38. Re-Awakening of Desire

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

Before – 2004 – After

Re-awakening to the Vision 
In spite of all the other stuff going on in our lives, don’t ever think that I left off seeking to know the Lord and to understand what I was missing in my knowledge of the gospel. The bigger changes will come in the next chapter, but by 2004, my season of healing with John Eldredge had come to its completion. 

Although we continued in church attendance, especially for the sake of the children, it had become clear to me again, that the church in this world was simply not offering what I required from God. 

And so I continued to write, and I continued with my Times of Refreshing letters, the second volume. I do have all twelve of the issues of this second volume in my computer. The first is dated April 5, 2004 and the twelfth is dated September 5, 2006, so these letters covered a span of two years. The second and third letters are dated May and June, while the fourth was not until August 5. 

I mailed these to an address list that included some who had subscribed originally to Times of Refreshing and to which I added some in the homeschool group as well as some others. I may have sent out forty or fifty such letters each time.

The larger article in the April issue of Times of Refreshing begins with the following statement. ~~~ “God has laid upon me the necessity of sharing with others what He has taught me over the years. I find myself faced with the accountability of ‘to whom God has given much, much shall be required.’” The article is an attempt to place what I later on called the second, third, and fourth most important verses of the Bible, filled with all of God, rivers of Spirit flowing out, and casting down all accusation, upon the certainty of Isaiah 55, that God will accomplish all that His word means in our lives on this earth.
~~~
Then the second article is “Thirst.” I placed that into my book, The Great Story of God, with very little change in the wording. When I look through it to quote an important line, however, I want to bring in most everything. And so I would suggest you read it in order to understand the desperate cry of my heart continuing in the spring of 2004. 

Here is one line. ~~~ “All the years I have walked with God a question has haunted me, pursued me, found me out every time I managed to build a 'safe' place for myself. Is God doing something in the earth and I am not a part of it? To be honest with you, I can think of nothing more horrifying.” ~~~ 

The May issue was all about knowing a Spirit word, of our need for the Holy Spirit to show us what God means by what He says – “The Spirit gives life.”  The June issue continues with the importance of a Spirit revelation and the levels of the anointing in the calling of God. In this issue I introduce to my new readers the concept of the Feast of Tabernacles, that God has so much more for His people.

My purpose in this bit is to show the deep agony of heart that was re-awakening in me, that I would not be found anywhere else but inside of God and inside what He is doing upon the earth. 

Our Family Life 
Before recounting the monumental and disastrous fall semester of 2004, I want to share about our transition of church fellowships in the summer of 2004, giving a further picture of our home and family life through this time. I also want to outline some major changes in my thinking that came through this year. 

First, in June, Kyle, who was twelve going on thirteen, had the opportunity to visit his grandparents, Claude and Roberta Mack, at the Ridge in Bowens Mill. We dropped Kyle off at the airport and he flew to Jacksonville by himself where his grandpa picked him up. He enjoyed a good time with them before returning home the same way. Although we had left the move fellowship, we still wanted our children to have some continuing experience of community and of the anointing of God that is simply not found elsewhere.

The pace of remodeling work on our house was slowing down. I began re-building the bathrooms. We painted the dining and living rooms. I did not record an exact schedule of what we did when, however. 

I had noticed a “Church on the Rock” on the bypass going into Baytown. We had visited a similar church in Lubbock and knew it to be a good Spirit-filled fellowship. Awhile after we stopped going to the Assembly of God in the Heights, we attended the Baytown Church on the Rock and liked it. The pastor was Tommy Meekins and his wife, Barbara. Their son, Jeremy, led the praise. Jeremy Meekins was a wonderful praise leader, and this was the first time in the Houston area that we could freely worship God in the songs that were sung. Jeremy was slow and contemplative and preferred songs of worship.

The children, especially, fitted right in, and the brethren there welcomed our children, who were bright and inventive and who loved the Lord. This was not a large church, maybe 50 to 75 members. We would attend here for more than a year. In the end, however, we found little depth there, and thus this final “church” experience for us through this part of our time in Houston proved empty as well. 

Great Changes of Understanding 
I know that much of what I am sharing in this section took place across the span of 2004, just not when. In fact, now that I know Father-with-me, I understand better the causes of changes inside of me. I realize now that writing the article “Thirst” through March of 2004 opened thirst back up inside of me. I had separated myself from the word of the revelation of Jesus Christ, not by cutting it off, but by simply placing it on a shelf until the Lord brought, as I understand it now, the necessary healing. By this point, my time reading John Eldredge had completed its good work in me. 

