35. The Vision and I

© 2020 Christ Revealed Bible Institute

November 1994 – August 2002

I have left my heart out as I have shared the events of our life from leaving Blair Valley through our time in west Texas. In the last letter, I shared:

~~~ If they had told me that God had filled my heart with a vision of Himself, but I would have to wait patiently until it was His time, that would have been such strength to me, for it would have been in agreement with a God who had always shaped my heart for Himself. But such a view was not found in move philosophy.  And so their counsel to me was for me to “let go” of that vision as “not-God,” and to get on with the present program. This part of their counsel served only to increase my confusion and pain, for it required me to agree that I was never connected with God on the inside of me and that He had not filled my heart with His understanding. ~~~ 

I can honestly say that, regardless of all my outward anything, my own experience all the years I was in that fellowship was with a personal God shaping my heart for Himself, something of which I was constantly aware. I did not know Him very well and I knew myself less; nonetheless, it was always God Himself contending with me.

And from that moment when God planted a seed inside the heart of a twenty-year-old boy, concerning the revelation of Christ through Christ Community and a place of refuge for God’s Church in her hour of greatest need, that vision has never departed from me, no matter how it has been battered along the way.

When I was twenty-two, I made a covenant with God that I would know Him and that I would walk closely together with a people who know Him. Anyone who would think to turn me aside from that covenant is wasting their time.

Yet now, over forty years later, I am more by myself than ever and the vision I have labored over in tears for decades remains yet unfulfilled. Yet I find no more reason to turn aside from it now than I ever have, for the vision of God is life forevermore.

When we arrived at Blair Valley, I carried in my heart a vision for a Community of Christ different from what I had known in the move. I hoped that God would fulfill that vision there, as He had said to me, “Blair Valley is your home.” A large part of my hopelessness in February of 1998 was the realization that it would not happen in that context. Nor did I have any idea how it might happen.

The change had come for me in November of 1994 when God showed me the face of His precious Church at Christian Life Center in Oregon. And it was there in that prayer hut on the wooded hillside that I placed myself before my God, that He would prepare His word in me for her sake. 

From that time on, even as we returned to move community, I have labored over the meaning of that vision, how it might be fulfilled.

Now, if you want to know what I mean by “my vision of a Community of Christ,” then read Symmorphy V: Life. Everything I wrote from August 2006 until November of 2017 was so that I would be able to write that text. And everything I have written since I completed it has been so that I, with others, would become what is written there.

From the day we left Blair Valley until this day as I am writing this chapter, twenty-two years later, I have carried that vision of a Community of Christ in my heart in the expectation of God, that He would fulfill that Word which He alone has planted inside of me. I have carried it with many tears and through many lonely places. 

More than that, for the first half of that time, I could not consider my place in that vision anywhere else than upon the Blair Valley property, for God had said to me, “Blair Valley is your home.” I just wrote the following line in my chapter, “Sent as Kingdom.” 

~~~ The picture of earth together with air, then, is the largest and central meaning of the Kingdom of God. And the best earth word that describes such a thing is the LAND. I cannot express the extent to which "the land" expresses the deepest longing and love of my heart. And “the land” meant the most to me when we lived at Blair Valley. ~~~ 

With my brain, I can conceive the fulfillment of that vision for me in any place, so long as I know God placing us there. And if that is God’s interim, I am more than content. BUT – not with my heart. My heart sings only when I consider the fulfillment of the Community of my heart inside the land that is Blair Valley.

Now, as I have shared the details of my life with you, I do have a strong memory of things, yes, but I also have much documentation, transcripts, letters, college papers, calendars, photographs, and so on, all of which give me many specific details. And Maureen has provided many things she remembered that I did not.

At the same time, while we were still living in Lubbock, I began penciling out my autobiography in a month-by-month chart. I communicated much with my mother during our visits with her and by letter concerning many of the details, and thus had that all laid out before we moved to Houston. 

