40. The Time of the Jesus Secret

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

June 2006 – December 2007

Lakewood Church

We arrived at Lakewood Church that morning, just off of Highway 59,  halfway between downtown Houston and the Galleria. We found a place to park and joined the flow of hundreds of people into the building. Lakewood church had been a former professional basketball stadium now converted into a church.

Where to go might have been confusing to us, but we were guided by welcoming people all the way through. We ended up on the southern slope, looking down at the thousands of people below and on the slopes all the way around, more than twelve thousand in this service, the largest of four each weekend.

It was just like the mountain valleys of my youth, vast slopes of saints all around and on the valley floor below, worshipping God together in the full anointing of the Holy Spirit. The praise service was wonderful, led by several together, although Darlene Zschech was the primary worship leader that morning. It was the kind of praise that I could join freely, worshipping God with all my heart. The prayer time was living and personal. Then Victoria Osteen spoke for about ten minutes. She is a fiery Pentecostal preacher as strong in the Spirit as many I had known in the move.

Then Joel Osteen shared his word. Joel is a small, Texas man, about the same height as his lovely wife, Victoria. Joel is an optimistic man who sees the best in all and can’t really help the fact that he smiles all the time. He is very unassuming. He has shared many times that he had no thought ever of stepping into his father, John Osteen’s, place nor of ever being a pastor. Yet the hand of God clearly set him there. For that reason, he states, he never tries to give God’s people anything more than what he is, as God has taught him.

That morning, Joel’s word was on the value of natural health and eating organic when possible. This was not a common topic for him, but one which Maureen and I loved. To say the least, I was enthralled with Lakewood Church and have loved it from the first moment there.

The next Sunday, Joel completed his teaching on healthy eating. Afterwards, we stopped at the Whole Foods grocery store on Kirby and Alabama, right across from a large Borders book store.  We had shopped here before, but now it was “on our way.” We saw lots of people that must have been at Lakewood. Afterwards, we ate our Sunday dinner at the Souper Salad on Gray and Dunlevy, on our way towards home. And thus, the pattern of our Sundays for the next seven years was set.

Joel states that if you come to Lakewood three times, then consider yourself a member.    

August 6, 2006

August 6 was our third Sunday at Lakewood Church. I was 49 year’s old. I do not remember anything about that service in particular, or where we sat, or what Pastor Joel’s word was about.

But before I share what happened on this momentous day, I want to place before you the man that sat in that service that morning.

I have been an incredibly vulnerable man from my youth, knowing that of myself I am LOST, knowing that I have no ability whatsoever to figure anything out. For that reason every single time I found myself assailed, which was often, I reached in all desperation for the only thing I knew to be true, what God actually says in the gospel. When I was 25, God rebuked me strongly about trying to figure out what Bible verses mean with my mind. From then until now, I have only hidden what God actually says in my heart, weeping often that somehow He would write those words there for real.

But then something terrible began to happen inside of me as I hid in my heart what God actually says with no need to know what it means. A haunting whisper began that grew slowly over time saying, “This word I have hidden in my heart so that, in my overwhelming desperation I might know the living God, this word is not in agreement with the ‘correct' ideas in my mind or with what is being preached all around me or believed as ‘Christian theology’ among Christians. I became convinced that there was something terribly wrong with me, and so I applied myself earnestly to ‘believe in’ the 'correct ideas’ being preached into me.

Alas, I had no success at all. And so I came to that cold and lonely place, in February of 1998, when I had no hope whatever that I could ever know my Father or please Him or do His will. I KNEW that I did not know the gospel and I had no idea that I ever could.

Yet as I stumbled forward, hurting from ten thousand unhealed wounds, I determined one thing only, that Jesus is my Savior and that I will know nothing else. Then I did something even more desperate. I set aside everything else, every word planted in my heart and every idea found in Christian preaching. I had no more interest in being a ‘Christian,’ but only that I might know my Jesus, close and real, carrying me through the darkness, through a way I did not know.

Then, slowly, in His gentle kindness, my Jesus brought the first great level of healing to me, beginning with the most wondrous thing - “My heart is good. My heart is filled with Jesus.”

Before long however, I was thrust back into that great contradiction whispering inside between what God actually says in the gospel and what all Christianity teaches. You see, it is a dangerous thing to plant God’s word in your heart in the desperate hope that God will cause His word to be what He means. For such a word planted in that way burrows deep and sends forth powerful roots even as it hides, almost as dead and unknown by you, until that moment when it springs full-grown into your consciousness.

Because, you see, I still had no idea what any of it meant or how I could know my Father that I might live.

If you had looked around the Christian world that Sunday of August 6, 2006, I don’t know that you would have found a heart more filled with Gospel word as God actually says it or more convinced that he does NOT KNOW what any of it means or more desperate to know what God does mean by what He says.

I think you would agree that God had 'set me up’ and that every step of my life had brought me directly here.