The result was that through these months of mid-2004, the seed God had planted in my heart through Sam Fife slowly re-awakened inside of me with deep groanings. But I had separated myself from the present teaching of the move and would not look in that direction. I spent time searching on the Internet such terms as “sons of God,” “manifestation of sons,” “feast of tabernacles,” and so on, hoping to find people who taught the same word that filled the cry of my own heart.

I want to include some pieces that I wrote through the early months of 2004 that display what I mean. First, I wrote this.
•
I would like to share briefly what God is speaking to me at this present time and what He is presenting to me. I am in an unusual place, by God’s design, I am convinced. For twenty-one years I lived by sitting under the anointed preaching of the Word. That Word was my life. For six years, now, I have been waiting on God to give me the things that I knew were missing in my life. That is not completely true, because these last six years I have also relaxed. I know that I needed to relax for God to heal my heart, but I also know that the anointing that I long for comes through intense commitment.  

I find that the Word that I long to sit under once again is not available to me at the present time. Some might say, “Well, you need to go here, or, you need to go there.” I have done that, and what I know I need to live is not there, including the move. God has to put me into this kind of a place before He can begin to convince me that I need to be strong and of good courage, that I need to be convinced of Him as David was, that I need to place myself before Him until He brings out of me the word that I know I need, and not only I, but God’s people as well.  
•
Then, here are some excerpts from a piece I wrote titled “Why Return to Christian Community.” I include a fair bit, because I need you to see my heart’s cry through these in-between years.
•
Am I a people person? Yes and no. Yes, in my propensity to find life paths that are filled with people. At present, I spend my days interacting with 140 teenage kids. Before I was married, I was driven, almost, to seek out people, to be with people, to establish relationships with people. I enjoy solitude as well, though. I realize now that my inclination to spend my evenings with people, whether partying before I was converted, or fellowship and Bible study after, was driven by a deep loneliness, a loneliness that did not abate until I married Maureen. An amazing thing happened, though, when my wife walked down the aisle; the loneliness vanished and does not exist until I have spent more than one night and day without her.

But the present. Why am I no longer driven to seek out relationships with other people like I once was? Partly because I am fully content and without loneliness in my own home and partly because of the pain I have received over recent years from such seeking of relationships. But when I look at the “friendships” that have not worked out in recent years, I realize that there was no possible compatibility of heart between them and me. Unless two hearts are centered on the same vision, they can share no meaningful relationship.

But am I a people person? There is much evidence to argue that I am not. I no longer seek out other relationships. I have always been ready to go right after a formal event, like a service, is over. I hate to sit and chitchat. The other day my colleagues at school (all women) were standing in a circle on duty, chitchatting. My mind immediately closed it out and I was somewhere else. I have always been like that. I am not comfortable, at all, in informal social gatherings, I never have been. A formal social gathering, where there is a focus and a purpose – say a speaker, I love to be a part of, with intensity. But the moment it switches from formal to informal, I am gone.

When I am in large gatherings, especially the preaching of the word, a deep angst, an exquisite agony creeps into my heart. It is not demonic, though sometimes the anointing is greater. The angst is most strong when the word has penetrated my heart most deeply, and I have to get by myself before God. I cannot imagine engaging in the empty talk so many of God’s people are able to do after hearing such a word.

My greatest lack in relationships is my unreasonable fear of confronting people with what I feel about something, especially those in authority when I am in disagreement with them. The only time when I do not have that fear is when I clearly have the position of leadership and I have a clear purpose. In the past, I would be abrasive in that role, but I believe that is gone. I have 140 eighth grade public school students with whom I interact daily to prove or disprove anything in that.

I am definitely not a loner, and I most clearly have a heart for other people. I refuse the definition that because I do not and will never connect with idle talk and because I feel very out of place in informal social gatherings and will always do so, that I am therefore not eligible to enter a calling that includes constant heart to heart relationships with people. And be careful in judging personality types. What seems to some to be weakness, could be the very quality necessary to carry the day in the path God has set before an individual. 

[Note: At this point in my life, I had neither heard of nor considered Asperger’s.]

I know Christian community. I have lived in six separate communities over a total of eighteen years and have spent significant time visiting many others. I have moved in many different aspects throughout the heart of community, including leadership. I spent most of my time working within the community; I went out to work very little. I know how Christian community works. I know its strengths and weaknesses, its ups and downs. I made a careful and deliberate decision to separate myself from the communities of the move, and looking back now, I realize that it was just in time. I was closer to being spiritually comatose than I knew. It has taken God six years since to rescue me and to heal my heart.

