55. The Meaning of a Life

© 2022 Daniel Yordy

July 1964 – September 2022

This experience of giving an account of my life inside the presence of God has changed me forever. It is the most important thing I have ever done in my walk with God. This chapter is a tapestry set forth of God visiting with me from age seven until today, revealing Himself and His word to me. My life is unfettered JOY out from great travail.

Please don't think that I am "boasting of myself" in presenting this layout. I have never known my life in this way; I did not realize the close hand of God upon me. I must set this out just to understand. Yet I am not "special." Your life is the same, if you would place the Lord Jesus upon yourself, one seamless story of Christ.

The Planting of Seed
July 1964 – In response to the picture of my black heart becoming white by the blood of Jesus, I ask Jesus into my heart on the back steps of our home. A “strange warmness” fills me.

July 1965 – I make friends with Henry Miller, our neighbor. Friendship begins to enter my identity of myself.

June 1968 – The agony of travail begins to show itself in my life in tangible ways. I did not know until now that it was always God my Father sharing Himself with me. This agony of travail has never left me. I see now that from the start it was always for the sake of God’s people.

July 1968 – A girl in the berry patch asks me what I want to be when I grow up. I give her a true and honest answer, “I want to be married.”

Fall 1968 – I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. Frodo’s willingness to take the ring to the fire and his victory through weakness sinks deeply into my heart. I did not know yet that it was my Father calling to me.

June 1970 – I make friends with Larry Janssen, a second meaning of friendship. (These first friendships did not endure because the individuals were not true.)

November 1971 – I become friends with Andy Wyatt, a third meaning of friendship.

April 1972 – I spend the weekend with the youth group in a “community” experience at the Albany Mennonite church. Something inside knows that this is right for me.

July 1972 – I read Prison to Praise. God plants the seed of “give thanks in and for all things” into my heart. I am filled with the Spirit and with joy. I sit under a teaching for the first time in which the Old Testament patterns are shown to be Christ Jesus towards us. I am deeply intrigued.

October 1972 – I overdose on LSD. I see the gates of the heavenly city closed against me. I wrap myself in the fear-filled imagination that it is permanent.

1975 – Throughout the months of this year, I notice two strange things occurring on a regular basis. On the one hand I sense and sometimes see a “divine presence” protecting me from evil and on the other hand, I feel the winds of the “hound of heaven” pursuing me as I run.

February 1975 – I am again moved by a community experience, something I do not understand.

April 1975 – I begin working with Jimmy Barkley. He is my first true friend and a man with whom I learn the joy of working in harmony together.

August 1975 – My dad lifts me up in his heart to God with tears upon his face, and God speaks to him, ~ “Daniel will return to Me by Christmas.” ~

December 1975 – I see a vision of two vault doors slamming shut, similar to what I had seen when I overdosed on LSD, except this time I know that my time of hiding from God is closed to me and I will never return.

A New Level of the Planting of Seed
December 1975 – In my inability to connect with God through faith, I place my finger on the page and read, “For it is impossible… to be restored.” I pray, in tears, “Lord Jesus, would you be crucified again for me? Would You put Yourself to open shame again for me?”

– I hear the words, ~ “My son” ~ and I see that the gate is open and God will receive me. I am able again to believe. It is two days before Christmas.

I now know that this Voice speaking to me was the same Voice speaking to Abraham, that is, the Lord Jesus, the speaking of God. I have never thought otherwise than that this was God my Father speaking to me. I will include throughout every word spoken by this Voice with this marking: ~ “ ” ~. Please understand that this Voice speaking to me was not inside my mental thoughts, but rather, coming out from the Spirit of my heart, and that these words were always unbidden by me, usually catching me entirely off-guard, one might say. The meaning of my life is defined by these words.

January 1976 – Andy Wyatt also returns to the Lord and our friendship becomes a fellowship as young men desiring to know the Lord.

March 1976 – I read the Psalms in one sitting. I am filled with a peace I had never known before. I read Watchman Nee’s Release of the Spirit and follow his example. I ask God to immerse me in His Holy Spirit and then I believe that I have received.

April 1976 – A sense of God’s presence comes upon me as I drive to work. Without any warning I hear ~ “Will you surrender all that you are to Me right now?” ~ This is the second time the voice of God speaks to me and I am overwhelmed. How can I give all that I am to God? I fight and struggle all day. Before I pull into the driveway I give Him answer, “Yes Lord.” Before I can make it onto my knees beside my bed I am filled to overflowing with the Spirit of God and am speaking in a heavenly language. This is a powerful planting in me of the seed of “Ask and believe you have received – Be it unto me according to Your word.”

May 1976 – I read John’s gospel. When I read the words “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will lead you into ALL truth,” they leap off the page and into my heart. I seize them as my own, filled with intense longing. Although these were not words spoken directly inside the Spirit of my heart, but rather Bible words becoming me, I have never thought other than that this was the same direct speaking of God as His voice.

July 1976 – I am caught in intense agony inside my gut with the knowing that I am hearing a false “gospel” being preached, but I don’t know what that means or what to do about it, especially since my “mental theology” theoretically agreed. I try to read Arthur W. Pink’s The Depravity of Man, but the book vanishes and I cannot find it.

