"For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!"
-Isaiah 9:6
Merry Christmas, Tommy!
Jesus is our Messiah, the long awaited Child who is the Son of God and the Savior of All! And we thank you so much for coming alongside us to share the love and hope of our Messiah through Messiah Ministries this year!
Just as the Holy Spirit conceived new life in the womb of Mary, so the Lord has been birthing new life in Messiah Ministries. "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19)
As you know, earlier this year the Lord called us out of Rapha God Ministries to reactivate Messiah Ministries on a full-time basis again. We're deeply grateful for those years of life-long friendships and life-changing ministry; and we're now filled with expectant faith for the life-changing days of ministry ahead! While we continue the calling of over 22 years of sharing the healing love of God and preparing the way of the Lord at home and to the nations, new doors are opening to step into new opportunities to reach even more people with God's love and power in the name of our Messiah, Jesus!
The Lord is making our ministry much more accessible over barriers of distance, language, and cost. We recently had prayer ministry sessions of inner healing and deliverance in Scotland, Poland, and Sweden, as well as many places across the US -- all through the Internet on Zoom, Skype, and FaceTime in the comfort of people's homes!
Stepping into this new season, we're teaching our Healing Academy and Principles of Inner Healingalongside other ministries like our dear friends at Aldersgate Renewal Ministries in Tennessee and alongside other churches like our current courses at Bridge Church in Fredericksburg, Texas and on-line at Olney Methodist Church in Illinois. And we've been so honored to share the word of the Lord with hope and healing, such as the Tent Revival on the Southside of San Antonio, the Central Texas Area Aglow Ministries gathering in Boerne, and our recent Run to the Battle Conference in Kentucky filmed on DVD. We'll be traveling again soon to minister at scheduled conferences in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Canyon Lake Aglow in Texas to start off the New Year.
100 Pastors and Leaders in Pakistan received our teaching and encouragement at a recent spiritual retreat through our Internet Ministry presented live through Skype!
Hundreds of souls have come to Christ most every month through our Outdoor Evangelistic Crusades in Pakistan via our Skype Internet Ministry! We reach out to a new village every month through our ministry partner there and help distribute food, clothing and gifts for the children of needy families at Christmas time.
Many are receiving physical and emotional healing, along with spiritual freedom, as we share in this great awakening revival in Pakistan! Praise God! Your prayers make all the difference!
Rocio and I have been leading a weekly on-line group in partnership with MorningStar Ministries and served alongside Max Lucado and city leaders of the PraySA citywide revival prayer meetings. We continue to send out our Morning by Morning daily prayer devotional, to help our friends and prayer partners grow in intimacy with Jesus, and offer words of encouragement and prayer over the phone, in homes, and as the Holy Spirit moves in personal encounters along the way. It's all by the grace of God, as we seek to be more like Jesus in our world through this ministry He has entrusted to us.
Endorsed by Max Lucado, Randy Clark, and Andy Reese, my book on Inner Healing Prayer Ministry, Free to Be Like Jesus, has now been taught in over 40 Schools of Ministry and is being used as a foundational teaching in several church's prayer ministries. We're thrilled that it's currently being translated into Spanish by the pastor of a ministry in Honduras helping young girls get set free from human trafficking, called Casa de Ester! With Rocio's fluent Spanish, Rocio and I are anticipating new ministry opportunities to share this message in Spanish-speaking countries around the world!
A Fresh Testimony of the Healing Love of God
Just the other day, a young woman named Brooke sent us this photo of her new Christmas Ornament, beautifully sealed with the date of her prayer ministry session, along with her declaration, "Jesus is the Key."
We're honored and thrilled to share her full testimony of her "Path to Restored Hope and Faith" below. Brooke tells us, "After a decade of gathering pieces to this giant jigsaw puzzle of trying to figure out why I was still stuck, I met with Tommy and Rocio on August 8th, 2020, a day that forever changed my life and the course of my path.... What God showed me during that session was the ultimate affirmation of how involved He had been the whole time, protecting me, fighting for me and gently guiding me to the final battle of victory over the enemy. His timing was perfect!" All glory to God!
We're so grateful to the Lord -- to Jesus our Messiah -- who is still healing the brokenhearted and setting the captives free! And we're so grateful to you for joining with us to be a part of all the Lord is doing through your prayers, encouragement, and support that make this ministry possible!
As we celebrate the birth of Christ in this season of joy with expectant faith for the season ahead, may the Lord bless you and keep you! May the Lord pour out His exceedingly abundant blessings upon you as "A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, and poured into your lap!" (Luke 6:38) We thank God for you for your sharing in proclaiming this Good News of His Kingdom with us through Messiah Ministries! (Philippians 1:3-5)
Merry Christmas and God Bless You!
In the Love of Jesus,
Tommy & Rocio Hays
Messiah Ministries
Tommy's Cell Phone: 210-668-3300
Tommy's Email: tommyhays@messiah-ministries.org
All contributions of any amount
are very welcome, tax deductible, and greatly appreciated!
Tommy & Rocio Hays
Messiah Ministries
17503 La Cantera Parkway, Suite 104407
San Antonio, Texas 78257
Tommy & Rocio Hays | Messiah Ministries
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Brooke's Full Testimony
Jesus is the Key; All He Asks is That We Believe
"My Path to Restored Hope and Faith"
"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future..." Jeremiah 29:11, my favorite bible verse. As a young Christian, I found comfort in this verse, resting in the belief that the Lord was very involved in my life and had hopeful plans that through His perfect will would unfold in His time. I still believe this to be true now; however, it wasn't until my life took a big turn, that this verse became so much more. Those very words became a God given anchor of hope and faith that never let go of me even when I tried to let go of them when my circumstances were filled with overwhelming despair and doubt. 2020 has been such an unprecedented, difficult year for us all, a year filled with pain, loss, fear, and isolation. If you are experiencing despair, doubting the promises of the Lord, feeling attacked by the enemy, or stuck in past wounds, I encourage and hope you will keep reading!