But now that I find myself restored and whole inside, I come back, once again to the reasons I lived in community in the first place. And that is what this paper is about.

The first and foremost reason for me to desire a return to community, in fact, the overriding reason, that alone is sufficient to bring a return is this. There is a presence of God upon community that does not exist elsewhere. People go to church, God moves, and they think it is exciting, and so it is, but in a godly, faith-filled Christian community, the continual presence of God and of the anointing upon the service and upon individuals is far, far beyond. From the beginning I have known that. I have left communities several times, broken, hurting, and confused, but I have always gotten up again and returned.  Why? Simply this. Enduring all the discomfort of community in the midst of the presence of God was far preferable to me than the ease and comfort of life apart from community, but with only the tiny, occasional trickle of His presence, if that at all.

I miss His presence so badly I could weep. When we visited the little community north of Houston [Note: I will include this experience in just a bit], yes, there were oddities, yes, we instantly reacted to the less pleasant aspects of immature Christians and “group expectations” in community. But, oh, when we gathered together to worship and seek God, the river of His presence, the joy and light on the faces of all, the freedom of worship and of sitting under anointed word, was so, so wonderful.

I would rather know the river of His presence, and I say that, in spite of the present weariness of my body.

There are other reasons for considering a return to community. A second is our own needs, physically and spiritually. In order to have the land and life we want we will have to share it with others, it will come no other way. Sitting and hoping for an unexpected jackpot will not bring it. Really hard times are coming, we need neighbors to whom we are connected both physically and spiritually. We are walking through a battleground; we need fellow soldiers walking along side of us. This is a real and pressing need, a need that gets only lip agreement from others, but nothing more, apart from committed community.

A third reason is my own heart’s ambition. The word that is in me and the calling to ministry I have on my life can find true expression only from community. The word I would preach must both lead to community and flow from community. That may not make sense, but I know it is true. Apart from community as a base, the ministry I carry as a burning desire in my heart, will never come to fulfillment, it will remain forever, only a “what if,” hollow and empty.

A fourth reason is our children being part of a larger story. We left community partly for our children’s sake, that is true. But I have no intention of ever re-entering move communities. I will share later what kind of community is in my heart, certainly a community that will be significantly different than what we have known. When we talk about our children, let's hold an “ideal” community in our minds, whatever that is. When I see the tiny, little lives lived by the kids I teach in the public school, I am aghast. I want my children to know a larger picture, to understand and be a part of the great story of God. To be a part of something radically different from the shallowness and banality of this world. I want them to experience so many different parts of life, things they only get to read about now, farming, animals, missions, ministry to others, but more than anything else, anointed praise. I want them to know the value of land, the beauty of sloping hills and streams of water. I want them to know the wildness of the country.  I hate the confinement of city life.

A fifth reason is me, who I am, being able to devote my entire life to what I believe in.  Oh, my sweet wife, in all of these things, I have not included you, but then, you have a nature that builds community wherever you go. Let me, in this paragraph, finish about myself. I am a builder, a designer, a dreamer, a farmer, a teacher. I have for so long given my strength to things I do not believe in. Every day in the public school, I see good reason that the whole thing be abolished. Yet, I must give my support to it, because that is the only way I can get my living. It is endlessly debilitating to devote one’s self to something entirely contrary to one’s heart. (Not that I am not pleased to, by it, bring home what my family needs to survive.) My vision for community would engage all of me in every way. My deepest desire is to devote my life to teaching the Word to people who long to grow in the grace of God.  
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Note: I did not send the above piece to anyone.

Bill Johnson & the Spirit Out-Poured
I have noticed a marked difference between those who “left the move” after the deliverance times with Jane Miller and those who left before. I will share a brief experience with one who “left before” in the next chapter. There is often a bitterness expressed from them.

Those who left after the out-pouring of the Spirit through Sister Jane were not “leaving,” but rather, going on to know the Lord. Many of these brethren, including Sue Sampson, Mozelle Clarke, and Janet Randall, who had been my teachers at Blueberry, gravitated towards the ministry of Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California. Many visited his church and, even if they lived across the country, attended his conferences and listened to his good teaching. 

But some did move to Redding to be part of his church and school of ministry. My niece, April, with her husband, Ben, moved there and April attended and graduated from the Bethel School of Ministry. Katie Bracken moved there, and eventually, Michael and Deborah Kuntz. 

