45. A Vision of God
© 2021 Daniel Yordy
September 2011 – August 2012
A New School Year Begins
In August, a new school year began. Katrina chose to go to C.E. King for her high school years, and so I ventured back into those halls again to enroll her in the school. James was in sixth grade, and so he was now enrolled in C.E. King Middle School, and so I made my way back into those halls as well. This was not easy, but the Lord and I worked through all the conflicting emotions. Kyle did not continue with school right away after his return, but worked for a time at a Ruby Tequila’s Restaurant in mid-town Houston.
Johanna began her senior year at Upsala Christian School. Barbara Beebe, who was the principal of the Upsala school asked me if I would teach my writing course to Johanna and to Matthew Schneider, who was in her same grade, as he wanted to learn to write better. I agreed to do so and thus was as an English teacher to those two through the whole year, even though it was long-distance.
Meanwhile, I had two new college groups taking developmental writing at Lone Star College. This was now my fourth time through my course in the college classroom and it was becoming more effective. Being immersed in teaching writing had inspired me to believe that I could make it my online business, and so I created the website www.thewritingconservatory.com. In fact, I became all excited about making use of this website with my college students. I signed them all up onto it on the first day of school and immediately it crashed. I was not able to make it useful to many all at the same time, although I maintained it as a resource for my students. Matthew and Johanna were able to use the website as part of my teaching them as well.
Under an Arrogant Christ
On September 20, 2011, I received an email from a reader. Only now am I realizing the great importance of this moment. Let me set the background first.
I had written my letter, “Knowing God” (found now in Gathering to Life), and sent it out on Sunday, September 18. This letter was several things. First, it was the most anointed letter I had written up until that moment. Second, it focused the whole purpose of my life and the intensity of my heart – to KNOW God my Father. Third, even as I wrote it and sent it out, I knew that I was still reaching, that I still had not fully entered into the knowing of God with me that my heart longed for. Yet, fourth, it expressed quite clearly the agony and desire of my heart at the time. And fifth, it served as the “bait,” that is, talking about Asperger’s, that drew an awful response. And so I must share a bit from it, the portion that sparked the horrifying email I received two days later.
~~~
From “Knowing God.” Some people have a problem with my talking about Asperger’s and autism. Someone wrote to assure me that “Christ is not Asperger’s.” Others say, “Well, it’s just how we ‘see’ things.” Technically, that’s true, but the problem always comes in that, according to them, ME, as I am right now, cannot be Christ. And for me to KNOW Him, I must alter myself, get away from myself, whatever.
If Christ is not my Asperger’s, then I have no hope. If I have to alter my emotional difficulties in order to know Him, then I can never know Him. If I have to be something other than what I find myself to be, then where do I turn? You see, I have decades of knowing that “voice” and all the horror of frustration, all the endless agony that it produces, all the numbing hopelessness. It is not Jesus, though it comes through sincere and good people.
And it’s not just Asperger’s. Every one of us is afflicted with a weakness appointed to us by a Father who does all things perfectly. All of His ways concerning us are perfect.
To deny our weakness is to pretend. Christ is made perfect in our weakness.
All of me, in all of my ups and downs, my ins and outs, my fears and distresses, I am always and totally fused together with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and He with me in an intimate union of the complete immersion of my spirit into His Spirit and His Spirit into my spirit. His consciousness is inside of me, my consciousness is inside of Him, and we walk together in an utter sharing of life.
I went through great emotional and physical difficulty on Friday (in the middle of writing this piece). I was greatly distressed, weeping over my gross inability to fulfill the reality that is in my heart – and to provide for my family’s needs. I felt as if all I long to see accomplished was nothing more than my fleshy fallen ambition and that it could never ever be.
The next morning, when I felt a bit better, I heard the Lord nudging me inside, “You passed the test.” Do you see how foolish it is for us ever to judge ourselves? What had I done that He approved of?
Simple. In all of my weakness and inability, I saw no shadow of separation inside myself between me and Jesus. I looked at my center and saw Jesus. I knew, with no shadow of thought otherwise, that He is my life and that we are joined together in perfect communion, soul to Soul. I knew that He shares all things with me that I am. I knew that I share all things with Him that He is. I knew that we are joined in a perfectly fused union. I knew that ME, in all the distress of my weakness and anger and inability and despair, He carries ME inside Himself, and He walks in intimate union with that very me.
