42. Out of the Furnace

© 2021 Daniel Yordy
June 2008 – May 2009

The last chapter ended with “withstanding all assault.” This chapter begins with “withstanding all assault.” I cannot express too greatly the relentless awfulness that assailed me through all these months, the crying, wailing voices of accusation and despair. Yet none of these voices were on the inside of me, as I had once known them. My own speaking of Christ my life was on the inside of me and all these voices were outside. They were close, they were all around, but they were NOT me, nor did I ever give them heed, not for one moment.

Now, all these voices were of three larger types of accusation. The strongest in my ears was that I had no right, that I was exalting myself against God. The second was against Jesus, that these words I was speaking were not actually He in my heart and mouth, that they were just words and that speaking Christ personal as me was gross hypocrisy, for such claims are visibly untrue. And the third was against myself, that I am a failure and a loser, that I so fall short of God.

I would not hear them, and I kept my ears closed against the screams against me by speaking the Jesus Secret without fail. Christ is my life; I have no other life. Christ is all there is in me.

The Summer of 2008
This June, Maureen’s mother, Roberta Mack, was celebrating her 80^th birthday. Sister Roberta had been diagnosed with cancer some years before, but had continued in faith in God and it had not progressed. At this point, however, the decline was showing itself, not outwardly, but in weariness. Maureen and her sisters wanted us all to celebrate this time with them at Bowens Mill.

This would be our last trip in the green van. We drove along the Gulf Coast through Mobile, Pensacola and Tallahassee on our way to Bowens Mill. We stopped to enjoy the white sands of the Florida beaches.

When we arrived at the Ridge, Sister Roberta was still doing reasonably well. She and Claude were no longer in their little trailer. They had a small double-wide across the way from the teaching trailer, about half-way between the Tabernacle and the top of the slope down towards the school. Right behind their trailer was a nice large single-wide with a sitting room porch added on. This is where we stayed, in the large master bedroom with the kids in the rooms on the other end.

We had a good time visiting with Claude and Roberta and with Maureen’s sisters and Matthew. Our children were good friends with Breanna, but had not had much time to spend with her during their growing up years. These several days at the Ridge were an adventure they shared with Breanna. I gave copies of The Jesus Secret to Claude and Roberta and to Jim and Joyce Fant. I was able to share life from the present word of Christ with Jim and Joyce, and I shared a devotion with the whole family at the Ridge that was well-received.

I liked the fact the my kitchen was still going strong, fully enjoyed by the family. At the same time they had added two wings to the front of the dining hall to allow for bathrooms and for a nicer family area beyond what had been a crowded and narrow dining room.

I have one memory from this visit that embarrasses me even now anytime I think of it. I had just watched and enjoyed the silly animated movie, Surfs Up. I suggested that the family watch it in the family area of the tabernacle, which we did of an evening. The problem was that it was not appropriate in that setting, and by the end everyone but Claude and Roberta had left. Yet I have learned to place the Lord Jesus upon such foolish mistakes, for He shares everything with me.

A Business Idea
On our way back to Houston, we headed towards Dallas first in order to visit with Uncle Werner and Aunt Erma Honsalek. While we were in their home, Uncle Werner gave me his entire set of the Great Books of the Western World, from Homer through Freud. I had owned this set before, given to me when I was teaching at Bowens Mill, but I had sold it when God turned me around and forbade me entrance to Blueberry with all those books. Now, God returned it to me separately from any false identity in me, and I have enjoyed using those books as an important resource all through my writing.

On our way home from Dallas to Houston, driving south on I-45, I was thinking.

Let me explain. I love to drive, for driving keeps my brain quietly occupied in such a way that I am then free to think about anything and everything. At the same time, driving in the early part of the day, while drinking coffee, inspires my mind into seeing things clearly.

I wanted to start an Internet business so that I could support my family from home without needing to tie myself to employment situations that were hostile to my heart and strength. Along with the copywriting course I had taken,  including a second course that was even more useful than the first, I was reading Michael Masterson, the author of both courses, and his approaches to business, which were solid and good.

And so, as I was driving, three things came together in my mind, my desire to teach teenagers, the things I was learning from Michael Masterson, and my desire to apply what I had learned from the copywriting courses. What I saw, as they came together, was “Micro-Business for HighSchoolers,” an online course designed to establish teenagers in a business of their own inside of which they would learn many practical things as part of their schooling. It became what I would call, “business-driven learning.” I excitedly hammered out the details of this potential business in my mind on the rest of the drive home.

This online course would be massive, extending over a full school year, as a full high school course, with teaching and practice. And from day one, it would guide the teenager in the start-up and expansion of their own money-making business. Every facet of business expertise including business math and writing, marketing and Internet, production and practice, writing a business plan, and so on, every skill was to be developed step by step, even while the business had begun.

