9. Heart with Heart

© 2019 Daniel Yordy

Remembering the Most Important
As I am writing this unexpected chapter in my life story, I have just returned from a trip to the Nashville, Tennessee area where I taught this word of Christ our life to a small group of people and enjoyed rich fellowship with them.

Nonetheless, my Father and I shared some difficult experiences together in travail for His people. As I continued to ponder the meaning of these things the day after I returned home, the Lord enabled me to see a huge reality of my life through all the years I lived in move community; understanding the truth was like a sharp sword piercing through my soul.

Then I realized I had left out the most important thing God spoke to me as I was enjoying all those experiences at Graham River Farm through the summer and fall of 1977.

I cannot share the story of my life without sharing my experiences with other people and the sometimes wrenchingly difficult things I passed through. And I cannot share my interaction with others in such a way that leaves any shadow of blame upon them.

I now see such a mighty purpose of God for the next nineteen years of my life, greater than anything I could have imagined. I must frame these years, from July of 1979 with my arrival at the little community above Albuquerque, New Mexico to August of 1998 when my family and I left the Blair Valley community and the move, I must frame them a bit differently.

I intend to set forth my soul for the sake of each one with whom I interacted through these years. I intend to win the hearts of many, including those from whom I received the most hurt, confusion, and unending pain. In this chapter, I must set before you exactly what I mean, for you and I are about to walk together through the Holy, and it’s best that no accusation of fault be found in your responses as a reader.

Yet, at the same time, there is no profit to any reader unless you can know and understand the reality and meaning of the utter hopelessness into which my soul was cast through those dark and lonely months of January and February, 1998, and the context out from which came the tears of agony through the winter of 2001-02 as the healing of God came to me through John Eldredge’s wise counsel, step by terrible step.

The sword that thrust through my soul yesterday was of the same kind as the sword of desperate healing through my years of reading John Eldredge.

During the late summer and early fall of 1977, during my wonderfully romantic experience at Graham River Farm, I heard a word spoken in my spirit and in the heavens around me as I did the various tasks of my days.

I heard, “That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” I heard it over and over through many days, “That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. – That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Finally, my curiosity became too great; I needed to know from whence this line came. I searched my Bible until one day I found it – Luke 2:35: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

This was not God speaking to Mary; this was God speaking to me. I was twenty years old when I heard this word, and it was as painful to me then as it would ever become. Now, forty-two years later, I want to show you exactly what God means. 

The Press of God’s People
I love community. I love gathering together with God’s people. In the midst of the gathering and the back and forth, it would appear to you that I do well. What you would not see is the wrenching difficulty into which all that press of God’s people places me. 

Part of Father’s purpose in this trip to Tennessee was to show me the boundaries of my ministry and calling in practical interaction with others. 

God anoints me to write in the early morning hours as I hear Jesus singing in my heart. God anoints me to share that same word with you in every way that I can. God anoints me to fellowship together with those who have embraced the full reality of Christ our only life. And God anoints me to teach inside of a classroom to those who are eager to learn.

What God did not create me for is to share this word face to face with those who have forged a Christian identity that is not Christ our only life.

It is an exercise of love poured-out by which we see Christ Jesus living as each one and by which we impute no consciousness of sins. But it is not an act of blind foolishness. God’s people identify themselves by many powerful things that are not real or true. 

There is the “I am the pastor” identity that can be unwilling to accept that the gospel of the serpent has been their bottom line in spite of all the “love” that they teach. There is an “I am of the Spirit” identity that has no need for any “Bible word,” but that calls its own thoughts as “God speaking” and imposes those thoughts on others as “the word of the Lord.” There is the “America is God’s country” identity that imagines that the U.S. government has always told the truth or that “God” and “America” are some sort of allies instead of the mortal enemies  that they are. 

The problem with all human identity derived from “not-Christ” is that the person who identifies him or herself with position or title, membership or country, flag or cause will oppose the Lord Jesus when push comes to shove. They will speak words concerning themselves that are not Christ our life. And the problem with that is a prolonged season of not knowing Father.

Here is the only entrance into Christ. – That every mouth might be closed, and the entire cosmos brought under judgment before God (Romans 3:19). As the entrance into Christ, the words “guilty before God” are fully appropriate. 

Identifying with anything of our lives in this world WILL block our knowing that we come out from the Pro-Knowing of our Father through the good speaking of Jesus.

