49. The Season of Symmorphy II

June 2016 - August 2017

“Father, I thank You that You have planted Your Word inside of me so richly and that You have enabled me to hear the meaning of Your Heart. I love Your Words; I love the singing of Jesus in my heart; I love the flow of the anointing onto the page; I love the awakening of Your knowing in the lives of those who read.

“You have given me so much, my Father. You have given me Yourself, and I belong inside of You.”

The School Year
In the summer of 2016, James was also taken on as a paid intern at Jesse Jones Park. Through this summer, Maureen and I realized that James’s final two years of school needed to be more formal. We communicated with Barbara Beebe at the Upsala Christian School, and the eldership agreed that James could come up to spend his eleventh-grade year in their school. Steve and Cindy Schneider offered James a room in their home for him to stay. James’s work through the summer at Jesse Jones park helped pay for his tuition and other costs.

James is the only one of our children who is not a Canadian citizen and so we had to work through the whole process of getting him a student visa, all of which was now online.

Towards the end of August, Maureen flew up to Toronto with James, and then on to Thunder Bay and Upsala. She helped him move into his new room with the Schneider’s and saw him situated in his new classrooms, just down the hall from where Johanna taught her classes. James would spend his final two years of high school attending the Upsala school.

Meanwhile, Katrina was now the only one remaining at home. Life was much more quiet for me, which was good and not-so-good, at the same time. This fall Katrina was hired full time as a park ranger with Jesse Jones Park where she would continue for five years. She also began her second year in the theater program at San Jacinto College in Pasadena.  We were able to buy a Jeep for Katrina to have for her use.

From Essence to Kingdom
The first half of writing Symmorphy II: Essence was a solidifying of my understanding of God’s meanings, culminating in a closer look at redemption and salvation. In all that I write, I am reaching for clarity in the knowledge of God and of what He actually says.

But then, towards the end of July, I began a section of Essence that I called, at the time, “a looking at darkness.” I wanted to see more clearly how the Church turned away from Paul’s gospel, never really having known it, and to know what it actually was that Christianity now called “the gospel,” something hammered out from the fiction that Jesus is “faraway.” This section began with "How Was the Flesh Exalted?” 

The important thing for this narrative of my life is this. It is God who has placed inside of me the burning need to KNOW the gospel as He speaks it in the Bible and to understand what this anti-gospel is, where it came from, and how it triumphed inside the Church of Christ throughout the in-part Church Age. The clarity I so desperately needed will come by December of 2020, but it is important to me that you know how it came.

Sometime in the first week of October I had a dream anointed of God. In my dream, I was standing at the top of a stairway looking down at Jesus in the room below. Jesus was beneath of me. His eyes beckoned to me and I said to Him, “Jesus you are the same as me and I am the same as You. I am a man, just like You, filled with all the fullness of God.” When I said that, I knew that Jesus was no longer “beneath of” me, but now part of me, Jesus and I as one together.

I knew, now, that I must share these words with others. The first person I saw next was a girl, around six or seven. Eager anticipation was upon her face as I told her to say, “Jesus, you are the same as me and I am the same as you. I am just like You, a girl filled with all the fullness of God.” I knew that in that moment, this little girl was sealed into God and that our bond together was complete, regardless of outward proximity.

In my dream, I continued teaching others to say that same thing, “I am just like You, Jesus, a man/a woman filled with all the fullness of God,” and many responded with joy, each now sealed into God, each now part of me and one another. Yet not all would hear.

I noticed a group of “deeper truth” Christians in a room high above me, some of whom I had known. I wanted to speak this word to them, but I could not get up to them, and they showed no interest in coming down to hear.

In my dream, I continued speaking to others, those not “put together,” those not successful in either church or world, and they gladly spoke those words of union with Christ. I knew, in my dream, that I had spoken, and was teaching others to speak, the very fulfillment of the First Day of Tabernacles, of being sealed into God and of being made a part of one another.

