The Best Thing

By Kirk F. Jordan

The Best Thing is partly my story but mostly about God's amazing grace. The book may be crude and raw, but outside Calvary's forgiveness, it's neither worth writing or reading. Honestly, I'm the least of all of these, not really gifted in any particular way--willing, not gifted. If I have a gift, it is believing in the One that saved me, obedience to the One that called me. The Best Thing is meant to be driven, to stir you that you might exit the book transformed from your entrance. Don't leave the way you came that He might become greater and we the lesser. The book is designed to make you mad or get you excited, move you to sing your song, understand you have gifts, and share those gifts in a God-honoring, glorifying way. At the end of the day, when we do the math, consider the earth's spinning, rotating 23.5 degrees on axis; there is no reasonable explanation for my story or yours to be saved by God's mercy. This book is for all people everywhere. It covers the globe, all races, colors, and geographical locations. There are people everywhere living in thousands of years of unforgiveness. God nailed His Son to a cross to pay our ransom that we might be forgiven and forgive one another. This book is a call to put down our arms, receive God's payment on Calvary's shore, take up our crosses, and love one another. Jesus is not a "thing"; in fact, He is many things. So we'll just leave you with The Best Thing and pray that you drive it. Hear the call within its pages to sing your song.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889432050

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The Best Thing

Kirk F. Jordan

ISBN 979-8-88943-204-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88943-205-0 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Kirk F. Jordan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreward

Chapter 1

D Is for Drive

Chapter 2

In the Beginning

Chapter 3

Trouble with a Capital T

Chapter 4

Searching

Chapter 5

Mentors

Chapter 6

Divine Appointments

Chapter 7

Louie

Chapter 8

Alaska

Chapter 9

Hoonah 2019

Chapter 10

Angels Unawares

Chapter 11

Read the Book

Chapter 12

Dear Friends

Chapter 13

The Green Crayon and the Stained-Glass Window

Chapter 14

All in All

Chapter 15

In His Presence

Chapter 16

The Cross

Chapter 17

The Best Thing

About the Author

Dedication

The dedication is real simple and obvious. It is the first item of business; it is the business and it is the conclusion of the matter. I dedicate this book to Jesus Christ; He is my Lord and Savior. Without Him nothing good resides in me. He is the Author of my life. I spent the first 28 or so years of my life serving the devil. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making him pay for it. I'm a child of God, chosen, elected, predestined. There's no other explanation for this book. It's partly my story but mostly His, all of it. Mine is just one of millions of testimonies of redemption, salvation, but there are more to be written. …nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able… 2 Timothy 1:12. He is with me, and if you'll let Him, He will be with you.

Acknowledgments

The older I get, the more I understand and observe, the more I am convinced a spirit of gratitude reaps a longer, healthier, joyful, peaceful, blessed, fulfilled life than all the world can muster. A cheerful heart is good medicine and if there are side effects the list would be long, praiseful, thankful, grateful would be at the top of the list. The literary world recognizes these as acknowledgments but in God's economy it is grateful praise, thanksgiving. God knew exactly what I needed, when I needed it and blessed me exceedingly abundantly with my wife Kim.

When my mother, overcome with Alzheimer's, could no longer pray for me, God saw fit to appoint an absolute treasure, an angel of the Lord in my wife. 1 Peter 3:1 …that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives. This scripture has been fulfilled in my life in regards to my wife's behavior. She didn't raise her voice, point her finger, condemn me for my wayward life. No, she kept her tongue, she took it to the Lord in prayer and I began to see changes take place in my life that I could not explain. Kim is the epitome of a Proverb's 31 woman and anything I could add to that would be a gross understatement to the power and authority a woman has in the life of a man. It's interesting that Kim displayed many of the characteristics of my mother, Mary Jane. I cannot say enough about my mother but at the end of the day, she saw fit to have me in a pew on Sunday. Proverbs 22:6 Raise up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it. I thought she had us in the balcony on Sunday because of the view but now that I think about it, I suspect it was better for everybody if a restless child was separated from the masses. Thank you, mom, for raising me up in the way that I should go and setting me before those stain glass windows that would make all the difference in the world. I want to thank my father for beating me into hell, a hell-bent for election life that left a path of destruction, bent metal, broken bones and a blood trail for nearly 30 years. Suffering often seems the necessary part of our journey to salvation. My father suffered many things in his life but I can't begin to tell you how blessed I was by him. There is easily a book to be written about it but one of my earliest memories at our home in Greenville was an entire wall in our living room full of books. I want to thank dad for passing along a love of reading and writing that has blessed and enriched my life beyond measure. Mom and dad, thank you for giving me a genetic disposition of a relentless, reckless, tenacious passion for life. A deep, rich, profound appreciation and love for things above, and things on earth. I know that God knew me before the foundations of the earth, but my parents built on that foundation and my life has been exceedingly, abundantly blessed because of my mom and dad.

