32. My Reasons for Leaving

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

Respect Requires 
My respect for God’s people with whom I walked requires me to set forth my reasons for leaving the move of God fellowship and that covering under which I had walked for twenty-one years. Then, I must also add my reasons for leaving Blair Valley and finally, for leaving Canada.

Through the last two chapters, I have attempted to limit things partly to my thoughts and feelings through this time. Now, however, I must give you the full meaning as I understand things in this year of our Lord 2020.

The covenant I made with God when I was twenty-two years old remains unchanged from then until now, that I would know God in this life and on this earth, and that I would walk with a people who know God. Not a day has gone by from then until now that I have not held this commitment and vision in my heart, regardless of all my ins and outs.

Why Did We Continue?
There is a different question that must come first, and the answer to this question God has now shown me, and indeed, it is the deepest answer for all other questions.

A casual reader, going through my account of the difficulties and pain God took me through from 1990 on, might well raise the question, “Why on earth did you stay in such an environment for years? Why did you not leave earlier?"

The answer is commitment.  

In the Headwaters Convention, in February of 1978, God spoke to me “You can trust this ministry; I have sent them.” I do not take a word like that as an absolute. What it means to me now is that for this season of my life, this fellowship and this ministry were God’s chosen environment for me to walk, in order that I might know Him. 

I committed myself to that word and that ministry at great cost over many years. 

As I was writing the chapters on Blair Valley, the Lord showed me that it was my commitment that He honored in giving me a godly way of transferring that commitment from that which is outward to the Lord Jesus inside of me, and through Him, to all who belong to Him. 

The outward structure was necessary for me until it wasn’t. But think of that. What if I had just said, “Phooey on this,” and gone my way. If my commitment to God inside the move fellowship meant so little to me, then it would have continued to mean little anywhere else.

The unwillingness to commit one’s self to God’s people, even to continuing through great costs, is an unwillingness to commit one’s self to God. As John said, “We cannot say that we love God if we do not also love our brothers and sisters.”

Love is not a feeling; love is a commitment.

God never violates the integrity of our persons. God gave us the season of peace at Blair Valley because He honored Maureen and me and gave us the place where we could separate from that fellowship inside the integrity of our own hearts and for very specific, personal, and godly reasons. 

And in saying that, a time that has held the most difficult unanswered question for me is now filled with the Honor of God.

Reasons for Leaving the Move
From the time I first read the Bible through, at age nineteen, I chose one verse in the Bible as the desire and direction of my heart. That one verse was John 14:23. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him (NKJV).

This desire of mine, to experience the Father and the Son coming to me and making their home with me, has been the primary motivation behind how I have walked and how I have studied the Bible. 

By the early months of 1998, the teaching of the ministry of the move, apostles and elders, had removed from me all hope that I could know the only thing I wanted to know. This was a profound and existential removal of hope. 

I had no idea that, by leaving the move, I would come to know this one thing that I wanted, but there was no question that remaining in that fellowship would never bring me to the one place I will go, knowing my Father at home in my heart through Jesus Sent into me.

Through all the writing I have done over the last fourteen years, I have made one claim only regarding myself or what I share. That one claim is that I have found what I always wanted, Father at home in my heart. 

The second reason I left the move fellowship was that I was quit with a “Jesus” far away from me. I needed a Savior, close, personal, and real, the One upon whose breast I always lean my head. From that moment on, I have rejected any thought that I would ever be a son of God in myself. I cannot ever please God myself, and in leaving the move, I quit all idea that I ought to do such a thing.

As you can see, those first two reasons were closely related. I will also place the next two reasons for leaving the move together. 

The third reason I left the move of God was that the vision for community that I carried in my heart for all those years was rarely my actual experience. I now understand the reasons why the order and philosophy of the move communities never answered the cry and longing of my heart. 

However, at that time, there was a very large issue inside the wrongful definition of community, with which I could no longer walk in agreement. That issue was the self-righteous sectarianism of the people, ministry and non-ministry, who were part of that fellowship. God took Maureen and me to Oregon through 1993-1995 in order to open my heart to His entire church. 

My final two reasons for leaving that fellowship were personal, towards me and towards my children. The truth is, losing the community, rural, and agricultural environment for my children to grow up inside of is the single greatest loss we suffered in leaving the move. Yet I count the integrity and honor of their persons to be more important. And I knew that, had we continued in the definitions of that sect, my children would have experienced wrongful disrespect of their persons. That happens everywhere, yes, but it is different when it’s coming from “God” in their minds, rather than God being their refuge.
For my children to grow up imagining that God disrespected them – that would not be!