I completed and sent out the final parts of Symmorphy II: Essence through the middle of October and then picked up where I had left off in Symmorphy III: Kingdom, with “Christ as Word as Us” and “Christ as a Spirit of Power.” I called these chapters as “one of the great milestones of God in my years of seeking to know Him.” This was a major step in understanding how Spirit and Word flow together as the environment in which all things exist. Our reality, as it seems normal to me now, was brand new to me this October of 2016.

In the first part of December, I received an email from Lanny Gao, a sister from Athens, Georgia. I asked Lanny recently about how she found my website; let me share her response to me.

Hi Daniel, I went to my mailbox and found out that I wrote you the first email on 12/05 /2016. I found your website a couple of months earlier probably (not quite sure) in the month of September 2016.

Years ago the Lord showed me that the feast of Tabernacles is yet to be fulfilled. I was googling "the feast of Tabernacles" online. After some searching I found an interesting website "The light house library" (I went back to look for this library after a while and was not able to find it any more). There were quite some good articles that caught my interest. After a little while, I found a series of articles "The Feast of Tabernacles." To my impression, this was the longest one there. I started reading it. Then I searched the name Daniel Yordy, finally I found your website! I delved right in until today.

I couldn't stop reading your materials. I felt I needed to contact you to let you know how blessed I was but I just couldn't stop feasting on your website. It was until December 5, I finally wrote you the first email. You kindly told me that I can ask you if I had questions. To me, I barely had any question to ask, I was just busy taking in everything!

There was tremendous healing taking place in me while I was reading your articles. All these years, I was doubting…. "Does God really love me?" "Am I blessed?” …because my life was filled with so much hardship and difficulties. When I found out that my heavenly Father truly loves me and all these difficulties and hardship have a great purpose, everything in my life  looked different to me ever since. I want to tell you, Daniel, many, many times that I am so blessed by you. You have given me Hope!