In other words, the motivation to learn would be the successful making of money through the student’s own business. Here is my one-line description. – Micro-Business for HighSchoolers is a nine-month course - always updated - that leads teenagers through the process of developing real-world businesses, while they master many of their high school learning objectives, and bring profit and value to their world. –

I went right to work on writing this course as soon as we were home. It was too big of a job just for me, and so before school started, I had hired three other writers through an online freelance website to help me in writing specific lessons. I obtained funding for this endeavor through a new credit card, expecting that it would pay for itself as well as support my family.

By the time the fall semester at Family Christian had begun, the first parts of Micro-Business for HighSchoolers were completed and the business idea was well on its way. At the same time, I would write about the spiritual side of this experience in my first Christ Our Life letter.

My Classes for 2008-2009
I was moved to another classroom for this year, the one nearest the front main door in the upstairs. This year I taught eleventh and twelfth grade English, British Literature this time. The group we had taken to Dickens on the Strand were now the eleventh graders and my son Kyle and his class were the seniors. Then, I taught tenth grade English and world history, and ninth grade English and geography. The ninth grade group included my daughter, Johanna. I must have had another class, but I don’t remember what it was.

Mr. Anderson was suspicious about my beliefs concerning world history, that America was not the apex of God’s dealings with mankind, and so he stood outside the door, unknown to me, through my world history introductory session. He must have been satisfied because he allowed me to continue.

I really appreciated having Kyle and Johanna in my classroom, for those two saw a side of their dad that they would not have known otherwise. I am very good in the classroom with teenagers, but my abilities there are not duplicated anywhere else.

The prior spring, I had asked Mr. Anderson about using a different set of books for my English classes, books that would have been much more useful to their learning than the ABeka grammar books. He did not grant my request, but proceeded to buy the ABeka stuff anyway. I brought one of the grammar books to the start of each of my three classes and read a couple of lines from the first chapter. “We are required to use these books,” I said, “and so we have.” That book went back to the book closet and there they sat on the shelves.

The thing is, I wanted to teach these students how to write and filling their time with a grammar book means they would never learn to write.

I really enjoyed teaching British Literature; it allows for such a variety of study and enriching projects. I had taught my writing course the year before to my upper level groups. For that reason, this year I took them through writing a short story. This was an incredibly fun task, an exercise which taught me a lot about teaching writing. And after helping them work their stories to completion, I had some awesome stories. The best one was a western, written by Chey Wilshire. I encouraged him to consider a career of writing stories.

I took the ninth grade group through my writing course. The best writer I have ever taught was the young black man from C.E. King who went on to Harvard Medical School. The second best writer was my daughter, Johanna. I have tried to convince her of that ever since, but she won’t believe me. She claims she doesn’t “like to” write.

I read Watership Down by Richard Adams each Thursday to the ninth and tenth grade groups. That’s a long book. My son, Kyle, has assured me that it was, in fact, a “horror story,” but that all my students were entranced by my reading of it. It’s not a horror story to me, except when I watch the animated version of it. Nonetheless, it is one of the best portrayals of true leadership in world literature.

With my juniors and seniors, I read some out from the British Lit pieces we were studying. I also pulled out my poetry folder from teaching poetry in the Blueberry School and taught the upper grades a writing poetry unit. Again, this was a tremendous experience for them and for me.

Mr. Anderson questioned Josiah and Kai, who were in my tenth grade world history class, as to whether I was actually teaching them substance. You see, I do not teach rote learning, the memorization of endless and soon-forgotten facts. I teach the story and meaning of history and the student work is always writing essays. Grading essays is a lot of work, but it’s the only way real learning takes place. Josiah and Kai gave Mr. Anderson proof that I was, in fact, teaching them from the book and assured him that they were learning more from me than any other teacher they had.

This underlines, then, a growing problem for me through this school year. I teach by how young people actually learn, and not by the rote, “fill their heads with facts and quick answers to a simplistic worksheet” method, like the popular ABeka curriculum requires. At the same time, I respect my students and treat them as real persons. I had between 40 and 50 students who had never had a teacher like me. It is they who will say that they learned more from me than any teacher they ever had. They  were not accustomed to a teacher who respected them and who taught them to think critically and not just accept what they were told.

A black girl in the tenth grade group had borrowed a book from my desk. When I needed it in class, I could not find it. She assured me that she had returned it, but since I did not see it, in my frustration, I basically “accused” her of losing it, in front of the class. When they left to go on to their next class, in the quiet of waiting for the next group to come in, I paused long enough to discover that, indeed, there it was, among some other books on my desk, just as she had said. In my consternation, I sat  down immediately and wrote her a note, “Teneshia, I did find the book on my desk. I apologize for saying those things to you. I was wrong. Would you please forgive me.” I asked the first young man coming in to take it over to their room and give it  to her.

I learned later that she cried after she read the note. The thing is, most teachers just don’t do things like that, especially towards a black girl who was sometimes a trouble-maker.

