May 2022 Newsletter
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By Ed Piorek
Hit the glove!” I still remember the words my dad yelled to me from behind the home plate of our practice baseball field in the empty lot beside my childhood home. “Come on, son, throw a strike!” he called out as he centered the big catcher’s mitt over the exact center of the plate. I wound up and fired a pitch at the target. It was very important to hit the glove, especially on that particular day. We had just returned from a Little League baseball game and things had not gone well.
I pitched the game and we lost. My father was the coach of the team and he was not too pleased with my performance. By the end of the game we were losing badly, and he began to verbalize his displeasure, shouting instructions at me. I was failing to “hit the glove.” As I stood all alone out on the pitcher’s mound, my eyes filled with tears.
My father’s love was what I was looking for.
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Like all children, I loved my dad and opened my heart to receive his love in return. However, the demonstration of affection I desired never came.
As the years passed, each experience of falling short was another brick in a wall of pain that separated me from others, and my loneliness grew. I was terrified of failure. When it came time for me to leave home, I took my fear and emptiness and my longing for a father’s love and tried to fill the void with what the big world out there had to offer.
Years later, after giving my life to Jesus, I was invited to teach a small Sunday School class. This was the beginning of years of zealous service for the Lord. My desire to serve was sincere, and my ministry was fruitful. However, my good intentions were tainted a little by a feeling of competitiveness. I was still insecure. Even though I had dramatically met Jesus, I knew little of the person and power of the Holy Spirit. I felt I had to rely on my own youthful energies to succeed in ministry. And when it came to knowing God the Father and His love, I was unable to get past the image of my dad, whose love seemed dependent on “hitting the glove.”
It wasn’t long before my diligence and zeal propelled me ahead of others and into leadership, and soon enough I was standing behind the pulpit as pastor of my own church, wearing a three-piece suit and attempting to preach perfect three-point sermons.
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Unfortunately, perfection is impossible to achieve, and the occasional criticism of well-meaning parishioners felt like arrows of rejection. All my experiences of letting my dad down left me with a deep-seated fear of failure, and those arrows of rejection always found their mark. When these emotions surfaced, I harnessed them in a valiant attempt to do even better, but the increase of effort led to an early spiritual and emotional burnout. I needed more of God’s enabling power in my life.
About this time, I met John Wimber. John laid hands on me and my wife and we began a new season of ministry in the power of the Spirit. It was exciting to learn about the person of the Holy Spirit and use spiritual gifts. Although I experienced great success in my re-energized ministry, the nagging fear of failure was still there. I still had not come to know my loving Father in heaven. I was still trying to hit the glove.
In 1985 my travels with John Wimber led me to Oklahoma City where nearly 1,500 people were gathered for a conference on healing. I often assisted him in his seminars while he discipled me in doing the works of Jesus. After the message, he called the sick to the front for prayer. But then he called me up to pray for them! Instantly my heart was overwhelmed with the fear of failing in front of everyone. Would I be able to “hit the glove”? To my amazement God often healed the needy person, but the anxiety of these moments took its toll on me and I soon realized that I had to find a better way to deal with my terrible fears.
On Friday night after the evening session John informed me that he had to head home early the next morning and that I would be on my own. I was gripped by the fearful vision of having to take John’s place in front of that large crowd. I lifted my hands up to heaven and prayed, “Father, Your Word says that You love me and will show me what to do. Father, I need Your love right now!” Suddenly I felt a warm presence flood my body. I felt immediate relief and began to cry. My first thought was to ask, “What was that?” and the answer which was impressed on my mind was, “This is the Father’s love for you.” When I finished crying, I was filled with a sense of peace, and went on to a wonderful time of ministry. As I look back, I realize that marked my first identifiable experience of the Father’s love. For the first time in my life, I felt the warm embrace of a father’s arms.
Several months later, I was preparing to send out my Associate Pastor to plant a new church. As I prayed for him I had a disturbing thought. Jim was a charismatic leader—perhaps people from my church would decide to go with him when he left. Perhaps a lot of people. I envisioned my church, rapidly shrinking, and saw myself as a pastoral failure, rejected by my peers, alone. As this terrible vision developed, I felt fear creep through my body. What began as a nagging little fear in the back of my mind soon merged with all the historical fears I had been suppressing and I found myself paralyzed.
 Order Ed’s Book & 4-CD Set/Audio Series Your Father Loves You |
At the pinnacle of my pain, I felt the presence of the Lord surround me.