I am very thankful for you, dear brother Daniel! – Lanny

~~~

Not long after this, Lanny also began sending me a regular monthly donation that has continued until now. The Lord was giving His answer to my heart’s cry and to our need.

A Further Turning Point

Through the week of December 19-24, 2016, I wrote Chapter 14 of Kingdom, “Not Knowing God.” This chapter is right at the mid-point of the five Symmorphy texts, and writing it became a major turning point in my life and my knowledge of God.

Lesson 14.2 was titled “Calvinism.” In order to write that chapter, I found a copy of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion online and began to read. It wasn’t long before I was pacing back and forth through the house calling on the Lord Jesus as I was overwhelmed with the awfulness of what I was reading – a God who “knows evil” and a salvation that leaves wickedness as the only connection between the believer and this “God.”

Much more than that, it did not take me long to realize that I was also reading Buddy Cobb, that what Buddy Cobb had preached, the man whom I sat under more than any other in my life, including his “Plan of God,” was little more than an expression of John Calvin. I had figured that Buddy Cobb’s theology was Calvinist, even when I was at Blueberry, but I never said such a thing, for it would have been hotly denied from every direction.

What was horrifying was to see the dark definition placed against God and the repudiation of the covenant. Calvin said that when we "see God" we will know just how WICKED we are. The Bible says that when we see God, we will know that we are just like Him.

This was all very disturbing to me and I read no more of Calvin beyond what I needed to write that one lesson.

But Lesson 14.3 is titled “A Highway for God.” Writing this lesson, then, right after, marked another great turning point in my life, a more complete “turning around.” It’s not us “going into” God; it’s God coming through us into our world.

A Christmas Trip
During Christmas break, in December 2016, Matthew, Johanna, and James flew down from Canada to share several days with us. We rented an Airbnb home, a large and quite comfortable double-wide trailer in an isolated and lovely spot in the hill country of Texas, west of Austin.

Before we went, however, Matthew came to see me early one morning in my little office in the back of the house. He asked me for my permission and blessing to ask Johanna to be his wife. I gave him my blessing with all my heart, but I did place one requirement on him. I requested of Matthew, in return for my blessing, that when it came time for their children to be born, he would study the issue of vaccination carefully, that he would look at the arguments against equally with any arguments for, and then make a decision. I said that if he would become fully conversant in the arguments against, we would accept whatever their decision would be.

I do not know if my son-in-law has kept his agreement with me, nor will I inquire. Rather, Maureen and I continue to do what we have always done towards our children, placing ourselves as intercession before God for their sakes, that God Himself would arise inside of them.

Claude and Lois came down to be with us over this Christmas. Our dinner this time was an entire English Christmas dinner that I had found in a magazine.

During that day, Johanna came out into the living area with Matthew behind her, a ring on her finger and a beam upon her face. They planned to be married in June, after school was out.

I want to share also an autistic difficulty that happened to me during this short time, for it has bearing on the present. The engine of the Suburban had begun to cut out on me when it was hot. I did not know if this was a fuel problem or an electrical problem. It would still run, but only with low power.

I filled the tank with high-octane gas and it seemed to run better until we hit the steeper climbs of the hill-country. We did make it to the Airbnb, slowly. Kyle and James both insisted that the problem was caused by me foolishly filling it with high-octane fuel. I knew this wasn’t correct, but I had no resolving answer.

As we were all in the rental home, conversing together, including with other young men whom I hardly knew, Kyle began to speak what I knew would be a public correction of me regarding my foolish choice to fill the tank with high-octane fuel. In my autistic agony, I could not bear the contempt of young men I did not know, and so I asked Kyle not to continue. He attempted to ask a question concerning what we should do with the Suburban. I stopped him harshly, and he left the trailer.

This was my son, whom I love, and this was the first real breach I had known with him. I could not bear that either, so I followed him and we shared openly together in full respect and again received one another. I realize now that this moment marked the transition from a relationship of parent-child with Kyle to the relationship of friend with friend we enjoy now.

Let me include as well that through this year Kyle had begun to restore his friendship with Shelbie Stevens whom he had known at the local Baptist church through his many visits there growing up. A few weeks after our Christmas trip, in February, Kyle and Shelbie began to date regularly, a relationship that grew from then on.

Driving Uber
