53. A New Altar

© 2022 Daniel Yordy
December 2020 – September 2022

Understanding Myself
The time period of December 2020 to September 2022 includes some of the most difficult experiences of my life, but it also includes some of my best times, knowing that my Father shares every moment and particle of my life with me. These two, the most difficult and the best, are connected in surprising ways.

I have chosen to place all of the difficult things into this chapter and reserve the continued flow of God’s favor in our lives for the next chapter. The reason I must do that is this very altar God has asked me to place myself upon inside of His presence and for the sake of His people.

Now, I say, “God has asked me to place myself upon,” because this is how we think, but it’s not really the accurate picture, for I do nothing of myself. Rather, God shares all things with me, and it is He, as All-Salvation, who places Himself upon the altar inside of and together with me, as His outward expression in heaven-earth.

One of the most astonishing statements found in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 12:21. The Head is not able to say to the feet, “I have no need of you.” – God needs His body, for He has no other means by which to enter into His creation to be seen and known. – We ARE indeed the body of Christ and members of Him as a part.

And so I finally understand, just now, that I must approach this experience of my life, covering around two-year’s time, not from my perspective only, but from God’s perspective. For just as He shares all of me with me, so also I share all of Him with Him.

I have just completed and sent out Chapter 55, “The Meaning of a Life.” At the same time, I am writing “I Set Forth My Soul” in Studies in John’s Letters. In fact, as I write, I am going back and forth between “I Set Forth My Soul” and “A New Altar,” for they are the same reality.

Only now do I understand my life. Yet I am not alone, for God has always had the same purpose in your life, dear reader.

I am overwhelmed right now as I look across “The Meaning of a Life,” and I see the hand of the All-Carrying One upon every moment, with intense determination and driven purpose. And I see this chapter, “A New Altar,” fitting into the Passover season of 2021 in the story of my life as the definition of everything. Somehow, I must convey to you the meaning, for I am speaking of 1 John 3:16, God’s only entrance into His creation.

Consider these words, written first by Jeremiah, the prophet who wept over Jerusalem and in his tears wrote Lamentation 3, which I have always read as the story of my life.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days says the Lord, I will place My laws in their through-minds and upon their hearts I will inscribe them; and I will be God inside of them, and they will be people inside of me. And no one will teach each their neighbor and each their brother saying, ‘Know the Lord’; because all will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, because I will propitiate their acts of injustice and their falling short will not be in My thoughts anymore (Hebrews 8:10-12).

There are three threads woven through this expression of the Covenant, and those three threads are all the pattern of my days. I am astonished and overwhelmed, for though I lived this, I knew nothing and planned nothing. For out from God and passing through God and returning to God are ALL things (Romans 11). Indeed, if I had known, I would certainly have messed it all up. Yet God did tell me, many times in many ways, but I had no idea what He meant.

The first thread is the Covenant, the primary meaning across the span of my life. The second thread is the Word planted in my heart, the relentless pursuit of my great need over decades. But the third thread is God propitiating my acts of injustice, and that third thread is the most pronounced in the structure of my years.

I have shared with you the pattern of three Passover seasons, with twelve years exactly between them, March/April of 1985 when God spoke my angry words to John Hinson in a dream ~ to March of 1997 when God said, “Son, you passed the test,” ~ to March of 2009, when I deliberately placed Brother Buddy into Jesus living as him. – “Do not speak against Mine anointed” and “take your brother with you,” that is, three apostolic ministries who were “above me” in the Lord, John Hinson, John Clarke, and Buddy Cobb, all three of whom I had reason to despise, yet God saved me from doing so.

But I like patterns and so I thought – “Well, what about twelve years after and twelve years before.” To my complete astonishment, twelve years after is March of 2021, this very month into which I am inserting this chapter, a chapter coming out from the travail of God with me through incredible awfulness and great glory.

Then I looked back at twelve years before, which would be the spring of 1973, the second semester of my junior year at Lebanon Union High School. I thought, “What on earth was I doing and thinking then?” At first it seemed a blank, so I thought through the courses I took that semester. Suddenly, without warning, a six by twelve BEAM came swinging out of nowhere and hit me right between the eyeballs (I’m being poetic).

As I am sitting here writing this morning, I’ll be 66 years old in just a few weeks. In all the years of healing from John Eldredge until today, this is the first time God has brought my great wickedness into the light. He has made sure I did not put these things together until right now, neither will I include them in my chapter on “A Time of Darkness.” Here is where my acts of injustice belong.

You see, I had thought my sins were fantasy and daydreaming, drugs and rock & roll. And when God said to me just before my season of deliverance, ~ “Even in the darkness, you were still My son,” ~ those were certainly among the things He included in my knowing at that time. Indeed, it was in the fall of my junior year when I overdosed on LSD. But those things were peripheral; let me now share the center of my evil self-exaltation.

I think about three men in my early years of the move, Dan Kurtz, Bill Ritchie, and Jim Fant, men of such integrity, honor, and steadfastness whose impact on my life defines me to this day. I think about three other men, Abel Ramirez, Don Howat, and Rick Annett, whose friendships towards me were the friendship of Jesus, friendships that held me steady through the winds of near-insanity.

As I considered the spring of 1973, I saw one man, then two, then three, two of them that spring and the third across my teenage years, three Christian men, three men who were my teachers, three men whom I despised and mocked and cursed.

If I did not KNOW Jesus for me right now, I would be unable to continue.