Bill Johnson had gone to Toronto during the out-pouring of the Spirit there in the 1990’s, as had Dennis Cline. That experience changed his ministry, and through him affected many who continued seeking God in the Spirit even as they “left the move.”

When I first arrived in Houston, before Maureen and the children came, I had seen a flyer advertising a “Holy Spirit revival” at a church called Victory Christian Center in northwest Houston, with Tony Krishack, pastor. I attended and found the same type of experience that had been known as “the Toronto blessing.” It was a wonderful service, and I received much from the Lord. We visited there a few times after as a family, but it was a bit too far for regular attendance.

At the same time, it seems that in those realms, the Spirit is an end in itself. While that’s wondrous, without a word of the revelation of Jesus Christ, such a continual experience cannot satisfy me. And yes, there was much wondrous laughter in the service, as there ought to be among those who rejoice in the joy of their salvation.

Through 2004, I read Bill Johnson’s book, When Heaven Invades Earth, and was much blessed by it. I knew it contained a part of what I needed in order to be a part of the fullness of Christ. Maureen and I listened to some of his teachings on tape.

Then there was a conference put on at the Humble Civic Center called something like “The Holy Spirit and Fire.” We attended during this time period, primarily because Bill Johnson was in attendance, and we wanted to hear his word. It was a strange event for us. Bill Johnson shared early on, and that was entirely of the Lord. But this was a conference put on by others to which he had been invited. 

Todd Bentley spoke. Half of what he said went in one ear and out the other. Maureen and I found nothing “wrong,” but not much that was meaningful, either. At the same time, I just could not connect with the praise. It all sounded good, but there was not a flow into which my spirit could rejoice. Then someone else got up to share; I have no idea who. Immediately, I knew that something was wrong. I motioned to my family; we got up and quietly went out the door. It is not my place to say that Jesus was not speaking to different ones according to His purposes in their lives; it’s just that I cannot remain inside something contrary to my own spirit.

In fact, Maureen went again with Kyle, but also got up quietly and left for the same reason.

I share this experience, not to place Bill Johnson with things “not right,” but actually to distinguish that, inside the realms of the out-poured Holy Spirit, as in all realms, there is much that is good, but always some that is not right.

Sons of God Community 
In my Internet search, I found a Christian Community called “Sons of God Christian Community” about halfway to Dallas, near Crockett, Texas. I communicated with the brother who oversaw that community, and we went up for a visit on a Sunday. The first time was probably in early 2004. 

This was a very interesting experience for me, but not so much for Maureen. We attended the service, shared meals with the community in their dining hall, and visited in the home of the lead ministry. I spent most of my time there visiting with the head elder, while Maureen conversed with some of the sisters who were not “ministry.” That’s what gave us two very different perspectives, though I was not ignorant of what she was seeing. I saw and enjoyed the community side of things; whereas Maureen saw the legalism under which the sisters lived.

They were a Spirit-filled group with a partial understanding of the revelation of Jesus Christ. I was freely invited to share in their service. I had long talks with the lead ministry (I do not remember his name and their website is gone), and we found much common ground of understanding. 

Then we went up again in the fall of 2004. I know it was then because I remember what I shared, things I was also writing in Times of Refreshing. We went up on a Saturday, planning to spend the night. We had a wondrous praise time, everyone dancing in a circle in the joy of the Lord. Again, in spite of a measure of legalism, there is an anointing found resting upon life together that is simply not known elsewhere. [This is what I referenced in the piece above.]

I was hoping to speak in the morning service, but the brother spoke a long time, a word very similar to Buddy Cobb’s. I got up to share anyhow, because I felt that my word was important, “The Treasure of the Heart,” which I had written in July. I saw a longing for the grace of God on the faces of many while I shared. And some came up to me afterward expressing how much it meant to them. I saw such a wistful longing in their eyes. We stayed for most of the day, visiting, before returning home to Houston.

After that, Maureen insisted that we were not visiting there anymore. My love of leaping into adventure had to be tempered by the goodness of having a wife and children who would have to make such leaps with me.

Trying to Start a Fellowship 
I wrote a letter to different families in our home school group, including the Rideau’s, expressing my desire for a fellowship of Christ. We invited different ones to our home for times of sharing. No such connection ever came to me from them, however. I do not have the gift of drawing people into something. 

Here is a description of the fellowship I was seeking. I believe I sent this out in my Times of Refreshing mailings.