Brother James, what can I say? I love you. You have been an absolute priceless piece of the journey, thank you. My sister Natalie. She may not remember this but she got me Jack London's Stories of Adventure for Christmas in 1986 and 10 years later My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Thank you for quietly encouraging God's call on my life. From the least to the greatest I am grateful. Jesus loves each one of you. Now let's put it in D for drive and as Malcolm said: Ring the bell the way it ought to be rung, in the name of Jesus.

This is a book about a selfish adventurous life that was apprehended, regenerated, transformed by grace of a loving God into a selfless adventurous life. A modern day Paul who now lives by these words: one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the price of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

David Means

The Best Thing is a timely written book where Kirk Jordan takes us on a unique ride as his words and heart dance on the pages. From a young child, broken by his earthly father, to an earthly child longing for a father figure, Kirk is led down a path of life lessons where he ultimately finds what his heart has desired all his life, a Father's whose arms are always wide open with agape love and adoration for him. A Father, whom is proud to call him son and one he can hold onto and follow for all eternity, through Jesus Christ. Kirk now invites others that are broken and longing for a Father's love into the same adoption. See what great love our Heavenly Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 John 3:1

Denise Orr

Foreward

Throughout the Old Testament God called people with feet of clay: murderers, liars, adulterers and unclean lips. Jesus called folks with rough hands, not the educated or sophisticated, but those who knew a hard day's work and the rough and tumble of the fish markets. Our world is full of the walking wounded, broken people leading broken lives. What better voice to tell the good news than one who by the grace of God has been called out of it, saved from it. Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.

Like a voice crying in the wilderness to those stumbling in darkness here is a compelling testimony to the saving, healing grace of Jesus Christ.

Jim Moose

A friend and pastor

Unity Church, Greenfield, PA

Chapter 1

D Is for Drive

J esus, Jesus, Jesus, the one fellow kept saying at the men's book study down the road one evening. His name was Les Irwin. When someone would ask his name, he would say, Les Irwin, less of me, and more of Him. Les is a good man, a Bible-believing, God-fearing man.

Years before that book study, as we were exiting the little church down the road after a Wednesday night Bible study, Les handed me a copy of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. Another one of those divine seeds planted in the heart and mind of a hungry soul, begging to be saved from the darkness within and the darkness without.

Remember John Denver's lyrics in his famous Rocky Mountain High song, I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly? John was right; there is something very special and very rare about an eagle. Every chance I get, I stop what I'm doing and watch them until they're out of sight. They have something that we simply do not have, and there seems to be a longing to reach the heights and dance as they do. Oh, the stories I could tell, watching them, studying them—it never gets old. They never disappoint. My appreciation only grows with each new encounter. They make it easy to get lost in the splendor of creation. As the eagle soars ever higher, a great blue heron passes by at about a third of the elevation, almost always in a straight line. They seem to have an agenda, leaves you wondering where they're coming from or where they're going. All in the same moment, a hummingbird lights on the barbed wire fence. And if you don't see the divinity therein, you know you'd be a poorer man. There really is a wonderment in all of it.

You'll never go wrong by taking time out of your day to observe the eagle, heron, or hummingbird, just to mention a few. But the point with the John Denver song is this: if you don't know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is, you'd be a poorer man or woman. Metaxas's book is thick enough, over five hundred pages, to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it's like the eagle in many ways. Not to watch it, read it, study it, understand it leaves us poorer simply because it is a rich offering. That's not to say that there isn't important work to do. But if we don't take time for the eagle, we've missed one of life's great treasures. We have a fine disposition for wasting our time on lesser things—in fact, often times, things that are harmful—and we are robbed of precious moments and lessons that make the world a better place.

Metaxas's book on Bonhoeffer teaches us things about humanity that, had we not read it, we might sit idly by, while history repeats itself. It's a book that will change your life. If it doesn't, it should; and if it should, it will. It did mine. We're not designed to be stagnated, stifled, suffocated. We're designed to grow, breathe, graduate, be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

My mentor, Malcolm Vandevort, lived ninety-four years, was healthy right up to the end, walked the hills of Ethiopia for thirty years as a missionary.

I said to Malcolm, You should write a book.

He said, The world doesn't need another book.

There are plenty of books out there that were a royal waste of time writing them and equally well reading them. My prayer is that this won't be one of them. Sorry, Malcolm, providence compels me.

I can tell you, had I not watched an eagle fly, read Bonhoeffer, or met Malcolm Vandevort, I'd be a poorer man. Each one taught me something, transformed me, inspired me to search for a higher way.

Life is too precious to sit idly by. Each of you reading these words is a treasure in an earthen vessel. Each of you has gifts that no one else on the planet