September 1976 – I want so much to be married, but Paul’s comments greatly discourage me. Lying on my bed, I cry out to God to show me His will. I hear the words, ~ “What does My word say?” ~ I reply with the only verse in my mind at that moment. “Delight thyself in the Lord and He will give thee the desires of thine heart.” ~ “Is not My word My will?” ~ This was one of the most important things God ever spoke to me in my life, though I did not know it at the time. (I also did not know that it would be fourteen long and lonely years before my precious wife, Maureen, would walk down the aisle to stand at my side.)

June through December 1976 – I learn from Watchman Nee that I am inside of Christ. This revelation is wondrous to me, though I have no idea what it means. I read The Autobiography of Madame Guyon and Rees Howells: Intercessor, and I am deeply moved by the knowledge that a man or a woman can KNOW the living God and that God does all that He speaks. I learn from Watchman Nee that Christ is inside of me. It is a revelation from God to me, but I cannot see what such a thing could possibly mean.

December 1976 – I day-dream of a ministry of Christ Community.

February 1977 – I experience a weekend of Christ Community and I KNOW that it is real and true. I weep in agony, not knowing how I could ever find such a thing. Through these months, I experience some of the greatest agonies of travail that I have known, yet I could not see through them into any resolution or answer.

March 1977 – I ask Jim Buerge if I could come up to British Columbia to spend a season with them. He suggests that I visit Graham River Farm instead. My heart is filled with warmth that this would be the Lord.

A Third Level of the Planting of Seed
April 1977 – I visit Graham River Farm for three weeks. I LOVE Christian Community; it sings together with all the fabric of my heart. I pour over the New Testament and my understanding opens to God’s requirement for practical righteousness. Dan Kurtz asks me, “Daniel, where is Christ.” I do not reply. He points his bony finger at my heart and says, “Christ is in you.” It’s true! I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW that it is true. I hear Sam Fife on a tape for the first time and am convinced that the man is full of baloney, but I cannot stop listening.

May 1977 – I search my Bible until I see God’s pattern of three levels of knowing Him written all the way through everything.

June 1977 – I return to Graham River Farm and to life in Christian community.

July 1977 – I hear Sam Fife preach on a tape the “mystery of a man and a maid.” I object strongly, but I search my Bible for weeks until, in a moment, I see God’s pattern of the reproduction of life written from Genesis to Revelation with all the truth of God placed upon that primary metaphor.

August 1977 – I hear the words in my spirit, “That the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed,” over and over as I go through my daily tasks for weeks. Finally, I search for that line in Scripture and when I find it, it pierces me as the very sword of God. “And a sword shall pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed.” These were words spoken by God to Mary; they are also words spoken by God to me. I read Watchman Nee’s The Spiritual Man and to my great embarrassment, I discover that I am a “soulish believer.”

September 1977 – I attend my first move convention and hear Sam Fife and the other ministry of that fellowship in person for the first time. I know, now, that this is the move of God, and that God has placed me inside of this fellowship. Sam Fife gives me permission, as it were, to see that my Bible says things that Christianity does not say.

October to November 1977 – In the confusion of my soul, in my loneliness and tears, on my knees beside my cot, I make a covenant with God that, somehow, somewhere, someone will escape all the confusion and enter directly into the knowledge of God – because of my pain and heartache. I am twenty-one years old.

December 1977 – Walking to the barn to escape the job of working on Dan Kurtz’s porch, I hear one word: ~ “Jonah!” ~ I turn back in response only to discover not long after to my great joy that I have been working on my own new bedroom. Not only is God planting the seeds of His Word inside my heart, but He is also hammering against my false identity, the made-up stories of self to which I have clung so desperately.

February 1978 – In the February convention, I hear a word, as a missionary call to me, concerning the vision of being a provision for God’s people all over the earth in their hour of greatest need, a vision of being a Joseph, gathering up word as food for God’s Church during a time of great famine. I “raise my hand” inside me to God. I have no idea how I could possibly be part of such a thing, but I want to be, with all my heart, I want to be such a thing for God’s entire church during her great travail.

March 1978 – I am riding on the bus down to Prince George, resting in God. I hear His voice, ~ “You are My son,” and I am filled with overwhelming peace. After arriving at the Prince George bus terminal, the terror of the Almighty comes upon me. I am shaking visibly. I run into a toilet stall to escape detection and sit down on the closed toilet seat. I see as it were a bony finger pointing straight at me and I hear the words, ~ “Will you surrender all that you are to Me right now?” ~ All I am able to say is, “Yes, Lord.” The peace continues, but in deep sobriety.

April 1978 – I read the Annie visions for the first time and my heart is caught by "A Vision of the Holy." I hope that I might be part of such a thing, yet it is entirely beyond me.

June 1978 – I leave home, driving to Bowens Mill in Georgia. I hear “NO” “NO” “NO” for miles down the road. I refuse to turn back. This was the first of only two times that I did not regard this “NO.” Yet I know now that my refusal was God my Father showing me my true self. I want one thing. I WANT to KNOW GOD in the midst of His Church at whatever the cost.

September 1978 – I see Sam Fife close-up inside of community for a few weeks. I am deeply moved by the intensity of single-minded devotion towards Christian community and towards Christ revealed in His Church that I see in him.