This was the kind of man who sat there that morning, as a garden soil dug very deep and made fully ready for the most far-reaching Seed of Life God would ever plant inside of me. It might have been in an exhortation, that Joel spoke that six-word phrase that was familiar to him and the Lakewood congregation, but which I had never heard or considered.

“Speak what God says you are.”

I can hardly express the wonder that happened in me the very second those words entered my consciousness, for I saw, in that moment their far reach and the wondrous gospel meaning that they carried. I was now oblivious to everything else as all the word stored up in my heart for decades leaped up to meet together with all the Word of my Father coming out from the heavens now flung wide open to me.

I was as a parched and thirsty land soaking up rivers of water outpoured. Hope long deferred gripped my heart with all searing excitement and all I could think about was getting home to my desk and to my wide-open Bible so that I might see and know what God says I am.

I want to show you what I mean by the RULING verse of the Bible. From my early thirties, I had determined that Romans 8:29 was my ruling verse and that the covenant God had entered into with me would RULE how I understood every verse in the Bible.

Conformed with the image of His Son - we shall be like Him as we see Him as He is - transformed into the same image.

As we began our drive home, I shouted to God inside myself. What am I? Who do You say that I am? And God answered my cry through His ruling verse and through the Covenant by which He had bound Himself to me. “In my finished state, as I am in completion before God, God says that I am just like the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Before we arrived home, I was already formulating in my thinking how so many New Testament verses, of so many different types, would read if they were speaking of me in my completed state, just like the Lord Jesus.

Nothing else could exist for me, at least for the next few hours after we arrived home as I rushed to my computer desk and opened my Bible to the book of Matthew. Before 1:30 that afternoon, on August 6, 2006, with my heart seized in astonished excitement, I typed the following words onto my computer screen.

I follow Jesus. I am a fisher of men.

I am blessed because I am poor in spirit; heaven’s kingdom is mine. I am blessed because I mourn (with those who mourn); I am comforted. I am blessed because I am meek; the earth is my inheritance. I am blessed because I hunger and thirst for righteousness; I am filled.

I am blessed because I am merciful; I receive mercy. I am blessed because my heart is pure; I see God. I am blessed because I am a peacemaker; I am a son of God. I am blessed when my enemies assault me; heaven’s kingdom is mine. I am blessed when people say terrible and false things about me and persecute me; I rejoice and am thrilled. I possess an incredibly great reward in heaven as a result.

I am the salt of the earth. My neighbors are blessed by God and kept from evil because of me. I am the light of the world; I set my light where all can see it; I give light to all around me. People see my good works and give glory to my Father.