But as I was considering the next chapter of my life, “A Season of Healing,” I realized the importance to me to set forth a structure of my grappling with this vision inside, what it meant and how it could be fulfilled. And, as I said, I was simply unable to consider the vision being fulfilled anywhere but at Blair Valley, even for years after we had left.

Basically, I was being asked, out from move philosophy, to take all my experience with God inside of me from November 1994 on, all the travail, all the expectation of God, all the seeking to know His meaning, and chuck it all out as nothing more than a fleshy fetish. This was not a “fetish,” it was God inside my own heart.

Into Blair Valley
There were four arenas of difference concerning a vision of community between what was beginning to form in me upon arriving at Blair Valley and what had been my experience in move community. In actuality, these heart ponderings began through 1996, the worst year of my life. Those four arenas of difference would be (1) the life of the community, (2) the attitude towards one another, (3) the governance of the community, and (4) the method of provision for community needs. In fact, it was our experience at Blair Valley that gave me my present view of community governance, and that was all adults included in the general decision-making, no “elite” group deciding for everyone else.

The truth is, from the time I left the Blueberry eldership in October of 1996 on, my eyes were opened to the deliberate elitism being fostered by the elders everywhere in their thinking of themselves. And the more evidence I saw of such an awful thing, evidence I had never noticed before, the more appalled I became. I will share my final experience with that elitism in a chapter coming up, after we moved to Houston.

Because I am a practical man as well as a dreamer, the need for provision is the issue that shaped most of my thinking and discussion with others from 1996 on. 

It was Sister Ethelwyn Davison from whom I first heard the vision of a teaching community. I suspect that she received that concept from the Lord while they were living at Shepherd’s Inn and conducting the Shepherd’s School of Music there. The school put on an evening “dinner and a performance” once a week for several years. Many would come out from Fort St. John to eat dinner while enjoying the singing and music put on by the students and faculty.

When the School of Music moved out to Graham River, that was no longer an option; Graham was too far for town people to drive out. Nonetheless, Sister Ethelwyn shared over time her continued thinking in the direction of community provision coming from providing a place of “respite” for outside visitors. 

This concept, of “worldly” people coming into the community for a short time, was NOT in move philosophy and most did not receive it. And it was this part of my vision for community that was instantly ruled out by Kars and Minnie Kiers with no further discussion.

You see, the idea of a teaching community, a place to which people could come for a short time of refreshing and then return home strengthened and renewed, sang all joy inside of me. Indeed, that is exactly what our brief experience at Christian Life Center was all about.

Because I am a dreamer, as well as a practical man, I dreamed of my vision of a teaching community through all my steps at Blair Valley. And in leaving Blair Valley, I dreamed of returning there someday soon with the provision to make it happen. I purchased detailed maps of the Blair Valley north and south and poured over those maps. I walked the paths of the property, dreaming of such a Community of Christ, and where its buildings would be placed. And I poured over those maps and those steps in my mind’s eye for years after.

I am an obsessive and unrelenting dreamer, a dreamer of very practical realities.
God gave me the key to how we should relate together in community while we were at Bowens Mill in the early months of 1997 – receive one another in the same way that Jesus receives you. I shared this at Blair Valley, and indeed it was received well, including being the core part of how I persuaded Kars not to disrespect me. Nonetheless, it did not become the general heart of the community; neither did I have the ability to make any real changes. 

Finally, the life of the community then became a significant part of my decision to leave the move, that life being JESUS and Jesus alone, our Savior and all Salvation. I wanted nothing more to do with a “christ” or any “christ-life” without Jesus Himself in Person.

Early Times of Refreshing
I have shared about my first letter that I began to send out in the spring of 1998, while we were still at Blair Valley, which I called “Times of Refreshing,” specifically from Peter’s words in the first part of Acts, that times of refreshing will come from the Lord as God restores all things. 

