Pastor JackParaugs

Pastor Jack Hayford once said, “From my mother, I learned to listen for the voice of the Lord.” Dolores believed that God rarely spoke “in a voice we can hear with our ears. But He speaks to us deep in conscience, where we hear differently and truly.” She would often ask Jack if the Lord had spoken to him or given him an impression about something. She would guide him toward a decision that way. And “if you ever told her anything the Lord told you, she would hold you to it.” She would call you back to the “benchmark place of what you said.” 

What really taught Jack was the way she modeled it. On a few occasions, Jack Sr. would call the family together and say to the children, “I want you to listen to what the Lord spoke to your mother.” One unforgettable time, fifteen-year-old Jack was sitting at the kitchen table, and Jack Sr. asked Dolores to share a dream God had given her, in which she had seen a burned-out hillside. The Lord told her that Christ was coming soon and that there was no time to “walk in barren places.” The family was gripped by the vision. 

The most significant lesson Dolores taught her children, and something Jack Hayford Jr. has retold, again and again, was the importance of telling the truth. 

Whenever Mama thought any of us might be tempted to be less than truthful because of the pressure of a situation where possible correction may follow an honest confession, she would take a precautionary step. 

Instead of simply asking, “Did you do (such and such) …?” she would precede the question with a statement. This statement had a sobering effect on me because it so vividly evidenced the reality of my accountability to be truthful in the eyes of God. Mama would say, “I’m going to ask you a difficult question, Jack. But before I do, I want to say, I’m asking you in front of Jesus.” 

Jack never saw this as a threat or a religious ploy intended to scare him or his siblings. Instead, it helped him and his sister and brother take “the Lord seriously.… And when Mama would say, ‘in front of Jesus,’ a powerful image would come to my mind.” 

We all knew God is everywhere, all the time. But there was a unique sense of the immediacy of the Living Lord when those words were spoken. I could imagine Jesus seated on the throne immediately to my left as I stood face-to-face with my mother and prepared to hear whatever question she had. 

The impact of this lesson was inestimable on Jack Hayford’s spiritual development, and it would stay with him for life. Although Dolores questioned Jack in this way only fifteen or twenty times during his years at home, nothing would become more central to his view of Christian spirituality than the need for complete honesty with God and others at all times. Jack realized what it was to live in the fear of the Lord, in the best sense.