~~~
Then, I can best describe what happened next by quoting from the next letter I wrote and sent out on September 25. Please bear with me, for in some ways, this is the most important moment of my life. I must convey to you its full impact and meaning. These quotes also show the close and ongoing relationship that I had come to enjoy with the Lord Jesus since February of 2009.
~~~
From “Christ versus Superman I.” After posting my letter, "Knowing God," on my website of a Sunday, I received an email response that arrived the following Tuesday morning. The email came from a brother who has sent me many email responses over time, the great majority of which have been sharply critical. In the majority of those emails there was no personal communication, no fellowship of Christ from one heart to another, just jab and poke.
Finally, nearly a year ago, he sent me one that was too overwhelming for me. It is my responsibility before God to stay free from controllers, and so I removed the brother's email from my list and erased all his subsequent emails without opening them. I hope to justify that decision through this letter.
However, the subject of this recent email said, "Hello Daniel." I am always a hopeful optimist, ready to believe the best, so I opened the email and read the short paragraph that was there.
I do not write these letters to be read, per se. Rather, I write them to know the Lord Jesus Christ more fully than I do. As I write, I hear Him singing. Yet to send out what I write is to open myself up to pain and sorrow. I bear that pain, though I don't want to, because of the love in my heart for those dear ones who also hear Him singing in their hearts when they read and because I know that a stopped spring soon grows stagnant.
I read the email twice, eyes blinking, knowing I had made a terrible mistake, but not wanting to read it wrong. I was already feeling weak, but I headed to my college classes in great pain and turmoil of mind and emotions, knowing from long experience that the pain and turmoil would not lift for at least 48 hours.
God orders my steps and all His ways concerning me are perfect. I give Him thanks with joy for all things.
On Thursday morning, as I awoke, the Lord spoke a verse into my heart: Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven . . . Matthew 5:10-11.
I realized that what I had thought was my own pain was really the Lord Jesus Christ, sharing His suffering with me for my glory. It was then that full peace finally returned to me.
However, from the time I read that email until now, the desire to speak against the issues raised in the email has not left my mind, issues that I have watched destroy so many dear people whom I love, along with the desire to shine the light upon the darkness until God's people can see most clearly the pitfalls that press so closely to the path of Christ. It is my hope that some, at least, will escape those pits of darkness because of what I write.
But I did not think I could actually write until the next Sunday morning for two reasons. One, the subject matter is too dark and too filled with human suffering to walk lightly into. And two, it is a delicate and difficult thing to separate between a brother and a string of emails which he has written. I do not judge the brother; I do not possess the wisdom to do so. He belongs to Jesus and is in very capable hands. However, I do judge the email and the things said in it. And I judge those things with all the ferocity that is in me.
My anger is right and just. Yet anger must always be carried inside of love.
~~~
Now, when I included the email in that chapter in my book, The Kingdom Rising, I stated that I will never read it again. I have kept that commitment, even though I have edited and then read the chapter many times since. However, as I prepared to write this chapter of my life, I thought that maybe I should read it for the purposes of sharing my life story more clearly. After pondering my reaction, and thus remembering the things it said, I chose against that idea. And so I include it now, sticking it in at the last minute so that I don’t have to skip over it more than is necessary.
You see, I must have you understand the violence and the ferocity inside of me to this day against this wicked, wicked definition of the Lord Jesus. It was four weeks and four letters after I received the email and read it twice that this anger and violence continued in me. In fact, in the fourth letter, sent out on October 18, I included these words.
From “The Mystery of the Holy.” “I am nowhere near finished with this topic. It burns as a fire inside of me hotter and hotter. I will speak for those who cannot speak for themselves; I will build a shield around the defenseless to protect them from the torture of well-meaning Christians.”
I do try to be nice when I write – what I really meant was “from the torture of the arrogant ‘Christ.’”
Here, then, is the email I received that changed everything for me. I will not read it again, for my anger is God’s anger carrying the hurt He knows against all who accuse Him of being evil, who place their own perversity upon the Father.