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The Fellowship of Jesus
A Different Approach to Church
The Fellowship of Jesus will be a group of simple-hearted Christians who would rather be a part of what Jesus is doing than anything else in this world.  
Our Mission will be:
To so give ourselves to Jesus and to His Spirit that He can change us into His image and mold us together as one body that He might triumph through us over His enemies.
To present everyone who belongs to Jesus faultless before the Presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
We Believe:
God will do what He says; He will fulfill His word in this earth – and in us.
God is doing something awesome in the earth, and He wants us to be a part of it.
God is inviting us into what He is doing, and His invitation requires of us commitment and a forsaking of every lesser destination.
We Preach:
A vision of the unveiling of Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead.
How God is preparing us as His sons and changing us into the image of Christ.
What it means to overcome the accuser for one another.
What it means to love one another in the glory of Christian community.
The necessity of extended worship and the presence of God upon His people.
The great story of God as it comes to its climax and our role in that story.
The coming destruction of the world system and the total defeat of our enemies.
That the power of God is greater than the weakness of man.
That your heart is the precious treasure and the very throne of Almighty God.
At The Fellowship of Jesus, you will hear a word that will challenge you, shock you, stir you, lift you up out of your American lifestyle, and birth in you a vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
You are welcome if you are:
Thirsty and hungry.
Longing for the glory of God.
Determined not to be left out of what Jesus is doing for anything in this world.
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The cry of my heart at this time is clear, but I was never able to make anything real happen. At the same time, you can see the seemingly slight adjustment that is coming into how I understand what it means to be “like Jesus.”

Preston Eby & Reconciliation 
In my search on the Internet for the word I carried in my heart, I found that word, over and over, being taught at various levels of understanding by anointed ministries in the Church. 

But I had a big problem, for all of these brethren teaching the vision of my heart, planted in me through Brother Sam, were inside the “ultimate reconciliation” arena. The primary person whose website I found was Preston Eby. And most of them I found on Gary Sigler’s website – Kingdom Resources.

Now, I had known that Preston Eby and Sam Fife had ministered together in the 1960’s, after which they parted ways. And even though neither mentions the other by name, I am fully aware that they are speaking of each other when they point out what they “disagree with.” Preston Eby believed in ultimate reconciliation and Sam Fife did not. Sam Fife preached a structured order for the fellowships, and Preston Eby disagreed with such a thing. 

Other than those two things, however, Preston Eby and Sam Fife teach the same thing. To know what Sam Fife taught, minus the sectarianism, then read Preston Eby, minus the ultimate reconciliation.

Eternal damnation was not preached in the move. It was assumed, yes, but only as an unimportant side issue. Brother Buddy taught that God was well able to save, even after death. 

But I had a problem. My problem was that I will not know anything that God does not say in the Bible, and I will hold to all that God speaks in the gospel as He speaks it and as He means it.

Nonetheless, I am always willing to hear any presentation of “what the Bible says.” I always judge carefully against what I know God says, and I always search it out in Scripture until I know a thing to be true or not. So-called “heresy” has never bothered me, especially when I hear orthodox preachers saying all sorts of non-Biblical things, and when I see BIG things in my New Testament that nobody includes. 

Among all those teaching of the same vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ through us, His Church, I carefully chose Dr. Stephen Jones as the one whose books I would order and study. I did that through these months. I spent much time in “Creation Jubilee” as well as my Bible. I also studied Preston Eby and others on-line. I bought other books as well, including The Jerome Conspiracy.

Here’s the thing. I don’t care what “Christianity” says or “believes” about anything. I care only about what God says in the Bible, and I have found the two to be opposed so many times. 

I studied what was taught carefully, and I studied my Bible even more carefully. At the end of that study, I agreed with Stephen Jones and Preston Eby, that the Bible does NOT teach unending damnation in torment.

Now, this is an account of my life and the word I share, not a “doctrinal study." Some might say, “Well I believe, end of discussion.” Such a claim is absurd. You and I are quite incapable of creating what is not and de-creating what is, no matter how hard our “believing” forehead might be. 

And so, if you believe otherwise, then I challenge you with that statement – the Bible does NOT teach eternal damnation, but rather, a bounded time of purifying in judgment. Either my words are true or not. Only the Bible itself will show you; definitely not some preacher. And in searching out such a thing, it is always good to read from both sides. The true will always show itself to those who are actually seeking Him.