In February, just before the super bowl which was held in Houston this year, I signed up to drive with Uber, using Maureen’s red Toyota Corolla.  Although I would take a break for a few months in the fall, I drove Uber for about a year. The amount one can earn driving ride-share is minimal, still it was better than sitting in my chair in the afternoon and evening doing nothing.

For the most part driving Uber was a good experience. I drove two or three afternoons a week. I learned right away that I would not drive after dark and that driving on the big event days  like the super bowl was a mistake. You get caught with short trips in heavy traffic and lose money. With Uber, I would pick up a person near our home first and wherever they wanted to go, that was where I picked up the next person, and so on. I drove to and throughout every part of the Houston area from Conroe to Galveston and from Baytown to Katy. This is the largest most spread out metropolitan area on earth. I carried every kind of person and drove to every kind of drop-off point. Driving someone to the Bush airport was always the most profitable because it was many miles driven on the fastest roads.

I enjoyed getting to know Houston really well and I enjoyed serving people. Over time, however, the “noise” and press of other people in my car would become too much for me, especially when I made mistakes.

By April, we realized that the red Toyota was insufficient for our needs. We found a newer Toyota Corolla, blue this time, which Maureen bought and which I then used for driving with Uber.

In May, I was driving a customer north on Kirby Drive in heavy traffic. He was late for an appointment and in a hurry. I was in the third lane on the inside with a clear stretch ahead of me. Meanwhile a car was inching through the other two lanes to take a left turn. He pulled into my lane without seeing me. I braked hard, but hit him lightly. Only the outer material of both vehicles was damaged, but the experience shook me greatly. The other driver, a doctor, accepted being at fault and his insurance paid, though when driving Uber, insurance is a tangled mess. We got the blue Toyota repaired and I continued with Uber after the wedding coming up in June.

This accident did show up in my writing as I turned my difficulty into blessing for the sake of my readers.

From Kingdom to Covenant
Through this mid-point of working on Symmorphy III: Kingdom, I was also developing the first set of courses for my Christ Revealed Bible Institute program. I had kept a course from Dr. Cecil Cockerham’s program on Hermeneutics in which he used R.C. Sproul’s book, Knowing Scripture. Sproul is also a Calvinist, but without immersion in the Spirit. For my course on studying the Bible, I wanted to use Sproul’s book because it was filled with useful things that should be part of understanding the Bible and because it contrasted so clearly with how I read and interpret the Bible.

And so I wrote my own take on interpreting the Bible, titled Knowing God by Scripture,” as a rebuttal of Sproul’s treatment of the Bible as the tree of knowing good and evil. This was my first full “writing to teach” little book, twelve chapters long with three lessons in each chapter. It is a wonderful book, filled with the impartation of life. I wish that all Christians would read it to know what their Bibles are and to know, not the Bible, but God by the Bible.

From January into February of 2017 I wrote the chapters concerning the Church in Kingdom, and of the firstfruits of God inside each local gathering. The beauty of the Church as she really is grew in my seeing.

In February, the print copy of Essence was finally available, followed by the print copy of Knowing God by Scripture in March.

As I wrote the final chapters of Symmorphy III: Kingdom through April, I brought back into my teaching and my relationship with God, that full word that I received from God through Sam Fife. As I completed Kingdom I wrote the following.

“And so it has come full circle. Out from my present knowledge of my full union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord has caused me to know this same word that I received into my heart from age 20 to 21, though I could not know then what it meant. I have faithfully given you that word in this Kingdom text.”

I had a lot going on through this time, including getting ready for our trip back up to Canada for Johanna and Matthew’s wedding. I shared about that upcoming trip with my readers on April 23.  

Through April, I also found the need to do a complete transcription of the Annie visions, I Looked and I Saw Visions of God, which I put into PDF form with my comments in the margin and made it available on my website. This was my fourth and final time reading through this little book. This time was wondrous, for none of these things were beyond my own experience anymore; rather, they were a description of my present knowledge of God.

Then, also this April, as I prepared to write the specifics of my first course for the Christ Revealed Bible Institute program, I encountered a problem when I thought to use Fred Pruitt’s book, Hearts of Flesh. Fred’s approach to writing was similar to mine, that is, to compile a series of letters into a book with only a loose connection between chapters. Scattered through his book were wonderful letters on various aspects of Christ living as us. In between them, however, were letters in which Fred attempted to fit union with Christ together with the Nicene “God.” This included giving place for eternal damnation as well as a fulfillment in “heaven-only” of the big verses of the New Testament. In essence, half of his book was what I wanted and the other half would confuse the student with things I would eliminate in the Symmorphy courses.