~~~
I decided to write this only because your desire for the fullness of Christ seems to great. I hope it really is. Your insistence to put a name Asperger's above the name above all names.
Some like the name cancer or autisms or one of many they parade around today and wear them like badges of courage to define who they are and how they over come in spite of their given name. Christ
Well I like the name of Christ and know that in Him I have been made new and in Him there is no Asperger's or cancer or poverty or any other thing of the fallen man. And our life has been made new in Him and by resisting all that would tell us other wise. I love you brother and believe you are on the right path but for some reason continue to believe that something beside Christ is your real life and who you are. Don’t need to respond I can hear it now an excuse for why you are the way you are instead of the truth that you have been made whole in Christ and that is the truth end of sentence.
~~~This “Christ” as expressed in this email, was the so-called “Christ” that I had known in my carnal mental darkness for years, standing high above me in his arrogance, demanding of me something I could never produce, a “Christ” who was no savior at all. Of course, it was this same false ‘Christ” that drove me into knowing only Jesus my Savior when I left the move fellowship.
The dark anointing upon the words of this email placed the power of that false image as I had known it for years back upon me. But the assault against me that I heard was “Shame on you, Daniel, for being autistic. Get out of your autistic self and get up into pretending like you have never pretended before, and then call your pretending, ‘Christ.’” Even now the hatred in me against this wicked definition of “Christ” burns just as fiercely as ever.
In my agony during the next couple of days, I reached for the only solace I have ever known, and that is the words of my Bible, God speaking the gospel of His salvation to me. I opened to one place, 2 Corinthians 12, and I studied what Paul actually said until it was written upon my heart. – And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is brought to full perfection and completion inside of your weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will boast inside of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest, dwell, spread as a tent over, and abide upon me.
Then, I wrote “Christ Versus Superman I” by that weekend, and I wrote it in anger for by that time, God had resolved much of the hurt. Then I wrote a long email to Dennis Rhodes in Australia, who was one that could appreciate my frustration. Often, I can express myself more personally when I am writing to a specific person. Much of my email to Dennis then became a large part of “Christ Versus Superman II,” which I sent out early Sunday morning, on October 2, 2011, just before we went to the Sunday morning service at Lakewood Church.
Seeing God as He Is
I must somehow convey to you the meaning of what happened to me next. To do that, I must bring in two threads, one concerning my thinking, and the other, a central part of my experiences with God through the seven years we attended Lakewood Church.
Over the prior few months I had been pondering the walk of the Atonement, and had begun to consider the meaning of a Man on His face in the mud under a cross He could not carry. I had been wondering how it is that in seeing this Man, we were seeing the Father. And I had been placing before my eyes the fact that Jesus alone shows us what God is like. At the same time, I had been teaching that you and I were inside of Jesus as He carried us through death and into life. Nonetheless, I had not put all these things together; they were just the beginning of thoughts.
Then, inside the anointing that was upon the Lakewood Church services and the liberty I felt in the Spirit to hear God speaking to me as He would, Sunday after Sunday, I experienced many times over the years moments of the heavens opening to me and the Father showing me things of Himself inside the context, both of what I was writing at the time or of what was being said in the service, particularly by Joel, and often out from both words together.
This opening of the heavens and the voice of my Father coming into me may not have been quite as strong as it was for the seven years I experienced the same thing listening to Brother Sam Fife minister the word, whether in person or on tape, but it was with much greater understanding, because in my early twenties, I could hardly believe God was speaking to me. At this point, having embraced the speaking of Christ, I knew that God was telling me the truth.
More than once, this seeing, this entrance of the knowing of God into me, was so profound that I could not keep myself from expressing outwardly in tears in the praise service. – And that is not something I readily did as an Asperger’s man.
Now, I do not remember which of the many things that made their way out from the heavens onto the pages of my letters that came during these times of great anointing. – Except here – October 2, 2011. (As I think, now, I do remember another such truth coming in this way, coming up in the next chapter.)
As I had rejected the above-you “Christ” over the prior couple of weeks, and held firmly to the Christ who shares all my weakness with me and who carries me inside Himself all the way through, so I was pondering that morning, inside an open heavens, the real meaning of what I was seeing.