October 1978 – I hear a word of union with Christ for the first time, preached by Lester Higgins. I am filled with overwhelming joy, though I have no idea what it means. I look at Sam Fife and see the same joy on his face towards such a word. I hear the most anointed speaking I have ever heard in my life as Sam Fife’s words open the heavens to me and I see the woman clothed with the sun, bringing forth the very life of God on this earth out from her great travail.

February 1979 – Sitting in the convention at Headwaters in British Columbia, I hear the voice of God inside my spirit. ~ “This is My ministry. I have given them My word for you.” ~ I see the same deep sense of travail for the church resting upon Sam Fife.

April 1979 – I hear that Sam Fife has been killed in a plane crash. The thought “we will go on to KNOW the Lord” up-whelms within me. Dan Kurtz shares with me many of his difficulties with the move fellowship. After dropping him off, I drive home. Everything I thought God had taught me is stripped away; nothing remains. In my desperation and great vulnerability, I shout out loud the determination of my covenant with God. “God, I WILL KNOW YOU in this life, and I will walk with a people who know You, right now in this age, right here on this earth.” I do not know what such a thing could mean, but I will never be turned aside.

May 1979 – Brother D shares with me of the little community just starting near Albuquerque, New Mexico. A witness leaps in my heart that this is God’s next place for me.

A First Furnace of Affliction
July 1979 – I watch Buddy Cobb turn the entire convention away from the Tree of Life to face the false tree of the “great struggle against sin.” I have no idea what is happening, but something in me marks this moment, and I know that something is not right.

September 1979 – After my return to the Albuquerque community after a brief visit in Oregon, I feel so very much AT HOME.

November 1979 – Lester Higgins comes through and preaches on union with Christ. I know that it is true, but I cannot see it. Such a thing is far away from me. He leaves in sorrow, and in sorrow, I see him go.

1980 – I hear a true “NO” from God, over and over, concerning a relationship with Roseanna, but I cannot let go. My identity is so tied up in the feelings of my imagination. God has to allow circumstances and the intervention of others to end my wrong direction.

June 1980 – I have the opportunity to drive away from the community and to return home to Oregon. I do not want to stay; I very, very much want to leave. I stay. Why? Very simple. I want to know God in the midst of His Church, no matter the cost.

August 1980 – Richard Hernandez and I spend more time together and become friends. This is another of many chapters of friendship God is writing in my life.

December 1980 – After the community is closed, I see the faces of the Albuquerque elders after the move ministry has spoken to them. I know that God is only kind towards them, but at the same time, I am struck with a deep knowing that you don’t mess with God’s people, for you are messing with God.

January to May 1981 – Jim Fant teaches me to justify God in all things and find Him right and true. He also teaches me that full deliverance comes only out from my own personal decision to cast down the evil one, regardless.

September 1981 – I experience the most anointed dream I have had. In my dream, Maureen Mack, a girl I had hardly noticed, comes to me in my distress. She says that she wants to know me and I see the kindness in her face. When I am fully awake, I see as in a vision the faces of Maureen’s two older sisters, and I know they are not for me. Then I see Maureen’s face again, and I hear in my spirit ~ “Man looks upon the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart.” ~ I know in that moment that Maureen will be my wife. I do not know that such a joy is still nine years away.

September 1981 to June 1985 – So many times through these years, such joy and anointing arise in me unbidden every time I pass by Maureen. Yet she is closed to me, and I do not know how to talk with her. By the spring of 1985, I can bear the agony no longer, and I harden my heart against such a thought.

June 1981 to September 1982 – I work closely with Abel Ramirez in watchcare over the men in the dorm and in leading parts of the work. In this mature level of friendship Abel demonstrates towards me, I thrive in the anointing. I do not understand, after the Ramirez’s move back to Mexico, just how badly I would drop when this relationship is no longer there.

Mid 1981 into 1983 – I listen to a number of Sam Fife’s messages until they are written deep in my heart, such words as Abraham offering up Isaac and of Jacob wrestling with God and not letting go. I write out all of “The Hollywood Series” into booklet form. I immerse myself in this word and am astonished without answer when Buddy Cobb tells me that it’s not of God. I try again to read Arthur W. Pink’s The Depravity of Man, but the book vanishes from me and I cannot find it.

1983 – Charley Jones shares with me how God speaks to him to buy this tool and take on that job, how God leads him in joy and provision. I do not share in return that God tells me, “NO” even when I just want to buy a screwdriver. As I ponder this contradiction, I understand that God’s path for one is not His path for the other, though we walk side by side inside of God.

1983 – I am happily planning to merge the four gospels into one. As I walk from the Tabernacle to the men’s dorm, I see a bony finger, as in a vision, pointing straight between my eyeballs. ~ “What are you doing to My word?” ~ God’s voice this time is harsh and stern. I drop all thought in that moment of ever trying to “figure out the word.” From then until now I have done only one thing with my Bible; I have planted all that God speaks as He speaks it deep into my heart with all the intensity of which I am capable.

January 1984 – I step for the first time into the classroom as a teacher. I have found my calling. I love working with teenagers, I love teaching, I love books, I love everything that has to do with school and education. I had never imagined; I had not known myself.