I wrote to Fred, asking him for permission to create a PDF document of just those letters from Hearts of Flesh that were useful to the students in the course. He cheerfully gave me his permission, and so I proceeded to do just that. Nonetheless, this experience left me confused inside of a growing need to separate the two gospels completely.

By May I had begun to write Symmorphy IV: Covenant. This was an incredibly important task for me. I wrote the following in the Review chapter of Kingdom.

The burden of writing Covenant, however, has come upon me in a manner of which I have not known before. The Hand of God has come upon me, and I no longer write for myself, but for my Father. And in so doing, I find myself, once again, on my face on the floor before all Holiness. Indeed, I fear God.

We are speaking of living inside a Consuming Fire forever. And I see that this Consuming Fire intends to open to us things never before given to humans upon this earth. When I say that, I mean things entirely INSIDE God’s Word in the Bible and by the Holy Spirit, yet things that have been hidden, even from those who wrote those words.

From May through July, however, I sent out the chapters of Knowing God by Scripture rather than Symmorphy IV: Covenant, even though I was writing the chapters of Covenant at the same time. I just included a link in the Christ our Life letter to each next part of Covenant. My thinking was that the chapters of Covenant were only for those who would seek them out. I returned to sending out Covenant in the letter with Chapter 10 “The Ark of the Covenant.”

Writing Symmorphy IV: Covenant was of great importance to me, and my knowledge of God increased enormously through those chapters including things of God that are normal to us now, but that have not been known in Christian thinking.

North to Upsala
Johanna’s wedding was coming up in June. Everyone else was planning to fly up, but I preferred to drive, mostly because it would give me opportunity to stop along the way both going up and coming back to visit with readers of my letters.

I especially wanted to stop and visit this person in Kansas who had been sending me a $100 check each month for some time now. He still was not subscribed to my letter, and so I sent a postal letter to the address, not being certain, yet, who this was, asking for his phone number. Thus I called Bill Horton of Atwood, Kansas that May, and told him that I would be driving up to Canada in June and wanted to swing by and spend a couple of days fellowshipping with him.

Bill sounded astonished, but he agreed and welcomed me to visit. This would be the only stop I would make on my way up other than to visit briefly with my brother, Glenn. To most, Atwood, Kansas, is way out of the way; to me, it’s just lots more counties to color in on my map.

Johanna’s wedding would be on a Saturday, June 24, 2017.  I left home in the Suburban on June 13, a week-and-a-half before. I had thought to spend the night on the way to Atwood in the Suburban at a state park in western Oklahoma, but it was much too hot. I got a motel instead. I arrived at Atwood in the middle of the afternoon. Atwood is a small town in northwest Kansas tucked into a small river-valley hollow out of sight of the vastness of the plains.

Bill is about ten years older than me, and he lived in a small three-bedroom home with his elderly mother. Mrs. Horton had mild Alzheimer’s and Bill had devoted himself to her care. She was kind and friendly, just forgetful. One of the three bedrooms in the smaller house was filled with books and the second with food stuffs, leaving only the main bedroom that was used by Mrs. Horton. Bill gave me that bedroom for my stay, while the two of them went down to their former home, which was on the market for sale, yet still furnished.

I do not know what Bill was expecting in meeting me, but I was soon quite astonished myself when Bill showed me his copies of my books. He owned all of them up to Symmorphy II: Essence at this point, and every one of them was dog-eared, marked up, and filled with tabs. I had no idea that someone else would be so involved with what I have written.

I spent that evening fellowshipping with Bill. I found in him a commitment to the same word I was hearing from God. I spent two nights very comfortably, and did not leave until early afternoon of the third day. We shared, in our fellowship, a desire to know the Lord. On the morning before I left, having determined Bill’s level of involvement with the word I shared, I asked him about Christian community, if he was in any way interested in such a thing. He replied definitely that he was.

The Suburban had continued with the occasional lack of fuel flow and thus running at a lower speed in the heat off and on all the way to Atwood. On the afternoon I arrived, Bill went with me to the local shop to see what the problem might be. They looked at it the next day and showed me the part on the fuel line that stuck when it got very hot, thus limiting the inflow of fuel. It would be a simple thing to replace once I could get the part. The mechanic also told me that if it cut out on me, I should stop and fill it up again with fresh gas. That would cool the device back down. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened on the way to Glenn’s.