Let me start with Mr. Philips, my 7^th and 8^th grade teacher, and P.E. and basketball coach. Yes, Mr. Philips operated inside the “low-grade bully” group towards me, at least as I perceived it. I hated him, and that hatred spanned across my teenage years from 13-19. I would flip a birdy out the window when his car passed us on the road. Later, when I drove by his house in the middle of the night on my way home, drunk and stoned, I blew my horn all the way by, and cursed him and his family with heart and with words.

Mr. Stroup was my U.S. History teacher through my junior year, thus he fits definitely into the spring of 1973. I considered him a very poor teacher, an insipid and shallow man. I passed his course, of course, but I mocked him. On the semester exam, which required all written answers, I filled in absurd and brilliant answers to every question, answers that were just a mockery of him. He gave me a zero, but I exulted in my success. (Later, when Maureen and I lived in Lebanon, Oregon, I saw that Mr. Stroup was the pastor of a nearby Spirit-filled church.)

Then, in the spring of 1973, we had a student teacher in our Chemistry class, taking the place of Mr. Burridge, our favorite teacher (for the few weeks of his student teaching). Whatever his teaching skills might have been, and I don’t remember his name, he did not know how to connect with teenagers. I think he might have condescended to us, a big mistake on his part. I did not really realize that I was typically the smartest guy in the room. You see, in Mr. Stroup’s class, I was by myself without any of my friends in that group. But I had more then once led the other students in rebellion against Mr. Philips. And, of truth, I was the undercurrent in our total-class, under-the-radar, rebellion against this student teacher. We were successful in that we were not found out and in that he failed his student teaching and could never be a teacher.

Because I will propitiate their acts of injustice and their falling short will not be in My thoughts anymore.

I know now that it is the demon god of “me, myself, and I” who must be appeased - propitiated – by the Love of Jesus until we come down off our high horse and place our foreheads upon the ground in the presence of the One who has always carried us.

“Mr. Philips, I was utterly wrong and wicked towards you and even towards your family; please forgive me.” – “Mr. Stroup, I treated you with such disrespect, please forgive me, I was wrong.” To the man who was the student teacher, “I was devious and wicked, and I led the whole class to do you great harm. I dare hardly ask your forgiveness, for silence is my best response.”

“Lord Jesus, You have already made me clean from all my iniquity and terrible acts of injustice. Indeed, You were with me even through these things, sharing my life with me, though I knew it not. You intended me in every moment, though You did not intend my sins. I ask You, Lord Jesus to release these three men from my darkness and all of its terrible effects, bless them with the knowledge of Your presence and goodness in their lives. Let them know Your joy, even now.”

The thing is, however, that redemption makes God’s purpose for our lives possible and real, but our redemption itself is not God’s purpose, neither is it the meaning of our lives. Something far greater is happening as a result of a life shared with God through Jesus. Salvation is entering through us into our world.

A Tale of Three Stories
The best way for me to convey to you the meaning of this “new altar” now present in my life is to share three stories with you. Two of those are fictional stories, the two most important such books to me that I have ever read, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. These stories were the call of God ringing inside my soul, calling me to this very moment.

But I want to begin with a third book, one which I read in February of 1996, the beginning of the most important time period of my life. This is a true story titled The Frontiersmen by Allan Eckert.

I had begun my time as an elder with the Blueberry eldership, yet I felt so inadequate. I did not understand why I could not move freely “in the anointing” as did all these others, as it seemed to me. I was watching a logging camp by myself in the deep cold, a hundred miles from the nearest other human. In my distress, I cried out loud to God, “God, can you not save even me?” I imagined that God did not answer me.

Yet now I know that He did, more profoundly than I can contain. You see, I had nothing to do for several days. Yet I found a large book, The Frontiersmen, in someone’s bunk and read it. It is the story of Simon Kenton, a man of greater importance than Daniel Boone in the opening of the Kentucky-Ohio wilderness to American settlers. This was an accurate historical account and vast in its scope. Simon Kenton was a man of great stature and the lands of Ohio and Kentucky sloping down to the Ohio River were the most fertile lands on earth.

As a young man, Simon Kenton entered that area in companionship with another young man named Simon Girty. These two young men were drawn to each other as friends so deeply that they were inspired to make a blood covenant together. To them, entering into a blood covenant meant everything; it meant a sharing of all for life. It meant they would be there for each other, regardless.

Yet in the conflict that came to the Ohio Valley, the two Simons found themselves on opposing sides. Simon Girty’s heart led him to side with the Shawnee’s in their distress, and Simon Kenton’s heart led him to side with the American settlers in their distress. The war was over the richest land on earth; elsewhere it was called the War of 1812.

There came a time when Simon Kenton was captured by the Shawnees and forced to run a gauntlet for his life. He ran through the blows most of the way, but just before the end, an old woman caught him hard with her stick and down he went flat on his face in the mud. Death was all he could now expect.

Yet at that moment (this is an accurate story), Simon Girty, the friend of the Shawnees, came into the camp. Girty gave himself as surety for Kenton, and the Shawnees agreed to give Kenton his life and his liberty.

I did not know this was God speaking to me, but God knew, and that’s what counts. Let me put into words now, what God spoke, if I had been able to hear.

“My son, when you asked Jesus into your heart, you and I entered into a Blood Covenant together. That means that you and I share all things together. All that I am belongs to you and all that you are belongs to Me. It means that I have your back. Now you are passing through a great gauntlet, carrying the Word I have planted inside of you through great tribulation. You will fail, My son. You will fall flat on your face in the mud, just like Jesus did. Yet I am there, nothing can stand against you, and I will carry you all the way through death and into LIFE.”