When we call our entire life in this world “GUILTY” and close our mouths about ourselves, AND, as we discover the wondrous glory of speaking Christ our only life, then we find that every real part of our entire life story has always been the story of Christ. We have not lost ourselves, but have gained ourselves back in full, true and good.

Justifying one’s wrongful actions, on the other hand, works the same as accusing one’s self for those actions, that is, it requires the spinning of a false identity. 

Those who hold tightly to any former self-identity are still carried by the Lord Jesus all the way through death and into life, they just can’t know that yet. Some may not know it for another thousand years. Holding a self-identity separate from “Jesus lives in my heart as every word God speaks through ‘Let it be to me,’” is nothing more than the spinning of mental nonsense. It contains nothing real or true or good.

Now, this is not a teaching on “identity,” but an attempt to position God’s purpose for me and for my entire life story. It is such a relief to me, such joy and peace, to know that God did not design me to interact as a ministry with those who spin untrue “Christian” identities. They belong to Jesus, and He knows exactly what He is doing in their lives. They are not my focus or concern. 

Coming to know such a thing, however, is not easy. Yet God did not just turn my heart away from a direction not for me, but, in the same set of circumstances, He turned it towards exactly those relationships He did design me for and for which He anoints me.

Let me explain. I put most of the cost of the trip to Tennessee on my wife’s credit card. That means my “ministry” became her debt. Most of the money to cover that cost did not come into our possession until the day after I returned home. Yet it all came in. – But from whom? It came from three individuals who have embraced this word I share and who, far more than that, have walked with me heart with heart for some years. 

And in that moment, the Lord made it clear to me, “This is how My Church is built, two walking together as equals, heart with heart.”

Fixing People’s Problems
I want to talk about the single most harmful thing done to me through all the years I lived in move of God Christian community. My purpose in this letter is to position these most difficult experiences in relating with others, especially with those who were “over me in the Lord.” It is my intention to set forth my soul together with Father for the sake of each one of these through my writing of the next nineteen years.

Inside of the Christian experience there are many who see themselves as spiritually mature, or gifted, or called, or anointed, and thus see themselves as sent by God to help those who are less mature or gifted or anointed. They see themselves “above,” and their brothers and sisters as specimens or guinea pigs upon which they are to work their superior insight into “What you ought to look like if you were to be like me (I mean like Christ).”

This conceit, coming out of the serpent’s self-arrogance and Adam’s contempt for others, is fairly common to us all. The only way I have ever known freedom from its entanglement is by the embracing of Christ my only life and by seeing my brother as Jesus living as him.

Yet as an Asperger’s man, I have lived a life under the practice of those who are determined to “fix” my problem. Their words ALWAYS increased my difficulty because, even though their words had no connection with anything real inside of me, I did imagine that God was speaking to me through them.

This is the horror of imposing “Christ” on one another instead of seeing Christ with joy as our brother and sister. It creates hell for our victims.

I must share with you my interaction with three individuals on this trip to Tennessee because it was my consideration of what really happened that prepared me for the sword of God piercing my soul in hurt and healing at the same time, the day after I returned.

And out from my sword-pierced soul, I intend to open to you the thoughts of the hearts of many. Actually, I can do that now with one word. What are the heart thoughts of many about to be shown for all to see? I can sum up those thoughts with one word. – “Father.”
I hope first to tell you and then to show you exactly what I mean.

I taught my “lessons” four times while in Tennessee, twice on Friday and twice on Saturday. Then, on Sunday morning, we continued sharing around the table in a true Christ-fellowship. It soon became clear that this was God’s intention for us that morning. In fact, I was able to share in the flow of Christ with Christ the important things from the lessons for that day. This final gathering was of true hearts desiring to know Christ alone. 

There was a couple, man and wife, in attendance in the first session on Friday morning. The brother in whose home the meetings were held opened our time together in the Spirit of Christ. Then the sister began to speak in prophetic utterance, directing the service as she wished, in exuberance, in dance, in outflowing abundance. She quoted from the “gospel of Thomas.” 

I receive all things as from my Father, so this did not bother me at all. Once I started sharing, several times I connected what I was sharing with what she had shared. I did this to honor Christ as her. After the session she visited with me regarding Asperger’s, something shared by a member of her family.

This couple was not at the afternoon session, which is when I shared the true image of God, a Man on His face in the dirt under a cross He could not carry, carrying us inside Himself, carried by Father. The couple did attend the Saturday morning session.