I have learned only recently that at least two of my students at this time, Paris Weber and Jenna Zurovec, Johanna’s close friend, had both hated English and school prior to my being their teacher, but have now devoted their lives to teaching. It is always an astonishment to me, but I have found the same report from many over the years.

Hurricane Ike
School had been started for only a few weeks when Hurricane Ike headed our way. Hurricane Ike was huge in size, but not as powerful as Hurricane Rita had been. Ike was a Category 2 when it came on shore at Galveston. School had closed down and everyone was at home. The officials instructed the people to sit this one out, since it was not destructive like Rita might have been and the millions of people trying to escape in their cars would guarantee a greater disaster. The people along the coast were asked to evacuate, however, but 80 some people on the Bolivar Peninsula to the east of Galveston chose to ride it out. They were on the side of the heavy storm surge hitting the coast, for the eye came right over Galveston. All the buildings on the Bolivar Peninsula were washed away, and all those people died. But the mainstream press never reported it anywhere, although alternate media did the very next day, with pictures of bodies scattered across wet fields. It was years later before I found the written confirmation that the alternate media was right.

We boarded up all the doors and windows and sat it out. A Category 2 is severe, but the roofs of the homes throughout the southeast side of Harris County mostly stayed on. The only problem areas were along Galveston Bay, where the storm surge broke the houses. Josiah Greer’s family lost their home, but most of the other student’s homes were fine.

Our roof sustained a small amount of damage. At the same time, the electrical power went out for everyone and no one had power for a couple of weeks. The school remained closed for this reason. In the mad rush of preparation for the hurricane, however, I had bought a generator from Home Depot. Thus we were able to keep our refrigerators going, and were basically fine.

What I did not have, however, was Internet connection with the several free-lance writers who were working with me on my “Micro-Business for HighSchoolers” course. For that reason, I drove over to San Marcos, Texas where I could rent a motel room for a couple of nights and have Internet hookup. It was late in the evening as I approached San Marcos, and I was driving too fast. I tried to slow down, but I was weary and before I knew it, my speed had gone back up as I went through one of Texas’s many little towns who make their money just this way. I was stopped by a cop and given a ticket. The thing is, though, I was grateful because the experience woke me up and may have saved my life.

In the motel room, I continued working with my writers and on the Micro-Business course. Because the topics of the course varied considerably, from accounting to understanding business, to practical shop tips, and so on, I had found three writers with differing skills. One was a college shop teacher from Michigan. One was a lady from Tennessee who had insisted she was good at writing general business concepts, and the other was a lady from California, named Karen Corey.

Of the three, however, only Karen, who was skilled with accounting and similar topics, sent me material that was at the standard I required for my course, with only a normal amount of editing on my part. The man from Michigan, who was a shop teacher of all things, could not write anything practical. After a few useless pieces, I paid him and let him go. The lady from Tennessee I had asked to write about such things as finding a good business idea and finding market niches, etc., her stuff was half usable. That is, I could re-work them a whole lot and end up with something useful. When I suggested that she improve what she sent me, she became angry. Before long, I had to disconnect from her as well; it was taking me more time to fix her pieces than to just write them myself.

Karen was great, though, because her part was entirely outside of my expertise and she seemed to be in it for the long haul. I put her name with mine, then, as the authors of the course.

Once we got back to school and things settled out from the hurricane experience, we had the insurance adjustor look at our house. Maureen was with him when he came, and, because of her graciousness, people always respond positively with her. Sure enough, the adjustor marked our house as needing a new roof, paid for by the insurance company.

I still had some strength at this time, and so I chose to do it myself rather than hire a contractor. This way I could spend more money on the roof, adding insulation, and rebuilding a section to fix a leak that had started prior to the hurricane. I then hired some of the young men from Kyle’s class to work on the roof with me after school hours. I hired Kyle, of course, as well as Aaron Pierce and Daniel Smith. Chey Wilshire also helped us for a day or two. The young men had a great time working with me on our roof, but they did find that I am a very different person when I am running a construction crew, much more of a driver than when I am in the classroom. And so the hurricane did benefit us with a new roof.

War Continues
Through these first three months of school, the internal war to stand in Christ my life against all the wailing cries of accusation continued full on.

I really intend not to fill these pages with stuff from my books, but as I look at the first Christ Our Life letter that I sent out in November, I see that it describes my inward state in the fall of 2008 much better than I can now. I will include some of it when we get to that point.

Here, I want to continue just a bit with the spiritual environment that Lakewood Church was for me through these years. There was always an anointing resting upon every part of the service. Even when they put on a carefully planned presentation for special days, like Mother’s Day, etc., and everything was choreographed, still, all things remained in the anointing of the Spirit throughout. I suspect a lot of prayer was behind everything.

I want to continue here with Victoria Osteen’s part in each Sunday morning service.

After praise and prayer, Victoria spoke for about ten minutes. As I said, she was a woman of power in the Spirit. I didn’t agree with everything Victoria shared, but she is the only speaker I have ever heard who presented “filled with all the fullness of God” as a reality for the believer.