The final reason I left the move of God fellowship was for my own sake. I was riddled with unhealed wounds. I was numb and frozen inside. I was hurting at every point. I was on the brink of mental and nervous collapse. I continued in this way on the inside of me for two years after we left, before any kind of healing could even begin.

I believe that I have given a complete and honest account of my decision. And in all these things, it was Maureen and I together, though I realize now that she followed my lead each time, always faithful to me beyond what I ever deserved.

Blessings from Being in the Move 
There were two different things operating inside the communities of the move-of-God fellowship. One of those things was people, operating as humans do, with every practice of manipulating and conniving, thoughtlessness and disrespect that all humans are so capable of doing, inside the context of the intensity of daily togetherness and out from a theology that painted God, humans, and salvation in the false manner of Nicene Christianity. 

Operating equally and in conjunction with all the problems that are humans, was the other thing in the communities, and that is people, filled with Jesus, of great value and regard, stumbling through life together, and in all their difficulty, learning what it means to love one another.   

I was no different than any, neither better nor worse. Yet having passed through those years, I have the same choice that every other human has in the present moment. I can call every moment, circumstance, and interaction with others by the Lord Jesus Christ and find each to be a blessing of life. Or I can call every moment, circumstance, and interaction with others by not-Christ and find each to be a cursing of death.

Since Maureen and I left the move, it has always been in my heart, not only to keep all that God had taught me through those years, but to draw any good thing of Christ from my experiences with all the brethren in the move into my present rejoicing inside of Jesus. 

When I chose to live in Christian Community in 1977, I did so carrying a vision inside of the community of my heart. When I left the move in 1998, that vision was NOT one of the things I placed on the shelf. Rather, I have walked every day before God from then until now in the expectation and hope that God will raise up around me, somehow, that Christ Community of which I would be a part.

You might think that I have sent out these letters over the last twelve years to give God’s people hope. That is not quite correct. I have sent out every single one of these letters in order to call forth that Community of God’s precious people that I am determined to know. If you have received good things from what I share, that’s part of the overflow of God.

And so, as I entered into the rest of knowing my union with Christ, sending out my first Christ Our Life letter at the same time, I determined to draw out from my years of experience in move of God community all the good things of Christ that I knew. And I determined to draw out from those same years of experience a clear outline of the giants in the land and how we are well able to defeat them. I have considered myself to be as Caleb, sent into the land of Christ to spy out both the good and the destructive, and to tell God’s people, “Let us go up and take the land, for we are well able to overcome.”

They said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large… Then Caleb… said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:27-30 – reduced).

I want to list a number of incredible qualities that I now possess out from my years of being a part of the move of God fellowship and Christian community.

The most important thing I gained was from Sam Fife, and that is my relationship with the Bible. The first thing Sam Fife did for me was to obliterate all the structures of thinking and definitions from Nicene Christianity that are not the gospel and that prevent Christians from seeing what God actually says. Then, in its place, he taught me the massive importance of “the words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life,” knowing the life of a Spirit-empowered Word. 

Sam Fife gave me “permission,” one might say, to regard the huge powerful statements of the gospel, things not part of most Christian thinking, like being filled with all the fullness of God, setting creation free, and overcoming death. He imparted to me a profound understanding of God’s metaphors of bringing forth life and of the Tabernacle of Moses and the Feasts of Israel. But most of all, Sam Fife gave me a taste of the opening of the heavens and the piercing voice of God coming through out from the depths of His being. The echo of that voice, knowing that God Almighty maintains a personal relationship with me in power, reverberates all through me to this day.

To know God and to know His Word – this is the greatest gift of my life.

I will continue, now, without trying to rate “importance.”

I think of all the wisdom imparted to me from so many over all those years, but especially from Brother Jim Fant and Sister Charity Titus. I absorbed the things they taught me probably more than they realized. There are some things I teach that are original to me, but it would be impossible to divide most of what comes through me as coming from one or another.

I must make something as clear as I can. When I speak of “running the gauntlet,” or the picture of “Eliza fleeing the dogs of slavery across the icy St. Lawrence, carrying her child in her arms,” I do NOT mean that the move of God or any of its people are part of that opposition. On the contrary, the thing I was escaping was the gospel of the serpent, and inside the precious treasure held tightly in my arms, close against my heart, is every single brother and sister, precious beyond measure inside of Jesus, with whom I interacted inside of Christian community.