April 1985 – I am very angry with God and totally stressed out over the disaster my life in community has become. I sit in the convention hearing preacher after preacher share the very things I have argued at God in my distress. As I walk back to the Ridge, I raise my hand towards God. “BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS!” I cry. “People are dying in this community and no one cares, no one comes to help.” (I do not know that Maureen is thinking the same thing at the same time.) The very next morning John Hinson gets up to preach. He says, “God came to me last night in a dream and He told me that people are dying in my community and no one notices.” How can this be? How can my angry words towards God then be spoken by Him to an apostle in the move? My brain registers what just happened, but I have no ability to process it.

April 1985 – I receive a letter from Judy Jones inviting me to come to the Blueberry Christian community in British Columbia.

July 1985 – I am determined to take back control of my life from God and I am distressed to discover that I am completely unsuccessful.

July 1985 to August 1986 – I read widely in world literature, an experience which opens rebellion against God to me. – If God is all love and all power, why does He let bad things happen to people? I do not know at the time, but God allows me to taste this rebellion so that I might know His power and goodness when He removes it from me.

November 1985 – I give up. The groaning of word God has planted inside of me is too great for me to bear. I pick up the Annie Schissler book, I Looked and I Saw Visions of God, and read it a second time. I do not read far before I am caught in the greatest of horror, that God is doing something wondrous in the earth and that I am not part of it.

February 1986 – I attend the Shiloh convention and am so grateful to be back in a third-feast word. My application to attend college at the Blueberry Community is accepted.

April 1986 – I am determined to IGNORE God’s “no” coming hard against my intention to enroll in the local community college. My sister, Frieda, asks me, “Do you think God would take the life of someone who was recklessly going against His direction?” Those words hit me hard and I know that they are God speaking to me. I know that He would take my life rather than allow me to follow that path away from Him. This is a shocking thought, yes, but I have always been so grateful that God has seized me in His grip and that He will never let me go.

August 1986 – As I attempt to drive back up to Blueberry and to the beginning of my college experience, carrying my huge load of books in my small car, I hear the same words John Janssen had shouted at his son, only now they are the words of my Father to me. ~ “I will not have those books in My house,” ~ over and over until I break, turn around and drive home in humiliation.

After dispensing with most of the books, I drive back up towards Blueberry, except now, again, I am hearing, “No, no, no” every mile up the highway. This is the second of only two times that I refused to regard the all-too-frequent “NO!” Why did I keep driving? For one reason only. I want to know God in the midst of His Church, no matter the cost.

A Greater Love
September 1986 to May 1988 – I love Blueberry. I love college. These are two of the best years of my life. Plenty of affliction, yes, but I am in the midst of a Spirit-filled church that moves in the grace and love of Christ. I have the astonishing experience, two different times, of a strong elder coming to me to apologize for something hurtful they had said to me. This is in such a contrast to my previous experiences. I learn so much through these years of the normality of the Spirit of God in the midst of the Church.

December 1986 – I am part of a wondrous experience, of sharing with the young people of the community that is everything my gut tells me Christ Community ought to be.

June 1987 – I have the opportunity to take another path, an opportunity that promises me everything I ever wanted. Yet the thought comes again to me that God would take my life rather than allow me to depart from Him. Needless to say, I do not go.

Summer 1987 – I spend much more time working with Don Howat, now that school is out. His friendship is the largest experience of friendship (other than marriage with Maureen) that I have known in my life. Don always receives me as an equal, and in his encouragement I thrive in the things God anoints me to do. This friendship continues to increase over the next several years.

September 1987 – I sit through Buddy Cobb’s course titled, “The Plan of God.” This experience “presses me to the wall,” so to speak, regarding knowing what God actually says in the Bible. Buddy Cobb’s teaching is little more than confusion to me; I cannot make sense of it, no matter how many Bible verses he uses. I am thirty years old. I make my first determination concerning the set of my face regarding the Word of the gospel. – God’s desire comes first, what God wants rules over all. And what God wants is to be seen and known by all through us, His Church. And this God, out from whom all things come, is Love. Not long after this determination, Romans 8:29 becomes my ruling verse.

October 1987 – I sit through Jane Miller’s course titled, “Spiritual Warfare.” Of all the ministries in the move, Jane Miller is the closest in anointing and word to that open heavens I had experienced through Sam Fife. I am caught in the overwhelming power of the Spirit. I say to Sister Jane on the first day of deliverance, “Sister Jane, you will pray for me or I will crawl into your pocket until you do.” That afternoon, as I sit waiting for my turn to be prayed for, I hear the voice of my Father, ~ “Even during your time of darkness (my rebellious teenage years), you were still My son.” ~ I experience the agony of deliverance, that there is no panacea, that “Yes Lord” is still required. I see the Shekinah glory of God resting upon the precious family at Blueberry. I am convinced of the reality of demonic influence; I see the power of God in open demonstration.

December 1987 – I write these words in a college paper, “I know that my father loved me and sacrificed everything for me.” Soon after, I am filled with the knowledge of God’s presence with me, for I had forgiven my dad in writing those words. I had “hated him without a cause,” for he had always treated me with such respect and kindness. I have known few people in my life more true and more good than my own dad, Emerson Edwin Yordy. And by this grace I know God my Father. I long for that day when he and I and Kyle can walk together as the closest of friends.