I arrived at Glenn and Kim’s on Saturday evening and spent all of Sunday with them. While there, I asked Glenn to order the part needed for the Suburban. I also made the final arrangements with them for James to spend the summer in their home, working with Glenn and Benjamin (James’s cousin) in construction. Canada was cooler than the states, and thus I had no more problem with the Suburban. I spent Monday night in a motel in Thunder Bay near the shore of Lake Superior. While there, I walked around a park area along the harbor and found a wonderful restaurant that I shared later with the rest of my family.

After arriving in Upsala on Tuesday, I wrote the following inside of Symmorphy IV: Covenant., Lesson “8.2 Describing the Holiest,” concerning my visit with Bill.

I am sharing all this because I really want to capture for you the practical heart of living inside of God, inside and as His Heart. Thus it was in this mind of Father and I together turning EVERYTHING that might be difficult into goodness and life arising in you that I drove a few hours out of my way going to Canada to spend time with a brother in western Kansas (Bill Horton) who has been reading and practicing what I write for some years now. It was in my heart to be a blessing to him and to lift him up in honor.

Yet when I drove on from there and from that time of fellowship and blessing, I found quite the reverse. In my own consciousness, my blessing of him constituted maybe 10% and his blessing of me the vastly larger 90%. I cannot tell you how deeply I was strengthened and lifted up by seeing the life and reality of this word God has granted me to share as it came back to me through a dear brother alive inside this same speaking of Christ.

Indeed, as this brother spoke Christ back into me, the same word I thought I had taught him, but hearing it myself now on a different level, a level of reality and substance, I find myself walking on a far stronger foundation of confidence than I had known before. This confidence works, now, …as a far clearer seeing of the path forward to the community of Christ that fills my heart.

Johanna’s Wedding
Johanna had been living in her own apartment in the upstairs of the Tabernacle at the South Farm of the Upsala community, and that’s where Maureen, Katrina, and Shelbie Stevens were staying, along with Johanna’s best friend, Jenna, who had flown up with her mother, Carla Zurovec, for the wedding. There was a manufactured home that had been set up on a property used as a business by the community in the past. This property was in-between the North Farm and the South Farm, just a short walk below the community school where Johanna had been teaching. Johanna and Matthew would be living there after their wedding and it was partly furnished. That is where Kyle and I were staying. James had his own room with the Schneider’s at the West Farm.

This home was not considered part of either community, and thus Johanna and Matthew would be semi-independent for the first part of their married life, something the elders of the Upsala community believed was important. Yet it also meant that I now had little involvement with the brethren, since I was not staying in anyone’s present home. I had unhindered time to write each early morning, this time two critical chapters in Symmorphy IV: Covenant, “Fire in the Holiest” and “Pro-Knowing.”

Maureen and I spent time fellowshipping with Steve Schneider, Matthew’s father and an elder in the community, in whose home James was staying. This fellowship was deep and good. Steve shared with us some of the difficulties James had experienced in fitting into a much stricter way of living than he had known at home. I am convinced that Steve was God’s best choice for James in that difficulty. Nonetheless, he also spoke of “seeking the will of God,” something that also showed up in “8.2 Describing the Holiest.”

Lois and Claude came to Johanna’s wedding. Sister Delores drove up from Minneapolis, and there were many others whom we knew. Another of Johanna’s friends from Family Christian, Serina Borny, also came, but only for the wedding.

Johanna insisted on an outdoor wedding; she is an outdoor girl, with flowers in her hair. Yet there were storm clouds and threatening rain. Her wedding would be in the mown field just below the Upsala community school. A large tent was set up and filled with tables for the reception after the wedding. Next to it were the rows of chairs set up for the wedding.

Here is a picture of me escorting Johanna down the aisle to Matthew waiting in front. I want you to notice four things in this picture. First, I want you to see just how beautiful our daughter is, and second, the deep emotion that is upon me. As I saw Matthew waiting for Johanna, I remembered myself waiting for Maureen. If the picture were clearer, you would see the tears on my face.

Then, I want you to see the dark storm clouds all around, covering the sky, but finally, notice the sunshine upon the wedding itself. This was a most remarkable thing, for the sun was on that wedding through the entire time. Just as the last of the guests entered the reception tent, only then, did the rains fall.