I am perfect in the same way my Father in heaven is perfect. God’s will is done in me as it is done in heaven.

~~~

You can be sure that at this point I was soaring in the heavens, filled with overflowing joy, for every aching longing I had ever experienced over decades, that I might know God and His Word, was being answered a thousand-fold.

I would never return to my former way of thinking or knowing ever again.

Family Times

Before continuing on with the unfolding of my new joy, I want to bring back in the context of our family life through this time.

I left something out of the last letter, which is that, in August of 2005, while I was still teaching at C.E. King, we had enrolled Kyle and Johanna both into a Christian school that we had seen often, right next to Beltway 8, about six miles from our home, called Family Christian Academy. Johanna was in 6th grade, and Kyle was in ninth grade. Kyle would complete all of his high school years at Family Christian. Because Maureen was also working, we could just afford the private school costs, which were lower there than most.

In the first week of June, while I was still overwhelmed with sickness from escaping the public school, Maureen's parents and aunt and uncle, Werner and Erma Honsalek (Erma was Roberta’s younger sister), were both celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary, to be held together in Lubbock, Texas. Our green van was continuing to have minor difficulties, and so we rented a minivan for the trip, which was much cheaper than even a minor breakdown. I didn't do too well on the trip, but we made it.

We had a wonderful time with family at the joint celebration. The Honsaleks and Macks were all there, and many more. We got to visit with Tim and Freida again. In fact, it was during this time that April shared with us her leading to attend Bill Johnson’s school. They went to California not long after and April gained so much from the Lord in that wonderful school of Spirit Ministry.

Brother John Hinson also came. He was the key speaker at the anniversary celebration. His word was filled with life and power, as usual, and yet, in the end, saying little of consequence. It was good to see him again at a personal level, however.

We arranged with Claude and Roberta for Johanna to spend a few weeks with them at Bowens Mill, just as Kyle had two years earlier. And so Johanna left with them for Georgia; Claude and Roberta would then bring her back to Houston. On our way back, however, we all stopped at Uncle Werner and Aunt Erma’s home, just south of Dallas. They were and continued to be missionaries to Brazil and Aunt Erma worked in the library of Christ for the Nations, where their son, Tim Honsalek, Maureen’s cousin, also taught music. We would visit in Werner and Erma’s home a number of times through these years. Uncle Werner had a large miniature train setup that he loved to show our children.

Johanna reminds me that she forgot her suitcase at the Honsalek’s, and we had to retrieve it. She went to Bowens Mill with borrowed belongings, but it would be a wonderful experience for her. In fact, she would write about one of her adventures there when she arrived in my English classroom at Family Christian.

Meanwhile, without telling Jo, we planned a complete remodel of her room. I went all out on this job, building her many wall shelves for all her many books, and a writing desk, a little project table and a lovely hope-chest/window seat placed under a new nicer window. We painted everything two shades of blue trimmed with white, but leaving a number of things as clear varnished wood.

When Claude and Roberta brought Johanna back, sometime in late July, they knew what we had done, but Jo did not. It was such fun to blindfold her and bring her into her new room and then watch the joy and wonder on her face.

In July, I drove Kyle down to the Greyhound bus station and put him on the bus for McAlester, Oklahoma. He was not quite fifteen. A move community in southern Missouri put on a week-long youth camp each summer, which Matthew Schneider and other young people from Upsala came down to enjoy. Kyle would get a ride with them and others from the McAlester fellowship. Kyle would attend these camps each summer, with Johanna after this first time, for several seasons.

Through the Spring of this year, Brother John and Sister Nathel Clarke made the monumental decision to leave the move of God and their leading place in that fellowship. Before they left, they stood before the gathering of many people from the BC communities and apologized and asked their forgiveness for any way they might have failed them as a covering of God towards them. Now, much of all this would be their story to tell, and not mine, so I will share only what I understood as they shared personally with Maureen and I, here in Houston.

John and Nathel had come to realize that the word of the gospel, which had become for them a view towards union with Christ even before Maureen and I left the move, was opposed to that impossible obligation preached by Buddy Cobb, that God is against us, and that He requires perfect obedience from us to prove that we actually love Him. After some time of speaking with Buddy Cobb, joined by Brother Tom Rowe as well, they realized that Brother Buddy would never hear them and that his teaching would only continue to dominate the move.

Soon after John and Nathel separated from the move, Tom Rowe did as well, along with many of the brethren in the Atlanta area. John and Nathel found a home in Creston, British Columbia along with others formerly from that fellowship who had made their homes there. A few years later, Rick and Shirley Annett would also move down to make their home in Creston. Many of these brethren, including John and Nathel and some from the Atlanta group found a good connection with Bill Johnson and have enjoyed the good teaching of Bethel Church until now.

You can be sure that two apostolic ministries separating themselves from the move at the same time and for the same reasons caused quite a stir across that fellowship. Some who remained were deeply offended by Brother John’s apology.

Later in August, after Lakewood had become our home church, John and Nathel came to Houston to spend several days in their daughter, Ann’s, home. Ann and Juan Giron lived on the far other side of Houston from us, almost to Katy, about an hour’s drive. They were also attending Lakewood Church, and we had visited with them before. Juan and Ann have three really fine boys, close in age, with their youngest around Kyle's age, all three born while they were still living at Blueberry.