February 1988 – I am singing praises in a very anointed service. My experience of overdosing on LSD comes strongly into my mind. With that thought, something like a great angry hornet’s nest breaks loose inside of me. I raise my hands up high and cast myself upon the Lord. As I do, bang, a darkness leaves me never to return. I can register in my memory the dark pain that ripped my gut for fifteen years, but I no longer comprehend it. For the first time since adolescence, I no longer need to hide myself in fantasy and daydreams.

April 1988 – I take the Grier speech course and begin my slow journey out from my autistic shell. I write Gene Edward’s “A Tale of Three Kings” into a play. God makes real to me the issue of rebellion versus David.

May to August 1988 – I am aghast, for there is Maureen with her parents, and I discover that she is planning to come to school at Blueberry. I spend the summer desperately considering leaving the community, for how can I bear a return to the agony I knew at Bowens Mill.

June 1988 – Upon returning from a trip to Oregon, I have a dream in which I see God’s people bound to death and in which I speak to them to live and not die, but they do not hear me.

August 1988 – The Spirit whispers to me, not as the Voice I often hear, but as an understanding, that God does not treat His sons in the way I was fearing, that everything is for a purpose and a season, and that, somehow, Maureen’s return into my life will be different.

September 1988 – I do the bravest thing I have ever done in my life. I ask Maureen Mack what she is taking this year in college. And the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me comes next, Maureen talks with me. Before our conversation ends, she says to me, “Daniel, I want to ask your forgiveness for how I treated you at Bowens Mill.” Her words are such joy and such pain, both at the same time.

October 1988 – Maureen and I start a covered friendship.

June 1989 – Maureen and I begin walking out a year.

And a Greater Affliction
Spring 1990 – I find myself caught in a great bind between the things I am being taught and what God actually says in the Bible. My school experience and my relationship with Maureen is bringing me out of my autistic shell, yet at the same time, I am without protection and much more vulnerable than I have been before. Before I was oblivious, but now I do not understand the responses of many towards me, for they do not fit with anything true concerning me. I imagine the lie, as it is taught to me, that my will and God’s will are violently opposed.

June 1990 – Our words to be married are confirming, but there seems to be an hostility towards our marriage from the elders. I go home to Oregon by myself. I am pressed with the question of what God requires of me, but I find no answer.

July 1990 – Upon returning, I look up at the roof construction I had left under Brian Dwyer’s direction. He is finishing the last of it. My soul opens to the realization that other people are of great value even when they DIFFER from me. This is one of the greatest changes in my life.

September 1990 – I stand before the family at Blueberry, with my own family also there, and I say, “Now I know that God does what He says He will do.” Maureen and I are married, the most important and the best day of my natural life.

August 1991 – Our son Kyle is born inside the close presence of God. I marvel at my wife, how strong she is. For the first time I KNOW that I love her.

September 1992 – Walking together with Don Howat along the air strip at Graham River, sharing strength together as equals regarding the work to begin in the morning, is the greatest and most precious moment of friendship I have known in my life.

November 1992 – I hear the Lord speak, ~ “Immigrate to Blair Valley.” ~

February 1993 – I hear the Lord speak, ~ “Blair Valley is your home.” ~

May 1993 – Our time at Blueberry on student visas comes to an end and we move to Oregon for two years.

A Third Time into the Furnace
October 1993 – God deals with Korah inside of me as I begin my first attempt at writing His word.

January 1994 – Johanna is born at Blueberry in the midst of the Church singing praises to God.

April 1994 to April 1995 – I work with Amos Stoltzfus installing high-end custom cabinets and enjoy a “working together” greater than I have known before or since.

November 1994 – We attend a Thanksgiving retreat. I see how precious all these who belong to Jesus really are to God. On my knees in the prayer hut on a wooded hillside, I place myself into Covenant with God, that He will prepare me that I might have a pure word for the sake of His precious people.

January 1995 – I begin teaching “The Two Gospels.” I do not know that I have them switched and that I am missing the central point of the gospel.

March 1995 – I am troubled by the rumors of all the evil things taking place in Oregon. The Lord speaks to me, ~ “Do not fight giants I have not placed in front of you.” ~

June 1995 – I walk into the worst time of my life. I am hit with the awful realization that in returning to Blueberry, we have come to the wrong place. This sense does not lift from me until we leave in October of 1996.

July 1996 – As I am sitting under the weight of carrying the burden of the second Graham River Tabernacle project all by myself, Brother Milton Vereide speaks words of Christ and of great encouragement into me eye to eye. At the moment of crisis, an experienced builder joins the work and takes on completing the roof. We are now able to finish.

December 1996 – I teach an “improved” version of “The Two Gospels” to the Blueberry family.

January 1996 – I begin my time walking as an elder with the ministry at Blueberry.

February 1996 – I become fully convinced that there is something terribly wrong with me that prevents me from being “an elder” like the others. While watching a logging camp by myself in the bitter cold, I cry out to God, “God can you not save even me?” I imagine that He does not answer me; I do not know that He already did long ago. I read a book in which I learn the meaning of a blood covenant and gain the picture of running through a gauntlet.

July 1996 – While digging in the soft sand underneath our cabin, I hear God speaking to me, ~ “Son, you have a sectarian heart.” ~ I respond only with quiet agreement, that He is telling me the truth. I do not “try to do better,” yet I know now that from that moment on, a sectarian heart was removed from me.

August 1996 – I face the giant of Korah inside of me, and I find it already defeated and gone. I will not speak against those over me in the Lord nor judge them nor myself. God alone is my Judge, and the Judge of all. I find God right and true in all things.

