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I must share this to explain my relationship to God and why I do what I do: My heart and sympathies are with the teens of this world because as I went through my teen years I experienced the most traumatic years of my life. I think there are teens out there that still find this so… I suspect now more than ever.

It will help if you to know where I came from: I was born into a Christian family, was dedicated to the Lord by God-fearing parents as an infant, and grew up in a wonderful environment of loving parents and 12 children (5 foster children and 7 natural)… At eight years of age, I gave my heart to the Lord in Daily Vacation Bible School.
— When I was nine I was healed of an inner ear infection by the prayer of faith of my dad. From that experience, I started to realize the reality of God in my life…
— However by the time I entered my teens two things drew me away from God:
1/ Hypocrisy in the church… I was a member of our church youth group, and I attended public school. I began to see that many of my so-called Christian youth group looked down on those ‘sinners’ from my fellows in my school. Yet these ‘accusers’ in fantasy, and sometimes in fact, were just as worldly-minded as those they put down… I began to doubt whether God really made a difference…

2/ As a self-centered youth, I found the church to be unreal and boring… It seemed that my worldly friends were having fun, while the only real pleasure my church friends seemed to get was when they could look down on these ‘sinners’… Praise the Lord there were exceptions, Earl C. our youth group leader was one of those, along with a few others I am sure. But the majority of my church peers seemed to be a negative no fun group, full of hypocrisy…
— Long Story Short: In my heart, I left the church, even though I was required to attend regularly with my family… I proceeded to taste of the world’s offerings. I went to dances. That was not allowed in those days, according to my parent’s faith. I didn’t know how to enter into these settings so I studied how the teens functioned at these dances. I saw that one big attraction seemed to be when people brought alcohol. “So that’s the way you make friends,” I thought. I proceeded to try that approach…

— Teens sense an outsider, I got nowhere. All I had to show for it was some embarrassing moments, a sickened stomach, and a sense of guilt… However, I did find some romance and friendship with girls that I met along the way. One of these young ladies became my ‘steady’ when I was 18. She was fun to be with, beautiful in her own way, and I enjoyed using her to brighten my days of struggle and loneliness…

— To protect her memory I will not use her name, but she was longing for acceptance and fun just as I was. In this search for acceptance, she kept asking for me to take her to my church’s youth group, for she wanted to see what life was like on the other side of the fence. We were so alike, yet of different worlds…
— I was not in favour of this introduction to my judgmental, hypocritical church friends. I could just imagine the stories that would generate. So I avoided granting these requests to meet my church ‘friends’, and that was not hard, for I hardly ever attended their activities myself…
Without going into detail, She and I became quite involved, and then as happens when you are too young for permanent relationships, our self-centred worlds collided and we broke up…
— In the following months we met a few times, but there was only a polite coldness between us. I heard rumors that she was living the ‘party life’ and seemed to be alright. As for myself, I was renewed in my focus to pursue my ambitions for my career choice. I was determined to become an airline pilot. In the state of my family’s economy, that meant that I had to qualify for ‘Royal Officer Training’ in university, this is Canada’s military equivalent of ‘West Point’. Here I would learn to be a pilot in the Air Force, and prepare the way for a career as an airline’s pilot…
So I renewed my focus on pulling up my grade average, for only the top 20% of students even get considered for these programs…

— Again I’ll try to make a long story short: I failed to graduate with the necessary marks. My future lay in rubbish at my feet.  I had never even considered a plan ‘B’… I ended up taking a position with my dad working as a labourer in a large sawmill. I became a number on a time card…
— A respected older brother had once told me, “Ken, you’ve got brains, I never want to see you working in the bush with the rest of us. You’ve got to make something of yourself…” …I felt I had let my family down… I was lost in my self-centered world when the news story broke in all our local and provincial papers. My Ex-girlfriend had been brutally raped and murdered. Her body was found in a park in my hometown. This shocked our entire area. This did not happen in our quiet part of the world… I was 19 by then, working and living in a sawmill community 70 miles away from my home town but I can’t describe the feeling of guilt that fell upon me when I heard that news.
— Along with the ruins of a lost future, now a sense of responsibility for a young girl’s spiritual destiny lay at my feet… I was devastated…

Satan tried to make me feel as if it were all my fault. You see I believe in the reality of Heaven and the Lake of Fire. I had refused, and purposely avoided any effort that may have introduced this young lady to the Lord… Conviction lay heavy on my heart…
— All this led to a confrontation with Jesus: I drove one day to a secluded area, parked my car, and walked to a high rock cliff that overhung the raging, beautiful Clearwater River. It was going to look like an accident. They would think I had just slipped and fallen. My family would be spared the stigma of what I was about to do… I was determined to end it all and answer for my failures.
— Satan had me on the ropes, I was listening to his lies of condemnation. I felt the world was better off without a loser like me around, I was going to commit suicide by purposely falling off the cliff into the rocks and the raging current below…
I hung precariously from a small tree by one arm. All I had to do was let go. I paused for a last look at God’s great creation. I pondered what had brought me to this point. I took a deep breath…
— However, fear would not let me do it: God would not let Satan’s lies prevail. I remember collapsing at the foot of that tree and crying out to the Lord, “Jesus, I am such a failure, I don’t even have the strength to end it. Lord God, I quit. Here is my life, if you can find anything worth saving it is yours…” It was like I heard God speak to my heart, “Ken, that was all I was waiting to hear…”
— I felt a warmth flow through me as if someone’s loving arms helped me pull myself away from that precarious cliff. I was able to stand by that tree and smile. The depression left me, all praise to the Lord, and has never returned for over 40 years now as I write this (and I know it never will). As I returned to my car I didn’t even look back. The Lord flooded my mind with a sense of peace and joy that has remained steadfast and sure through all these years of life’s ups and downs…
— My circumstances weren’t any different. I drove home and got dressed for my shift at the mill. But I knew that God was now in control and I had an amazing trust in His goodness and purpose… (And it has certainly been a life of adventure and excitement, believe you me!)

Teens (and adults), you can feel the security and strength of God’s purpose in your life too…  Just turn your future over to Him. He knows what’s best. He knows you better than you know yourself. Only God knows what will truly make you happy and fulfilled… Trust Him…
— There is one who will never forsake you. He will never move on. He sticks closer than a brother (or sister). His name is Jesus. If you haven’t done so, ask Him into your heart today. He will show you the way to a full, wonderful, and exciting life…

— If you need help to pray send me an e-mail, and if you can identify with any of my former struggles let me know so we can bring God in to defeat those lies of Satan in your life… (KK)