the Lord's solutions to their situations and the consequences thereof.

2) Pastoral leaders should provide liaison through appropriate mechanisms in providing special assistance to those who are in need of it and/or who request such help.  Help is not limited to financial resources.                           

3)  Except in the form of almsgiving, pastoral leaders are to provide no long-term financial assistance, personally or through those under them, to anyone.  Pastoral leaders can and should encourage other acts of giving and serving, such as cutting grass, painting houses, visiting the sick, etc.

4)  Because of the psychological and spiritual factors involved, which can sometimes become quite complex and difficult, pastoral leaders are in no way to become involved in "deliverance" ministry on their own. Such situations are to be referred to those who are specially gifted and experienced in this difficult ministry. This does not mean that you are not to do "Spiritual Warfare" through prayer and intercession. By all means, do so!

  2.1.k  Communication - Pastoral leaders will make every reasonable effort to maintain effective and open communication with those under them and will be available at reasonable times to talk with them.  However, pastoral leaders must know when to refer those who have problems that interfere with their functioning and will seek appropriate help in assisting such persons.

3.0  Pastoral leaders are responsible to be professional and Christ-honoring in the fulfillment of their mission.

3.1 Pastoral leaders will demonstrate respect for their calling, for effective Christian formation, and for the attributes, gifts, and abilities of co-workers.

3.2 Pastoral leaders will regard personal information about those under them as confidential and will utilize such information only as an aid in helping a person attain appropriate spiritual and social goals.

3.3 Pastoral leaders will recognize an administrative line or channel for their concerns through their appropriate supervisor.

3.4 Pastoral leaders will demonstrate continued interest and effort in their spiritual and social growth and improvement.  They will seek and use constructive suggestions and will take advantage of opportunities when offered that will improve their spiritual and leadership development.

3.5 Pastoral leaders will always be ready and available to be used by the Holy Spirit for the spiritual uplifting of those under them and/or of their fellow workers.

A G R E E M E N T 

As a Pastoral Leader, I agree to abide by and to implement all guidelines for personal and professional conduct as specified in the Standards and Procedures for Pastoral Leaders, which hereby becomes part of this agreement.

I affirm that, as part of the qualifications for this ministry, I have personally accepted and made a commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

I agree to live a life that is above reproach within both the Christian community and the world.

Because the work in which I wish to be engaged is an area involving Christian formation and is thus a sacred undertaking, I agree that no resolution can be authorized other than before fellow believers for any dispute that may exist. For discipline purposes and for resolving differences, I therefore agree to follow the Scriptural pattern of Matthew 18:15-17, Galatians 6:1, and 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, which I affirm that I have read and understand.

Signature­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________                                   

Date_______________________________________

­­­Authorized Witness____________________________

Date______________________________________

 

STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES FOR HOME GROUP LEADER COUPLES

QUALIFICATIONS:

Leader couples should exhibit an active personal relationship with and commitment to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Leader couples should be of spiritual maturity, with teaching and leadership abilities, tested and proven in their own families, that will allow for growth and maturity in those under them.

A male leader should be a good father model. He should be serious, straightforward, truthful, just, holy, modest, a lover of goodness, irreproachable and blameless, of steady, even temper, a man of peace, self-controlled, gentle and not violent, not contentious or self-willed, not someone who loves money, not given to greed, hospitable, a good teacher who holds fast to authentic doctrine, well thought of by those outside the community of believers. If married, he should be a faithful husband, a good manager of his household, able to keep, or to have kept, his children, if any, under control without sacrificing his dignity, a father of children who are believers and who are, or were, known not to be wild or insubordinate. 1 Timothy 3:2-7; Titus 1:6-9

A female leader should be a good mother model. She should be serious, temperate, not a slanderous gossip, entirely trustworthy, one who knows the value of everything she makes or buys, generous to the poor and needy, strong and respected and not afraid of the future, one who speaks with gentle wisdom, a woman who honors the Lord. If married, she should also be subordinate to her husband so that, even if he disobeys the Word, he may be won over without a word by her conduct when he observes her reverent and chaste behavior. Her adornment should not be an external one but rather the hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God. She should be one in whom her husband puts his confidence, one who does her husband good and never harm, one who looks, or looked, after her family's needs, one to whom her children, if any, show appreciation and whom her husband praises. 1 Timothy 3:11; 1 Peter 3:1-4; Proverbs 31:10-31

These are the Scriptural qualifications for Spiritual leaders in the Church. No one should be in a responsible position of leadership who does not meet them or is not striving for them. The training ground for leadership in the Church is the family.