I know now why The Lord of the Rings went deep into me when I first read it at age twelve, the story of a hobbit, stumbling through weakness and failure along a way he did not know, for the sake of his beloved Shire and all free people. To this day, I cannot read Frodo’s words, “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way,” without tears running down my face.

The depth of truth Tolkien wrote into this “make-believe” story is simply profound. Evil cannot be defeated by strength, but only through weakness. Yet here is the most incredible thing. When Frodo got to his goal, the fires of Mt. Doom, he failed completely. He could not throw the ring into the fire; all he could do was claim it as his own.

How, then, did he win? First, he could never have made it to the crack of doom by himself, for it was the sturdy legs and stout heart of Sam Gamgee that carried him up the last treacherous miles, and with him, the fate of all free folk. Then – this is the most important truth written by Tolkien all through his story – Frodo’s victory came from one thing only, step by step along the way, and that was the compassion he showed to Gollum, the least worthy creature on earth.

That’s what Gandalf had said, that the pity shown to Gollum may well rule the fate of many.

Finally, the journey of Much Afraid, stumbling each step of the way, in Hind’s Feet on High Places, spoke to me more than any other Christian book I have read. Much Afraid took a memento of every failure as a testimony of her thanksgiving. But when she finally reached the high places, on the other side of the valley of loss, all she found was a stone altar. There, in her pain and inability, she offered all of herself to the shepherd, that she might belong to him alone.

The truth is, in all three of these stories, it was a life offered in weakness and failure – for the sake of others.

There is a fourth story as well. Of all the things God spoke deeply into me through Sam Fife, the story of Abraham offering Isaac back to God on Mt. Moriah was the most profound to me and went the deepest into my heart.

Now, I want to take you to God’s altar for me, my end of the gauntlet, my edge of the fires of Doom, my stone altar of surrender, my offering of Christ back to God. For that purpose, God gave me, not three men this time, but four.

A Tale of Four Men
Over the last two years, God has given me four men, readers of what I write, whose unkind words and unjust actions towards me have ripped me all to pieces inside. Yet these four men love Jesus, are anointed of God, are gifted in differing and good ways, and have blessed and been a blessing to me.

Now, I am accustomed, out from years of living in Christian community, to bear with the stumbling failures and weird ways of other people, with patience and grace. Yet, in the makeup of their present expressions, God chose to give these four, four different traits in their responses towards me that are simply the most difficult human characteristics for me to bear. In short, I partly want to despise them by “exposing” them.

Here is what I just wrote in “I Set Forth My Soul.”

~~~ My salvation has nothing to do with Jesus “appeasing” God, getting Him to “back off.” My salvation has everything to do with a Man receiving me into Himself. It is for this reason that we know that the LOUDEST words in the universe were spoken to God inside of Jesus as He rose to His feet in Gethsemane. – “HERE AM I! I and the children whom You have given Me.”

We saw in our study of John’s gospel that the most despicable of human responses showed themselves in offence against Jesus the moment after He said those words, in the form of Judas and Peter. It is clear that Jesus had already chosen, personally and in agony, to receive into Himself even those. When He was faced with their deeds, it was already finished inside Himself.

I believe that God transferred all authority from Adam to Jesus that moment when Jesus said, “I will drink Your cup.” Jesus, personally and willingly, drank me into Himself, in all my dregs of sin and rebellion. And Jesus, personally and willingly, gave me Himself, His own soul, to call as my own.

I honor Jesus only by receiving with joy all that He has given me – Himself. Then I turn and do the same for my brothers and sisters.

The issue is contempt. Adam ate of death out from contempt, that he might rule over those whom he despised. Contempt versus Honor. There is only one way that I can receive in honor those whose actions towards me are, in my soul, the most contemptuous, those whom I naturally hold in scorn.

He humbled Himself. – Just like Jesus, I must choose humility, the lowest place, taking the blame upon myself, being silent before those who mock. Speaking only the very SWORD of God, “Father, forgive them.” This is what Jesus does for me every moment. This is the authority through which God moves in power. ~~~

When I attempted to write the words and actions of these individuals by name, Maureen reacted with horror. Her reaction forced me to realize my true motivation in writing those things. I really, really wanted to PROVE them wrong. I wanted them to hurt, just a bit, in the way that their words and actions hurt me. I wanted revenge.

At that moment in time, I remain just like Jesus, for He also felt the same things in Gethsemane, that’s why it is called AGONY.

And – just like with Jesus, to honor these men is an action of the deepest of humiliation. I must take the blame upon myself. I must be silent. I must speak Christ into and concerning them.

Even now, when I try to write a brief paragraph describing each, I find that I am still giving voice to contempt.

Let me state, then, even more briefly, those four things, which I must do to make sense to you of all of this. – (1) The hard forehead of Calvin’s theology, (2) the perverse delight of the flesh to offend, (3) the shallow spin of “amen, amen” that hides a love for the meaningless things of this world, and (4) a low-grade bullying trying to “fix” other people’s outward performance. And except for the first, the complete inability to say, “Daniel, I was wrong, please forgive me.”

To two I sent a letter attempting to share my own hurt, attempting to do so without placing blame. My attempts were unsuccessful. To the two most offensive communications, I replied with one short line, “Brother, you are as Jesus to me.”

Let me place all this into God’s purposes through me into this world, now, in the completion of this age. God gave me these four that I might do as Jesus did, that I might place myself beneath of them for their sakes, that I might carry them inside myself with fervent joy, stumbling with me all the way through the darkness and into LIFE.

My decision is 1 John 3:16, God’s entrance with power into this world. – By this we know love, because He set forth His soul for us, for our sakes, and we also are committed to setting forth our souls for the sake of our brothers and sisters.

But let me continue with the altar of God.

A Dream to Be Shattered
When God first spoke to me concerning Blair Valley in the winter of 1992-93, ~ “Blair Valley is your home” ~, He also began to shape in my heart a new view of Christian Community. This new view was different at the center and core of community from how I had known it up until then in the move fellowship. I have called that new view “the community of my heart,” an understanding that grew in me until I was able to put it down on paper in Symmorphy V: Life.

In writing this account from then forward, I attempted to give expression to that growing “dream” for a Community of Christ that would be an expression of the true essence of Jesus. I included extra chapters, just to put in front of you my ongoing thoughts concerning this dream.

In late 2012, when I wrote “My Vision” in response to John Gray’s wonderful word on “Lazarus, Come Forth,” I placed before my readers the thought of an actual return to the Blair Valley property and what it would cost to make it real. I shared that, as we had left that service, God spoke to me, ~ “I will finish the Word I have planted inside of you.” ~ This was a promise I perceived to mean the fulfillment of the community of my heart.

Through all these years everything I did and everything I wrote was for one purpose only, our return to community. I am a man of certainty and of commitment. You can see that in this move we were making, from Fernbank to our present home in Shepherd, a place that could become community was the only thing in my mind.

There were two problems, however. The first problem was that much of my thoughts and expressions were, in fact, the imagination of my mind. Yes, it was imagination coming out from what God had planted inside of me, nonetheless, it was, for all practical purposes, useless, and even a blockage to the real.

That is not the entire equation, however. Let me include the other part.

I have stated emphatically from the first that I sent out the Christ Our Life letter in November of 2008, that I write for two purposes. My first purpose is to know God, and my second purpose is to call forth a people who know God with whom I can walk daily, that is a Christ Community where my family and I could find our home.

I can say as of this year of our Lord, 2022, my first purpose is fulfilled beyond my wildest expectations. And yet, the first purpose cannot really be complete until the second is also fulfilled. I cannot know God without walking together with other believers of like precious faith inside a shared life together.

Yet I have believed, from the afternoon of August 6, 2006 on, that if I teach people to speak Christ their life, they will be TRANSFORMED, and out from that fruit of Christ, actual Communities of Christ would form.

That was sixteen years ago, sixteen long years in which no such thing has happened.

Yet, as Alexander Pope pointed out, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

By the first of June, 2021, we had found the property where Maureen and I presently live. I want to share with you a letter I sent to a brother, though I will not include any names. See this letter only as an expression of my own heart.