Yet I am in no way “superior.” I love the story that Dr. Paul Brand shares at the beginning of In His Image. He tells of working in the operating room with his Indian students and seeing on their faces the face of his own instructor when he was a young doctor training in London. He quizzed them after, wondering how on earth they learned the expressions of someone they had never met. “Oh no, Dr. Brand,” they replied, “that is your expression we have learned.”

Here is the truth. You might have found a lot of wisdom through the things that I share, but you would be wrong if you imagined that was coming from me. What you will discover instead is that you have sat in the classroom of one of the wisest people I have known; you have been taught by Sister Charity Titus. 

To be able to carry to you such treasure as I received, not just from her, but from many through all the years of my move of God experience, is to me a reward beyond all measure, a reward I certainly did not earn.

A third area containing many things of great value is the hammering of God upon me over so many years and in so many places. Christian community was the anvil and God’s Word was the hammer, and I was caught in-between.

One of the greatest gifts ever received by anyone is the gift of the removal of rebellion from one’s heart. Nothing in any regular church would have ever accomplished such a thing in me, only move-of-God Christian community. 

But with that hammering of God, shaping my heart to fit His, though I knew it not, came the opening up of myself, out from my disassociated shell, that I might know how to relate with other people and how to understand my own humanity.

Just like Much Afraid in Hinds Feet on High Places, I carry as great treasure every place of stumbling and pain inside of relationships with other people in the family of God. These gems I possess may seem of little value to those who have not walked in such a path, but they have no idea just how wealthy I am.

A fourth area is all the many wonderful things I did and experienced all through my years in the move of God. All the many and varied construction tasks that I did and learned to do, all the different courses I had the privilege of teaching in school, even before I was trained to do so, all the many wilderness and work and life experiences, that I would never have known in any “regular” life, I tell you what, these things are invaluable. And because I live inside the power of an endless life, none of these things are memories only; all things that I love to do and to participate in WILL come back to me again, in their season.

Finally, I want you to understand the meaning of the text that is dearest to my heart of all that I have written, Symmorphy V: Life, a handbook for Christian Community. If you have gained anything by reading of my years in Christian community, then know that every line in that text, every suggestion and perspective, comes out from intense care to set before you a real and true vision of the Promised Land of Christ, brethren, walking together in love.

What you find in that book is the Community of my heart, not just unharmed by any of the giants and fortified cities inside years of difficulty, but rather strengthened and made clear by all. You will find a full appraisal of the giants, yes, but an even more real setting forth of the Lord Jesus Christ as Community, as the revelation of Father, all the good fruit and blessing that is Christ Life.

It was twenty-one years of walking together with other believers in Jesus in the move of God, all the joy and all the pain, that gave me all that you find in that text, and I would not trade any of it for anything less. I have taken all the straw of my life, and I have woven for you gold.

I must pause and marvel at the undeserved wealth of my life, the majority of which came to me from my years in the move of God.

Reasons for Leaving Blair Valley 
When we left Blair Valley and moved into Fort St. John, I felt at different times that I needed to give a reasonable explanation of why we left. The reason I gave was that we just were not able to find any way to support ourselves in that isolated place. And that statement was entirely true, though it was not, of course, anywhere near the entire answer. The nice thing is that it seemed to be satisfactory to all.

The problem in me then was that I could have shared a dim view of why we left the move, but I had no idea, really, of why we left Blair Valley.

And in all the twenty-two years from then until now, that question – Why did we leave Blair Valley? – What if we had stayed? – has haunted my heart with a measure of despair every day. 

Writing these chapters has turned all that entirely around. God has not answered my question; instead, He has shown me that His proof of Christ in me was always the only thing happening.

It was clear to me as we worked through the decision to leave Blair Valley, that the community of my heart, a non-sectarian place that received all of God’s people regardless, with wide-open arms and with no obligation, would not happen at Blair Valley in that present context. Blair Valley was mostly about Kars Kiers, and Kars Kiers was mostly about the narrowest religious and sectarian aspects that blemished that fellowship. 

You see, the bottom line of all my hope towards our arriving at Blair Valley was that God would now bring forth a community that answered all the cry of my heart for real, for life, for being a blessing to others, to God’s people all across the earth. The bottom-line of my HOPELESSNESS was not “move doctrine,” then, but the deep realization that such a community was not and could not happen there.

Heart despair is why I left the place, though I never left the vision.

God’s Purpose for Us at Blair Valley 
Writing these chapters on Blair Valley inside the flow of God’s dealing in my life and placing the Lord Jesus upon every moment has given me a perspective of God’s purposes that I have never seen or known before now.

