Free at Last with the Spirit of Truth: A Guide to the Sacred Highway

Copyright © 2018 by P. Jay Bluerock.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018903584

ISBN:       Hardcover         978-1-9845-1595-7

                 Softcover           978-1-9845-1596-4

                 eBook                 978-1-9845-1597-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®. HCSB®. Copyright ©1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/23/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

770572

CONTENTS

Foreword To my readers

Dedication

Introduction

Book I: Discovery

The awakening of something spiritual

Sacred adventures—It’s like bam! and you’re in one

Wild things were taking place all over

We shared a kind of playfulness that is rare in this life

It was a revolutionary idea

Suddenly my whole world collapsed

Seems like I was born to sin

Book II: Recovery

My recover began in a moment of clarity

You can’t serve two masters. Which would I choose?

You can’t keep anything unless you give something away

You can’t hold it or tell it what to do

Come on in. Let’s have some fun

Come, nestle in the arms of your father

The fire starter

I will never leave you

The peace of Christ

FOREWORD TO MY READERS

A RE WE LIVING in a real world today? Or is it a fake world? Every day I become more convinced that there are evil powers that are trying to annihilate our real world and replace it with a fake world. The fake world is based on lies. The real world is based on truth. For some, the more honest we are, the more difficult it is to live in the fake world. I want to write this book for you who are searching for a lifestyle where you can be real and communicate honestly. The stories I have shared in this book are real. The stories will challenge you in ways you may not be aware of now. So be prepared to be challenged in the ideas you may now believ e in.

I am sure there will also be many of you who find this book supportive of the way you think, especially if you are an independent thinker, and I hope my insights will help encourage you to continue your pursuit of the truth.

Finally there will be some of you who find that the ideas presented here are very new to you, but you are open minded and want to explore them further.

Being honest is not always easy, but it’s worth it. Uneasiness and fright are rarely desirable feelings. But as I have learned to communicate more honestly, I have found a new joy and a new freedom that have given me more than I ever could have expected in this lifetime.

Many people search for some concept of God that is real to them. I believe we really do want to have God in our lives. Yet often this is difficult to find. My deepest hope is that this book will help you discover some fresh ideas about God that will help you develop the kind of relationship that you have always wanted with him or her, and the kind of relationship God wants with you.

DEDICATION

T HIS BOOK IS dedicated to my family and friends who have always stood by me and walked with me as I’ve traveled on my sacred highway. There are so many that it would be unfair to thank only a few. I want you to know that I do thank you all, and you are remembered always. I want to thank my two sons Jake and Kidd who encouraged me every minute of this Journey, especially when I wanted to give up. I want to thank Debbie McComber for her encouragement and support and for finding Teresa to edit my book. Thank you Teresa for all you did for me. You inspired me. I want to thank Reyna Lace, my personal consultant at Xlibris Publishing, and everyonee there for encouraging me in my endeavor. I also want to thank Teresa who was the first person to edit this book, and encouraged me to get this message out to the world. Without her encouragement I would not have tried to get it published. I’m sending you all a personal THANK YOU and here’s a BIG HUG.

INTRODUCTION

I thought to myself, This must be a vision, but I’m not going to tell anybody because no one will believe me,. I thought to myself. I was sure felt people would say I was crazy.

The minute I promised myself I wasn’t going to tell anybody, I gazed at the red hills, and, right in the center, four deer stood up and began walking toward the east. In musing about the appearance of the deer I was given another message: You are to tell your vision. That’s why we gave it to you.

Dr. A. C. Ross (Ehanamani)

I N THE WINTER of 1999, one very early morning around 4:00 a.m., I was awakened by what I thought was God. I heard a quiet voice inside me say, Jay—I want you to serve me full time. I heard this message repeated several times over the next hour. I asked God several times what he wanted me to do, and he just kept saying the same thing. Jay—I want you to serve me full time.

During the next month, I kept trying to figure out what it was that he wanted me to do, but I wasn’t getting very far. Then one day, while I was talking to a friend I was visiting in northeast Washington, her Bible fell to the floor.

I reached down and picked it up and looked to see what pages it had opened to. It was the book of Isaiah, chapters thirty-four and thirty-five. Because my grandson’s name was Isaiah, I concluded that this had to have some special significance for me. As you know, God works in mysterious ways. Isaiah describes a highway in a desolated desert that suddenly turns into a place that sounds like paradise. I thought that this highway, that also brought feelings of joy and gladness to those who traveled on it, just might be important.

Sensing that this biblical passage could be important, I began reading with special interest. Maybe there would be an answer in the book of Isaiah. This passage really got me excited as it described a place that had been dead and ugly and that suddenly came alive and was as beautiful as paradise (and I love beauty). I came to chapter thirty-five, verse eight. It said that there was a highway there, and that it would be called the sacred highway.

Immediately a light went on inside my mind, and I continued reading about what Isaiah had to say about this highway and those who traveled on it with enthusiasm. Suddenly a deep feeling of peace came over me, the kind of peace that comes when we discover an answer to a question that has been haunting us for a long time. I knew intuitively that this was the answer I was looking for.

As it turned out, it was only a piece of the answer, so I had to continue to search. Over the next month, as I read this chapter many times, I began to connect with it in a special way. One day I told myself that maybe I could be one of those sacred highway travelers, and I felt a special kind of joy in that thought. Eventually I became certain that this sacred highway was the key that would unlock the door that would lead me to finding out what I was supposed to be doing for God.

Some more months passed, and in the same way that I heard that still, small voice within me talking to me before, I heard it once again. This time it was telling me to get up out of my bed, get my notebook and pen, and start writing. I asked what I was supposed to write. The voice got sterner and said, Just do it. I knew better then to ask again. I got up out of bed and began writing and didn’t stop for twenty hours. The words and ideas flowed like a swift river coming naturally out of my mind and onto the paper. It was so easy that it was almost hard to believe that I had written it.