These qualifications should also be goals for parents as they provide leadership over their families.     

PERFORMANCE GOALS:

Leader couples are responsible for the effective performance of all general and assigned responsibilities.

Leader couples are obligated to those under them, to recognize and understand their God-given nature and abilities, to promote their worth and dignity, and to strive for their successful formation as Christians.

Leader couples will perform these duties in such a way as to enhance and maximize the spiritual and formative opportunities and benefits available to each person under their supervision.

Leader couples will work as necessary to achieve the overall mission of Christian formation.

PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES:

1.0  Leader couples are responsible for the spiritual formation of those under them.

1.1 Leader couples must exhibit a personal commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.         

1.2 Leader couples must be convinced of the importance of prayer in their own personal life and in the life of each person under them.

1.3 Leader couples must be enthusiastic and consistent students of the Word of God.

1.4 Leader couples must possess a thorough knowledge of and commitment to growth in their understanding of Biblical truth and Church doctrine.

1.5 Leader couples must undertake, as God gives them the strength, to live in full obedience to God's will as set forth in the Scriptures and Church teaching and to be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.

2.0 Leader couples are responsible for developing and nurturing those under them spiritually and socially. They will remain sensitive to the spiritual and social development of those under them.

2.1 Leader couples must see themselves as an extension of the Ministering Body of Christ. To that end, they should encourage or develop the following:

 2.1.a Andrew Evangelism - 1 Peter 3:15 & 16; John 1:40-42. Be a witness and model, reconciler, restorer, and open to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, which are essential, not optional.

 2.1.b Nurture - Gather the believers together and carry them in your arms until they are strong enough to walk on their own. New Christians must be introduced gently and gradually into their new life and relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  First, give milk, then meat.

 2.1.c Protection - Protect those placed under you from the philosophies, ideas, and values of this world that do not provide healthy food for the mind and spirit. Protect those under your care when they are being attacked or criticized, either by the world or by other Christians.

2.1.d  Reconciliation - many were once in churches and no longer are. You must go looking for them and bring them back from the world.

2.1.e  Praise and Worship - Lead those under you to new heights of praise and worship and give them good, refreshing food and drink from God's Word, especially as it has influenced and developed your own personal and spiritual life.                  

2.1.f  Discipleship - Help those under you discover God's will for their lives because in doing his will they will find rest.

2.1.g  Discernment - Discern the spiritual condition and gifts of those under you and protect them from the influence of those who would stray and go off on their own or do their own thing.

2.1.h  Discipline - Don't be afraid to discipline those under your care with the rod of correction and the staff of the authority that God has given you. But be aware that it is God's authority that you are exercising and be careful not to abuse it. You are a leader, not a dictator. Discipline is to be carried out according to the principle in Matthew 18:15-17.

2.1.i  Intercession - Intercede for those under you and stand against all the forces of Satan that would attack or infiltrate those under you.         

2.1.j  Share Resources –

1) Leader couples should provide encouragement but not become enablers. Teach those under you to seek the Lord's solutions to their situations and the consequences thereof.             

2)  Leader couples should provide liaison through appropriate mechanisms in providing special assistance to those who are in need of it and/or who request such help.  Help is not limited to financial resources.                          

3)  Except in the form of almsgiving, leader couples are to provide no long-term financial assistance, personally or through those under them, to anyone.  Leader couples can and should encourage other acts of giving and serving, such as cutting grass, painting houses, visiting the sick, etc.

4)  Because of the psychological and spiritual factors involved, which can sometimes become quite complex and difficult, leader couples are in no way to become involved in "deliverance" ministry on their own. Such situations are to be referred to those who are specially gifted and experienced in this difficult ministry. This does not mean that you are not to do "Spiritual Warfare" through prayer and intercession. By all means, do so!

2.1.k  Communication – Leader couples will make every reasonable effort to maintain effective and open communication with those under them and will be available at reasonable times to talk with them.  However, leader couples must know when to refer those who have problems that interfere with their functioning and will seek appropriate help in assisting such persons.

3.0  Leader couples are responsible to be professional and Christ-honoring in the fulfillment of their mission

3.1 Leader couples will demonstrate respect for their calling, for effective Christian formation, and for the attributes, gifts, and abilities of co-workers.

3.2 Leader couples will regard personal information about those under them as confidential and will utilize such information only as an aid in helping a person attain appropriate spiritual and social goals.

3.3 Leader couples will recognize an administrative line or channel for their concerns through their appropriate supervisor.

3.4 Leader couples will demonstrate continued interest and effort in their spiritual and social growth and improvement.  They will seek and use constructive suggestions and will take advantage of opportunities when offered that will improve their spiritual and leadership development.