And in that moment, I saw God, my Father, through this stumbling Man, God carrying me inside Himself through His incapable Son, all the way through a way neither Jesus nor me could ever go. In that moment, I saw that the weak human Jesus alone shows us God, and that this God is NOT above me, but beneath of me.
God was beneath my feet – carrying me!
I have never accused God of arrogance from that moment until now. And, of truth, the more I speak of a God who is meek and lowly of Heart and who thinks more highly of others than of Himself, the more all the words of the Bible sing together for joy inside my heart.
I remember that walk to our car right after the service, through the green lawns and by the fountains of water, basking in the wonder and goodness of a God who carries me. And I have been on a mission from then until now to change your definition of God to a God who knows no evil or hurt, to a God who covers all for all, hopes all for all, believes all for all, carries all for all.
The next morning I began writing “God Is Beneath Your Feet,” the letter that changed the whole course of my writing and the anointing upon it from then until now.
Here is the diagram, then, that I shared in Chapter 40, “The Time of the Jesus Secret.”
On August 6, 2006, I began to speak what God says I am in my finished state, just like the Lord Jesus. This was such a lift-off into a knowledge of God and of Jesus inside of me that I had longed for all my life, but had never known. On February 21, 2009, the Lord Jesus showed me that He had entered into union with me and that I existed only inside of Him. I have not seen myself as separate from Jesus since.
And on October 2, 2011, my Father showed me that He walked beneath of me, carrying me and Jesus together all the way through. My Father showed me that Jesus alone is His image, that He has no other image through which I am to know Him, that the walk of the Atonement is not something God “did”; it is the only visible expression given to creation of God as He IS.
I have never known my God in any other way or lived anywhere else since.
A Facebook Fellowship
My relationship with Chris Welch seemed to have grown through this time. I often included things he wrote in my letters as well as out from the correspondence between him and me. As I had shared, Chris had persuaded me to enter the Facebook world and to join with him in sharing union with Christ with many.
Then, Chris was facing a particular need and he gathered together a number of people inside of a Facebook private chat room in order to share that need and that we would pray with him. He included me in that sharing, along with some others who were reading my letters as well as others whom I had not yet known. When he created the private chat room, he was thinking only of a short-term thing, except, once the sharing began, it just continued. In fact, the sharing and fellowship among a couple dozen people continued for about three years.
I often shared things in the FB fellowship, as did many others. It was an experience of strength and blessing to me. Yet, at the same time, there were no “rules” inside the sharing, and often people would post, not just a link to another article, but the entire article itself. Sometimes these other articles contradicted our wondrous union with Christ, bringing back in the old story of human performance, a story that always fails.
At the same time, I had introduced Chris to my understanding of the world, and to knowing about the wicked men who control things behind the scenes. He had pursued his own study of the topic and was putting many things he had found in that study on his main Facebook page without explanation or discernment.
Both of these things bothered me, but I did not have to spend time with all of that, and so I put it all into “Christ living as them,” and continued with my enjoyment of that fellowship.
Continuing in School and Writing
The spring semester of 2012 would be my last at the Montgomery branch of Lonestar College. The reason is that I did not fully understand that, as an adjunct instructor, I was not in any way “employed.” That meant that I did not have a spot in any upcoming semester unless I secured that spot well in advance. The dean did not just pencil anyone into another session.
In February, I took the adjunct certification course at the Montgomery college, several sessions over several weeks. It was very similar to things I had learned in graduate school at Lubbock Christian University. I had hoped that this would raise my standing in the college. But then, the entirety of Lonestar (several other branches besides Montgomery) decided to merge the developmental reading and developmental writing into one course. To be prepared for that new course, I would need to take some further training being offered.
Because of some circumstance I don’t remember, I missed that further training time. But it was only later that I discovered that because I had missed it, I was no longer eligible for teaching again in the fall semester. I had taught my course five times, at this point, and it had become quite effective. I remember one girl, Cynthia, who said to me in class, near the end of the semester (and I paraphrase), “Mr. Yordy, I always hated writing in high school. I never understood it and no one taught me. But now that I have taken your course, I know how to write and I actually enjoy writing.”