John and Nathel visited privately with Maureen and I in the Giron’s sitting room. They apologized to us and asked forgiveness of us for any way they had failed us. Maureen and I gave them our full forgiveness with all our hearts. This was truly a gift of God coming with the wondrous new word of living in the favor and goodness of God which we were now hearing.

We went out to eat at a Chinese buffet with the Clarke’s and Giron’s. During our time together, Sister Nathel, especially, spoke words of blessing and Christ into Maureen and I. Indeed, this was how we had known them during our time in Oregon.   

We went home that afternoon in joy.

A New Faith in God

Before continuing with our history, I want to share more of this wondrous knew way of knowing God and His word that continued to pour through my fingers onto my computer screen. - Speak what God says you are - God says that in my completed state I am just like the Lord Jesus Christ, thus every word concerning Christ in my Bible is God speaking of me.

It did not take me long to work my way from Matthew to Revelation, many pages of wondrous confessions of faith. Yet as I look back now, through much hindsight, I know that my present life began when I got to Colossians. Colossians 3:3-4 & 9-11, in the NKJV, says this.

For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. - You have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew… but Christ is all and in all.

And on my page I wrote these words among the many coming now out from this brand-new book.

“Christ my life. Christ is all in me.”

This was not the most explosive moment of my life mostly because I had no idea what on earth had just passed through my lips (for I had learned long before to shout the word of Christ out loud). Nonetheless looking back, I know that something very deep was sealed in me at that moment, the greatest Seed of Christ my Father has ever planted into me.

Having completed Revelation, I had just begun to write out from my new joy, and so, through the next few months, I wrote in rough form what is now The Jesus Secret. I meant, of course, the mystery of Christ, but that sounds so old and already religiously defined. A mystery is a secret and Christ is Jesus, hence the Jesus Secret.

Now, here’s the thing, this wondrous new flow of what God actually says in the Bible now made real in me through the speaking of my mouth, completely separate and even beyond what Joel Osteen taught, was also joined with the simple and clear words of the favor of God which Joel spoke into us each Sunday.

Simply this, God says that He speaks all good words of heavenly blessing into me. But I had learned over many years to hear endless words of accusation and condemnation against myself and to speak them constantly in my own mind. In fact, in the move, the general prejudice was that since you are always contrary to God, you need to live a life of continual “repentance” defined as always speaking against yourself, but with nothing ever to replace “you.” To speak blessing and the favor of God towards yourself could only be “of the devil.”

And so Joel Osteen, through his simple teaching over and over, saved my life and my marriage by teaching me to stop the anti-Christ self-cursing and see myself inside the goodness and favor of the Father. Maureen became much happier over time as well and we were able to treat each other with greater kindness than before. Our lives became much more peaceful.

It would take five years of sitting under Joel’s continual teaching of this one most important principle of the Christian life for my mind to change completely and two further years to seal it permanently.

I can say truly, then, that from the summer of 2013, when I knew that God's season for us at Lakewood Church was complete, I have never once thought any wicked accusation in my mind against the Lord Jesus, that He has failed in His ability to join me utterly with my Father. And it is Joel Osteen whom I thank for the beginnings of that wonderful gift.

In August, I also wrote the 12th and final issue of Times of Refeshing and sent it out dated September 5. I was still processing what I was learning, for I didn’t really know what it meant. This issue was filled with much more goodness than anything before.

A Strange Day and a Terrible Night

After leaving the public school, we still received my full pay through the month of August. By September I was still so shattered inside from that whole experience that I simply was not ready to find other work. Instead, I cashed in my Texas educator retirement, which was several thousand dollars, more than enough to carry us for a few more months until I could find my feet under me once again. Because I was no longer receiving an ongoing salary, however, we pulled Johanna out from Family Christian and back into home school for the first semester of her 7th grade year.

Through this time, Maureen continued spending most nights at Miss Ruth’s in Pasadena. She had a bed there, but was on call and got up often through the night. She would nap some, then, at home during the day, but also had much of the day to work with Johanna and Katrina on their schooling and to teach James to read.

The problem was this. That August, we had signed the girls up with a free charter school, a public school that was entirely online. The charter school was named K-12. We received many boxes from them, containing a computer for the girls and all kinds of things for educational projects. We set everything up in our schoolroom and the girls went to work, with Maureen helping to guide them. The curriculum was set, and the instruction was all online. This seemed to be an awesome and simple solution for our situation.

Except it wasn’t. You see, the charter school did not understand that in a normal classroom, about half the time is actual instruction and the other half of the time is spent coaxing the children along. And so the girls were hit with twice the load as normal school. Here is what I learn now, however. On the one hand, it was too much for Katrina in 4th grade, but too boring for Johanna, who was missing all her friends at Family Christian.

A family member misunderstood our situation, and (I can only assume) determined that I was somehow abusing my family. This person turned to a ‘Christian counselor’ whose method was to break families apart so that “change” could come.

It was a strange Sunday, sometime in October. As we approached the main entrance to Lakewood Church, we noticed armed police mounted on horses. They were positioned just behind two rows of people lined up on either side of the flow of people into the church. These people were positioned on public property just beyond the church property. They had large placards that they waved at Maureen and I and our four children as we walked to Church to worship the Lord Jesus and bullhorns through which they shouted at us. The placards were of Pastor Joel with devil’s horns forking us all into hellfire and other similar things. and the shouts in our ears were that we were all going to hell if we went into that Church. 