Each of us have a very special story to tell. A continuous life-long story, shaped with uniquely designed paths that are paved and carved out by our experiences, circumstances, and choices. Some of these paths are joyous and beautiful ones - laced with memories so wonderful and moments too precious that we wouldn't want to choose a different direction on our journey to take. But what happens when you are a victim of trauma, fear, and pain, and your path takes a very sharp turn, in a different direction, one you would never willingly choose to go down. A path that takes you captive, imprisoning you for years, a path so desolate that all you know is suffering, isolation, fear, and despair. For me, the unbelievable restoration of hope & faith through Jesus's constant pursuit of my heart, seasoned with His perfect love, compassion and timing happened. A part of my life I loathed and wanted to be freed from more than anything, was the very place I began to experience more than I could have every asked for or imagined (Ephesians 3:20).
My story took this sharp turn at 10 years of age when my babysitter told me I could be kidnapped, which instilled in me a level of paralyzing fear that forever changed something in me that day. At a very impressionable age, the only way I knew to escape the overwhelming fear of that happening, was to tell myself to think of something happy and fun in an effort to distract me. I internalized it, thinking I could handle the fear but when other painful moments and wounds happened over the years, I resolved to believing only bad things would happen to me and I would either over self-protect out of fear or go on a relentless problem-solving pursuit trying to figure out why. I spent years on this path looking for an answer but never finding one that stuck, satisfied, or healed these deepest of wounds. All it did was keep me walking around in circles or I would take one step forward, to soon take two steps back... needless to say for someone who wanted so badly to get off that part of the path, I was not getting anywhere... or so I thought!
By age 22, I was in my weakest and most heartbroken state. The only one who could rescue me was also the very one who I had grown very angry and bitter towards, God. I felt abandoned by Him and that He didn't care about the pain I was experiencing. One day when driving back home, overwhelmed by all of this, and desperate for healing, the words in Jeremiah 29:11 tugged at my heart and I ended up giving it all over to God, telling Him, He had to be the one to fix my broken heart. It was in that very moment of complete surrender, that my time spent on this part of my path began to change. I began pursuing the Lord and my relationship with Him became my number one priority. Over the next year or two, my walk with Him grew more intimate as bonds of trust were being rebuilt; however, many things I had hoped would have changed remained the same - my circumstances, unanswered prayers, and the consistent accompaniment of fear, despair, and doubt. I continued praying relentlessly for answers, healing, wishing for a different set of circumstances and desperately wanting to be rescued all the while being attacked by the enemy from all sides. Looking back now, I can see that I was doing exactly what the enemy wanted me to do - staying trapped in the snare & stuck in the same spot on that dreaded part of my path. I remember thinking if only I had the hope and faith I felt I needed to have, then maybe my circumstances would change and my prayers would be answered. In this dark valley, I realized it was not up to me, I could not do this on my own, my only recourse was to let go. It wasn't long after this season that the Holy Spirit began speaking the truth to my heart and my path to restoration began. Facing the memories that had consumed me with fear, despair, and doubt was not easy and walking through them was not quick, but it was absolutely necessary.
About 8 years ago, I was introduced to a Christian prayer ministry and went through many prayer healing sessions that have provided such incredible breakthroughs in my walk, and most of all in my relationship with Jesus. Through these healings with every painful memory, every heartfelt prayer, and every surrender in tears, Jesus began unthawing my broken self-protected heart with His love and exposing the lies I was believing about myself and about Him, all of which came from the enemy. Over the years, I would write down the revelations from these prayer healing sessions as well as all of the words spoken to my heart by the Holy Spirit. With each new revelation, that anchor of hope and faith continued to grow stronger and stronger, but something was still keeping me trapped, tangled, and relentlessly trying to figure it all out.
If there is one thing about God that I will continue to both wrestle with and be completely blown away by, it is His timing. This past August, many years since my moment of surrender, I was reconnected to Tommy Hays. I first met Tommy years ago when I began doing Christian prayer ministry sessions. The perfect timing of our paths crossing again was the biggest blessing and gift from God. After a decade of gathering pieces to this giant jigsaw puzzle of trying to figure out why I was still stuck, I met with Tommy and Rocio on August 8th, 2020, a day that forever changed my life and the course of my path. As I laid out all of my years of sticky notes, painful memories, things I had heard the Holy Spirit speak to me, and the relentless victimizing events that had transpired in my life, I began to see it all with a level of clarity I had never known before. What God showed me during that session was the ultimate affirmation of how involved He had been the whole time, protecting me, fighting for me and gently guiding me to the final battle of victory over the enemy. His timing was perfect, all of the pieces to the puzzle came together at that exact moment because my heart was completely thawed, and I was truly open and ready to receive the truth. The part of my path I was once held captive to that tangled me up with despair, dread, fear, and ensnared by lies, is now a cornerstone representing the victory of the One who freed me, the One who ultimately held the key to my healing and freedom, the One who restored my hope and faith - Jesus.
As 2020 comes to an end, my heartfelt prayer is that this chapter of my life would remind you of how cared for and loved you are by Jesus and how intimately involved He is in your life. His plans are good, He heals the broken hearted, He restores the years the locusts have stolen, and He longs to show you how loved you are by Him. No matter what your circumstances are or where you are in your walk, I pray that through the His grace and compassion you would be filled with such overwhelming hope knowing you have the best companion traveling with you down each twist and every turn in your life's journey.
In Him,
Brooke