Through this school year, I was also developing The Writing Conservatory website hoping to obtain an income from it. I obtained written permission from all sets of students over these two semesters to use bits and pieces from their writing on my website and in the course. I even used a couple of complete Personal Narratives as examples. In fact, you can see a comment written by Cynthia as well as others here – Action Writing through Personal Narrative.
In the next chapter, I hope to explain just a bit what my writing course had become.
This spring semester, I took Johanna and Matthew through writing a short story, something I had done at Family Christian, only now I knew better what I was doing. Both of them were excellent writers, but Jo is one of the best writers I have ever read. For some reason, I have never been able to convince her of that; maybe when she is older and her children are grown, she will pick up the pen again.
Meanwhile, from my first letter written to bring down that awful image of an above-you “Christ,” “Christ versus Superman I,” my Christ Our Life letter writing became much more focused on a complete series that would be the size of a book. My topic was the kingdom of God, but my purpose was to know God as He had shown me that wondrous day in October. You see, it takes time for things to come clear and for all the necessary verses to find their place.
Through these months, then, I progressed through the chapters of what would become The Kingdom Rising. I remember my chapter “Repent of Augustine” causing quite a stir on the general Facebook feed, since Chris Welch posted all of it on his site as well as on Facebook.
It was in writing the three letters, however, “Defining God Defining Man,” “The Weakness of God,” and “The Foolishness of God,” that I worked my way into understanding the strong distinction between two images of God, either Jesus or the serpent, as well as what God means when He says, “great.” This included a description of God that has formed all subsequent writing. Here is that description as it finally became by the time I had completed this series.
– God always reveals Himself through weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state, limiting Himself by our weakness. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and we inside of Him. –
There was an additional turning point in my writing that happened as I came to know God only in this way, a verse that stuck its nose, so to speak, under my tent, a verse I did not understand at all, but that has wanted to put itself onto my pages as I write, unbidden by me, from then until now. That verse was 1 John 3:16 – and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. And so I allowed this verse to push itself onto my pages without having a clue as to what it meant until it took me into Jesus upon the cross in Psalm 22, in June of 2019. But that’s a later story.
Rhoda Marie Yordy
On May 4, 2012, my mother, Rhoda Marie Yordy, passed away into the next season of her life with Jesus. She spent her last few months in a care home in Hibbing, Minnesota, a good place. Let me share just a bit of her last years.
After we had visited Meadowlands in the summer of 2005, the community had closed. Glenn and Kim had purchased the forty acres on the other side of the road and there Glenn built a house. At the same time, Mark and Cindy Alesch had arranged to purchase the main part of the property from the move fellowship. Mark and Glenn continued to work together in the construction business.
Glenn had built a space for mom in their new house, and when it was completed, they all moved over. That was mom’s home, then, for a few years. In fact, earlier, Johanna had come down from Upsala to spend time with her grandma and aunt and uncle. Through 2012, then, Glenn and Kim knew they could no longer meet mom’s needs and so put her into Guardian Angels Health and Rehabilitation Center in Hibbing for her last several months.
We had been planning a trip up to Upsala for Johanna’s graduation, and thus we came up to Meadowlands, probably at the end of May, 2012. I will describe that whole trip in the next section. All of our siblings were not able to come to Minnesota at that time, and so we planned for a family memorial service for the next summer, when all could gather in Oregon and we could put mom’s remains in the cemetery plot next to Dad’s on the green slope just south of Lacomb.
The care home was having its own memorial service for mom and for a couple of others who had also just passed. Maureen and I with our children, and Glenn and Kim with their children all attended this service at the care home. This home was beautiful and mom had been well taken care of. Members of the staff shared with us how great a blessing mom had been to them, that, even though she did not speak, her smile always filled them with life and joy.
Mom did not have the outward gifting of some of the sisters I had known in the move who moved in a mighty faith and anointing; I am thinking of Sister Charity and Sister Ethelwyn. Nonetheless, I now see that her faith in God inside her sphere was as great as any. Mom never looked elsewhere, for her hope was always utterly in the Lord Jesus Christ. And she always imparted that same faith to each one of us, in spite of her inability of expression.