I had never experienced anything even close in my life. Maureen and I put our arms out to keep our children close and passed through. The elders of Lakewood Church were standing on the step up that marked church property, welcoming all the people passing through that gauntlet with us into the joy of the Lord. When we came into the vast auditorium, I marveled, for the congregation was singing the one song, the only word that counts. “The Blood of Jesus washes away our sin.” And they were singing it in the worship and anointing of the Spirit of Christ Jesus.

As Jesus said, “They have hated Me without a cause. - If they have hated Me, they will hate you also.”

On top of that strange experience, I drove home carrying a premonition in my heart that the day was not over. Later that afternoon, there was a knock on our door. When I opened the door a hard woman, a “Christian counselor,” stepped into our home, having already determined that my family needed to be taken away from me.

As this woman sat in our living room, she accused me of being an abusive father and husband. It was as if I was guilty simply because I was a man. The plan was that Maureen and the children would go live with the family member who had brought her, the children would all go into the godless public school system, and they would all be much better off. Meanwhile I would be left to fend for myself without my precious wife and my dear children.

The thing is, that God did give to me the very best friend. Maureen told them, “NO!” And that they needed to leave.

They did soon leave, and that evening Maureen went on down to Miss Ruth’s. I gathered my four children next to me on the couch and held them close and wept over them. I did not sleep that night, in fear that this cruel woman would go to the authorities with her accusations, that I still might be in danger of losing our precious children to awfulness.

That all passed, of course, and I soon returned to the joy of that word of the Jesus Secret that was now pouring through me onto the page. But I knew quite clearly that the devil had come against me with great wrath, knowing that his time was short because I was learning to cast him out of my heavens.

Although I forgave this family member, though there was never any recognition or apology for the horror intended against us, I still find myself quite angry, and I know that my anger is right and just. 

“Lord Jesus, together with You, I place our shared anger into our Father's love, that Father Himself might carry this family member all the way through the darkness and into knowing You as life. And I receive this person now as You, without any consciousness of sins, made clean long ago by Your Blood. Thank You, Lord Jesus that You are such a wonderful Savior.”

Concerning the woman, I don’t know her, and I leave her in the very capable hands of our Savior far away from me.

We did continue with the K-12 program until the semester ended in December. What we did not know was that Johanna had been paying attention to Pastor Joel’s teaching on the favor and expectation of God.

The thing is, God does what He says.

Family Christian School

Through this fall semester, Kyle was in his second year at Family Christian Academy. We had attended some of his events, and Johanna’s the year before, and met their teachers, including Robert Anderson, the principal of the school. That December, we attended a “field day” of games and fun activities that was the last school day before Christmas break.

When Johanna got home, she pulled out her school clothes and said, “Mom, I’m going to iron my clothes because I’m going back to school!” Maureen asked her why she thought that. Johanna replied that Pastor Joel said that when God speaks to us, we are to take a step in faith.

Later that afternoon, Kyle came home to announce that one of their favorite teachers in the school, a Mr. Garcia, had resigned to go on to other things and that the school was looking for a teacher to take his place.

(I knew nothing of Johanna’s confidence in God until I had to re-write this chapter.) I updated my resume, filled out the application, and went to the school to see Mr. Anderson. This was a Spirit-filled church, and it did not take long in visiting together to know that we shared much of Christ in common.

To put it briefly, I was hired, and would step into Mr. Garcia’s classes when school started again in January. My pay would be much lower than in the public school, but with a wonderful benefit; all our children, including Kyle, could now attend without any tuition required.

Our two younger children had to be tested for placement; they tested well at the grade levels they had been. And so Johanna would complete her seventh grade back at Family Christian, Katrina would be in fourth grade with Miss Mathis, and James first grade with Miss Lentz.

Family Christian Academy is a large attachment onto Family Christian Church, all one building. The school had a full and very nice gym on the side facing the beltway. Here is a picture from the front. The entrance on the left is into the school; the entrance on the right is into the church.

This would be my workplace as a teacher for the next two-and-a-half years. I was now 50 years of age.

Before the end of December, however, we rented the cabin at Village Creek State Park and spent a lovely weekend there. I have not brought in our love as a family for camping in Texas State parks. We began when Kyle was 12, in August of 2003, just he and I went camping at Martin Dies State Park as a father-son time. I wanted to share with him that all the things going on inside him were perfectly normal and human, that I also had known them, and that Jesus was inside of him inside of all that. On our way home, we watched the first Pirates movie together at the theater, just the two of us. It was all a great shared experience. We went back to Martin Dies Park as a whole family the next year. That time we all went out onto the lake in canoes. But I will not include all our camping trips, just a couple.

Back in the Classroom

As I will develop my experience at Family Christian and my relationship with those brethren as we go through the semesters, I want to keep this first semester fairly brief.