I do want to share an experience that probably happened a couple of years ahead, but which describes that open heavens into which I often entered partly inside of the anointing resting upon Pastor Victoria. Arriving at a particular Lakewood service, I felt a weight of discouragement. During the praise service, it seemed to me the entire congregation was under the same discouragement. As Victoria came out across the platform to present her exhortation, she must have sensed the same thing as well. I don’t know what she had planned for that morning, but it must have been set aside, because she strode across the stage and spoke with an authority as great as what I had known through Sister Jane Miller. Victoria commanded the demons to leave the house of God, with strength. As she did, I sensed thousands of dark spirits flee that auditorium in that moment, and we returned to the full knowledge of God with us.

It was this same spiritual environment of authority in God inside of which I was being kept through these beginning years of a new understanding of God and His word.

Now, I did not understand myself at the time. Only recently have I begun to realize what I was actually doing through these months of assault, indeed, through the seven-year time period that we attended at Lakewood Church.

Through these seven years, from the summer of 2006 to 2013, I cast down my enemy. Filling my house with Christ began in August of 2006, however, and was the cause of that all-out assault of the evil one against me, an assault that reached a fevered pitch in February of 2008 when Jesus showed me that He had already come into full union with me.

And so I have learned to fight, not because I wanted to fight, but because I wanted to live, that is, I wanted to KNOW Father-with-me above all else. Through these nine months especially, as I realize it now, I have “slain my thousands,” and I have “slain my ten thousands.” Yet I most certainly had help, an army of mighty angels taking down every powerful, familiar, and desperate demon ordered to insert its words into my sphere. There were no survivors.

A New Mailing List
Through these months, I had set up an email program on my computer that I could use to manage a mailing list and to send out bulk emails. I put the sign-up form on my dyordy.com website. At the same time, I asked Gary Sigler if he would put a link to my site on his Kingdom Resources page, which he did. As a result, through these fall months, a number of people signed up for my not-yet-begun Christ Our Life letter.

Among the first to sign up were Rita Robertson in Wisconsin, Bill Wilkerson in Virginia, and Bonnie Morris in Arizona. Bonnie Morris had her own website, “A Bridge Builder,” listed with Gary Sigler, and I had been in communication with her, as well as some others who wrote things similar to what God was teaching me.

At the same time, I was in communication with Fred Pruitt and the Christ as Us brethren, and a number of those signed up on my list.

Christ Our Life Begins 
The day came, then, in November of 2008, when the relentless spiritual assault that I had known for nine months broke completely, and I knew it no more. Yes, there would be short times over the next few years when I would sink into discouragement, but at this point in time, I had won a place inside the knowledge of God that I have never left since.

With great joy, I wrote and sent out my first Christ Our Life letter on November 16, 2008. Because it speaks to everything I was experiencing at the time, I want to share portions of it here.

~~~
Although I have had this list for some time, it is only now that the Lord has released me to send out the first letter. The Lord took me through a time of proving my faith and brought me through into a most pleasant, flower-filled meadow of rest in my union with Him. I have never known a more delightful joy.

When the Lord first shows us that He is our life, that we have no other life, that He fills every part of our human self and that every part of us, including the ugliest parts, He carries in Himself and has always carried in Himself, when we first come to that understanding, it is so foreign to everything that has ever screamed at us, from our own mind, from the pulpit, from Christian “theology”, from do-good others, that it takes many months for the whole thought processes of our mind to change.

Last summer, I started building an Internet publishing business in an attempt to support my family in a way I am able to do, with the hope that we can somehow get to a country property. Focusing many hours a week on business takes one’s mind “away from the Lord.” Then, in August, school began again, and I found myself once again in the desperate place of needing God to come through for me on a regular basis. I disagree with most of the Christianity that is presented in the school where I teach, yet I see Christ certainly visible in the brethren with whom I work. I am not a bold man, nor confrontive, and the situation the Lord has created for me to walk through is not easy. I do not speak, nor would it be the Lord if I did, yet I am very distraught over many of the things I believe are in open opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ, yet made to appear “Christian.”

That is the setting, but what I want to share with you is the truth on the inside of me. Always in the past, if I FELT rebellious, or angry, or frustrated, or far away from God, I believed that I was “in the flesh,” and that I was, in fact, far away from God. At the same time, I once believed that if I FELT mightily anointed, with joy welling up in my soul, that I had now entered His presence.

It is easy to see how absurd that notion is. Is Jesus my life only when I FEEL a certain way? Does my FEELING bad indicate that He has departed from me? When I FEEL raunchy, does that mean He has removed my sin from Himself and placed it back upon me? When we look at it this way, it is obvious that we do not determine truth by what we see with our eyes, but by what God says.

But then we get into the hard press of life. I feel un-anointed; yet I desperately need God’s help to survive the day. My Christian brethren assure me (through their devotional statements and prayers) that I am “in the flesh, in the carnal mind.” All the old arguments that weighed against me for years crowd into my mind. “Give it up, Daniel, you know God is displeased with you. You’re in rebellion, trying to do something that isn’t of Him.”

Yet, I will not. Jesus is my life. He lives His life in all of my humanity. All of these ill feelings that seem to work against me, He carries in Himself. He is simply sharing with me the agony of His people. I groan and weep over the false teachings being presented to my own children. I grieve over the idolatry being mixed with the Holy Spirit of Christ, knowing that innocent people are being murdered right now, today, on the other side of the world, as a result of that idolatry.

It is enough for me to say that Jesus lives in me – in all of me, in all of my humanity. And those raunchy parts of myself He has always carried them utterly inside of Himself – He carried them all to the cross long ago, and He has never offered to place them back upon me. It is faith. It is believing against the sight of the eyes and the feelings of the human.

And so I have believed that Jesus is my life, that I walk in utter union with Him, He in me, and I in Him, without regard to any feelings or circumstances whatsoever.

Hold to that belief! Hold!

And then the darkness passes as if it never was, and it dawns on me that I walk in a garden of peace, with a delight of oneness with Jesus that I have never known before. The joy of knowing that an unending discovery of Jesus in me and me in Jesus lies before me.  Jesus, as He is right now, lives His life in my life, as I am right here. And I? I am hid with Christ in God. I no longer seek His will. I live in His will with all confidence of joy.

Jesus is my life; I have no other life.
~~~