~~~
The real question, I think, is what do you want? I know for myself that when all the swirl of thoughts and emotions becomes insufficient, and when I reach deep into the desire of my heart, that is where I find the Lord.

For me, I think, the issue is more centered around what I need. Let me explain.

We have found a property, 1.5 acres on the bottom side of the little town of Shepherd, up 59 from Splendora, where Kyle lives. The land is sloped, which is cool; it has a sandy loam soil, which is great for gardening. It is filled with huge Magnolia trees, which are still shedding their fragrance. The house is cute and comfortable. The shop is just right for James’s tools. It doesn’t show in the pictures, but there is a single-wide mobile home just below the house. It may not be for sale, we will find out. Nonetheless, the hook ups for it are all in place, and if it were removed, it would be simple to put another unit there.

There is a spot for a third unit on the property, but other than that, it would not suffice for a larger community, but it is what is available, what we can afford, and what would meet our present needs. At the same time, there are many adjoining properties that are vacant and which the owners could be willing to sell. This is entirely outside of the high growth Houston area and the price of empty land here is not being driven up. BUT – I am unable to predict the future.

So – what I want to do is to garden and raise chickens; that is, I like the idea of turning this 1.5 acres into a garden/orchard oasis that would provide much of our food during difficult times. Yet that is where my need comes in. The potential and the newness would inspire me to at least want to try to do the work. On my own, however, I know it could not last long. There is a disconnect in my psyche and I can’t bridge it myself.

What I need is someone very like yourself who is enthusiastic about the same vision for the property and who shares the love of the same word and knowledge of God. When there is another man out there working, that disconnect in my psyche is bridged and I can actually go out and put in a few hours a day. And the truth is, I’ve been like this my whole life.

There are three needs that I have, then. The first is companionship in fellowship, for the same disconnect happens between my desire for regular weekly services and the doing of it. I know from years of knowing myself that someone like you would provide just enough to enable me to initiate such services. My children and wife need this also, especially Kyle.

My second need is physical health. I need physical work, at least a few hours a day, else I don’t think my body can stay healthy. And there is no physical work I would like to do better than to garden and raise chickens on a property such as this. It may sound pathetic, but I can’t change myself. With a fellow worker like yourself, I am able to enjoy work; otherwise, the disconnect is too great for any enthusiasm to endure.

My third need is to stay alive, with my family, over the next several years. I know that people do not comprehend what things will soon be like. The truth is, staying alive is a lot of work, work I could help with if I’m not by myself, but I think only frustration and rapid decline otherwise.

And so, there is a place here for you, work for you to do, and a fellowship for you to be a part of. The question for you is, what do you want, not what do we need.