Let me explain. There is an awesome comparison between the Feasts of Israel and the development of a baby in the womb. And the truth is that on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of pregnancy, that is, the day that Tabernacles begins, the child is first able to live outside of the womb. Nonetheless, God’s design is for the child to remain another month-and-a-half in that place so that it might be fully strong when it does come forth. And, in fact, the first day of the ninth month is the feast of dedication, added later.

I now see that God’s intentions towards me inside the move-of-God context were completed at the end of March 1997, when He spoke to me, “Son, you passed the test.” But I was in no way ready to “leave the womb,” so to speak.

Then, as I wrote about our time at Blair, God showed me the honor and respect that He extended towards me in giving me peace at Blair Valley inside of which I could work through the decision to separate from that fellowship, that had been as the womb of the Church to me, without any loss to the integrity of my heart and person. 

I am in awe at the goodness and kindness of our Father, and I give Him all thanks.

Reasons for Leaving Canada 
We had gone through so much over so many years to be immigrated to Canada. Our immigration status remained current for one year after our departure, and then we applied for and received an extension for a second year during which we could have returned at any time.

Except – we had absolutely no means to do so nor any place to go in Canada where we could support ourselves. The last day, in April of 2001, when our immigration status ceased, was a very sad day for both Maureen and me.

Now, as I have written this account, the answer has become simple and clear. God opened no other doors for us in Canada. And so we submit our hearts to His hand in all joy and goodness.

The Question of “What If?”
I have never set aside the word God spoke to me concerning the fulfillment of the Community of my heart, that our home is at Blair Valley. Nonetheless, I have been more than willing for God to plant us in such a community in a different place, at least for the time being. Because I live inside the power of an endless life, it would be no surprise at all if I were to find myself inside of a wondrous Community of Christ back in that valley in northern British Columbia during the Age of Tabernacles. 

Nonetheless, I carried a return to Blair Valley close in my heart for many years, but especially, the bringing forth of a Christ Community as I was able to describe in Symmorphy V: Life. This fact of my heart-desire posed a problem to some and was at the center of the identity issues God would take me through over the next couple of years after we left Canada.

I want to point you towards the two letters I wrote in the early months of 2013 that express this vision that I thought about most every day from our leaving Blair Valley on – "My Vision I" and "My Vision II," found in my book, Gathering to Life. And as I said, I would have gladly accepted the same thing anywhere else that God would place us inside His peace.

Through the seven years from the summer of 2013 until now, the years of Symmorphy, I have known a release from that particular location for the Christ Community I am anxiously ready to move into today, the very moment God raises it up.

But let me go back to the troubling of my heart as we left the place God had called “your home.” As I wrote out the story of the prophet in 1 Kings 13 who was torn apart by a lion because he had disregarded God’s instruction, the Lord asked me how I would place such an interpretation now. The answer was simple and clear, I would throw that interpretation right into the dung heap where it belongs right along with all of Satan’s use of Bible verses to tempt us not to trust in Jesus.

And the moment I knew that, the question “WHAT IF” vanished from my heart and I know it no more. There is no need for a non-answer to a non-question.

Yet there is another, deeper question that underlay that now-vanished question of “What if.” That deeper question is the security of being covered versus the sense of “flapping in the breeze,” now that we have no committed relationship with any ministry or fellowship.

Covering is important; it’s how local fellowships connect together. When I was “under the covering” of the move ministry, I had a place and connection everywhere I went. I was able to be a “ministry” during our time in Oregon, raising up a little fellowship, because of that sense of connection, purpose, and covering. 

The fellowship in Lubbock, Texas, under Pastor Gary Kirksey, where Maureen and I will find much help and the beginning of healing, held a similar understanding of covering for the safety of the church as was found in the move. This is not a sectarian issue.

Yet I am presently “on my own” and have been so since we came to Houston. I looked for some connection here, but God opened none to us. I KNOW that great blessing and a knowledge of the presence of God comes inside of commitment to one another inside the context of the local church, a commitment that includes a place of safety and protection found under that ministry of God that He places with heart-care over His Church.

My present lack of “covering” has troubled me all the years we have been in Houston. I have even felt uncertain that our place here was “God’s will.” 

My question of leaving Blair Valley, the Lord Jesus answered with – “Because I respected you.” But the answer to this question of covering, and of, “are we, maybe, in the wrong place?” He answered in an opposite manner – with stern rebuke. 

And I feel as Jesus did in Hebrews 5:7, on His face before God, that God might save Him from death. The death God would save me from is the death of a lack of absolute CONFIDENCE in Christ, that He alone directs my steps out from His own heart purposes.

