In college, perhaps it was in 1984, he heard a "kina quiet and simple" preacher who proclaimed a message of serving Jesus, not serving the church. Rusty Yates listened. He listened, too, as teh "quiet and simple" preacher traded barbs with a "fat cat preacher" standing across the way.
(still quoting)..The barbs the "quiet and simple" preacher exchanged wer the same ones Rusty would have thrown. He was impressed with the preacher. And his message of serving Jesus, not the church, freed Rusty Yates. He suddenly felt he didn't have to go to church; he was privileged enough, he said, to open the Bible himself. And he did.
He also corresponded with the preacher for the next year or two. At the end of that time, he was talking on the phone to his mother and told her, " I think I'm pretty much beginning to believe this stuff." With those words, "joy came over me". He finished telling his mother what he had to say, and then said it all over again because he was " so joyful." That joy, said Rusty Yates, was the Holy Spirit. " From your innermost being will flow rivers of living water." he quoted from John 7:38.
For the next few years after college, he and the preacher no longer corresponded. Then, after he met Andrea Kennedy, Yates corresponded with him about " once a year or so" The preacher's name was MICHAEL WORONIECKI. "
I did not copy this from the book for people to get into a discussion of scripture..rather, I typed it to show that the influence of this preacher got into Rusty in college..he stuck with it..introduced it to Andrea..got her indoctrinated..then..they contacted the Woroniecki's again and became GOOD FRIENDS with them. They had them over to the campground where they lived in their bus. Oh! incidentally, the preacher too LIVED IN A BUS..AHEM!!
Andrea corresponded with the preacher's wife for several years, and got this teaching pumped into her. I mean PUMPED into her! All the Satan stuff.
The scriptures were right. God's Word is right..but in the hands of false teacher's..who pour into the minds of people who cannot rightly divide the truth, it can be lethal.
‘Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 3:13,14)
The Word remember occurs often in Scripture." ‘Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth…’ ‘This do in remembrance of me…’ ‘Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord thy God hath led thee…'
"Remembrance is essential to genuine religion. And so is forgetfulness. Remembering and forgetting are two sides of the same coin. True forgetfulness means the discovery of something else worth remembering. It is the displacement of one remembrance with another, which is more ennobling. Paul only forgot what was behind as he focused on the prize toward which God had called him. We should all forget. But only on the condition that we aspire."
"Everyone makes mistakes. It is part of our heritage that we are capable of them. An oyster makes no mistakes. It doesn't have a mind that will permit it to abandon it instincts. It is not good to wander around in the cemetery of our blunders, reading epitaphs of past errors and opportunities lost. Michelangelo formed his famous statue of David the shepherd by using a block of marble, that had been seriously flawed by a previous sculptor. Similarly, it is possible for us to produce good by allowing our mistakes to be swallowed up with better things."
"No-one is exempt from sorrow. Therefore, much human happiness depends on forgetting what has happened to us by contemplating the blight that rests on others. When John Bright's young wife lay dead in the family home, he was visited by Richard Cobden, who sought to comfort him. After words of consolation had been spoken, Cobden looked up and said, 'There are tens of thousands of homes in England at this moment, where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of grief is past, I would advise you to come with me and we will never rest until the Corn Law is repealed.’ Bright accepted the invitation and plunged himself into a campaign to relieve the sufferings of others. Thus he escaped the crushing weight of his own sorrows."
"Guilt is also an affliction that needs forgetting. But it is only treated thus when there is a far worthier preoccupation to take its place. Paul was able to leave behind the guilty remembrance of crimes against the Church only as he found new and superior pursuits. He did not have enough time or mental space to accommodate wasteful agonizings over past sins. Robert Louis Stevenson prayed, 'Help us with the grace of courage, that we be, none of us, cast down when we sit amidst the ruins of our happiness or our integrity…that we may be up and doing to rebuild our city'."
"May God grant you a sacred forgetting of all that would... keep you---from a wholesome and fruitful sojourn in this world."