The light of His nearness began to break through the swirling darkness of my fearful thoughts. The pain within me solidified like granite in defiance of the Spirit’s presence, but the power of God increased dramatically, and the chilling rock of emotional pain shattered. With that freeing touch my mind cleared and my focus turned heavenward. Then I heard these words almost audibly impressed on my mind, “You are My son! I love you! And you can never fail in My sight!” When I heard those powerful fatherly words for the first time in my life I broke into tears and sobbed uncontrollably for nearly fifteen minutes. The Father gently spoke to me saying, “I am taking all the pain for all the years.”
When my crying ended, I felt greatly relieved, emptied of pain yet strangely filled with a warm presence, the presence of the Father’s love. I had received the witness of His love. I knew I was His. After forty years of pursuit, I had come to fully experience a father’s love.
Wherever you are in your experience of the Father’s love, you can always ask for more in the name of Jesus. Then the Spirit will descend on you to do the work He always does, bringing people into the presence of the heavenly Father and giving witness of His love.
Ed Piorek is a pastor and internationally known speaker from San Clemente, California who spreads the message of the Father’s love throughout
the world.
By Sid Roth
The Toronto Blessing Revival that impacted 4.5 million visitors from around the world was founded on the teaching of men like Ed Piorek. I recently interviewed Ed about the love of Father God for His children. Although Ed’s teaching was foundational in the previous move of God’s Spirit, it is even more important for this last move of God leading to the greatest harvest of souls in history (His Story)!
Ed’s resources are mandatory to prepare for the coming Father’s Heart Glory Revival. Please order them on the enclosed response card. And consider adding a gift to partner with us in the salvation of Israel and the world!
It’s crucial that we not just understand the Father’s love intellectually, but that we literally experience His Presence and embrace. We are incomplete without partaking in the full measure of the Father’s heart for us. We have had moves of God that emphasized the love and power of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit, but this last move is different. We will encounter the full love and Glory of Father God!
 Sid as a boy with his father. |
I experienced the best measure of human love from my own earthly father a few months before he died. I was driving him home after going out to breakfast and I asked him to sing the Aaronic Blessing over me. This prayer is found in Numbers 6:24-26 (NLT):
May the LORD bless you and protect you. May the LORD smile on you and be gracious to you. May the LORD show you His favor and give you His peace.
Then comes the promise in the next verse! God said, “Whenever Aaron and his sons bless the people of Israel in my Name, I myself will bless them.”
Shortly thereafter I experienced the tangible, majestic, indescribable Presence or Glory of God for a full week, 24/7. I knew that Presence because it was the same Presence that overwhelmed me the night I was saved. It transformed a flawed sinner into a child of God and transferred me from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God!
At the time I did not know why I was feeling God’s Presence constantly, but at the end of the week, I found out my dad was in the hospital, and he was dying. My Jewish father was born in Poland with a very religious upbringing. It was instilled in him that a Jew could not believe in Jesus! He hated even the name of Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus). So when I had become an outspoken believer in Jesus years before, our rocky relationship had gotten even worse!
But on his deathbed in intensive care, I saw the greatest miracle in my life! Dad’s throat was so eaten up with cancer, he couldn’t speak. Yet when I asked him if he wanted to make Yeshua his Savior and Lord, he belted out a loud “Yes!” Shortly after receiving Jesus as his Messiah, my father died and went directly to heaven! Only God’s Glory could have caused this to happen!
 Ukrainian refugees receive Sid’s book. |
I had prayed for my dad’s salvation for many years. One of the Scriptures I would declare over him was Exodus 12:3 (TSB), …a lamb for a household! At Passover, the Jewish people were to sacrifice a lamb for the entire family. This lamb was a foreshadow of Yeshua, THE Passover Lamb who would take away the sins of the whole world. God wants entire households saved! When the full Glory manifests, the most unlikely members of your household will be radically saved!
God has told me to expand my voice in every way possible! So I just put the audio version of our It’s Supernatural! TV show on Sirius XM satellite radio. Sirius has almost 38 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, mostly on car radios. We are on Ch. 131 (Salem Media) Saturday at 9:00 pm ET (6:00 pm PT) and a late-night timeslot, Monday-Friday at 2:30 am ET (Sunday-Thursday 11:30 pm PT). I also let them know that when an entire channel is available, I want to buy it to put ISN audio on 24/7!
I’m excited to share with you a report from our Ukrainian ministry partners just before Russia invaded. Your gifts make this and so much more possible!79 villages and towns had been visited. 3,400 gave their lives to the Lord. They taught 10 schools of evangelism with over 200 people trained to be evangelists. 800 homes had food packages along with the Gospel!
And I just received word that my Jewish evangelistic testimony books (in Russian) are being distributed at the Ukraine refugee center in Moldova (see picture to the right)!
May the Glory of God overtake you and your entire household!