For some reason, I don’t really know why, I was not sleeping well. When I stood in front on Saturday morning, it was after two nights of only four-hours sleep, plus all the exercise of non-stop fellowship and interaction. I was doing well inside, but outwardly I was not overly expressive, shall we say. We had a time of praise during which I was definitely not exhibiting outwardly “full freedom in Spirit expression.” Yet in all things, I see Father sharing any and all difficulty with me for the sake of His people. This is the deepest faith in God I have ever known, the greatest surrender, and the MOST WONDROUS blessing and goodness.

Sharing heart with Father is my treasure.

After the teaching, as we began to fellowship, the husband said to me that he had seen me in a dream from God the night before. He saw me inside a large wooden crate with thick boards nailed tightly. Then he saw a crowbar tearing off the first of the boards with great difficulty, but it was coming off. He also had the “interpretation,” (something one should never do – “Let one speak and another interpret.”) His interpretation was that I was penned in a cage and God was about to set me free. 

I suffered no temptation whatever to imagine his dream or his interpretation as being “God speaking to me.” I had no need to cast those words down, for they simply drifted off into their own nothingness with no help from me.

You can see the vital importance of our speaking BIBLE words as Christ our life. When we hear words that are not Christ, they have no meaning to us. How many times does God say that a believer in Jesus lives inside a cage? And how many times does God say that a believer in Jesus lives only inside of Christ? Never for the first; many, many times for the second.

Yet God does speak of a piece of wood causing problems. Had I been allowed to interpret the dream, I would have done so by God’s words. “The wood is only in your eye, my dear brother. The crowbar is removing your wrong seeing so that you may see Christ as He already is.”

Then, after we had eaten lunch, I was sitting at the table when the sister began to prophecy over me that I would rise up out of whatever it was she imagined to be “not-Christ” and be “free in the Spirit.”

This has happened to me so many times in so many different ways. When I’m in the middle of it, I have no idea what is really going on and so I simply move in graciousness and wisdom of entreaty, which is God’s intention anyway. Only later do I begin to understand what was really happening.

And so I was delighting in this sister, in her heart and in her expression. But her words were joining her husband’s words in the nothingness that they were. 

But in my care for her, I did not want her to continue to speak empty “spiritual” things. I wanted to win her heart. So I stopped her, and in gentleness and with great care, I explained to her Christ living as us. She began to listen. I shared with her that God had forged a treasure inside of me that, if she would know me, would be of inestimable value to her. (I do not remember my exact words.) 

She sat down beside me with what looked to me like interest on her face. I refuse to imagine that I can know what is going on inside of any other person – unless they tell me, but I did have the hope that I had placed into her thinking something wonderful she may never have known before, that Christ can be as her AND as me and be very different in expression, yet fully the same Christ, that we can treasure our differences rather than impose ourselves on one another.

These two did not return for any more gatherings.

If I had imagined for one moment that it was “God speaking to me” through that couple, I would have had two options. Option 1 is to pretend with all my might to be what I am not and do what I cannot. Option 2, then, is to imagine that I have fallen short of God when I inevitably fail at being fake. Living inside such thinking is what “hades” means.

I must also mention another man who did not attend the sessions or participate in any fellowship, but with whom I visited briefly early one morning. This brother believes that Christ does live as him and that every thought that flits through his mind is God speaking through him. Jesus does carry this man all the way through, but his thoughts are not God’s thoughts.

In the same way, there are many in “spiritual” Christianity who also imagine that, since God has “anointed” them, then the thoughts coming into their minds are God’s “prophetic utterance” for this or that person. I realized later that the sister and this other man were identical in practice, though opposite in expression. Yet keep this concept in mind, for this is how the sword of God pierced through my soul after my return.
Now, I want to step aside from these individuals in order to talk about this universal practice in Christian circles, that of imposing our own religious expression on others as if they can be like Christ only if they pretend to be like our “anointed”  and “superior” selves.

This was an almost universal practice throughout the move of God fellowship; it is the only possible expression of ministry that can come out from a false hierarchy. Indeed these things are universal to Christianity in this world and are the cause of the name of Jesus being held in contempt by most non-Christians today.

There is another word we use that IS this practice, including what the sister was speaking at me. It’s called bullying, and it comes out from complete disrespect. 

God’s answer is simple. “Receive one another in the same way Jesus receives you.”

The next day after I arrived back home, as I was sharing all these things with my wife, she said something I had not known before. 