As you can see, my letters were much shorter at the beginning than they are now. Writing this much once a week was a full measure for me then, especially since my primary focus was classroom teaching.

You will find the first several letters, written through November, December, and January, two per chapter, in Our Path Home: “Home As It Really Is,” Chapters 5. “Christ is Personal,” 8. “The Exchange,” 10. “Between Two Ages,” and 13. “All His Ways Are Perfect.” In addition, some of the early letters are also sprinkled through “Who Are We” and “Into His Image.”

A Miss-Step
Even as the joy of Christ my life was increasing, my struggle with the environment in the school that seemed to me to oppose the wondrous gospel of our Salvation, only increased. At the same time my physical strength was declining. I could still manage a full 40-hour work-week and meet all my teacher requirements, but just barely.

And so, as the end of the semester approached, I became very eager to separate myself from that environment and to devote my time to my Internet business, to get it off the ground and bringing in what I believed would be a good income for us. I do readily acknowledge that the needs of Kyle and Johanna were not in the front of my mind as they should have been.

I loved my students, and I loved to teach, but I cannot bear with Christian opposition to Christ. Let me give some examples.

I will first include an experience I had with a student. Brandon Farias was a young man in my tenth grade class. I had always perceived something blank inside his expression, although he was a “teddy bear” to his classmates. One day, Brandon challenged me in class. His stance was open disrespect, but his tone was quiet and absolute control. I love teenagers in all their antics, but I do not allow disrespect.

I told him to leave my classroom and to go see Mr. Anderson. He refused. I said that I would call the police (the option in public school and in college, but not here.) He laughed at me and refused to move. He mocked me and dared me to do it. What I perceived in him was not a dark thing sitting upon him, but rather, the full control of the human over a spirit of rebellion. By the hand of God in my own life over many years, I could not be in the same room with such awfulness.

Immediately, I stepped outside the room, but not beyond where I had a full view of my students to be sure they were safe. I motioned to a nearby  student to go bring Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson came quickly and escorted Brandon out of the room. I was now free to return to my classroom and to continue teaching.

Afterwards I asked Mr. Anderson if I could sit down with him and Brandon to talk through this difficulty. Mr. Anderson said, “No.” Now, I cannot know his reasons, but it seemed to me that there was no “walking together” in the experience or ordering of this school. It seemed to me that I was given no place in any larger ministry to these young people.

Then, in the high school teacher’s meetings with Mr. Anderson, on one occasion, Sue Cannon exhorted us all that the devil was going to win over us if we did not get more serious about “walking with God.” I gasped in astonishment when she said that, for all I knew was Christ Jesus filling us with all of Himself, as the Bible says.

On another occasion, Mr. Anderson exhorted us with that meaningless phrase, “Step out of the way so that Jesus can be seen in your classroom and not you.” – If Jesus is in me, and I step “out of the way” (something no one has ever done or could do) then Jesus must also vanish.

The worst moment, however, was in the morning all-teacher’s devotions. Mr. Bohacek was sharing the devotions that morning. He waxed eloquent about the American soldiers in Iraq who were such examples of “Christ” to us. I bit my tongue, for I was close to rebuking him openly for such horror in equating killers with Jesus. Yet that is how these people saw the world, and how they defined “Jesus.”

In fact, Mr. Anderson had brought some military men into the school to speak with the older male students. I had Kyle come to my room so that he did not have to become a target of the U.S. military. This was truly an act of placing evil in front of children and calling it “good.”