Over the years, mom had labored over a quilt for each of her children and grandchildren. Mine was the first, and Jenelle’s son, Sean, was the last, twenty-six quilts in all, I believe. Each of our children keep their grandma’s quilt as a prized possession. I have no doubt that mom’s faith in God in tears was also poured out for each in the making of their quilt.
Johanna’s Graduation
Johanna’s high school graduation from Upsala Christian School was set for June 9, 2012. We had only the red Toyota Corolla for the trip, a great car to drive, but a bit small for five people and all our luggage. I drove most of the way, with Kyle in the passenger seat. Maureen endured the center of the back seat in order to be between Katrina and James and thus keep the peace. We hoped to visit with as many Yordy and Handrich relatives as we could on the way up and on the way back, thus we planned a fairly long trip.
Our first stop would be with Arlene Litwiller Sutter, my Aunt Ada’s (dad’s older sister) oldest daughter, in west central Iowa.
As we were driving north through Missouri, past Kansas City, I heard the voice of my Father, unbidden by me and unrelated to any other thought, quiet, but unmistakable, “Son, because you have honored My word, I will honor you.”
I have often thought of these words, for there has been no outward fulfillment of them, that is, not as yet. Nonetheless, before the end of this narrative, I hope to show you that God has done what He says in my life, not in an outward manner, per se, but with greater value to me than I could ever have hoped.
And again, what I thought was a stumbling through endless unrelated experiences, as I now write them out, I see God’s incredible patterns and preparation in my life. The next two chapters of this narrative will contain a series of related and very specific difficulties. I now realize that God spoke this word to me beforehand, just what I would need, the right word at the right time.
We had a wonderful visit with Arlene. Afterwards, we drove straight west to the northern suburbs of Chicago to spend the night with Deborah Coleman, the younger daughter of my Uncle Orvin (Dad’s oldest brother). Deborah is married to an African American man. I had remembered her as a girl, just a bit older than me, in one of our visits to Michigan when I was a boy. She shared that she had always wondered about me and the direction my life had taken. She has been reading my Christ Our Life letters since.
From north Chicago, we drove up to Neenah, Wisconsin, arriving there late morning. We met with Rita Robinson, a sister who has read my letters and books from the start and has communicated with me much over the years. We gathered in the home of her cousin, Marie, and Marie’s husband, Richard Williams, along with a couple of others who wanted to hear what I had to share. We all sat on their couch and I shared a word of Christ our life, the first time I was able to share with eager hearers. After the time of sharing, we ate at a restaurant, with good fellowship together. Then Rita took us to visit her home where we met her husband, Wayne.
This was an unusual thing for them, that a “ministry” would take the time to share Christ with them. As we were leaving the Williams’ home, Marie insisted on giving us an envelope which turned out to contain a generous amount of money. Maureen and I were overwhelmed with the goodness of God. The truth is, we did not really have enough to cover the cost of the trip; now we did. Thank you, Richard and Marie, for your great generosity.
We drove on that afternoon to Meadowlands, north of Duluth. We stayed there a couple of days, visiting with Glenn and Kim and their children, and Mark and Cindy Alesch. While we were there, all the Yordy’s gathered in the downstairs of the Tabernacle one evening, and I read aloud to them Johanna’s short story. The truth is, it was just inside the “horror” category of story. Because I read with expression, the story had full impact on all listening.
We finally arrived at Upsala a couple of days before the graduation. This was my first visit to this community, although Maureen had spent several days here the summer before. We were given Johanna’s room. She had lived with Ray and Paula Brumbach through the second year she had been at school. Paula was one of Jo’s teachers in the school. We had a most wonderful time in their home. They received us in all the joy of the Lord, and we spent hours in good fellowship.
The Upsala community was divided into three small communities, the West Farm, the South Farm, and the North Farm, just a few miles apart. Each community had its own mealtimes together, but all three gathered for services and for school. The South Farm was the largest of the three; this was where Johanna was living; whereas the school was up the road a mile or so, as part of the North Farm.