October 1996 – We drive away from Blueberry.

December 1996 – I lie drunk on our motel bed in California in the despair that I have failed in everything. Yet I rest in God, justifying Him and blaming no one, whether God, myself, or others.

A Long and Slow Healing
January 1997 – Maureen and I are received by Canadian immigration. We are now free to move to Blair Valley.

February 1997 – In my study of the Bible, for the first time the words “Receive one another as Jesus receives you” enter my consciousness, even as I place those words into an astonishing list of New Testament verses commanding us to be just like God.

March 1997 – While listening to Brother Ernest Watkins share in the Bowens Mill convention, I hear God speak to me, ~ “Son, you passed the test.” ~ In that moment, I know that what God is after is something quite different from what most of Christianity thinks, including the move. I know what God truly wants of us, that we would justify God in all things and find Him right and true and that we would place no blame upon any, including ourselves.

April 1997 – Kyle and I arrive at Blair Valley and begin working on our new home.

July 1997 – Katrina is born into our precious and all-too-brief time at Blair Valley.

November 1997 – We “land” as immigrants as we cross from Washington into British Columbia.

December 1997 to August 1998 – A time of peace, a time of quietness and reflection, a time when God can place my dependence entirely into Jesus.

December 1997 to May 1999 – I enjoy a relationship with Rick Annett in which I learn from him the true meaning of friendship.

February 1998 – In the cold and in the loneliness, I despair of ever pleasing God or doing His will. I do not know that the lights are turning on and that I am seeing real for the first time. In my sense of despair I hear the quietest words God ever spoke to me, ~ “Give My people hope.” ~ I hardly hear those words because I imagine that I have no hope to give. I do not know that the final giant of “any sufficiency in myself” is now gone from me.

February to August 1998 – I know now that I am missing the key point of the gospel, but I have no idea what that is. I become deeply troubled by the contempt for “others” held as an essential element in move-of-God thinking and practice. I become weary of the game of pretending to be “in the Spirit” and all the mask-wearing it entails. I make a firm and final decision that I do not want to be a “son of God” in myself, but that I want to KNOW Jesus, my Savior.

August 1998 – We leave Blair Valley and the move of God and go to Fort St. John.

November 1998 – I discover that there are other people who share the same personality difficulties with me, that maybe there is not something terribly wrong with me. I am numb and frozen inside through all these months, yet I hold to the grace of the Lord Jesus and to nothing else.

February to May 1999 – We enjoy the sweetest of fellowships with the Dickout’s and the Annett’s even while I see God closing all doors for us in Canada.

July 1999 – I am accepted at Lubbock Christian University and we accept that God has opened this door for us in Texas.

October 1999 – James is born in our home at the Lubbock community inside the prayers of the Church.

December 1999 – I attempt to fit back under the teaching of the move and it nearly destroys me. Kyle wonders at the despair and agony he sees on his dad’s face.

January 2000 – We separate fully from move community and enjoy full participation with the fellowship of people sitting under Pastor Gary Kirksey. Yet I remain numb and frozen inside.

December 2000 – In an anointed service, I go forward with many for a time of repentance. I say to God, “Oh God, I repent of ever having listened to Buddy Cobb.” (Although I needed to do this in that way then, I know now that God had great purpose for placing me under Buddy Cobb’s ministry for so many years.) For the first time, I can say to myself, “God loves me.” – without any “but” added. Only now can healing actually begin, oh so very slowly.

July to September 2001 – The doors close on moving to Fort Worth and God takes us to a lovely little school in Maple, Texas where I am both the principal and the high school English teacher. This is a place of great peace and goodness for us.

December 2001 – The first knife of God’s healing goes all through my soul as I begin to read John Eldredge.

January 2002 – As he shares himself personally with me in his books, John Eldredge teaches me to say “My heart is good; my heart is filled with Jesus.” I confess those words with all joy. The agonizing process of placing all my pain into the Lord Jesus and seeing Him there with me in every hurtful moment continues over many months. In actuality the healing does not become complete until 2021, as I write about this whole time in my autobiography.

August to October 2002 – I get a job teaching school on the east side of Houston, Texas and we move to our family home on Fernbank Drive where our children will grow up.

July 2004 – I stop accusing God of knowing evil.

Fall 2004 to July 2006 – I weep often over the ignorance of God both in myself and in all the church.

A New Word
August 2006 – I hear the most astonishingly wondrous words ever spoken into me by another person when Joel Osteen says, “Speak what God says you are.” I rush home to begin writing The Jesus Secret, caught in the intense fervor of a door flung wide open to me into the knowledge of God my Father. Years of Bible Word planted deeply in my heart come rushing up into the speaking of Christ my only life.

August 2006 to July 2013 – It takes five years of sitting under Pastor Joel for me to stop all cursing of myself in my own thoughts and two more years for God to seal me into this new mind.

Fall 2007 – I begin to articulate, haltingly and poorly, a many-years-long attempt to show God’s people that they have been reading their Bibles using wrong definitions, definitions of death, and that the ruling verses of the gospel ought to be the rule over everything they know about God and His Word.