I became very angry with Mr. Bohacek and Mr. Anderson. Here is what I wrote.

~~~
The other morning, I was feeling angry about some things my Christian brethren had said. At the same time, the old familiar voice whispered to me that I was in a “state of rebellion” and that I “needed to submit” to these brethren, that unless I did so, I could not be under God’s “covering.” I refused; I was not about to let my anger go, because it was right and just.

Then, I thought, “No, Jesus is living His life in me. This feeling of anger is Jesus, sharing His frustration over lies that bring destruction and darkness. The moment I thought that, Jesus spoke to me. He said, “Will you love these dear brethren, in spite of our anger, with My love.” I said, “Yes, of course, Lord.” Immediately, all trace of the anger vanished, swallowed up by God’s love through me.

This is a terrible thing! God’s love does not displace His anger, it swallows it up. That means that His anger is carried inside of His love. Yes, all expression of God’s anger is surrounded by and works for the purposes of His love. But it is still terrible.

Yet it is also a wondrous thing. Now, I could continue to love my brethren, beyond the anger, with God’s love. Yet, I had not diminished myself in any way. Self was swallowed up in one with God. I knew that Jesus was living His life in me.
~~~

And so, in December, I submitted my resignation to Mr. Anderson, that I would not be returning in January and that I hoped to spend more time on developing my Internet business. Part way through the Christmas break, however, Mr. Anderson invited me over to his home. He shared with me that he had been unable to find a replacement and he asked me, in humility and kindness, if I would consent to return in January and finish out the semester.

I told him that I would. It was a humbling experience, returning when I had told everyone I would not be back, but I am well used to such things by now, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. My students were thrilled that I would continue.

The spring semester of 2009 continued much the same as before, yet I was becoming more weary, and the physical requirements of the full teaching job were becoming more than I could fulfill.

I must insert here that, through the prior months, the engine in our green van went out, and we sold it for scrap, as it would have cost too much to repair. I needed a vehicle to get to work, and so the Rideau’s offered us a red Buick LeSabre they had acquired, for $1500 paid monthly over time. This was a tremendous blessing to us. The Buick was strong and comfortable, but it had lots of peripheral problems and was not suited for any long drive.

Sister Roberta Mack
In February, Maureen received an urgent call from her dad, that her mother, Roberta Mack, was declining rapidly because the cancer was spreading.

Maureen bought a ticket, but it was timed too late, for February 23. Sister Roberta passed on February 22, 2009. From Atlanta, then, Maureen rode down to Bowens Mill with Aunt Jenny and others of Roberta’s siblings flying in.

I realize now that two eulogies must be part of this narrative of my life, the first for Maureen’s mother, Roberta Mack, and the second for my own mother, Rhoda Yordy, who passed on a few years later.

I first saw Roberta Mack at Bowens Mill in June of 1978 when I had chosen her Bible studies to attend. There was something earnest and deep inside of her, in seeking to know God, that drew me. Of truth, I thought to myself later, when God first spoke to me that Maureen would be my wife, “like mother, like daughter.” I’ve never had a moment since when I thought otherwise.

Roberta was devoted to God and to knowing Him her whole life. With Sister Ethelwyn Davison and Sister Charity Titus, Sister Roberta was an example of a life poured out for God’s people on a daily basis for years and years like none others I have ever known. She never flagged in her devotion to the people at the Ridge, to their needs, and to her care for them, not once in the thirty-one years she gave her life there, at Graham River, and with us.

Sister Roberta was a heritage of God that impacted the lives of hundreds of people, but especially her daughters and grandchildren. Yet it was a very sad thing to me that, in her final days, she knew sorrow, for the vision to which she had devoted her life with all abandon had not been fulfilled in her. She never knew the joy of an already completed salvation.

The children and I took off several days from school, and rented a vehicle to drive to Bowens Mill for Sister Roberta’s memorial. I had signed up for an economy car, but when we arrived at the car rental place, they did not have what I had ordered, and so they upgraded us to a Toyota mini-van at no extra cost. This was awesome. We went a more direct route to Bowens Mill than we had the summer before.

When we arrived at Bowens Mill, we again stayed in the 16’ wide single-wide set behind the Mack’s home. This was a very comfortable place for us. Brother Claude was subdued and sorrowful, but he was a man of faith in God. In fact, I think at this time he was free to be more real as himself than he normally was. All of Roberta’s brothers and sisters were at Bowens Mill as well, having flown in from Texas, California, and Oregon.

There was an open casket visiting time at the Funeral Home before the burial service. The chapel room there was filled with both relatives and brethren from the community, everyone standing and visiting quietly while different ones walked by to view the open casket.