It could be that the Lord has appointed you for such a task as this – specifically, to help keep Daniel and his family alive over the next several years. If that were true, I believe it would be a worthy ministry, beyond just saving my own skin. I can’t even promise a full Christian Community; that would take at least a third person or family unrelated to either of us. Yet our life together would operate to some degree as community, something we would work out together.

Maureen and I, then, invite you to move to Shepherd, Texas (provided we close on this property) and to be a part of our fellowship together in the word and in the garden.

If the single-wide home does not remain, we would have a small bedroom in our home until we obtained a unit for the space, just below the fixed house. It is important to us that you have your own place so that you feel that you belong. If you chose to come, I would help you move, including renting a truck to bring your stuff down.

Yet the bottom line is what do you want? The truth is, your decision is free entirely from our needs and must answer the desire of the Lord inside of you. If you determine that your place is in (your present location) then we leave you free and blessed in the Lord. Yet if this invitation touches something deep inside of you, then be assured that we here need you and your help even more.

~~~

Let me comment on this letter before continuing. First, nothing in this letter was spoken as a whim. I knew the cost, and I was fully prepared to pay that cost.

Then, Maureen thought this sounded like I need a “savior.” Yet I am absolutely convinced that God NEVER intends of us to become “super-heroes” all by ourselves. That since “I can do all things inside of Christ,” I ought to produce everything needed out from myself. No – God intends that we NEED one another. I know that I need other brothers and sisters walking together with me daily that I might know the Lord and that I might live.

Finally, I include this letter because I must. This letter sums up forty-five years of desire, of saying, “Yes, Lord,” at every point along the way. In it I open myself up, making myself more vulnerable and exposed than anything I have ever written to anyone. This was the first tangible expression of “I will walk with a people who know You,” since we left Blair Valley. This is me.

June 9, 2021, then, was the most difficult day since I left move of God community, for there  was no response to anything that I wrote. I was caught, through that day and through many days after, in a deep sense of shame, that speaking Christ your life accomplishes nothing, that it transforms no one, that these fifteen years of writing to know the Lord and to call forth a people who know the Lord was one big waste of time. I agonized under the thought to remove all I have written from public availability.

Yet it was also a deep personal humiliation. Let me explain.

I now realize that among the many thousands of people who committed their lives to the word Sam Fife preached was a higher percentage of people of honor and integrity than can be found in any other group. When a reader suggested that there are no people of honor and integrity in the church, I hit back hard. That’s the one thing on which I will not be silent, speaking evil falsely against the Church.

Yet through these many days of great failure in June 2021, I thought, “Have I drawn no one of integrity and honor to the word that I share? Does my Asperger’s present such an awful outward face that no one true is drawn to me?”

Please understand, the same word God spoke to Elijah applies also to me, “I have ‘seven thousand’ who have not bowed their knee to pretending.” That means that I never actually lost sight of the fact that there are those dear ones who are people of integrity who do read my letters. I am sharing only the depths of what I felt at the time, and nothing of what I did or meant.

After a few days, as the pain and humiliation lessened slightly, I began to do what I always do. “God, what is Your purpose in sharing Yourself with me in this way?”

If I Perish, I Perish
Then, I think it might have been on Tuesday, June 15, as I was considering once again the next session of the Zoom teaching, the second lesson on Esther titled “If I Perish, I Perish,” that the Lord first entered my darkness with His Word.

He began by enabling me to see my own fault, that I had been imposing my own mental daydreams on my readers. I began to realize that maybe I was holding others to a higher standard as I had known integrity in the move fellowship, and not that level in which Christ Jesus living as them had carried them through thus far.

In that moment the Lord showed me, out from Esther’s story, a level of covenant with Him beyond anything I had known before.

Let me put it into human words. “Son, if you will surrender to me all your practice of imagining your future in any way, including your desire for community, then I will be intercession through you for the sake of our Church.” – “God, my Father, I give You this practice of daydreaming about what could be our next step together and about how a Community of Christ might happen, that You might remove it from me. In doing so, You, my God, will be mighty through me for the sake of others.”

“If I Perish, I Perish,” was possibly the most life-changing thing I have ever written. By the next Sunday morning, June 20, the Lord had restored my heart sufficient to share again in the Zoom meetings and to speak these things out loud to the precious brothers and sisters gathered there. Here are just a few excerpts from that lesson, along with the prayer we prayed together afterwards.

~~~  This was no light matter for Esther. Her enemy had the ear of the king and the law on his side. The chances of failure were so high that to stand for her people was a choice to die. Her final statement, “If I perish; I perish,” was no light thing. It was as costly as anything given personally in history. Esther had little hope of success.

We sang it in the move – “If I perish, I perish, but I’m going to see the King.” On the one hand, we had no idea what those words meant. On the other hand, I knew hundreds of people in that fellowship who paid every price to be part of what God is doing in the earth. I now understand how rare that quality is.

It became clear a couple of years ago that God has not anointed me to minister the word I share to potentially interested believers. It has now become clear that God has not anointed me to be the beginning of a Community of Christ. This second is probably the greatest sorrow of my life.

To “go in before the King” for the sake of God’s people is the costliest thing I have ever faced. Yet this is what Jesus is sharing with me in the present time.

You and I will never know the Father unless we walk together with others of like precious faith. Indeed, I realize how foolish I am to continue writing as if I know anything. Yet God has not anointed me to gather a community together around me, though I have sought for it with tears for 23 years.

Only one thing is left for me. And that is to join with Jesus in the loss of everything, that I might win LIFE for the sake of our brethren. I have no wisdom; I have no strength. But I do have the Lord Jesus, my Savior, arising always inside of me and showing Himself to me through all the course of my life.