It was a wonderful wedding, of course. Then, during the reception after we ate, different ones got up to share. Both Steve and I shared that we had known years before that God had placed Matthew and Johanna together. Then Kyle got up to share. Kyle was still 25. As he spoke, I was struck by the depth of the anointing that was upon him and I knew that God had appointed Kyle as a shepherd in His Church. Then the chairs were put up and Jenna Zurovec led the young people of the community in a Texas line dance. That was really fun to watch.

Jenna and her mother were quite impressed with the community and Johanna’s life there. I was also very grateful that Shelbie had the opportunity to know firsthand the setting in which Kyle had grown up. She enjoyed every part of it, even though it was all very different for her.

Johanna and Matthew drove east to Quebec City for their honeymoon. On their way back, they stopped at Richter’s Herbs near Toronto, the source of herbs we had bought seeds from years before when Johanna was growing things at home. It was exciting to me that they got to stop there. Johanna bought all sorts of herb plants for her new home.

I must add one shadow to this time at Upsala because it is necessary for things to come. Always before, when staying at the Brumbach’s and fellowshipping with the brethren at Upsala I had felt fully welcome and found an anointing of the Spirit that I could join together with. This time, I was somewhat isolated in the house Matthew was preparing as their home. Our accommodations were not fully complete, though in all things I give thanks. The problem was that during this whole time I felt the same spirit of condemnation that I had felt from the move in the past. From whence it came, I did not know, but it left me much less interested in having anything more to do with that fellowship.

My Trip Home
As part of my travel plans, I had set up a lengthy trip home with a number of different stops. James rode with me down to Glenn and Kim’s north of Duluth where I spent a couple of days getting James settled in for the summer. Glenn had his new shop fully set up by this time. He was able to replace the defective part on the Suburban quickly and easily.

While I was there, I made time to visit with Mark Alesch for a couple of hours. The Meadowlands “community” was now their property and at that point in time Mark and Cindy were the only ones living there, having converted the several buildings into places for people to stay on vacation. I had a wonderful time sharing with Mark concerning the word God was giving to me. I left him with some of my books and placed him on my mailing list.

James spent this summer working with Glenn and Benjamin to earn the money for his next school-year’s tuition at Upsala.

I drove on from Glenn’s to Neenah, Wisconsin to visit again with Richard and Marie Williams and with Rita Robinson. I shared the word with them that evening and through the next day. Marie had arranged for me to stay at a friend of theirs, but when I went there after dark, I found the sleeping arrangement to be utterly unsuitable, to say it kindly. I excused myself and drove back to the William’s place and slept in the back of the Suburban. I was set up for that, with a full foam mattress, and was quite comfortable.

Another elderly sister was also with us in the Williams’ living room. I believe she was blessed by the word of union with Christ I was able to share with her. She passed on not long after. Marie expressed a desire to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and so I prayed for her. This is not something I’ve ever done before or since, but to my complete astonishment, as I was praying, the Spirit of God poured out from her and she was praying in a heavenly language. I also spent a couple of hours riding around and visiting with Richard, as he showed me where he worked.

After a second night there in the Suburban, I left early the next morning heading towards Michigan. I had originally hoped to cross Lake Michigan on the ferry, but the timing would not work. Not wanting to go anywhere near Chicago, I drove north through upper Michigan. I took a side route in the center of Michigan to collect a few missing counties before finally arriving at Ed and Dora Carter’s place near Flint. This was where they were originally from and had returned there from Nashville prior to this visit.

Now, Ed Carter had continued to call me about once a week or so, all through this time. It was easy for me to visit with him and our conversations were warm and fruitful. I was always much blessed in the Lord as a result. For some reason, however, there did not seem to be a connection in the Spirit when I first arrived.

Ed was usually humorous. With a person like that, I am sometimes a chameleon, that is, I take on their mood. We sat in his living room together that evening, and Ed scrolled through the TV, looking for something to watch. When I said that I did not wish to watch a WWII movie, he argued at me as to why that made no sense. To my horror, I fell into the same mood and before long we were arguing AT each other over politics. I can’t imagine anything more stupid than arguing over politics.

I went up to their spare bedroom that evening feeling quite depressed. It took great faith to draw the Lord into myself, that Jesus shares all with me.