February 2008 – In a chapel meeting, as I try to hide from a false word being spoken into the children, I wrap myself utterly inside of Jesus. In that moment, “I” seem to disappear and Jesus becomes all that I am in my knowing. I discover Fred Pruitt’s writings and begin to learn the joy of my precious union with Christ.

February to November 2008 – I withstand great spiritual assault as every voice I have known hurls its accusations against me that “I” cannot be “Christ as me.” I refuse to consider those voices daily until November when they break away and depart from me.

Fall 2008 – God teaches me to place the same union with Christ that I enjoy upon the brothers and sisters with whom I work, in spite of their words that are contrary to Christ and in spite of their false attachment to the world.

November 2008 – I send out my first Christ Our Life letter, “Faith Makes Christ in Me Personal.” Jesus is my life; I have no other life. Christ is all there is in me.

February 2009 – I am faced with a spirit of hostility from Buddy Cobb towards me and towards my teaching of union with Christ. I am faced again with the potential of “Korah” in my response. I refuse Korah, both towards Brother Buddy and towards Claude Mack. I choose to see that the same Jesus who lives as me lives also as them and carries them through the darkness and into LIFE just as He also carries me.

March 2009 – I read the Annie visions a third time. The things she sees are much closer to me now. From my reading I write, "All of His ways concerning me are perfect. God has never led me wrong. God has never not led me"

Summer 2009 – I write “The Most Important Verses of the Bible” in another attempt to set out God’s definitions for how we are to know Him and how we are to understand the Bible.

July 2010 – I learn that I am Asperger’s.

October to December 2010 – We go through the deeply humiliating process of bankruptcy. The Lord Jesus writes a deeper meaning of “no sufficiency in myself – all sufficiency in Jesus” upon my heart.

November 2010 – I am humiliated by my autistic difficulties as deeply as I have ever been.

December 2010 – In a visit to a small Pentecostal Church, I see again the beauty of God resting upon His people.

June 2011 – I am again faced with the agony of opposition coming against me, as I perceive it, from Claude Mack and Buddy Cobb. I choose again to place the Lord Jesus Christ upon them inside the same Salvation I would know.

An Ever Increasing Word
September 2011 – I receive a devastating email of the arrogant “Christ” demanding that I “get up out of myself” in order to know this “above-me” deity.

October 2011 – God turns me right-side up and causes me to know Him as He really is, as the One who CARRIES me. I determine to know God ONLY through the image of the Lord Jesus Christ and in no other way, and in particular through that one time and place when we see God as He is – the walk of the Atonement, a stumbling Jesus carrying us, carried by God all the way through death and into life.

July 2012 – As we are driving north to Johanna’s graduation, I hear God speaking to me, ~ “Because you have honored My word, I will honor you.” ~ I write “Filled with God,” and begin to speak to myself that God fills me with all that He is. For the first time, I am connected to knowing that God shares my life with me, though I hardly know what it means.

September 2012 – I hear John Gray preach “Lazarus Come Forth.” I hear God speaking to me, ~ “I will finish the word I planted in your heart.” ~ I received this concerning my desire for Christ Community, yet it also had a deeper meaning.

December 2012 – God gives me to understand that my heart is His Mercy Seat and that inside my heart, I join all things together with Him. For the first time, I am able to place my Asperger’s utterly into God and His goodness and to give all thanks.

May 2013 – I pray a prayer into audio asking God to seal me into Himself as pictured in Revelation 7. My life changes completely. Never again do I accuse God of being separated from me. From here forward, I know Father-with-me in all things, and I call it to be so.

July 2013 – Because of my experience at the end of May, I realize that our season at Lakewood Church under Joel Osteen’s ministry has come to an end. It was a season of goodness, and I hold Joel and Victoria in my heart before God with all honor.

April 2014 – I begin to reckon with the reality that since we are saved and since we live only inside of God, the Christian life is to be lived as “turned around” and now going out from God as the revelation of His Salvation in all heaven-earth.

October 2014 – In one of those occasional dreams that are God speaking to me, I see Charity Titus in the heavens with my mother. After I awake, I hear Sister Charity ask me for my forgiveness, and I know that she has joined with mom to pray for me. The healing towards my time at Blueberry can finally begin.

April 2015 – I write “Sustained” and a whole new understanding of reality enters my consciousness, that all things come out from the good-speaking of Jesus every moment. I begin to write Symmorphy I: Purpose, which is a deeper exploration of the ten ruling verses of the Bible.

June 2015 – I see in a flash God’s meaning for Paul’s word, symmorphos, as sharing all form with the Lord Jesus Christ. Symmorphy enters my understanding.

October 2016 – In a dream, I speak into others to know their union with Christ, that they are the same as Jesus, a man or a woman filled with all the fulness of God. I write “Christ as a Spirit of Power” in which God gives me a far clearer understanding of the power and reality of the bath of living Spirit Word in which we live.

December 2016 – I write “Calvinism” and “A Highway for God” in Symmorphy III: Kingdom, and my path turns towards ever greater clarity in hammering out the difference between the two trees in the garden as found throughout the Bible.

Spring 2017 – God restores into my writing the full word He spoke to me through Sam Fife.

April to June 2017 – God’s meaning of “energeia” and “pro-knowing” explode into my life in all glorious joy. I read the Annie visions a fourth time, adding comments and turning them into a PDF. I now know everything she sees as part of my present knowing of God.

