The Lord has put on my heart a few things to say before getting into the book.  The details in the book, as in any relationship – by the very nature of “relationship”, are intensely personal.  The discomfort of getting into each other’s personal lives is, I believe, a huge reason why people choose “system” over relationship.  It’s just too messy and hurtful to do relationship.  System is much easier and safer.  But we’re called to be in relationship – first with God, and with one another in and by His Spirit.  And in and by His Spirit, and with what Jesus did for us to make it possible, we are able – and called – to go there.  So this book, and all that I’m going to write in conjunction when going through this book, is dedicated to having the fruit of relationship in our lives.

What qualifies me to expound on this subject – relationship, specifically spiritual relationship, I believe, is not that I have a handle on any of it.  But rather that the Lord has given me a heart for it, and has invested heavily in me in this area.  I make mistakes just as we all do and go thru periods when I’m not willing in one way or another to participate.  The Lord seems to allow this… He has given me periods of respite.  To be honest, it can be extremely intense living in these spiritual relationships.  There is a huge amount of spiritual warfare against God’s Love, and participating in His Love.  I have also experienced tremendous passion in the context of these relationships – the Lord’s passion – which is all consuming and in many ways exhausting, all while being exhilarating and life giving.  I believe that once you have a taste of what’s possible and what the Lord is after, you cannot accept any substitutes.  One of the things that Jay regularly stated about me is that I was “unchurched”, which set me up to be able to experience and incorporate these relationships and truths without having to be emptied first of a lot of erroneous teaching that makes people members of system rather than relationship.   The Lord has managed to keep me “unchurched” to this day, which delights me to no end, and would – I’m sure – Jay.  :-)

There are other things that “qualify” me to speak to what Jay talks about.  One is that Jay and I had 9 years of almost daily communication by email – most days numerous emails.  The timing was the last 9 years of Jay’s life, the last of 40+ years of his living in this relational dimension.  Jay poured himself into me and after the first 3 years of our relationship told me that he had given me everything – the best of what he had in him.  The next 6 years was walking it out.  We worked together throughout those 9 years talking with people – mostly online – being a witness to what the Lord was doing through us in relationship.  I lost access to most of those emails – I believe part of the spiritual warfare – but have enough in writing, and certainly in my heart, to feel I can accurately convey much of what we talked about, especially in these areas of God’s Love and Relationships from God.  Also, Jay told others – including Carleen – that of all of his spiritual children I “got” him the best.  He would often say that I said what he said better than he did.  And the last thing I said to Jay – in person the day before he died – was that I would do my best to pass on what he had given me.

For those of you who know me and wonder what became of me after Jay’s passing, I’ve been quietly living, adjusting to a new phase of life.  I’m now 63, just 2 years younger than Jay was when I met him, and not nearly as prolific as he was in either writing or in relationships.  He was uniquely suited and chosen for so many things that I’m not sure many of us could aspire to.  Two years before Jay passed, my husband of 30 years divorced me, and that, along with losing Jay, has taken many years to recover from.  In the meanwhile, the Lord has taught me to increasingly trust Him and lean on Him.   While I’ve continued to live relationally – to make relationships the most important thing we’re here to learn to do – I’m just now feeling the stirrings of the Lord to pick up where Jay and I left off.

Jay and I had initially intended to make this book the first of a 3 part series.  For various reasons that did not happen.  Perhaps the most significant event of the second book was the revelation we each had – with second witnesses – of who we were to each other.  The Lord made me a spiritual daughter to him.  Something that Jay fervently believed, and I concur, is that before we can go deep into relationship with anyone, especially someone of the opposite sex, we need to have revelation of who we are to one another.  That relationship not only dictates who we are to each other, but the context and content of what passes between us.  For instance, just as in our natural families – if things are working right – we listen with different ears to what a father would say rather than a sibling.  A father would speak differently to a child than to a brother or sister.  He speaks into the child’s life, and in the best case scenario the child aspires to be “like Dad” when he/she grows up.  One of the things that I loved about Jay was how he was restrained until he got the green light from the Lord – after the Lord revealed to both people who they were to one another – before he dove in.  He had learned the hard way to restrain himself, and to not try to take someone somewhere before knowing who they were to each other, and what the person was ready for.  Jay had great sensitivity to the Spirit, as well as to the person he was being given.

I believe that what I laid out here is what the Lord put on my heart as a sort of foreword to moving into the book.  I do believe there are some things not in the book that provide more of a setting to where we both were at the time we met online.

One of the main reasons that I paid such close attention to what Jay said, aside from the strong spiritual stirrings, was that I had a word from God about 3 months before we met that I was “going to meet an older man who was much further along spiritually and who was going to become very important to me”; and, “he would be talking a language I would not understand”.  I got the very strong sense, from the first email, that this person was Jay.  And while the language was English, there were so many references and nuances that were unfamiliar to me (being “unchurched” and not really knowing the Lord) – not to mention Jay’s unique communication style, it was like deciphering a foreign language.  The Lord brought understanding to me on so many levels.  The other thing is that I had a life changing experience just prior to receiving this word – described in the book starting on page 56 in the chapter, “The Love Patent”.  Jay later told me that he believed, and I concur, that during this experience I had been baptized with the Holy Spirit.  All this to say that the Lord got my attention in a big way to prepare me for what He had in store.

At the time of our first email exchange, I had gone to a sort of “chat room” while seeking healing for my marriage.  Jay came there at the request of another spiritual daughter to check it out.  That’s where he responded to a posting I had made, and the rest is as we recorded.  Perhaps that’s enough introduction for now.

I would like to add one other thing.  If anything I’ve said has caused you to feel offended and you’re still with me, as Jay would say, “Good!  Now we’re getting somewhere!”  I can see Jay smiling in my mind’s eye.  Time to fasten the seat belts!  :-)

Love!

Lisa