My Times of Refreshing letters went through three distinct phases. The first five letters were written while I was still in the move fellowship. The problem was that I had contracted a year’s worth of issues with those who had purchased subscriptions. When we moved to Fort St. John, I had sent out only those first five. In my mind, I owed my subscribers a total of twelve issues. 

At the same time, when we arrived in Fort St. John, I soon purchased a regular computer and thus “retired” my large word processing typewriter, a unit which did use floppy discs for storage. I no longer have any record of most of my first issues, however. Yet now I find buried deep in my saved folders, issue Number 6, which I wrote in December of 1998, while still in the fall semester at Northern Lights College. I wrote and mailed out the remaining six issues, then, over the next year, not finishing my obligation until after we had arrived at Lubbock.

Thus the second phase of Times of Refreshing was those I wrote during this time of transition. The third phase was a complete series of another twelve letters, which I wrote and sent out in 2004, coming up.

Now, I am the kind of person who must have everything working together in perfect harmony and purpose. Much of my writing through the years has been to discover how God is such balance and harmony. Those who have followed my writing from the start know how I have rejected a “God” who knows or does evil, out from the clear teaching of the New Testament. Yet I have always been appalled at the persistent belief, among all Christians I have known, that God “knows” evil. I could not stop writing about it until I understood the harmony and purpose of God in all goodness. 

And so, in my present mind, the development of the vision of Community growing inside of me works seamlessly together with my continuous laboring over the education of children AND my attempts to understand myself AND my love of designing homes AND Maureen’s and my love of natural health and aromatic herbs AND ---. 

I just went through all my early folders which I managed to retain as I went from one computer to the next over the years. I printed out all relevant documents that would show a progression of my thinking from December of 1998 through October of 2003. 
I want to take you, now, across that path, up until our final month in Applegate trailer park. Then, I will update that path as we go through the chapters of my life from then until now.

The Word and I
I have two documents in hand, both of which I wrote in December of 1998, while living in Fort St. John and attending college at Northern Lights. The first document is issue Number 6 of Times of Refreshing, with an article titled “For There Are Three Who Bear Witness.” The other document is a paper I wrote for the Portfolio Development course I was taking at the time, titled “Request for Credit and Portfolio.” 

I want to describe and even quote from these two documents and explain how they are intrinsically tied together.

  Of truth, this is the central purpose of writing this entire account of my life, to set forth the relationship between the Word God speaks in the Bible and me, all the way through, so that I also might know God-with-me.

In the Times of Refreshing article, I use the courtroom metaphor and into that metaphor, I place the challenge against the word God speaks spoken by the serpent. And then the determination of God to prove Jesus, all that He speaks, faithful and true. This is the same place and context, then, inside of which I wrote Symmorphy I: Purpose. 

Then, if you were to read through the article, you would think, “Hey, this is the same thing Daniel teaches today.” You would be mostly right, but entirely wrong.

Knowing now our precious union with Christ and defining everything by the ruling verses of the Bible, it is the easiest thing for me to show the difference.

In the previous chapter, “A Valley of Decision,” I made this statement. ~~~ “Yet I did not know God, not really, neither did I know of any answer for the vast hole I perceived at the center of my knowledge of the gospel.” ~~~