We are called for such a time as this, and God has given us a very specific task to do.
If God has not anointed me to minister this word to His Church, and if He has not anointed me to begin a Christ Community, then what has He anointed me to do?

I am beginning to understand the critical importance of the entrance of Word into the human sphere, into the voice of humans alive in the present time hearing and speaking in agreement with that Word. And so God has anointed me to find that Word arising inside my heart and coming to me out from the heavens, and He has anointed us together to believe and to speak that Word inside our world.

Let us Pray. I don’t know if you wish to join with me in this prayer, for it is a prayer out from the loss of all things dear in this world. If you wish only to listen, that is also the grace of God. The seriousness resting upon us is greater than that resting upon Esther.

“God, our Father, You are mighty and fearsome. We do not stand inside Your presence lightly, for we know the great costliness of Your Salvation. We ask first for ourselves, Father, with strong crying and tears, as Jesus did, that You would save us from death, and especially from the death of holding contempt for others.

 “You who carry all, we stand here inside Your presence as Esther stood before the king. Your people, O God, are under overwhelming attack from an enemy they do not comprehend. We know, Father, that You spoke the consequences of sin into our world. We know that Your Son, this Jesus who lives inside of us, crafted, by Himself, all cleansing away of sin. And we know, Father, that You now speak through Jesus inside of us a new Word, a Word of Life for the sake of our brothers and sisters who have been fatally wounded. But we know as well, Father, that Jesus must find faith in the earth.

 “It is for one reason only, O God, our Father, that we would be that faith of Jesus in this earth and that is that we might know You, through knowing Jesus Sent as He reveals His mighty Salvation through us.

“Father, we would SHARE, all through our experience and in every practicality, the meaning and power of the cleansing-away wrought by Jesus, that our brethren might live and not die. Lord Jesus, we would know the full meaning of the Ekenosis, of this Redeeming God coming through us, making us part of His poured-out Love.

 “We know, Lord Jesus, that the redemption of our brothers and sisters will cost us everything, as it did You. Yet as we suffer the loss of everything we value in this world, Lord Jesus, we are absolutely confident that everything is being turned by us together into the salvation of Your Church.

“Lord Jesus, it is You alone who causes us to share with You the same loss of everything, and the same faith that everything we are and every circumstance coming our way is absolutely and only coming out from our Father. And this narrow and confined place You now share with us, Lord Jesus, we know that it is Father’s Heart.” ~~~

Yet out from this experience with God would come the most wondrous revelation of God-with-us coming through me into the human experience, coming up in April of 2022, a Word that would change me, along with many others, forever.

Placing Everything upon the Altar
I now know the altar of God and the offering of “a sweet-smelling aroma.” I want to share both the beginning of this new fire, now upon the altar of God, and its completion in July through September 2022 as I am finally able to write this chapter, the chapter that is the “climax,” the meaning and purpose of my life.

Through July and August of this year, 2022, I watched two mystery shows on TV with an Asperger’s character as the lead role in each. The first was The Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the second was Astrid. The first is South Korean and the second French. In both cases, the actresses genuinely portrayed Asperger’s differing characteristics with great skill. The only lack, I think, came from script writers who did not really understand such things from inside of them.

What I love about Attorney Woo was how free she was to express her “weirdness” in public, to do her little dance, especially as she entered a place, and to allow herself to be autistic even in the courtroom. This was beautiful to me, though it is not the normal story of those who are Asperger’s. In fact, I loved her “dance” so much that I wept tears, for my severe efforts to hide my Asperger’s expressions over years, and especially in community, always drained me of much strength.

Astrid was more realistic towards the pain all who are Asperger’s bear all their lives. The story-line included flashbacks to her adolescence in school. She was smarter than all the others, yet they mocked her savagely for her differences, and she had no defense. The story-line also included her joining with a circle of those who were Asperger’s who met regularly to help each other through life.

The great grief of all who are Asperger’s is the constant attempts of others, low-grade bullies, who think that they ought to “fix” the outward expressions of an Asperger’s person so that we might “behave” more appropriately, more “like” them. This practice is relentless, especially in the church, and even more especially in Christian community. It is what makes a place impossible to enter. In fact, it typically comes out that if I want to be like Jesus, then I must be more like them.

Don’t get me wrong. There is an expression, spoken in kindness, that gently guides an Asperger’s person into knowing how to relate with others. Attorney Woo’s father was good at that, instructing Woo that she could not talk about whales, her obsession, while at work. More than that, if I have done something to hurt another, and they or someone else points that out in the kindness of Jesus and in private, then that also is good.

The need to “fix” me, especially in public, is something entirely different.

But the most wonderful thing about Astrid’s story was the portrayal of those “normal” people in her life who were to her just like Don Howat and others were to me. The main one of those was an outgoing and very expressive woman, named Raphaëlle, who was the lead detective in the show. She placed herself as Astrid’s friend, and inside that friendship, Astrid could venture out into public places that otherwise would be only unbearable pain.

And inside that protective friendship, Astrid could give the brilliant abilities she had to give, a gift she could have given no other way. This was my life; this was Abel Ramirez and Don Howat to me. This was also that safe place for me as “the teacher” in the classroom.

It was Raphaëlle’s birthday. Astrid asked an Asperger’s friend what she should give her as a present. The friend suggested – give her something that conveys what she means to you.