Even though I was excited about what I had written, I had a difficult time trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with the ideas. I am sure that some readers can understand the frustration I experienced. It’s the kind that comes when God wants us to do something but doesn’t tell us precisely what it is he wants us to do. Yes, he may give us a lovely outline or a beautiful description of something, but his message always seems incomplete. It’s like he wants us to fill in the blank spaces even though those spaces appear larger than the message itself.

So in the end, I just accepted that this is how God communicates, and I went forward the best I could. And that’s how I began this sacred adventure. It took me three years to find answers that made sense. Yes, it’s important that the answers to the questions that we seek when we’re trying to figure out God’s will for us make sense because from my experience many of them don’t.

As I began discovering answers, I felt that deep joy inside me again, and I felt like dancing and celebrating. I immediately rushed out and told my closest friends that I was going to write a book. They responded in different ways. Some were positive and some were negative. But not long after that experience, a whole new sense of powerlessness embraced me, and I experienced a whole lot of fear. It was the kind of fear that suddenly appears when we’re about to do something that seems impossible to do.

When I talked to my son Jake about all of this, I asked him why it seemed so difficult to complete the work that I had started three years earlier. He had a simple answer. He said that if it had been easy, I wouldn’t have needed God’s help. I had to laugh because this seemed so simple. This was a lesson that I needed, and it came at a perfect time. I was ready to hear it and then take action on it. I remember this as a turning point. After this discussion with my son, I began to work on learning how to rely more and more on God and less and less on myself. God’s timing is quite different than mine, but when it’s time, it’s time.

BOOK I

Discovery

CHAPTER 1

The awakening of something spiritual

I understood this to mean that the body of Jesus will not come back, but that the Christ Spirit is returning.

Dr. A.C. Ross (Ehanamani)

T HE PROPHET ISAIAH describes what the sacred highway feels like. In chapter thirty-four of his prophecy, he uses horrific language to tell us that it is a place where the desert is dead.

Thorns will overrun her citadels,

Nettles and brambles her strongholds.

She will become a haunt for jackals,

A home for owls.

Desert creatures will meet with hyenas,

And wild goats will bleat to each other.

There the night creatures will also repose. (Isaiah 34:13, 14)

Suddenly in chapter thirty-five, this same desert comes alive.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;

The wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus it will burst into bloom;

It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

And streams in the desert.

The burning sand will become a pool,

The thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

Grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

And a highway will be there;

It will be called the Way of Holiness. (Isaiah 35:1, 2, 6–8)

A sacred highway is a road that is open for anyone who is willing to follow this path—no matter where it may lead them. It will lead us into many experiences that will leave us with a feeling of everlasting joy and gladness. (Isaiah 35:10) The experiences that create these feelings I refer to as sacred adventures.

I have thought long and hard about a kind of joy and a sense of gladness that would be experienced as everlasting. I searched through my wealth of memories and remembered many times in my life when I felt this kind of joy. In each instance, I was always doing something that I’d best describe as an adventure that had a special meaning for me.

People experience two types of adventures. One is to encounter danger or to take on an exciting, dangerous pursuit. Another is more romantic. It involves an experience that disrupts a sleep-like state of mind we are in, or maybe a sense of indifference we have to the world around us. Suddenly the experience gets us excited about life again, getting us stirred up inside. These events inspire us to seek the supernatural in life. They are often without a basis in facts and are felt or described as fanciful or idealistic, and are therefore not practical. These are the kinds of adventures that I want to write about in this book—those that help us gain insight into a whole new world that is being created.

My idea of sacred adventures grew out of the experiences I had at our family cabin in the Cascade Mountains.

The Cabin was a place where I could always find supernatural understanding that lies buried deep within the soul. Whenever I went there, something magical (or what I call sacred) always happened. There was a special rhythm to everything, different from the rhythm and cadence I experienced in the cities. I could feel it changing as soon as I entered the highway, left the city, and headed toward the mountains. The change was slow, but it was certain.

After leaving the highway and entering the private dirt road leading to the Cabin, I always stopped and took a long look back toward the city. There wasn’t a single building or street in sight. All I could see were mountains and trees. I would begin to drive slowly down the road, allowing myself to enter the sacred, eternal spirit surrounding the place. The Cabin felt like my idea of heaven, and I’ve always believed that if there is a heaven on earth, I first discovered it at the Cabin.

I first discovered this rhythm early in my life. One afternoon, when I was a young boy, I was trying to take a nap in the cabin. I lay on my bed in a dreamlike state and heard the sound of the swing outside the screened window moving back and forth, making a squeak, squeak, squeaking sound as the chain rubbed up against the two old Ponderosa Pines. It was a sacred moment, something that at first seemed insignificant, but suddenly it began taking on great importance.

As I lay there in my bed, the energy around me seemed like a spirit that was wanting me to hear that sound of the swing moving back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth in a very special way. As my life moved from childhood to adulthood, I would never forget that sound, and how it seemed to be calling me, like the sound of a bell, to come forward into eternity.

I had several other similar experiences there like that one. In that same bed, in the thick darkness of night, I felt a sense of eternity as I lay there listening to the sound of the river moving slowly and steadily downstream.

At times I would sit on a boulder along the riverbed, watching the river flow downstream until I got lost someplace inside eternity. Sometimes I would just sit there and dream for hours.

I would experience this same feeling along the riverbanks, picking up rocks and hitting them with a stick, trying to knock them across the river. At other times, I’d look for flat rocks and try skipping them across.

*     *     *

If you’ve ever done any of these things, then you’ll certainly know what a sacred experience is. No other experiences are quite like them, which