I know that “vast hole” so clearly now, here it is. Let me quote, first, and then alter the wording.

~~~ God stands accused of lying. Satan was His first accuser, but Jesus triumphed over Satan. Today, it is you and I who accuse God of lying when we fail to believe what He says. What does God want of His people? Two things: first that they maintain a relationship with Him whereby they truly hear and understand what He is speaking, and second, that they believe absolutely that what God says must be fulfilled in them in this life. ~~~ 

On the surface, it appears as if I am focusing on God and His Word, but in actuality, this becomes the same Nicene exaltation of self, making it all about the human and not about God.

Let’s try the same thing as I would write it now. I have underlined the altered words.

– God stands accused of lying. Satan was His first accuser, but Jesus triumphed over Satan. Today, it is you and I who accuse God of lying when we fail to believe what He says. What does God want of His people? Two things: first that they rest in their relationship with Him whereby they hear God speaking them through the good-speaking of Jesus, and second, that they believe absolutely that what God says is already completely fulfilled in them in this life. – 

The first paragraph positions the issue correctly, yet leaves the Christian in unbelief, rebellion, and death. The difference is one thing – confidence that God is already true. That is the “vast hole” I was missing, and it is the entire difference between all life and all death. You see, the second rendition is all about God fulfilling all things through us as He now wishes.

However – what a careful researcher would see is that the entire context of what I teach now is all there, including what God actually says about the key issues, in contrast to all Nicene theology. What I was missing was the how. "MUST BE" versus ALREADY IS.

In the end, my first rendition is the same as the serpent. “You shall be,” as a replacement for God’s “You are.” I would not truly know the difference until 2008.  

Except for the “HOW,” I taught the same things then that I teach now. Thus I can know for myself with all certainty that from my early thirties, when “conformed to the image of His Son” became my ruling verse, until now, I have taught the same word all the way through. The only change that is needed is a simple one, from “shall be someday” to “I am.” I was not able to see that it has been all one word until I have written this account. 

Then I look at my portfolio and I see that I was grappling with the issue of understanding myself equally with the issue of knowing God and what He actually says. 

We can’t know God without knowing ourselves, and we can’t know ourselves without knowing God. This is God’s riddle, set clearly in place all through the Bible. God is known by a Man; man is God-made-known.

I did not know myself. I did not know that I was smart, all I thought was that some things were easy and fun. I did not know how others perceived me. I did not know the harsh outer shell I wore. I did not know these “others.” I did not know that they were like me. And move philosophy taught us that God is completely replacing us with something different. That what I am was unacceptable to God; that He required me to be something else. 

Writing this portfolio, a description of what I know and can do, was the first time in my life that I considered myself as God made me. It was a startling and even frightening experience. I did not know what to do with what I found.

Here is something I wrote in that paper. – "I am the kind of person who does not do something timidly. If I am interested in something, I will spend hours designing my own versions of it. I have always been willing to tackle large and difficult projects, even with little experience. I do the job well, the experience comes, and I remember what I have learned." – You see, I was 42 years old and I had never before thought things like this about myself.

Yet if you had asked me then if there was a match between all that God speaks, and my own human qualities and attributes, I could not have seen such a thing. I did not know that God intended to bring these two things together, His Word and my life, and make them one. And, dear reader, God is doing the exact same thing with you.

Jesus and I – and My Heart
Then, in 1999, after our move to Lubbock, I have a piece titled “Personal Profile Statement” and then a list of many verses titled “Jesus Way,” all of which I typed out in full, not copy and paste. – "Knowing Jesus, knowing myself. I would have told you then that these things are far apart; I did not know they are two sides of the same thing." 

Then I have three more documents all pertaining to my vision of a Community of Christ, which I was now calling “Times of Refreshing.” Even before James was born, I was using what I was learning in college to lay out an ordered description of this “place of refuge” and “Christian renewal center.”

Then, I have the first of several renditions of a Times of Refreshing issue in which I lay out “my vision” very similar to how I wrote the same thing again in Gathering to Life. I don’t think I ever sent that issue out.

Finally, I have a document, written in November of 1999, titled “Thoughts on the Mission Statement,” referencing my vision of a teaching community. Here is part of one of the paragraphs.

– A group of Christians, seeking to be the temple of God, will have this attitude and expression: the temple is the place where God and men can meet. It is a place where God is willing to come, because of both the blood and an atmosphere of respect for His ways, but it is also a place where lost or searching people are willing and able to come, either because they have a hope to meet with God, or because they simply feel welcome in an environment of hospitality and openness. … The temple is NOT for the pillars and the walls; it is for God and others. – 

You can see here the same context of thinking into which the latest things God has taught us about being the Mercy Seat can appear, that is, our entire lives being the place where our Father can meet together with others and they with Him.

Doing What I Can Do
I can write the entirety of the vision in minute detail, rooted in practical human realities and coming out from every Word God speaks. What I CANNOT do is make any of it happen. This great inability was as distressing to me then as it is now. 

To compensate for my inability, then, I have done two things, all the way through. First, I placed my confidence in God, that He does what He says He will do. And second, I wrote, or at least, at that time, I tried to write. I can write. And if I can’t do anything else, then by the grace of God, I will write my way into being part of the revelation of Jesus Christ through His Church.

The next document is larger, running from July 6, 2000 into November. It is titled “Times of Refreshing Journal,” the same concept as the “Student Teaching Journal” about my experiences each day working with Greg Reeves in the classroom, that I wrote for college during the same months. In it is also two large letters that I wrote to Peter Bell.

The journal starts with these words. ~~~ I want to commit myself to spending at least ten minutes every day writing about Times of Refreshing (a term I now used to mean my vision of a Community of Christ serving as a Christian renewal center). My topics can range from personal feelings, things the Lord shows me, doctrinal issues, structural or practical issues, hopes and dreams, frustrations, doubts, faith, or anything else that comes to mind. ~~~ 