I cannot share my life without sharing my interaction with those who impacted my life for good or for ill. And thus I must bring in now by name an individual who factored in my life in a number of closely personal ways during the last several years I was in that fellowship, Barbara James. Sister Barbara was a traveling ministry who moved in a strong and effective deliverance ministry. She was anointed of the Lord with much wisdom and many good words. Although Sister Barbara is a specific individual, yet, of truth, she stands in for many throughout my years in that fellowship who thought and moved in the same way.

The only thing I ever received from Sister Barbara’s input into me was increased confusion with a corresponding decrease in answers. Every word she spoke into me had no meaning to me; her words had no connection with anything real in my heart and life and experience. She always had it wrong.

Yet I believed that her ministry to me, along with all others to whom I had submitted my life, was God to me. And so God became more and more CONFUSION to me.

Maureen told me that Sister Barbara had shared with her that she had been taught and believed that, because she was an anointed ministry in the move of God, then the thoughts coming into her mind were God’s thoughts towards this other person and that she should be confident in her “discernment” of them.

If we do not speak Bible words, that is, what God actually says in the gospel, written in our hearts as Christ made personal, our very and only life, then the words and ideas flowing through our minds are NOT God’s words at all, no matter how anointed we imagine ourselves to be. The serpent’s words RULE in the human and the Christian domain until we learn to speak only what God speaks as Christ Personal as us.

When I compared Sister Barbara’s practice with that of the sister in Tennessee, I saw that they were identical. That realization was like a sword splitting my soul apart, that so much that people whom I held in high regard imposed on me as “God,” so many things that were just made-up inside their own limited self-knowledge. It was a piercing of great pain that resulted first in great healing and second in determined purpose.

Winning Heart with Heart
I do not want to use this chapter to bring in things that must unfold through the circumstances of the next nineteen years ahead. I want only to position what is real and true along with my determined purpose in every upcoming chapter.

God walks with me through great difficulty, and in it shows me great contrast, so that I might understand, so that I might be able to share with you that which is real and precious. I no longer resist the difficulty, but I am glad that my Father and I together, through our shared difficulty, are enabling His people to know Him.

The Church of God is built in only one way, and that is two together, side by side as on a garden bench, sharing heart with heart. Speaking so-called “prophetic word” or so-called “discernment” at people is building a kingdom, yes; it’s just not God’s. 

More than that, God has NEVER once told anyone what He is doing in the heart and life of another. And He never will. God never tells anyone that “so and so is sinning.” If God remembers sin no more, how can He tell you what He does not know? 

I do not know what is going on inside of you, what you are, how Jesus is showing Himself to you in your inward person – UNLESS you tell me. And such intimate conversation happens only as we are together, heart with heart, honoring one another with utmost respect.

There is no other Church.

And so, as I write forward from here, I am going to DARE something terrible out from my split-open soul. 

I dare to seize every individual person with whom I interacted as mine, to seize them into the knowledge of Father, to seize them into the overflowing abundance of the joy of their Salvation, to seize them into honor and glory and respect forever.

I dare to win their heart.

And I will do so by setting forth my own soul for their sakes, that they and Father might meet together, here, above the Blood, and utterly free of me.

On page 74 is a picture that describes for me what I intend to do. This is a picture of the great test that Penelope set before the false suitors after Odysseus’ return home, a test that only the true Odysseus could accomplish, that of stringing the bow of Odysseus and shooting an arrow through a line of axe hoops all the way to the target.

Here is a picture from The Odyssey played by Armand Assante.

The first diagram below left represents the heart of each person, relating at me from a distance. Notice the wall between the two hearts maintained by the gospel of the serpent – “Your heart, Christian, is evil. You ought to be like Christ, but you know full well that you are NOT.” Words can be thrown over the wall at one another, but never heart with heart.

The next diagram shows my intention through this recounting of all the interactions of my life. I intend to place my heart out over the heart of each person just enough that the sword of God might pass as that arrow through that place where our true hearts are joined.

Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

Notice it says the thoughts of the hearts, not the thoughts of the mind.

And what is the thought of the heart of every believer in Jesus? “Father. – Father with me.”

They made the mistake of involving themselves in my life; therefore I have the right to win their hearts for Father alone.

Yet I also realize that this will come in only one way, me and each one, sitting together, sharing heart with heart, in the full respect and honor of true friendship. 

Consider the diagram again, not as “romance,” but as a shared Hheart with Father, our one point of togetherness, the only Church of Christ.





Few episodes of my life are better at showing the thick wall between two, as created by “Christian” doctrine, than my next year-and-a-half at the little community in the high plains above Albuquerque, New Mexico.