The next day, as we were sitting around his patio table outside, Ed asked me, a bit harshly, “What are you trying to do, start a cult?” As I shared out from union with Christ in response to such a wild question, Ed finally began to respond back inside the Spirit of Christ and we enjoyed good fellowship together for the rest of the day. I wondered, though I don’t know for sure, whether Ed had searched out “Sam Fife” and “the move” online and read all the horrible and mostly untrue stuff one can find.

The next morning I drove on towards Akron, Ohio. I had first wanted to drive back into Canada, into southern Ontario, to visit with Kathy MacDonald, but it was not a good time for her. For that reason, I went on to spend two nights with Dan and Joanne Kurtz near their original hometown of Unionville, Ohio.

I had a wonderful time fellowshipping with Dan and Joanne. They had attended a couple of move conventions again prior to this, just to see how things were going in that fellowship. Dan had embraced Preston Eby’s teaching on ultimate reconciliation, so he would never have fit back under Buddy Cobb. Dan shared again many more of his experiences with Sam Fife in the early years of the move communities and of some of the difficult things he and Joanne had faced at Graham River Farm.

The second evening, Lee and Claire Wilkerson, who had been a part of the second Graham River community, came by for supper and fellowship. They lived in that part of Ohio at this time. Dan had a number of my books, but I don’t think he had read them much. Instead, he gave them to Lee to read. Lee had also embraced Preston Eby’s teaching. Since I started writing my life story, however, Dan has read most of my letters.

My heart was full and rich from my time with the Kurtz’s. But I was quite worn out at this point. It took me two long days to make it back home to Houston, arriving home late on Friday, July 7.

Here is what I wrote, then, in Covenant, Lesson 9.3 “The Father’s Heart.”

I am sharing my conclusions from this time of going from place to place sharing Christ with some VERY different sorts of people. As I went from time spent visiting with one person to time spent visiting with another, whether that time was many hours or ten minutes, I realized that I seemed to be a different sort of person from one interchange to the next. I realized that each one with whom I spoke cast me by their image of me and drew from me only what they wanted. I could not be more nor less than what that one wanted me to be towards them.

You see, as I have traveled, I find that my only desire is to be life as people wish me to be life, to speak Christ as people want to hear from me Christ living as them, and to be silent when people are not interested. Basically, I find myself giving out to them only what people draw out from me. And what each person wants God to be through me to them is very different from one to the next.

A sister wanted to receive from God through me full immersion into the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues specifically. I have never done such a thing in my life. I just prayed as I write prayers in these letters and to my utter astonishment, the Holy Ghost flooded into her soul and prophetic tongues flowed out of her mouth as rivers. Just like Jesus, I had nothing to do with it. Rather, she, in her own faith and desire, made use of my being there in order to connect with God in her according to that desire.

Another brother also desires to know God through all that I share, yet he is a persnickety sort of fellow who likes to draw people into argument. I have not pointlessly argued politics in 20 years, yet there I was, meeting him at his desire and foolishly arguing over a point that was utterly meaningless to both of us. You see, in times past, I would have gone to bed under total condemnation by such a thing. But I have turned around, and I now see all things as my Father together with me. It was difficult, yes, but I now see that “becoming all things to all men” is not a theatrical exercise, but the very being of God, no matter how excruciating it might be.

Directions for Kyle & for Covenant
This summer of 2017, the Lord opened a most wonderful door for our son, Kyle. During Kyle’s time taking electrical courses at San Jacinto College under Mr. Elder, he had organized study groups with the other students and even stood in front of the class at times to help with the teaching. Mr. Elder had recognized Kyle’s gift in teaching and told him that after three years experience in the field, he might find a place as a teacher in that program.

Kyle reconnected with Mr. Elder, and with his help applied for a full-time teaching position. Now, Kyle had only three years of field experience and a two-year associates degree from college. He certainly did not “qualify.” Kyle was the first of several to be interviewed. During his interview, the college board liked him so much that he was hired to teach full time on the spot and all the other applicants were dismissed.

Kyle is a born teacher, and he has been an instructor in the electrical program at San Jacinto College from the fall of 2017 until the present – five years now.

All of Houston went through quite an ordeal in August, affecting the lives of many, including ours. At the same time, I was finishing the middle part of Symmorphy IV: Covenant in August, about to enter into a wondrous new seeing of the Church of Jesus Christ coming up in September.