We gathered with the family in the Tabernacle of the South Farm for mealtimes. This was a wonderful family of people, much closer in their expression to what I had envisioned community should be. We visited with John and Gerry Kiezebrink. Their daughter, Kittie, had stayed with Dan and Joann Kurtz at Graham River years before, at the same time I was there. We visited with Dot Richie. She had also been at Graham River, though her husband, Bill, had since passed on. Steve and Cindy Schneider, Matthew’s parents, were living at West Farm; we had a meal with the family there.
Ted and Eloise Beebe lived at the South Farm as well. Ted Beebe is a highly skilled musician, piano player, and composer. He had taught Johanna on the piano, taking her to a higher level of classical piano playing than she had known before. Barbara Bell, the wife of my good friend, Peter, was Ted and Eloise’s daughter. Their oldest son, Paul, lived there with his wife, Gaye. Paul made his living manufacturing fine wood-working knives, chisels, and gouges, which he sold through Lee Valley Tools. His little shop was right there on the way to the Tabernacle. Then, their second son, Eric lived with his wife, Barbara, at the West Farm. Barbara was the principal of the school, and Johanna’s main teacher.
I love community, and I loved being back in its expression at Upsala. The elders there had chosen against some of the poorer practices of the move and had even taken a firm stand against some of the things Brother Buddy taught. It was a wonderful place for our daughter; she is very much a wilderness girl.
The graduation was held in the Upsala town community hall, a public building. The move communities often rented it for larger services. It was a very comfortable accommodation, not far from the West Farm. There were five students graduating, including Johanna and Matthew. Jo and Matt had become good friends during their two years of classes together, but as yet, Johanna, at least, had no thought of a romantic inclination. Because I had been one of the Upsala school teachers, as well as the dad of one of the graduates, I was given a speaking part in the graduation ceremony. I also was able to pray a prayer over them in the anointing of union with Christ.
Johanna was not ready to return home, however. She wanted to spend at least another year at Upsala, being part of the family and working in the larger community to earn some money. So the rest of us continued on our visits with family on the way back. We drove into northern Michigan and spent the night with my cousin, Carl Yordy, Uncle John’s youngest son. On our way down to Ashley, Michigan the next day, we made two stops. First we drove over to Fairview and spent a couple of hours with Rosemary, the daughter of mom’s sister, Donna. Rosemary was the only one from the Handrich side of the family we were able to visit with on this trip. Afterwards, we stopped at the Fairview Cemetery and found the gravestones of my two brothers, David and Thomas. Then we drove over and found Yordy Road. This really impressed Kyle and he had to have a picture taken of him standing in front of the sign.
We had supper with Arlyn DeBoer, the older daughter of Uncle Orvin, and sister to Deborah Coleman. Afterwards we drove on down to the Yordy farm, now owned by my cousin, Wallace, Uncle John’s middle son. We spent a couple of days with Wallace and Jean. They were not living at the original farm, but in another house down the road. The next day was a mini-Yordy reunion because of our visit. A couple of Uncle Charles’s children were there, though I never knew them well. Also, John David, Uncle John’s oldest son, drove up with his family. John David Yordy was a professor at Goshen Mennonite College in Indiana for many years and then became the president of the college.
Our last stop on the way back home was in Bloomington, Illinois, with Mary Salter and Phyliss Litwiller, two more of Aunt Ada’s daughters. We spent the night with them and had such a wonderful visit.
These visits to all the Yordy/Handrich relatives really impressed Kyle, especially. All of my family are warm, generous people, always quick to laugh. But many of them have had one thing or another to do with education. Kyle came back home with the realization that, “I come of a family of teachers.”
After we returned, Kyle enrolled in San Jacinto Community College for the summer term, hoping to finish his audio engineering associates degree there.
From Kingdom to Covenant
All through this trip, I had continued writing the final chapters of what would become The Kingdom Rising. In fact, it was during my early morning hours in the home of Ray and Paula at Upsala, that I wrote, inside a beautiful anointing, one of the most important chapters of my career, “Filled with God.” I will use from this chapter again and again whenever I return to this topic in future writing. Indeed, it was after writing “Filled with God,” that my focus of faith began to switch from “Christ is all there is in me,” to “Father, You fill me with all that You are.”