August 2017 – God plants in me the meaning of standing in the bottom of the Jordan – my last name – until every one has crossed out from death and into life.

September 2017 – Patterns of home enters my understanding of the Church of Jesus Christ and of the ten ruling verses of the Bible.

November 2017 – I write “Give Me a Place to Stand,” asking my readers for their part in the establishing of a community of Christ. God speaks to me ~ “Son, you provide for them.” ~ I do not know what it could mean, for I have nothing outward to give. Then I write the lesson, “And I in You,” and speak out loud a commitment to God to be as Jesus for the sake of His Church. I know a further level of sealing in God’s purposes for my life.

December 2017 to April 2018 – I am thrown into agony over the Word, what God actually says and what I must write.

April 2018 – I hear a word preached that is as the serpent in the garden and I discover the extent of the falseness in the Calvinist translations of the Bible. I become very angry. God shows me the essence of what was out of whack in my community experiences.

June 2018 – God shows me His heart inside of mine as a shepherd over His people.

July 2018 – I receive clarity concerning the opposing lists of “rules of thinking.” I finally see how Genesis 3:1-5 is the other ruling verse, one verse to “rule” them all.

August to November 2018 – I write Knowing Jesus as He Is.

February to April 2019 – I am given a clearer understanding of God’s meaning for John’s vision as our manual of victory regarding the Church of Christ.

June 2019 – Finally, after eight years of seeking to understand what God means by “setting forth our souls,” He shows me its deepest meaning inside of Jesus in Psalms 22.

August 2019 – I begin sending out the first chapters of my life story.

September 2019 – Our wonderful fellowship in the Zoom meetings begins.

October 2019 – God speaks to me that His purpose for me is to give of myself wholly to the little group gathered on Zoom and to no longer look for “ministry” abroad.

November to December 2019 – God brings full and wondrous healing to my memories of Bowens Mill.

January 2020 – A mighty anointing flows through me as I begin writing The Highway for God.

January to April 2020 – It takes me nearly four months to work my way through writing about my first seven years at Blueberry. It is excruciating, but in the end there is only peace remaining and I can think about my time there with joy. I learn what giving an account inside the presence of God is all about.

May to June 2020 – I write of my final time at Blueberry and the test God takes me through. I begin to understand the incredible hand of God that has always been on my life.

July 2020 – I write and complete the mini-course “Living in Paul’s Gospel.” I finally know what the gospel of life really is and can express it clearly.

August 2020 – God shows me His purpose for my time at Blair Valley and removes from me that wrongful question – what if? We begin to pray for the Church of Jesus Christ in our Zoom meetings. We prepare ourselves for war for her sake.

November 2020 – I complete “Safe from the Serpent’s Gospel” and now have a full clarity regarding the false gospel as it works in Nicene Christian thinking.

December 2020 – I finish writing about my years teaching in Sheldon ISD and come to peace regarding all of that. I complete the mini-course “The Ruling Verses” and now have God’s clarity concerning His thinking for Christians. I am pressed into practicing the Mercy Seat at a level deeper than I have ever known.

January 2021 – Coming out from my experience of the Mercy Seat, I begin to know the reality of sharing life with God beyond what I have ever known. My brother Franz comes to me in a dream and pleads with me to pray for his children. I begin to do just that.

April 2021 – I begin writing Symmorphy VI: Mankind as God takes us to a whole new level of understanding who and what we are.

June 2021 – Through a most difficult set of experiences, God removes from me all fantasy regarding my ability to bring forth a community of Christ and turns me, through the teaching on Esther, to a ministry of intercession for His Church. I agree with God to accept nothing as from myself that I be all for the sake of all Christians across the world.

August 2021 – Maureen and I begin a new life at our home in Shepherd, Texas. We begin Studies in John in the Zoom meetings and God takes our understanding of His life in us and our prayers of intercession for the Church to whole new levels.

September 2021 to April 2022 – the knowing of Father sharing life with me continues to grow in simplicity, in intimacy, and in JOY.

April 2022 – I begin writing Symmorphy VII: Completion. God takes me into a third level of experience with Him, an unfolding experience of completion. I share this with all, both my readers and on Zoom.

June 2022 – Our intercession for all believers in Jesus throughout earth and heaven takes on a level of power and certainty never before known.

July to August 2022 – We complete our most wondrous study of John’s gospel as a gospel of LIFE with “Jesus Sends Me,” and we begin the study of John’s letters with “I Fellowship with God.”

August to September – I pass through the travail of writing “A New Fire,” “A New Altar,” and “A New Direction.” I place myself utterly into God; I will not separate myself from Him. I choose humility with Father in return for the Victory of the entire Church.

September 2022 - I finish writing this account of my life given inside the presence of God. This has been a three-year journey, filled with much travail and much joy. My seeing of my life is utterly transformed, for I have never been alone.

Nonetheless, writing about the great press of difficulty and loss coming through this time places me into the same agonies of heart caused by those specific events as I wrestle through how I am to present these things. As always, God gives me grace and understanding.

Every moment of my life from my conception until now has been "Father with me," sharing everything of me as Himself. My life is joy inexpressible and filled with glory, one seamless story of Christ.

Your life is the same, dear reader, as you call it to be so, as you place the Lord Jesus Christ upon yourself all the way through.

October 2022 - I have the final print copy of my autobiography in hand.