If I lack confidence in God in one small and hidden area, how can I impart true confidence to anyone?

“Lord Jesus, You are well-able to direct my every step and I am confident with all certainty that You have done so, through every day of my life. We did not “stumble” into Houston, but You placed us here and You gave us no outward connection with Christian brethren here, for Your purposes and desire. Jesus, You are absolute Lord over every moment and day of my life, and I place myself absolutely into Your Confidence, filling my heart with glory.”

It is this confidence, then, that is and will be a covering for many, a shelter from the storm, a place of safety and belonging.

A Life Made Whole 
Our daughter, Katrina, who just turned 23, has bought herself a travel trailer that she hopes will be her own home. Katrina is the head of the heritage program at Jesse Jones park and is becoming known throughout the arena of Texas heritage. Her spunk and determination make Maureen and I very proud.

When Katrina first put the trailer onto her pickup, it weighted the pickup down more than is safe. She drove it around, but when she came back, it seemed that the weight of the trailer was beginning to pull the pickup apart. In difficult driving situations, such an imbalance of weight could have resulted in the trailer pushing the pickup in directions Katrina would not want to go.

Then our son James, who will be 21 in October, borrowed torsion bars and an anti-sway bar from our neighbor across the street and installed them on the trailer/pickup hookup. These bars pulled up the trailer and pickup even with one another tightly. I drove the unit back home from an outing to Waco and was pleased with how safe it felt. I was driving one unit. When I turned or when I braked, I never felt that the trailer was anything other than part of the pickup.

As I finished writing the chapters on Blair Valley, that image of the trailer weighting down the back of the pickup came to my mind as a clear picture of how my life has been.

Let me explain. The trailer is that large and heavy portion of my life that was my years in the move of God and in Christian community. The pickup is my life since we left that fellowship and we are now in the cab, being driven forward by the power of Christ our only life. My adult life has been two large parts, the first part resting as a heavy weight upon the second part. Most who left the move tried to unhitch and cast off the “trailer” of their move experience from their present life. I am convinced they are doing nothing more than deluding themselves. 

The connection between the trailer of my years in the move and the pickup of my present life was our leaving Blair Valley and Canada. That connection has always been weak inside my heart, and sometimes it seems that the years of difficulty might push our present life in wrong directions because of that weak connection.

The picture of James installing the torsion and anti-sway bars, pulling up the trailer and pickup even with each other, now one tight unit, came to me so strongly as God honored me with Himself through this weak point of my life. 

And in that moment, I felt that the two large parts of my life have come fully together as one. I feel whole, complete, and put together.

Now, as I am looking forward to writing the second half of my adult life, I am filled with anticipation of the joy of Christ my life entering my experience. 

Every particle of my years in the move fellowship is fully complete, fully inside of Jesus, fully filled with blessing and joy. 

And I realize now that until this has happened for me, until that weak connection of our leaving Blair Valley was lifted up into the strength and honor of God towards me, then I suspect that any foray into a community experience might well have resulted in being pushed by hidden emotions in directions I would not want to go.

“Now I am ready, even so come, Lord Jesus. Place Maureen and I into that community of my heart where we will know God and where we will walk with a people who know God. Let it be so; it is so.”

Bearing Precious Seed 
When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad.

Bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the South. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him (Psalm 126).

Let me share with you two paragraphs in the first chapter of this narrative.

~~~ So, if you are willing to entertain my foolishness for just a bit, we together must ask the obvious question – Why in God’s good name would He, in fact, pick such a bumbling failure of a man as this unknown “Daniel Yordy” to speak the revelation of Christ as He is to His church?

I am writing this account of my life for two reasons. First, it is my intention to prove to you that God has no good reason whatever to speak to His church through me – and many, many good reasons why He would not. And second, it is my responsibility to lay before you how God has taken me by the hand, step by faltering step, and led me into His own heart, that here, hiding entirely inside the heart of my Father, I might show that heart to you. ~~~ 

I hope, at this point in the narrative, that I have proven beyond all question that God has no good reason whatsoever to give such a treasure of word to one such as I.

Yet He has. And my heart is overflowing with tears of goodness and joy. For nearly twelve years, now, I have sown this word in tears, this word of the Community of Christ that I carry in my heart FULFILLED. 

Doubtless, I will come again rejoicing, bringing my reward with me.

And my reward is you, dear reader, found in all the joy of Christ your only life through every moment and circumstance through which you have walked. You are my treasure and my joy, that Jesus would prove to you that you have always been His revelation.