A quick description of the interior of the school will suffice. When you enter the big school doors, there is a hall to your left which is the primary grade classrooms in the downstairs as well as a stairway going up to a similar set of rooms that were most of the middle and high school classrooms. If you went straight on towards the back from the entry, the hall was wider and culminated with the gym. On the way back to the gym was first the school offices to the left and then the school cafeteria. On the right were the large entry doors into the church sanctuary. We teachers had a devotion time in the sanctuary before school each morning. All the way across the sanctuary and up the stairs on the other side was a large youth room that was the classroom for several of the high school classes and a meeting area for middle and high school chapel each Thursday afternoon.

This was all brand new to me this January of 2007 and I do not remember all that I taught that first semester. My classroom was in the upstairs after the hall turned to the right, about half way down, near the math and science rooms. I do remember a large group for eighth grade Bible class, US History with the seniors that year, and a drama class as an elective chosen by students from seventh grade to maybe tenth. These were the only seventh grade students I have ever taught. I was able to teach them a bit, but I am definitely not a drama teacher. Since I was simply taking on most of Mr. Garcia's courses, and since there was another full-time English teacher, I did not teach English this semester.

I do love to teach, and I do connect with my students after they discover I’m not the stiff and gruff person they first imagine, still, I do not remember now that much of consequence from these first classes.

Just before the semester began, a number of the middle and high school teachers rode up to Dallas in a large van to attend a Christian teacher’s conference at a large Christian school there. It was a great time to get to know my new colleagues, although I will not share any more names until the fall semester. I rode in the front with Mr. Anderson who was driving and we fellowshipped together all the way up. As I said, we had much in common in the Spirit. On the way up, however, Mr. Anderson said something that imprinted on my memory. He was talking about the tendencies of the world and said, “We live in a day where people call evil good and good evil.” These words would come back to haunt me.

Soon after school started I learned that I was required to lead the children in the pledge of allegiance. I went straight to Mr. Anderson and said as gently as I could that I could not in good conscience participate in such a thing. I was not about to share how I view the practice of teaching little children to take their hearts that belong only to Jesus and to swear them with a binding oath of their mouths to the kingdoms of Satan in this world. Something about “millstones” and “necks" got my attention long ago. You see, I am a timid man, I don’t try to control other people, I know Jesus does all things well, but most of all, I had to have this job to provide for my family.

Mr. Anderson replied that the school required this in order to teach respect. I was free not to participate, thus I always stood and placed my hand on my heart but did not speak the false words. Nonetheless, it was clear, right from the start, that I was not a member of the cult of "God Bless America.” This would be the agony inside of which I would work for the next two-and-a-half years, caught every day between the wondrous word of Christ my life now rising inside of me, precious brothers and sisters who loved Jesus and walked in the Spirit, and the grotesque exaltation of this world as if it shows us “Jesus.

And so I began my time at Family Christian feeling as inside of a straight-jacket. I was filled with wondrous knowledge of Christ and accurate knowledge of this world, but no one was interested. I found these students had been taught never to think critically, but only to regurgitate what was put into them. I did insert good things from the Jesus Secret whenever I could, but those things could go only a little ways. And I did attempt to throw “monkey wrenches” into the gears of their imaginative fictions concerning this world, but, especially this first semester, I received mostly mockery in return.

I remember speaking of our being made perfect just like the Father, as Jesus said, and a seventh-grade pastor’s son hurling back, “You don’t believe that, do you?”

Now, before continuing any further, I must position both Robert Anderson and my time at Family Christian into God’s intentions towards me. Before I arrived at this chapter in my life, I recognized that there was unresolved anger in my heart towards both of these. Then, before I inserted this parahraph, I had finished writing about my first year-and-half at Family Christian. I could then see some of that unresolved anger in my choices of wording.

This is a wonderful and good thing and the glory of giving an account of our lives inside the presence of a devoted God. As we place the Lord Jesus upon everything and ourselves inside of Him, we find that we are then free to give thanks in and for the sake of all, and to place our own normal human reactions into the love of our Father.

As my daughter, Johanna, reminded me of the private grief Robert Anderson has carried in his personal life through all these years (as is true for all in one way or another), so my heart melted towards him. The last thing I would want is for any reader to hold Robert Anderson in anything less than the highest regard as a dear brother who loves Jesus and who has carried in his own life the sufferings of Christ for the sake of others.

At the same time, however, it is my task before God to give a clear accounting of the path from whence comes this Word I share. Much of that includes my own internal pain towards things that hurt and confused me. I expect God’s enabling presence that I can share this path even while carrying these precious brethren into joy.

The Summer of 2007

We remember little about the summer of 2007.  I am sad that I did not continue to keep a record of events since we moved to Houston.

In July, Johanna was old enough to attend the Missouri summer camp with Kyle. I put them both on the Greyhound bus heading for McAlester, where they would again ride with the Schneiders and Dix’s to the camp. A few hours later I got a call from a concerned Kyle saying that their bus was late into Dallas and that they had missed the next bus and were stuck in the Greyhound terminal in downtown Dallas. I told him to stay put and I would call Aunt Erma.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before Aunt Erma picked them up and took them to her house for lunch. Meanwhile I also called McAlester and someone there agreed to drive down and pick them up. Aunt Erma met them on the northwest side of Dallas and they were on their way again. Kyle wrote about this adventure in his “Remembered Event" paper in my writing class, so I know it well.