After Maureen and I with the children passed by for one final view of Sister Roberta, we also stood among the guests to visit. Brother Buddy Cobb and Brother John Hinson were there at the same time, visiting together. As they talked, they seemed to me to make indications towards me and I perceived that they were discussing me. Now, whether this was so or not, I don’t know fully, but it was what I believed at the time. I had shared The Jesus Secret with a number of different people in the move, including Jim Fant (who had also passed on a few months before Sister Roberta), and some of the traveling ministry.

It has been my typical experience, when visiting move community since we left, to feel an environment of condemnation all around me, partly because that’s how it always was and because I knew full well that was the attitude towards those who had “left the move,” and especially towards someone like myself, who had become “taken by false spirits of deception into such false teachings as union with Christ and a God who reconciles all to Himself.”

This was the end of February, 2009, twelve years after God had spoken to me, “Son, you passed the test,” and twenty-four years after God had begun this great contest with me concerning my attitude towards leadership in the church.

Now, here I was, having won full victory into the joy of knowing Christ Jesus, now as my only life, faced with five men who stood as leaders in the church, yet in opposition in one way or another to Christ and towards me, Claude Mack, Buddy Cobb, John Hinson, Robert Anderson, and John Bohacek.

And so I was hit, over and over through this time, with the biggest question of all. IF – Christ lives as me, in all that I am, and has done so all my life, and regardless of all my fault, does He not also live as each one of these men, regardless of their lack of knowing Him as He really is?

Here’s the thing. The work of God in me through the first twelve years of this confrontation was complete. Never once did I hesitate. In every present difficulty, I deliberately placed the Lord Jesus Christ upon each one of these men, and saw them as Jesus to me, regardless of the pain and confusion it brought to me.

Oh, I certainly struggled with all the wherefores and the why-hows, but never with the doing. If the salvation of Jesus means so very much to me, how could I withhold the same salvation from anyone? Yet I continued in agony with the great contradiction that, if Jesus is living as these men, then why do they not know Him, why do they persist in so much anti-Christ thinking?

We had a memorial service at the Gathering Place, a building built at the convention site specifically for the regular services of the three communities. I also shared in this memorial service concerning what Sister Roberta meant to me, and especially the great gift of her daughter. What I shared was well received by all.

Sister Roberta was buried in the little cemetery on the Bowens Mill property, just south of the Ridge, right next to her mother. I saw several other grave stones there of people I had known when I lived at the Ridge, including Brother Jim Fant’s.

Because we had the larger mini-van, we had room to load a number of things that had belonged to Sister Roberta that Claude wanted to give to Maureen, including quite a few books.

Difficulty Increases
Upon our return, there were about three more months to go to complete the school year. The truth is that, for Kyle and Johanna’s sake, I am so very glad that I agreed to remain. The religious environment of the school was getting as difficult for Kyle, especially, as it was for me.

At this point, I had become physically and emotionally weary to the point that I had to choose not to do some of the teaching requirements. In such a contest, I always chose for my students and dropped certain “school” duties.

It was my students who always gave me the strength I needed. One time, before school started, I had my head on my desk, too weary to even think about teaching that day. Chad Steiger walked first into my classroom and sat down at his desk. I raised my head as he came in, and instantly, I had all the strength I needed for the day. But when the last student left my classroom, I dropped again, wearier than before.

I could not bear the chapel times, and so did not attend. Mr. Anderson corrected me, however, and said that I was required to attend. I submitted and did so. Of truth, he was always gentle and kind to me.

Nonetheless, one Thursday morning, when I was in my classroom during chapel time, Kyle came into my room and asked if he could wait out the chapel time with me. This was so thrilling to me, that my son would flee the religious nonsense of others and find refuge with his dad and with the Jesus I know. This is not common.

One time, in the chapel service, when there was an especially strong anointing (which there often was, in spite of the hostility of word), I felt to prophesy. As I spoke, the Spirit of God came upon me and my words in great power. No one spoke after, until Mr. Borny, moving in the wisdom of the Lord, connected what I spoke to the students as the Lord speaking to them.

Because of this evidence of the anointing upon me, I was allowed to share with the students in a chapel service. I don’t think I did so well with that, however; I think I talked too long.
Here is something else I wrote during this time.

~~~
The other night, I was hit with all the discouragement and despair that is so familiar to me. In my mind, I had every reason to quit. Who was I kidding? I am alone, cut off from fellowship, maybe because God has cast me off. I’m a jerk, a loser. I decided to wrap myself in despair. I did not call on Jesus.

I tried, but I could not. Jesus laughed out of my heart, throwing off the darkness, “You silly boy, you belong to Me.” Joy and faith and hope flooded me, filling me full. The darkness vanished as if it had never been.
~~~

The end of school finally came. At that point, I knew that I did not have the strength anymore, physically or emotionally, to sign a contract committing myself to a 40-hour work week. I have productive days, yes, but I have too many weak days to satisfy an employer.

Graduation
The graduation of Kyle’s twelfth-grade class was a very good occasion, especially since he was chosen by his fellow students as the “King” for homecoming and all the attendant honors. Kyle was also the vice president of the student council this year.