The simple fact is that my decision was based on one negative and one positive. The negative is that the word “eternal” has no place in our Bibles. The Greek word is aeon, meaning, an age of time. It was Jerome who stuck “eternal” into the Latin Bible because of his fascination with pagan torment in fire. No one in the first two hundred years of church history knew anything about such a thing as “hellfire.” It came in only through the Latin theologians.

The positive is Paul’s gospel, which, according to Paul, stands above everything else found in the Bible. Paul’s gospel alone enables us to understand the very cryptic things written in John’s vision, a vision that no one in the first two generations of the Christian Church knew anything about. And Paul taught very clearly what God’s end game is – all restored back to Father – God all inside of all. In the end, the entire doctrine of eternal hellfire is based on one idiom no one can translate accurately, aionos aionos, in John’s hard to understand vision – and on nothing else.

I will go no further, except to say that, while this new understanding would never become the focus of what I teach, it did alter my understanding of God. I have no interest in knowing what God does not mean, and every interest in knowing what He does mean.

For the first time in my life, the possibility that God does NOT know evil could begin to shape my knowledge of the Father.

More Times of Refreshing 
The August 5 issue of Times of Refreshing was on the treasure of the heart, that your heart is good, and on glory versus shame, that God speaks well of us. The September 5 and November 5 issues were about the Feast of Tabernacles, which you have read, for they became Chapter 2, Applying the Feasts, in my book, The Feast of Tabernacles. 

I did not send out the next issue until March 5, and it’s on the same topic, God filling His House, the Church, with His presence and glory. I did not write another issue, then, until December of 2005, so I will include my concern in that issue in the next chapter.

Natural Understanding 
Then, also through 2004, two elements of natural understanding came into my picture.

Soon after I was on the Internet in our townhouse in Fort St. John, I came across a website by David Talbot, a disciple of Immanuel Velikovsky, who was attempting to make Velikovsky’s ideas more current. His website was about the planet Saturn as it was before the flood of Noah. That website eventually disappeared. Then, in 2004, I saw a link to a “Velikovsky” website on a news page I frequented. I followed that link and so was introduced to www.thunderbolts.info, shortly after it was created. 

What had happened was that David Talbot met a man named Wallace Thornhill, who was a student of the great electrical universe theorists of the twentieth century, including Kristian Birkeland and Hannes Alfven. As Talbot and Thornhill conversed, they discovered that they were studying the same thing. And thus the thunderbolts website was born.

Almost every weekday, five times a week, the Thunderbolts website posts a new article titled “The Picture of the Day.” From 2004 until now, I have read most of them, early in the morning.

I never liked astronomy in school or as any personal interest, but the electrical theory of the universe fascinated me. I do not accept ideas, however, that are not proven out by much demonstration of evidence. And so I set myself to know the evidence of an electrical universe. I bought the books and studied the website until I was fully assured that it is reality. When I mention it in my teaching, I am well-versed in what I am sharing.

Then, in December of 2004 was the massive earthquake just off of Thailand, and the tidal wave that destroyed so many. In searching out the reality of earthquakes, I found this website – https://ds.iris.edu/seismon/index.phtml. You see, I have been swayed in the past by grandiose claims of the end times, including the claim, on a regular basis, that “earthquakes are increasing.”

Once I found the seismic monitor, I determined that I would know the facts. And so, from December of 2004 until this morning, I have looked at the earthquake map nearly every day. I have learned that earthquakes are not “increasing.” What happens is that there is a rhythm. For a while, earthquakes are small and infrequent, then for awhile they reverberate around the ring of fire. Then they are quiet again. The claims that “earthquakes are increasing” happen only on the upswing. You never hear anything from these guys when earthquakes are low.

The pattern that is happening here is that by my forties, I was done with believing hype, whether Bible hype or science hype or world events hype or “God bless America” hype, or any other hype. I need facts and evidence. I need things that can be proven or disproven, demonstrated either true or false. And that very much includes “what the Bible says.” 

Placing Jesus Upon 
I know that I repeat myself, but as I am writing these accounts, the knowing of the straight arrow of the word through the days of my life is so very important to me. I could not live with the imagination that any part of my life was not found inside of God and inside of His determination through me.

“Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have always kept my heart close inside of Yours. Thank you that You have never left me alone, regardless of all my ins and outs. Thank you, that the very moment I was healed enough, You placed in me again that awakening of great thirst to know You and through You, the Father.”

“Thank you, Lord Jesus, that You were so faithfully preparing my heart for that moment when the heavens open wide to me and You become the very fabric of my life.”
Now, I can begin the next chapter with the most disastrous semester in my teaching experience.