Johanna's sister-in-law, Luanne, a few years younger than Jo, wondered that Johanna has always seemed to her to be a part of her growing up years, even though they lived a thousand miles apart. The stops in Oklahoma on the way to the summer camp in Missouri were a reason for that.

I do remember something important that began sometime through here. I had become interested in making a living online so that I would not have to be subject to the worlds of employment, something that would be inside my expertise. I saw an ad for a copywriting course from American Writers and Artists in Florida. I purchased the course for a few hundred dollars and completed it. It was worth every penny in teaching me how to write to sell. The amazing thing is that God “wrote” the gospel perfectly to the things they taught (or maybe the other way around), to persuade people to buy into something that carries great benefits, but mostly meets their deepest needs.

I loved this course and the things I learned from it and now waited until I could know just how to implement it. I would also turn and draw much from it in my own teaching of writing. Even now, when I peruse the AWAI website again, my heart is drawn to that whole arena. I know, however, that it will not bear fruit in this present season, and that is part of the story going forward from here.

Our First Years at Lakewood

Our lives through the next seven years, and through these five chapters of my narrative, take place inside the context of our attendance, most every Sunday, at Lakewood Church. Even though this is talking about fewer than seven hundred hours of actual time, I equate this environment as being as impactive upon my life and the life of my family more than any other, save Blueberry.

The only reason Lakewood Church does not have a chapter or two of its own is that outwardly, it was pretty much the same all the way through. Because the impact of that environment on our lives as a family, and upon the development of the present Word of Christ which I teach, was so great, however, I hope to keep the power of that environment inside the Holy Spirit fresh and current through this season of time.

Joel Osteen taught me to HOPE IN GOD far beyond what I had ever known was possible.

Lakewood Church had been nearer to our home for many years, but had grown too large for the facilities that had been John Osteen's church. When the city needed new tenants for the now unused Compaq Center, a basketball stadium, Lakewood Church agreed to lease the new facility from the city. While we still attended, the city asked Lakewood if they wanted to buy it outright for a very reasonable price, which they did.

After leasing the new facility, the congregation signed for a remodel of around $100,000,000. That sounds like a lot, but it’s not really. Everything had to be re-built to hold a large congregation that grew to around 45,000 people. That included a four-story addition for classrooms. As a builder myself, I was very pleased in my interaction with the building, that choices had always been made for enduring quality and never for outward show. You can't have bathrooms used by thousands of people each week needing to be re-built every few years, for instance. Yet the feel of the building was always comfortable, but simple. (These things are important to me, personally.)

The huge parking lots that had been used for the big games remained accessible to Lakewood Church. There were large lots, two levels underground as well as others above ground and in different places. For the first couple of years, we parked our green van in an above-ground lot for big vehicles. Our path was partly above ground, and then underneath to eventually join with the huge flows of people coming up from beneath and entering the huge main entrance of the church.

This walk from and to our car was a really special part of my life for seven years. Little James had wheelies on his shoes, and so he grew up wheeling back and forth along this way. Maureen and I walked together hand in hand while our children walked in front of us chatting and laughing merrily. And we walked in such hope coming and going for I never attended a service there (almost) in which God did not speak to me profoundly both through the praise and through the word shared. There were times when my connection with God inside the anointing of the Spirit upon those services was greater than anything I had known before, sometimes almost more than I could handle.

It’s a very simple equation that Jesus made quite clear. - We find what we seek. - If someone declares that they did not “find God" there, well, nothing more needs to be said.

Now, because I want to bring Lakewood Church fresh and living, into each of these five chapters, I will leave a description of the service itself for the next chapter.

I want to finish here, however, by expanding a bit more on our trip home each Sunday, for again, as I said, the going to and coming from Lakewood Church was central in the goodness of our family life together.

We left every service in the joy and expectation of God. We drove the few blocks to Whole Foods. On Sunday afternoons, Whole Foods set out free samples of different foods for sampling, fruits and olives, cheeses and chips. Our children would race on ahead, browsing on all the good things while Maureen and I gathered the groceries we purchased from there. An environment of wholesome foods carries a sense of God in itself, but even more in the joy of the service we had just left. At the same time, the people who worked there were odd, a bunch of hippies, so I felt right at home, as did our children.

We then drove on down Alabama and turned right on Dunlevy until we came to the Souper Salad. We ate there most every Sunday for years. In fact, we found out later that the owners thought of us as their special Sunday family and our absence on occasion was a little less joy for their week.

Often, though, we would eat first and then spend a couple of hours in the big Border's book store right across from Whole Foods. There are few things that we did as a family that I loved more than our many times in book stores, and Borders was twice as big as Barnes and Nobles and had many more comfortable places to sit and read. Johanna and Katrina each read more than one book, just across our times at Borders. Only James turned out not to be a reader; he is very hands-on instead and prefers a tool in his hand, not a book. There was plenty to occupy him in these stores as well, however, including taking people up and down the elevator or standing at the entrance to hold the door open for customers going in and out.