~~~ I thought this morning, Blair Valley and Times of Refreshing are the only things I know that clearly fulfill and answer everything I find in my heart – the desire to be a part of something bigger than myself, the desire to see God manifest in His people, the desire to be involved in a river of life, the desire to be a teacher and administrator of an instruction facility, the desire to do and live in beautiful woodwork, the desire to find purpose and meaning and direction outside of the narrow deadly confines of sectarianism, the desire to get my children to a country setting. ~~~  

Then I have an itemized cost list of how to turn Blair Valley into the community of my heart.

At that time, however, because I did not know Christ my only life, I did not have the same drive to write daily as I do now.

Here is the entry for October 1, 2000. ~~~ Lord, do it. Enable me. Make me to know Your will. Make me to understand Your word and Your ways. Lord, I ask it in faith, believing. Your will be done… I need to keep writing. ~~~ 

What I want you to see is twenty and thirty and forty years of my same contention with God for the same vision fulfilled. 

Letter to Pastor Gary Kirksey
Next, I want to share most of a letter I wrote to Pastor Gary Kirksey, dated October 28, 2000, a few months after City View had begun.

~~~ Dear Pastor Kirksey,
I have wanted to communicate with you for some time.  My wife and I had attended Trinity for about a year. When you began City View, we visited and felt the Lord would have us continue as a part of the new church. We have especially appreciated the word you have shared over the last year. Several times we felt your sermons were meant just for us. We want to thank you for being a channel of God’s ministry to our lives.

We have been a part of an apostolic fellowship for many years. We separated from that particular fellowship two years ago because of philosophical differences. Yet we continue to desire to be a part of what God is doing in the earth, but in the broader context of the full body of Christ.

As I have been reading Peter Wagner’s book, Churchquake, I am excited both at the confirmation of our experiences over the years, and the confirmation of the direction God is now taking us.

I am presently completing a Master of Education degree at Lubbock Christian University, with a teacher’s certificate. I taught for several years in Christian schools, but I did not have a state certificate. I will obtain a teaching job in a local secondary school soon.  However, teaching in the public school is an interim step for me, a way to support my family in the meantime...

Part of the goal I believe God has placed in my heart for some years now is to establish a Christian renewal center/School of ministry with a unique emphasis that is partly described by what I read in Peter Wagner’s Churchquake.  I am working on a pamphlet describing the vision God has put in my heart.  As I see it, it will be a several-year process to establish such a thing.  I believe in covering and would appreciate your insight into this endeavor.  One of my strongest concerns is that whatever this school of ministry, etc. becomes, it must be plugged into the city-wide local church as well as the body of Christ world-wide.  It will not become an entity unto itself. 

I would enjoy an opportunity to visit with you more about this topic and to hear what is in your heart concerning the things I have mentioned whenever you might have time.

Thank you again for the things God has done in our lives through your ministry. ~~~

Note: This “pamphlet” I mention to Pastor Kirksey I have also printed out. It is a complete layout of “Times of Refreshing Center” as I was learning such layouts in my college courses, with mandate, mission statement, and so on.

Knowing Jesus and Teaching Kids
Through the early months of 2001, my focus turned towards my thoughts concerning the education of children. Through all the years our children were of school age, I have labored over my conception of childhood education. And the thing is, inside a context created by someone else, I can do a lot. But what I cannot do is bring forth that context myself. 