In fact, I would sit in the cafeteria and marvel at my son, at his graciousness as he went from one group of students to another, joining briefly with the conversation of each group in full harmony and welcome. And Kyle always had a heart for the Lord. When he was old enough to “go out” on his own, it was to church services that he went, at churches I knew nothing about. I supported his choices fully, for I have always believed that it is Jesus with whom my children must connect, and not me.

Yet the graduation was bitter-sweet for me. Even though I was so relieved that the time at Family Christian was over, I found that disconnecting from my students there became very strange. Some of these children had never had adults treat them as real and valuable persons in themselves, though they had lived in a Christian environment their whole lives. And many of them attached themselves to me in what felt like a “stickiness,” one might say. Their apparent “need” of me became very uncomfortable to me.

At the graduation, however, Robert Anderson spoke of “honoring those to whom honor is due.” He used George W. Bush as his example and spoke harshly against those who “dishonor” the American government by not believing the official account of 9/11. Yet my knowledge of the facts told me that he was honoring those who had no honor at all. Of truth, the words he had spoken to me at the start, “We live in a day where people call evil good and good evil,” had come full circle and were, in fact, a description of his own untrue view of this world.

My Departure from “the Furnace”
All through these months, I struggled over this contradiction in my brethren at Family Christian between their sure knowing of the Lord and their false connections to this world. I pondered John’s exhortation, “Do not love the world nor the things of the world,” knowing that it was true, even while also seeing that Jesus was, in fact, carrying them inside Himself in all that they were.

Throughout my entire time in that place, I grieved much inside, for I knew that the wells of salvation and the knowledge of God were to be found inside of me, if anyone was interested. Yet no one was. A man filled with the knowledge of God passed through their midst and no one noticed and I could do nothing more than weep in sorrow.

In spite of the fact that so many American brethren worship the beast and give their hearts and the hearts of their children in binding allegiance to it, they still belong to Jesus, and He carries them all the way through the darkness and into life. I have long since become settled inside regarding this great contradiction. I don’t say that I have all the answers, but that I am at peace.

Two years later, when Josiah Greer and Kai Ordonio were graduating, they got after me, insisting that I attend their graduation. Maureen and I did go, to our great regret, for the U.S. military was given greater prominence than before.

Before continuing, I must share that I had finished this letter in a way that left me unsatisfied; then, I wrote large chunks of the next two letters. This time of my life, from, say, January of 2009 until January of 2011, is a period I have not understood, and for that reason, have not considered it up-close. A conversation with my daughter, Johanna, plunged me back into my failure that I had no idea where to place. And that is the reason for this long gap in writing these chapters.

God used this two-year time period, that also marked the steady first-growth of the word I share, to bring me into the full outward understanding of my own inadequacy and failure. And so, after I had written these portions of my life story, I grappled in agony with things I have not understood. And as He always does, the Lord Jesus brought me to such peace and to such pure understanding, and I give Him thanks, for all His ways concerning me are perfect.

Now, I will continue presenting this two-year time period, but with an understanding of joy that I have not had before this moment.

I did not belong at Family Christian Academy, and neither did Kyle. Yet that is where God put us for this season for very good reasons. Think of the womb in the hours before the birth; the womb must become the enemy of the baby, for the baby no longer belongs in that place. Yet to the baby, it’s all confusion and pain. – “You don’t belong here; get out.”

By placing us into that pain of not belonging, God enables our heart’s cry reaching out in desperation to know Him as He is, contrary to all the darkness of the church in this world. If God did not put us into such a place, we would sit in our ignorance and never know that there is LIFE we have not yet tasted. A baby that will “not be birthed” can only die.

I did not belong with these people; they were my brethren, and I loved them and saw the Lord Jesus in their lives. But they were not going where I must go nor living in that which I must know.

I now also understand the critical importance, in the path God has set before me, in my firm and continual choice to look at these leaders in the church who stood in such opposition in my own perception, and to see them and to call them as Christ Jesus living as them and carrying them all the way through. I will show you what I mean in the next few chapters.

I have left out many sharp details of “not belonging” in this account. One that stands out was a mother coming into my classroom demanding that I apologize to her and her daughter for daring to suggest that the U.S. government might be lying.

I always humble myself in such moments because I have no ability to “defend myself,” but even more because winning the heart of a dear brother or sister is always far more important than any foolishness of “being correct.”

And so I place Robert Anderson and John Bohacek, and all the brethren and all my students at Family Christian, inside my heart upon the blood sprinkled there and in the presence of my Father, and I set them completely free of me and from any offence or grief I might have known. At the same time, I ask God for life for them, that, as He gives me life inside of Jesus, so He would give that same life to them as well, regardless.

When I left Family Christian at the end of May, I would never again find myself inside such an environment of this world that could be only a great furnace to me. And it is with joy unspeakable and full of glory that I now know God’s intentions through all of this.