Our journey home, then, took us down Allen Parkway and the city parks along Buffalo Bayou. We would often stop and walk the parks, especially in the spring and fall months. Our  favorite park was the smaller Sam Houston Park, tucked between Buffalo Bayou and the tall buildings of downtown Houston. Johanna dubbed it "Hobo Park," because homeless people sometimes sat on the benches inside the park. The park was a grassy slope down to a small lake filled with ducks. There were walkways lined with huge and marvelous Live Oak trees, the kind that boys like me want to fill with treehouses. Around two sides were set historical homes and a small church that had been preserved from an earlier Houston and had been placed here. These buildings were not open to the general public, but we did a guided tour two different times and enjoyed it very much.

Here is what I mean to say in all this, that the joy of living in the expectation of God and the joy of family life together combine seamlessly, hand in hand. And so God gave of Himself so richly to Maureen and I, and our hearts overflow with gratitude.

My First Book

In order to fit everything in, I will place here my continuing work on The Jesus Secret and not bring in my teaching experiences through the fall semester until the start of the next chapter.

Through the summer of 2007 until December, I worked to turn my mostly finished book, The Jesus Secret, into an actual printed book I could hold in my hand. First, I sent copies of the rough draft to three individuals, my sister Jenelle, Katie Bracken, who was in Redding, California at this time, and Kay Smiley, who had moved with her husband Dave Smiley from Blueberry to Florida. I asked them to mark it for me and comment in the margins. Asking people who don’t know how to edit was not the best avenue, however. Jenelle helped the most, in pointing out wording I had used that treated people in a shallow way. I absolutely did not want to do that, so I was very grateful for her corrections. I have slowly learned to edit those things out before they show up on my page.

Katie did not quite understand what I was doing, I think, and wasn’t able to add anything. The one thing she did not connect with was the back and forth meaning of “abide in Me and I in you,” that this relationship is reciprocal, not one-sided. When I had written those words out from the definition of “abide,” I knew that this was against everything believed about Jesus and us, but I also knew it was what God actually says, and so I persisted.

Katie Bracken continued to communicate with us through these years, especially with Maureen and Kyle. I did send her a few of my early books, but she was quite ill through these years and has since passed on. I have no doubt that if she were hearing my present understanding of the Glorious Salvation in Whom we live, she would receive such knowledge of Christ Jesus with all joy.

Kay Smillie was writing comments for a bit that seemed to show her enjoyment of what I had written, then suddenly she wrote in the margin, “This will not work,” and that was the end of her assistance. I take her words as meaning, “Since we are NOT like the Lord Jesus, speaking Christ has no meaning, and will not transform anyone.” That would be typical “move” reaction. I emailed Kay, but she replied to me that (my paraphrase), “I have no time to consider what you are saying about Christ in me. I have enough concern dealing with anti-Christ in me.” She wrote that she wanted nothing more to do with anything I might write.

I asked a sister I knew through Family Christian to draw for me the cover for my new book, a way to represent the resurrection of Christ.

I then found a Christian editor online, a young lady named Emily Sather, whom I hired to carefully edit the book. I might have paid her $600 overall. Emily Sather was the perfect choice because she never corrected me or what I taught, but she marked how I worded things heavily, and even rejected how I argued things at time. I embraced 95% of Emily’s correction because I write for readers to know Jesus, and if my poor wording prevented that, I would have failed in my purpose. In fact I re-wrote my opening pages with very different approaches until she was satisfied.

Because I set myself to embrace and implement most of Emily’s corrections, many on every page, in the end, she became my final writing teacher, one might say, and the one I learned the most from. Thank you, Emily, for your kindness and help. Such an approach to editing I have found since is very rare. From then on, I applied what she taught me to the flow of my writing until many of those problems no longer show up.

Once Emily had found and corrected so many mistakes, I went through it again myself and found many more. Then, I sent it to my friend, Peter Bell, and paid him around $300 to do the final proof. Peter is very exact and meticulous, and I was astonished at how many tiny little mistakes he found that Emily and I had both missed, almost on every page.

I don’t take any of my books through this process now because would cost a lot more money than what I have. If I did have the means, I would take all of them through this same process; it would serve only to make them more readable and accessible.

Through these transitions, I had a local Christian print shop print it as a book with a cover, but three copies cost me $35 each. Finally, when it was all ready, I hired a Christian book printing company I found online, located somewhere in the mid-west. I paid them around $750 to print and ship me 100 copies of The Jesus Secret.

If I remember correctly, this final process took place through the Christmas break and by the beginning of the spring semester of 2008, I had 100 printed copies of my first book in hand ready to give away.

A New Metaphor

What I did not know was that God had just begun to blast me as a Saturn Rocket out of Christianity in this world and into living and walking only inside of Jesus. And the picture of a Saturn Rocket, powered by three phases of fuel blast in order to break free of the pull of earth’s gravity, came to me only as I wrote this chapter of my life. Again, I had always thought of myself as a desperate and incapable man stumbling from one mistake to the next. I had no idea.

The second stage of the rocket will fire in February, 2008, coming up next, and the final stage in October of 2011. And if I might mix metaphors, all three came through the agony of  travail, as of a woman filled with Jesus crying to give birth in the face of the dragon, that is, me, as the little guy being thrust out of the womb into a brand new and glorious world unlike anything I had imagined in the darkness.