Yet my waiting upon God in expectation of faith saw my children raised and gone. The urgency they provided is no more, but my vision for the regular school part of a teaching community remains.

It was the courses I was taking in the graduate school that were inspiring many of my directions of thinking. I can’t hear anything that I am not immediately applying to my knowledge of God and of Community. I have a document I wrote for “Advanced Writing,” dated January 11, 2001 and titled “Definition of Experiential Education.” It lays out the thinking of learning by doing valuable things rather than deskwork only.

Then, I have more business brochures, my unending effort to start a business of my own that would provide for my family, and, if successful, provide for the beginnings of a Community of Christ. At this point in time, my business thoughts were in the direction of woodworking, having my own shop and woodworking business.

Then in March, I am writing about Jesus as the Lamb of God and laying out a list of chapters for a book on being a son of God. I did not write that book because I still did not know Paul’s gospel.

Then, in April, I wrote “Rationale for The Interesting Academy,” my first name for a school of my own.

This is not a symptom of “going from one thing to another.” Rather, it is the harmony together of all things that I love and do, yet all still in vision form only, waiting upon God.

Teaching Kids and Knowing Jesus
When I travel while drinking coffee, my brain seems to open to new ideas and possibilities. For that reason, much of my time in the back and forth of the job with Edison Extra in Missouri, through May and June of 2001, I was thinking up all sorts of things.

I have a document titled “Yordy’s Guide to Self-Study,” and another titled “Exploring the World through Projects,” the beginning conceptions of my Project-led Learning Guides.
I love teaching kids, and I love the joy of a child learning through doing something important to them, and I love the entire spectrum of education.

Then there is the “Yordy’s Guide to Self-Directed Learning,” followed by “Freedom Learning Center: Business Research Plan.” This was my second “school name,” always part of a larger Community of Christ.

At the same time I am writing these things, however, I am also writing “Essential Truth.” Let me include all of that document here.

~~~ 1. The heart of the Christian life is knowing the risen Jesus as our close personal friend. The thing that made Jesus different, that drew His disciples to Him like a magnet, was that he really liked people, all the time. He delighted in people - not condescendingly, but at their level. 

2. We can only be to others what Jesus is to us. If we are distant to others, it is because Jesus is distant to us. We can love others unconditionally, only when we are living in the close, personal love of Jesus ourselves. As I know that He delights in me, I also can delight in others.

3. We will only ever be a full and established version of what we are now. If we are not being a blessing to others now, we will not suddenly become a blessing to others at some distant point in the future.

4. Community, though blessed of God, carries this great danger – that we will restrict ourselves to loving only those who love us and greeting only those who greet us. The heart of the Church’s mission, our mandate, is to be a blessing to whomever the Lord sends, even to those who will never give anything back.  

5. The reward of the believer, the crown we receive at the end of our life’s work, is the glory of those who have been blessed by us. “For you are our joy and our crown.” 

6. Obedience and righteousness are the fruit of the presence of God; never the other way around. We do not seek obedience and righteousness so that we might obtain the presence of God. We seek the presence of God and out of His presence comes obedience and righteousness.