3.5 Leader couples will always be ready and available to be used by the Holy Spirit for the spiritual uplifting of those under them and/or of those under them.

A G R E E M E N T

As a leader couple, we agree to abide by and to implement all guidelines for personal and professional conduct as specified in the Standards and Procedures, which hereby becomes part of this agreement.

We affirm that, as part of the qualifications for this ministry, we have personally accepted and made a commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

We agree to live a life that is above reproach within both the Christian community and the world.

Because the work in which we wish to be engaged is an area involving Christian formation and is thus a sacred undertaking, we agree that no resolution can be authorized other than before fellow believers for any dispute that may exist. For discipline purposes and for resolving differences, we therefore agree to follow the Scriptural pattern of Matthew 18:15-17, Galatians 6:1, and 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, which we affirm that we have read and understand.

Signature­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­__________________________________                          

Date_______________________________________

Signature________________________________

Date____________________________________

­­­­­Authorized Witness____________________________                                               

Date______________________________________

 

STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES FOR TEACHERS

QUALIFICATIONS:

Teachers should exhibit an active personal relationship with and commitment to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Teachers should be of spiritual maturity, with teaching and leadership abilities that will allow for growth and maturity in those under them.

PERFORMANCE GOALS:

Teachers are responsible for the effective performance of all general and assigned responsibilities.

Teachers are obligated to those under them, to recognize and understand their God-given nature and abilities, to promote their worth and dignity, and to strive for their successful formation as children of God.

Teachers will perform these duties in such a way as to enhance and maximize the spiritual and formative opportunities and benefits available to each person under their supervision.

Teachers will work as necessary to achieve the overall mission of Christian formation.

PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES:

1.0  Teachers are responsible for the spiritual leadership and climate of their learning center.

1.1  Teachers must exhibit a personal commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their own lives      

1.2  Teachers must be convinced of the importance of prayer in their own personal life and in the life of each person under them.

1.3  Teachers must be enthusiastic and consistent students of the Word of God.

1.4  Teachers must possess a thorough knowledge of and commitment to growth in their understanding of Biblical truth and Church doctrine.

1.5 Teachers must maintain a God-honoring, purposeful, orderly, and pleasant learning environment.

1.6  Teachers must undertake, as God gives them the strength, to live in full obedience to God's will as set forth in the Scriptures and Church teaching and to be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.

2.0  Teachers are responsible for developing and nurturing those under them spiritually and    socially. Therefore, they have the major responsibility for instruction. They will effectively organize and manage their learning center in order that the purposes of effective learning are promoted.

2.1  Teachers will teach regularly scheduled classes as assigned.

2.1.a  Teachers will assume responsibility for regular learning assignments and will not leave the class unattended.                                                                                       

2.1.b  Teachers will actively engage in teaching/learning activities during all assigned instructional time.

2.1.c  Teachers who need to be absent for any reason must arrange for a substitute teacher to cover their class.

2.2  Teachers will remain sensitive to the spiritual and social development of those under them.

2.2.a  Teachers will make every reasonable effort to know each person under them and to be aware of each person's growth and progress.

2.2.b  Teachers will periodically evaluate the learning/teaching situation to determine their own effectiveness and student progress toward learning objectives and to make changes as necessary.

2.3 Teachers will employ instructional aids, methods, and materials that will provide for creative learning and motivation.

2.3.a  Learning experiences and materials will be compatible with Christian formation and the needs and abilities of each person.

2.3.b  Opportunities are to be provided for each person to plan, participate in, and evaluate activities appropriate for his/her level.

2.3.c Teachers will strive constantly to present ideas in a clear and convincing manner.

2.3.d Teachers will provide special assistance to those who are in need of it and/or who request such help.

2.3.e Teachers will work with those under them to reduce anti-social or prejudicial behavior and will help them grow in respect for others of various backgrounds and individual differences.

2.3.f  Teachers will assist those who have problems that interfere with learning and will seek the help of others in assisting such persons.

2.3.g  Teachers will make every reasonable effort to maintain effective communication with those under them and will be available at reasonable times to talk with them.

2.4  Teachers will maintain adequate records of attendance and other matters as necessary to satisfy their own need for knowledge or the progress of those under them.

2.5  Teachers will maintain a disciplined learning environment consistent with good interpersonal relationships.

2.5.a  Teachers will accept each person as a child of God possessing individual worth and dignity.

2.5.b  Teachers will refrain from directing damaging remarks and expressions to any person.

2.5.c Teachers will attempt to be consistently fair and impartial in all relationships.