Astrid braved entering a public pub to offer her gift to “Raph.” When Raph opened it, she was astonished to find a thimble. She gulped and said “Thank you,” but she had no idea what it might mean.

Later, when it was just the two of them, Raph asked Astrid, “Why the thimble?” Let me paraphrase the answer.

“When someone really wants to sew something, they are faced with a painful task, for a needle is needed and it is sharp and often draws blood. Then they take a thimble and place it on their finger. The needle is no longer able to jab and they can finish sewing things together. You are my thimble, Raph, for your friendship protects me from the pain. That way I can go into a crime scene with you and help weave together the answer without suffering pain.”

That thimble became one of Raphaëlle’s most precious possessions.

I went out to water my fruit trees right after I watched that episode, on August 17. As I was meditating on the Lord, I thought, “Jesus, You are my Friend; You are my thimble, just  like Don Howat was my thimble. It is Your friendship that protects me so that I can give to others all You have given me to give, without placing myself into pain.”

When I left the move fellowship, I said, “Jesus, I will know You MORE REAL than Don Howat ever could be.” In this moment, twenty-four years later, it was TRUE.

I wept much as I watched these two shows, for the Lord Jesus took me into my own autistic experiences and showed me that it was GOOD, and that He and I together made all my difficulty to be effective goodness for others.

It is only out from that moment that I am able to write this chapter.

I know that each person bears much suffering out from different reasons and in different ways. I also know that we cannot know one another’s pain unless we truly know our own. The pain of autism is different from pain as known by many. By describing my own pain, I am in no way diminishing anything you also have borne. Rather, I am, with Jesus, sharing myself with you.

I want to go next to that sleepless night when I stumbled into my bed in overwhelming pain over the terrible accusations against God that are Calvin’s theology.

In that moment, lying there on my bed, I knew nothing of my present understanding. I was in pain, from the top of my head to the bottom of my gut, but especially through my heart. This is not an emotional or a demonic pain, no demon was in my heavens. This pain carries no bitterness or unforgiveness. Yet it remains. In my twenties, it would have ripped me apart without slacking for a week or more. In my fifties, it would have lasted about forty-eight hours without abatement.

Only one thing ever diminishes that pain, and that is the words of my Bible, the words of the gospel, entering into me, that I might know my Savior. And so it has been since I was nineteen.

As I lay there in the dark, I did what God has taught me to do. With my heart wide open in spite of the pain, with tears on my face, I drew my brother into my heart, upon the Mercy Seat, upon the Blood, and there I joined him together with my Father inside the pain and confusion of my soul, and I set him utterly free of me inside of God.

Except, I took it a step further into God than I had known before. I said, “God my Father, I am willing to stumble through the pain and darkness with You for my brother’s sake because I know that You will raise me out from death and into LIFE. – And You will also raise him into LIFE along with me!” I repeated that same declaration often through the night.

The pain continued, however, and to this day I place him inside of God, that through my pain offered in tears, my brother might come to know that Jesus is his only life.

The first part of God’s completion in me is the Completion of His Word. Now, this second part of God completing in me His purpose and sending had begun, and it began inside of FIRE. This is the Completion of God’s entrance into creation.

If I were to share, blow by blow, the extent and meaning of the pain coming against me over the last two years from these four brothers in Jesus, you would be shocked. For over a year, I wept every single day over the brother’s response to my invitation to community. I pleaded with him and with the others, anonymously but regularly, in the lessons I wrote, seemingly to no avail. I searched out every way that I could share how I also had failed (bringing in that time that I lied to Brother Jim Fant, for instance), so that I might give them a door into saying, “Daniel, I was WRONG, please forgive me,” and to add NOTHING to it.

Sometime, maybe in January of 2022, I was driving home with my son James. It was after dark. He said something to me that was cruel and awful. I felt inside that I had done enough for him and that now I no longer wanted to maintain a relationship. We drove on in silence for awhile, feeling a savage barrier.

Then, James said to me, “What I said was wrong; I should not have said that.”

I want men, especially,  to understand what happened inside of me the very moment that those words entered. – ALL sense of a barrier VANISHED from my soul, and I was free to relate with my son inside of love and joy as I normally do. I felt better, even, than if those previous words had never been spoken. I felt the great value of a costly koinonia.

You can be “right” or you can be a friend, but you CANNOT be both. It’s called integrity.
Let me return to June of 2021. I have titled this chapter, “A New Altar.” It was “new” only in the sense that now I finally accepted its full meaning. This was the same Altar of Incense preached into me by Sam Fife and others in my early years in the move fellowship.

“Lay your Isaac down,” became now, “Lay down upon My altar your desire to bring forth a community of Christ in your present life. Surrender it all to Me and think no more of it.”
Christ life is life together; it has always been life together. I cannot know God except together with a people who know God walking daily together. To give up the dream of returning to the Community of my heart in the present time is to abandon 45 years of earnest commitment, of desire, and of deep travail in the presence of God.

But all of that now seemed to be nothing more than hot air and straw.

Yet to abandon the thought that our new property at Shepherd could be a community of Christ was to me the loss of everything my life meant.

Yet my grief waited only on the next word from Jesus, and when that Word came, laying it all down upon the altar, as Much Afraid did in Hind’s Feet on High Places, was my only option. There was no decision to be made, for my decision was made when I was 22.

And so, for the first time in 45 years, I stopped thinking about community, not because I have abandoned anything, but because I have placed it all, with myself, utterly into God, my Father, and He will raise me up. God will give me the Community of my heart, and I will sing for joy.