7. The presence of God is obedience and righteousness. God created each of us as unique individuals; no human model can show me how I am to be like Christ. I am holy when I am filled with the presence of God and unholy when I am not. To be filled with all the fullness of God is the earnestly sought goal of the believer, not as some distant event, but as the grit of our daily experience. ~~~ 

Again, you can see the missing ingredient of the gospel of our Salvation, already finished, not coming someday.

This is then followed immediately by a pamphlet for a new business idea, an educational editing service. Of truth, I have earned way more money per hour doing educational editing and writing than any other task for money, though it was always while working for someone else. None of my own business endeavors ever went very far.

And every one of these many things is an essential part of the Community of my heart.
What you have in this book, then, is the life of an incapable man, filled with dreams, but unable to make any of it happen, yet a man who will NEVER let go of God or of His Word or of the Vision God has planted in my heart.

Conclusions
The urgency I feel writing this chapter is to set forth and even to understand for myself the bridge between the revelation of Jesus Christ and the experience of community, as I knew both in the move of God fellowship, the bridge between that and this present word I share as it brings forth the practical expression of the Christ Community of my heart. I feel that this urgency is that of my Father’s, that He would prove out the unchangeableness of what He speaks, of what He actually says in the gospel.

Much that is believed about our salvation and about God in Nicene Christianity is not found in the gospel, and the key verses of our salvation are not found in Nicene theology. That is a powerful statement, and true, and absolutely devastating. And the purpose of God for the entire path of my life is to search out the meaning and distinction of this great contrast between the two gospels. 

I rejoice in God increasing my understanding of what He means by what He says day by day in directions I never knew before. But what I cannot have is a God who changes what He speaks from one season of my life to the next.

I must have a God who speaks the same word in me as I share with you in Symmorphy V: Life and A Highway for God, now in my early sixties, as the word God showed me of Himself in my early fifties, of a God who carries all.

And I must have the God of my early fifties speaking in me the same word that I find in my early forties as I labored over our relationship with God and with one another, not knowing at all how any of it would be fulfilled.

And I must have the same God of my early forties, this time I am writing about now, speaking the same word inside the same vision then as He spoke into me in my early thirties as I made the absolute decision to ground all my thinking on the ruling verses of the Bible, the same verses out from which I think today, and inside my love for community and college at Blueberry.

And I must have the same word in my early thirties that God spoke into me through Sam Fife in my early twenties, a word and a God I embraced with all my heart in covenant bond.

And I must have the same word preached into me by Sam Fife in my early twenties BE the same word that entered into me at age seven when I asked Jesus to live in my heart.
But more than all of that, I must have a God who is telling me the truth. I have written this chapter so that I might KNOW that it is true.

There is a further reason for this chapter. The three years coming up, 2006, 2008, and 2011, that are the mightiest years of my life, as God gave His "HOW" to me, as Jesus said, first birthed by Word, second by Spirit, and third the knowing of Father, the importance of these years can be known only in the context laid out in this letter and the last.

The wisdom and philosophy of the move, and the voices of all those good people speaking into me, denied any thought that it might be God-with-me. “Know your place; it’s clear that God has not anointed you. Stop all your silly imaginations that He will do what you think.”

In 2008, I stood against those voices for nine months solid as they wailed against Christ my only life every day. And at the end of that season they vanished from my mind, and I heard them no more.

In this chapter, then, the connection between the two parts of my life is made complete. Now, starting in the last months of 2001, I can begin to trace out the arising of a new knowing of God, of myself, and of Salvation. Same word, yes, but all sorts of verses that had been shoved into the background by unbelief and false theology can now come into the singing of my life.

You cannot and will not and should never try to come into union with God, by any means whatever. God, your Father, has already come into union with you through the Lord Jesus, now the only life you are. Believe that He is.