The Book that Started it All

Every book has a story behind it, and The Return to the Inner Temple was born out of my own restless search for what seemed missing in the life of the Church. I had spent years preaching, teaching, and serving, yet I could not escape the sense that something essential had slipped away. The earliest believers did not have seminaries, publishing houses, or even the New Testament in their hands, yet their lives burned with an intensity and vitality that put our modern Christianity to shame. What had they known that we have forgotten?

The answer came slowly, shaped by study, prayer, and the witness of those who came before us. Again and again I found myself returning to Jesus’ words about the inner room: “When you pray, go into your room… and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:6). That “room” is not just a quiet corner of the house — it is the hidden temple within, the dwelling place of God in the soul, the fire that fuels everything else.

Writing this book was my attempt to retrace the steps of history and rediscover that inheritance. I listened to the witness of the early disciples who lived out of the Spirit’s indwelling presence, the desert fathers and mothers who fled to the wilderness not to escape but to find God in stillness, and the mystics like Teresa of Ávila who spoke of the soul as an interior castle burning with divine love. Their testimony converged on the same truth: Christianity is not sustained by buildings or programs or even by texts alone, but by the living presence of God within His people.

I also found myself turning to Scripture with fresh eyes. Peter calls us living stones, built into a spiritual house; Paul insists that Christ dwells in us, the hope of glory. Prayer, then, is not performance or ritual — it is the communion of the Spirit in the secret place of the soul. When I wrote The Return to the Inner Temple, I wanted to remind the Church that this is our true inheritance. We were never meant to trade intimacy for information or Presence for performance.

What I did not expect was how writing this book would begin to shape the next chapter of my own life. As these truths settled deeper into me, I realized they demanded more than words on a page. They required a response. If the inner room is where God meets His people, then we must build communities that center everything on that encounter. Out of that conviction, The Furnace Christian Fellowship was born.

The name comes from Teresa of Ávila’s imagery — the soul as a furnace ignited by the fire of God’s love until it becomes wholly flame. That picture captured everything we long for: a fellowship not built on spectacle or machinery, but on hearts set ablaze in the secret place. Our gatherings are simple: prayer, worship, and fellowship around His Presence. Yet in that simplicity lies the very power the Church has too often overlooked.

So this book is not a detached work of theology or history, though it draws on both. It is the story of a return — my own and, I believe, one that God is inviting His people to make in this generation. The Return to the Inner Temple is an invitation to rediscover the Presence, reclaim the flame, and live again from the indwelling Christ. And The Furnace is simply the community where we have chosen to live out that invitation together.