After our return home, I set myself to turn A Kingdom Rising into a printed book, my second. At this point, technology had advanced in the book publishing business. A couple of years earlier, I had sent a PDF copy of The Jesus Secret to a print company in Boston, Massachusetts. They charged $75 to put the PDF into what is called a “book expresso machine,” that is, a large photocopier that prints and binds a single copy of a book when it is ordered. This way, I paid only for one copy at a time, whenever someone ordered The Jesus Secret. At the same time, this print shop mailed the copy directly to the buyer.
At this point in time, however, Amazon had begun their own similar print business with a subsidiary called Create Space. Amazon has since switched all that was Create Space to Kindle Direct Publishing, which is basically the same thing. With Amazon, however, you simply upload the PDF yourself, right into their computers, at no cost. Then, you order a proof copy or two from them and upload again until the print copy is exactly what you want. In all, to publish a book through the Amazon website costs me only the proof copy cost, from five to fifteen dollars total. Then, a printed copy is made only in response to someone ordering it.
On August 14, 2012, The Kingdom Rising was published and available to all on Amazon.
Meanwhile, after writing about the Kingdom, the outward expression of God in the earth, my heart interest turned to the Covenant, the inward binding agreement between God and us.
More than that, I had been pondering for some time the meaning of the walk of the Atonement. My idea, then, was to combine three things, the New Covenant, the Walk of the Atonement, and the furniture of Moses Tabernacle, particularly the Altar of Incense.
Now, through these years, I was very connected to communication with others, particularly Chris Welch and Bonnie Morris. Bonnie did not join the Facebook fellowship group, but she responded with blessing to almost every letter I sent out.
Now, understand, I am very impacted by “what people say.” And so being in an environment of regular communication with others regarding the word God was giving me to write was both a blessing and a distress. The distress came when there was contradiction of the word of Christ our life, not direct contradiction against me, but rather a general expression of the old way of thinking attempting to insert itself into the present word of union with Christ. And by “old way of thinking,” I mean expressions of disconnection from God, of the obligations of performance, and of harsh words spoken against people who love Jesus, but who are not “with us.” The worst for me, however, were statements coming out from the accusation against God that He knows evil.
As an Asperger’s man, however, I never feel any obligation to come under the manipulation of bullies. When someone sends harsh or argumentative words my way, I simply erase the email without responding and never look at an email from that person again. I do not “hide”; rather, I follow Nehemiah’s example, that I have a job to do, and I will not be turned away from that task to meaningless and lifeless discussions.
The first letter of “Covenant” I wrote as a challenge, and it did cause a bit of a stir in circles beyond me. Then I set myself to explore and to know the meaning and reality of Jesus’ walk, beginning with Gethsemane and ending with the Resurrection and the sprinkling of His Blood upon the Mercy Seat of heaven. Please understand that this was much more than any “interest”; it was a burden and a cry deep inside of me to KNOW the living God through KNOWING Jesus Sent into me.
What It All Means
As I have written this chapter, I have found myself sealed into a certainty of knowing God’s hand upon my life that I have been unable to know before now. I do not exalt myself. The practice of waving the flag of “Oh look at God upon MMMEEEE!” has always repulsed me. I have always believed that those who shared out from “God upon me” were sincere and true, and I always received them as from the Lord. But as an Asperger’s man, I could never think that way of myself. Rather, I only ever thought of myself as a desperately vulnerable man, stumbling from one bed of hurt to the next through all the course of my life, longing to know God my Father.
But having finished this chapter, I now can know, with all quiet certainty, that my life has always been God’s intention, that I am a vessel set apart for His purposes, and that He has ordered my construction and the circumstances of my life solely for His Determination towards His Church and the revelation of His glory.
And I know that the words Jesus spoke to Ananias concerning Paul are also His words concerning me. – Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name… For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15-16).
I did not invent myself, neither did I order my steps. And so I rest in peace, knowing that I am not “putting myself forward,” something utterly abhorrent to me.
At the same time, I KNOW that my life is nothing more than a pattern for you, for your sake, dear reader, so that you might also place the Lord Jesus upon all the days of your own life, so that you might also KNOW with all quiet certainty that you have always been seized in the grip of the All-Carrying One for His purposes just as much as I might have been, just as much as Paul was.
If it isn’t true for the least and for the littlest in God’s house, then it cannot be true at all.