2.5.d Teachers will not discriminate against any person.

3.0  Teachers are responsible to be professional and Christ-honoring in the fulfillment of their mission.

3.1 Teachers will demonstrate respect for their calling, for effective Christian formation, and for the attributes, gifts, and abilities of co-workers.

3.2  Teachers will regard personal information about those under them as confidential and will utilize such information only as an aid in helping a person attain appropriate spiritual and social goals.

3.3 Teachers will recognize an administrative line or channel for their concerns through their appropriate supervisor.

3.4 Teachers will demonstrate continued interest and effort in their spiritual and social growth and improvement. They will seek and use constructive suggestions and other professional and spiritual help to improve their teaching.

3.4.a  Teachers will take advantage of opportunities when offered that will improve their spiritual and professional development.

3.4.b  Teachers will continue to read and study both within and outside their own area of teaching.

3.5  Teachers will always be ready and available to be used by the Holy Spirit for the spiritual uplifting of those under them and/or of their fellow teachers

A G R E E M E N T

As a Teacher, I agree to abide by and to implement all guidelines for personal and professional conduct as specified in the Standards and Procedures for Teachers, which hereby becomes part of this agreement.

I affirm that, as part of the qualifications for this ministry, I have personally accepted and made a commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

I agree to live a life that is above reproach within both the Christian community and the world.

Because the work in which I wish to be engaged is an area involving Christian formation and is thus a sacred undertaking, I agree that no resolution can be authorized other than before fellow believers for any dispute that may exist. For discipline purposes and for resolving differences, I therefore agree to follow the Scriptural pattern of Matthew 18:15-17, Galatians 6:1, and 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, which I affirm that I have read and understand.

Teacher’s Signature­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________                                    

Date________________________________________

­­­­­Authorized Witness____________________________                                              

Date________________________________________

 

FAMILY TO FAMILIES MINISTRY

43 Lucas street

Sparta, NC 28675

www.famllytofamilies.webador.com              336-977-7360        p.hession2014@gmail.com

 

GODLY LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21^ST. CENTURY

An in-depth personal or 6-hour group study in Servant Leadership to train your pastoral and home group leaders. It offers all the time-tested tools needed to lead any organization within your area of influence in a God-honoring manner. Supplements are provided to assist leaders in working with those under them. Using the facilitator guide provided, the study can be led by anyone with experience and integrity. A $20 per-person fee includes all materials on a flash drive __ or cd __ (please specify) and shipping. Payment may be made by check, money order, or credit card to Family to Families Ministry at the address above. Contact me with any questions.

Patrick J. Hession

------------------------------------------------------Cut and return----------------------------------

Please charge my _ VISA  _ MASTER CARD _ AMERICAN EXPRESS _ DISCOVER

Card # _______________________CVV_____   Exp. Date: _______________

Phone # ________________________ Amount: $ ________________

Signature: _______________________________________________________

Where to send the flash drive(s) or cd(s) _________________________________

A BRIEF BACKGROUND

Patrick holds a B.A. degree in Philosophy. In addition to several years of theological studies, he also holds an M.A. degree with a double major in Counseling Psychology and Social Psychology.  Trained as a Psychotherapist, Patrick taught all aspects of Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, and Human Relations at both the high school and college levels for 25 years.

Along with his academic background, Patrick has extensive experience in non-academic settings. He has held several executive positions in organizations and has served as an officer or member of several boards. A professional mediator since 1992, Patrick has over 125 hours of training in family, business, and civil mediation. Patrick’s books are available at www.hessionbooks.webador.com. Click on cover.

GODLY LEADERSHIP AGENDA

Module 1: The Importance of Godly Leadership

Why there is a critical need for Godly Servant Leaders in the 21st Century

Module 2: Making Friends with Your Self So You Can Love Yourself More and Serve Others Better

The three most important questions of life

Introduction

Taking responsibility for yourself and for your actions

Self-assessment exercises

Module 3: Dynamics of Empowering Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is an attitude and an asset

Self-assessment exercises

Three factor theory

Situational leadership

Concept of process in skill development

Activity

Motivation and satisfaction

Teambuilding and delegation

Module 4: Collaborative Problem Solving, Decision Making, Strategic Planning

Activities

Problems and decisions

Group decision making - pros and cons  

Problem solving process

Toolbox

Module 5: Developing personal and organizational goals and objectives

Objectives

Purposes and tips

Toolbox

Module 6: Managing and Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts

Understanding conflict

Skills and ground rules

Negotiation strategies

Dealing with anger

Dealing with resistance

Toolbox

 

'