Never Alone

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=168 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="002a11c3.png"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Home Page"><U>HOME</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Book Page"><U>BOOKS   </U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Articles"><U>ARTICLES</U></A></div> <bR> <div>  <A HREF="id7.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tapes"><U>TAPES</U></A>   </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id8.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Spiritual Warfare/Occult "><U>SPIRITUAL WARFARE, OCCULT   </U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id77.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sexual Abuse Issues"><U>SEXUAL ABUSE ISSUES</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id11.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Exposing the Darkness Seminar"><U>***EXPOSING THE DARKNESS SEMINAR***</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="mailto:greid@elp.rr.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:greid@elp.rr.com"><U> <img src="HTMLobj-827/aniGif.gif" border="0" align="bottom" width="67" height="50">  </U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="3771bc80.jpg" border=0 width="283" height="200" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B>Chapter Three</B></div> <div> <B>Never Alone</B></div> <bR> <div> <B> I was a lonely kid. I spent most of my weekends and summers alone. I really didn't fit in with anyone, and my brother hated me "tagging along", so I spared myself the humiliation by learning how to love reading and sitting by the creek alone. Until I was 15, I only had two friends - one at school, and one who was a bad influence and a user. That filled 5% of my growing up years, leaving the other 95% for me to suffer the agony of rejection, feeling unwanted, left out, alone.</B></div> <div> <B>    </B></div> <bR> <div> <B> A boy's fear eventually became an adult's nightmare. My fear of being alone, which I'd hidden so well, became a torment beyond description. When at 24 I signed a lease on my first apartment without any roommate, I signed on to a complete nervous breakdown. Black panic fear hit me every day, paralyzing me, making me physically sick. It got so bad that I once went out into the woods and just screamed and screamed until I was hoarse. </B></div> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  </B></div> <div> <B>The death of my spiritual mother, Doris, had started this waking nightmare. The person who had absolutely, unconditionally loved me - cared for me - was gone, leaving me to face a hostile and uncaring world - alone. </B></div> <div> <B>   </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>  When the torment got too much to bear, I flew out of town to visit my pastor and spiritual father, Rick Howard, grasping desperately for help and relief from this black death. Rick was, as he always is, loving and encouraging. I knew there would be no easy answers. Rick had taught me that all answers come from experiencing the intimate love and trust of our Father God and His Son Jesus.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  I stayed at Rick and Anita's. Anita was the practical side to Rick's spiritual life, and together they gave me hope. This nightmare wouldn't last forever. I was safe. But why didn't I feel safe? I felt like I was in hell, with no one to reach in, and I couldn't reach out.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  One afternoon I drove to Stanford University as I felt the dark curtain of fear and torment descend once again as it had, like clockwork, for nearly two years. I parked in the parking lot under a tree just to rest.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>  </B></div> <div> <B>   I closed my eyes and began to drift into sleep.</B></div> <div> <B>     </B></div> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  Then I heard it; an evil, tormenting voice, just as sure and as real as any human voice:</B></div> <div> <B>     "You're going to die ALONE - just like Doris did!"</B></div> <div> <B>    </B></div> <bR> <div> <B> Tears of panic and hurt spilled out of my eyes, as I remembered her life; never married, no family but me. BUT ME! Immediately I snapped out of my paralyzed state, and I felt the Spirit of God rise up in me like a warrior, and I shouted loud enough for all hell to hear me: "You're a LIAR! She did NOT die alone! I WAS WITH HER!!!" With that, two years of dark anguish came out in a torrent of tears. I cried because the attack was so real, so EVIL. I cried because I finally understood the demonic nature of this attack threatening my very sanity. I WASN'T going crazy! Satan knew my childhood fear and pain, and set on me to torment me until I died of a broken heart!</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  Then I cried and thanked Jesus in gratefulness because I knew He had heard me. Satan had overplayed his hand, thinking to use Doris, the most Jesus-like person I'd ever known and someone I loved like my own life, to illustrate to me that God "rewards" His most loved saints with aloneness, abandonment and death. But the Lord had made me remember - I had been sent to her, to hold her hand until she passed over the river to the cheering, loving crowds of angels and warriors gone before, and to the welcoming arms of Jesus. Doris wasn't alone - even at the end. Now I could absolutely trust Jesus to take care of me, too.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  The other night, I was talking to a young girl God had given me to love and care for like my own daughter. She had run to the arms of a boy because she was so afraid God would make her be alone if she followed Him to fulfill her calling. How could I tell her? It was like listening to myself, 15 years before. I understood - more than she could know - the pain of loneliness. And I understood the absolute futility and agony of finding a cheap substitute for love in the arms of someone God hadn't given to you. I prayed somehow she would see my life and know that God had filled my life beyond my wildest dreams, and He would for her, too - if she stopped running and faced the fear of being alone.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  People talk alot about why kids sleep around so much. They mainly write it off - with a cynical chuckle - to "raging hormones". I don't think so. Beyond the sexual awakening of adolescence made so accessible by a sex-soaked society and media, there's so much more to this "impulse". The more I spend time with kids, the more I think it has very little to do with hormones. It has more to do with FEAR. Fear of being always, and forever, ALONE. They're willing to pay the price of pregnancy, risk the fear of disease and even AIDS, or at the least heartbreak and abandonment, if they can only not feel that loneliness for a moment. It's a clever and effective trap that's killing them, as every one night stand makes the fear a little stronger and the loneliness a little worse. It hurts me so bad. How can I tell them? God isn't a need crusher. He's a need fulfiller. He has absolutely provided so that no child of His will ever go without love - without family - without belonging. But they're SCARED. How can they trust God, who they can't see, when so many of them have been so abandoned, so rejected, so forced to feel alone by those they DO see?</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B></div> <div> <B>  If all I could give them was, "Have faith!", it would be just a bunch of meaningless words. But I have something more. I've got Rick's words about learning through intimacy with Jesus that He can be trusted. I know, beyond a doubt that it's true because experience has proven His promise that I would never be left an orphan. Even when human love has failed, His love was dearer and more real than anyone's. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>    </B></div> <div> <B> So I give you more than "just trust God". I offer this story, and my life - single though I be - as proof of God's tender care. I am surrounded by love, by dear friends and family, and the greatest bunch of kids on the face of the earth. I don't feel an ounce of torment. I don't feel in the least unfulfilled. I'm standing on the other side of the river you may be at right now, scared, lonely, unable to stop the torment that leads you to quick-fix sexual experiences just to stop hurting for a moment. I stand on the shore of certainty and absolute fulfillment, telling you that if you trust Him to fill that place in your heart and deliver you from the fear of rejection and abandonment that drives you to things that will kill you, He'll do for you what He did for me. Swim the waters of faith! Don't be afraid. If you dare to trust the One who leaves no heart abandoned or unfulfilled, you'll find all you hoped for - and more - on the other side of this shore.</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id157.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Backrow Loner"><U><B>CHAPTER FOUR - BACKROW LONER</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>                     </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>