In year 2000, John Paul jackson introduced the first ever teaching of the Art of Hearing God outside the USA...in Scotland.  Cynthia and I had moved to the far north east about three years before and CLAN Gathering, the summer conference of New Wine Scotland, was still in its early growing stages.   Cynthia had been looking at a flyer that had come through the post and asked me if I had seen it, about a course with John Paul Jackson.  "Hmm, yes", I said (thinking at the same time that I had moved from 40 miles away from Edinburgh to almost 200 miles away).  Then came these wifely-typical words: "I think you should pray about going, it looks right up your street!"

Cynthia has since admitted she had enough discernment to know I should go but not enough to know she should go! 

So, this is where it gets interesting, I prayed, simply, "Lord what do you think about me going on this course of John Pauls?"

The answer was profound - "This will be the most significant teaching for you in 9 years".  I was arrested!

9 years previously was the natural end of a glorious season of years travelling around the UK, Europe and a little in the USA as a ministry team member on Vineyard conferences.  Until that point, the single most significant teaching influence in my life had been John Wimber and those who ministered with him.

So off I went to Edinburgh, sans wife but after 2 hours into the course I phoned her and said, "This is terrific, every Christian should do this course, this is some of the best discipleship material I have ever encountered!"  Several hours into the course, my next call announced "If the Pastors could hear this they would love John Paul".  It was the whole business of the character of the revelatory gifted person, how they are meant to function in life, in the church, in relation to Godly authority, how they are meant to grow in favour with God and man alike.  I was seeing clearly how so many Pastors had been alienated, not by the prophetic gift as some supposed but by the immature, untrained use of the gift.

The whole thing was elegantly constructed to lead you on a path through a spacious, well kept garden a path that was hedged in by scripture, leading exquisitly toward a friendship with the gardener.

The peace and goodness of God was paradoxically pressed upon you like a gift, one that encouraged you to lay down lesser possessions to make room for it.  It was a path to greater maturity and greater intimacy with God in all his fulness. 

I hope if you choose to take this course you will share some of my surprise,  joy and enthusiasm amidst the weight of truth and grace, stimulating exercises and as much homework as you have capacity for, which is contained between the covers of the course handbook. 

 Into this, John Paul has condensed an exhillarating, sweeping journey through the bible and 25 years of his own life with God, as a man proven through time to be trusted with great revelatory gifting and the ability to freely give as he has received. 

I count it both a privilege and a pleasure to assist him, and you, in this process

Rick Hayes