In the place of my own somewhat imaginary “dream” of starting a new community, my focus and zeal turned fully now upon the entire Church of Jesus Christ all across this planet, now in her hour of greatest need. I had been using the figure of 100 million and more believers in Jesus all across the earth. Our prayers for the entire Church in the Zoom meetings went to a whole new level of confidence and specificity.

All of my life belongs to the Lord Jesus, and He and I together turn everything into blessing and goodness for you, for your sake, dear reader. You also are utterly inside of Jesus; you have never been anywhere else. Place the Lord Jesus Christ upon your entire life, even as I have done, and you will know just as much that your whole life has never been anything other than one seamless story of Christ.

Finally, as I shared, my attempts to write this chapter, through July, August, and September of 2022, threw me into the same confrontations with awfulness inside myself as I had known in the actual interactions. I did not know how to write about these things.

Then, Maureen shared with me the anger of a family member towards me for including them in my life story and making it public. This really frightened me. Out of this fear, I wrote a lesson titled “The Terror of Light,” and inserted it into Studies in 1 John. Later, I removed it, because I had written before I received God’s final answer.

Yet what I shared at the end of a recent lesson on Zoom, this August 21, 2022, and the prayer we prayed together came out from this “terror.” I wrote this in response to this dilemma of needing to finish my life story, but being unable to do so. I share it here to convey a small measure of the difficulty of knowing how to write of these things and to show my reaching for, but not quite having, God’s ANSWER.

~~~ Our Prayer. There is so much in this lesson that could direct our prayers, but this time, I would ask you to pray for me. I have completed my life story except for what now appears to be the most difficult time-period to write about, the twelve months from December 2020 to December 2021. Through this time, God has led me to give my all for the sake of His Church in intercession, yet the mechanism through which that came is a whole series of events filled with autistic pain and inability greater than most in my life.

It is no problem to take the reader into my own pain and failure, the problem lies in the cause of those things from my interactions with others. Yet this is the meaning of my whole life and of God’s sending of me.

Let’s Pray Together. “Oh Father, how do we give an account of our lives inside of Your presence without giving hurt to those with whom we interact? How do we reveal Your intercession through us without sharing the deep hurt that others have caused?

“Lord Jesus, You are my Friend, close and real, and You protect me from all hurt and dishonesty. Yet these are also my friends, no matter what I feel like in the moment and no matter what foolish mistakes they and I have made. Lord Jesus, how do we walk together inside of the light? How can there be light inside of an unwillingness to be wrong?

“There is no darkness in You, oh Father. Nothing can be hidden. Yet You have sent us to cover one another and your entire Church. Father, Your Love is inside of us. It is so.” ~~~

Over the next couple of weeks after this prayer, I went through many severe downs as I attempted to write these things. In the end, I have chosen to unveil my own depths of autistic pain so that you might know the Lord Jesus Christ as He is, but to cover, at the same time, my brothers and sisters.

So, how is it that I am writing this now, in the quiet joy and certainty of this Tabernacles season in late September, 2022, and in the full personification of “I Set Forth My Soul,” the completion of the Day of Atonement?

In every instance of about three month’s time, in every feeling of awfulness, in every sense of hopelessness, in every wailing cry, in every moment of heart-stopping fear, I knew myself only inside of my Father, I placed God as sharing Himself with me, in all this pain.

And over and over, I said to my God, “Father, take this pain as Your own, and use it to deliver, not only these precious brethren, but also Your entire Church in this hour of her greatest need. God, I give You my pain; give me our Church.”

And we also are committed to setting forth our souls for our brothers and sisters. – The altar of God and the offering of a sweet-smelling aroma. The Day of Atonement fulfilled in the Church.

Setting Forth My Soul
I want to pray, now, together with you, dear reader, for I must bring all of this into God my Father, that He might be glorified through all my stumbling failure.

“God, my Father, I drink Your Cup together with You for the sake of my brothers and sisters that I might share Your Heart.

“Father, I know that Jesus has removed from me my acts of injustice towards my teachers in junior high and high school, placing them into His empty grave. Yet these three men, Mr. Philips, Mr. Stroup, and the chemistry student teacher remain in my heart, even with their offensiveness towards me as I perceived it. I welcome each one of them into this wondrous Fellowship I enjoy with You, Father, even with those actions and words that I perceived as hurt. Let my willingness to share Jesus’ suffering be an open door and a short path for each one of them into Your knowledge and joy. If You so chose, I am ready to walk daily with each of them as they are the Lord Jesus to me.

“God, my Father, I open my heart wide towards the brothers whose words and actions towards me over the last couple of years have been difficult, at least as I have perceived it. I humble myself for Your sake, and place myself beneath of them to lift them up, together with You. In every way that I was and am wrong, let me be wrong, with no need for self-defense. Let my open heart inside of You become to each of them a path of Life, a run into Joy, a knowing of Your Fellowship with them. Whether they walk with me in daily life together or not, I receive them with all their human frailties, whatever private pain I might bear. I receive each one as the Lord Jesus to me.

“Father, I pray for each one of my readers, including those who are reading this in the present moment. Use my words, use my life, to open to each one Yourself, Your Heart, Your Joy, Your Life. Embrace each one inside Your Heart, together with me. Cause them to know all of Your fulness filling them full and flowing out from them as Rivers of Life everywhere they go.

“I ask these things inside of Jesus’ name and for Your sake, Oh Father, that You might be glorified, and that Your Jerusalem, the Church of Jesus Christ, might be a praise and a joy to all throughout all creation.”