Don't talk of love
Well I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried

Men tried to love, but love comes hard because some get burned while trying to love. Especially when a man got comfortable with expressing his true feelings with a female. In love, there is commitment. In lust, there is the "throw-away" mentality that is implemented when the thing we lust after (women, money, power tools, fast cars, etc) no longer arouses nor stimulates us. These are the things we think can not hurt us back through a sharp word of backbiting and bickering or a poor choice. Both love and lust cause some pain in life. Unfortunately, when the hurt comes when I go from being a loving caring outgoing human being to "I touch no one and no one touches me". We isolate from people, God, and sometimes the thing we need for healing.

In the end, we want love to win out while refusing to sacrifice manhood in the name of sensitivity training. We desire that special someone to spend the rest of our life with as we struggle to obey God's word waiting for Ms. Right to appear in our life. I pray for her daily hoping I did not miss her along the way. We fear loneliness as children, as young single adults, and as old widowed men. We desire intimacy, but have a hard time distinguishing sex from love. Sex today is seen more as a recreational sport than a holy consummation of marriage between a man and his wife. Men who are sexually active and not in the will of God tend to view their conquests of women like trophies. We fail to see the deeper and painful significance of the notch on the bedpost as the ingrafted mental notch of a sexual experience out of God's will comes back to haunt us through a relationship that goes south, an unwanted pregnancy, or when we meet Ms. Right and make her Mrs. Right the memories from the sins committed pollute the meaning and the intimacy of true love between the man and the wife. There is something wrong when a man is intimate with his wife and he either thinks about another woman, baseball, or worse, call the other woman's name out in that special intimate time. It is usually too late to see the two become one when sex is done outside of marriage. From the men that have given me wisdom to maintain virginal purity until marriage, the breaking of the bondages of sexual relationships outside of the marriage covenant drains and consumes the energies of the man as well as the woman.

There is a high cost for low living. People throw away marriages over five minutes of erotic pleasure or a cybersex experience. People drink away their paychecks or snort away their paychecks. Why?

To soothe and wish away their pain experienced from an unresolved issue. Escaping to a temporary utopia, these people think that their addiction will permanently free them from their pain. Instead, their pain is enhanced and festers deeper and worse in their spirit to repeat the cycle next weekend. We saw a woman sell her soul to marry a millionaire, then complain about the psychotic behavior, then claim that she never wanted to marry the man but did it for the secondary prizes. She now desires to regain her "integrity" (if she really had integrity, she would have never followed through by participating in this publicity stunt) Ironic? Or is it Sardonic?

I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain

Men, from my experience of youth, have to participate in the raising up of something no matter what it is. Whether it's the walls of defense mechanisms that shelter us from the mental shrapnel around us or the need for funds to undertake a new endeavor. Men like to work and raise up things from the ground up in all areas and phases of life. When we were boys, we raised cain. When we were teenagers, we raised "hell". When we were young adults, we raised ambitions, careers (some raised ministries instead of allowing God to raise the ministry), and families. When our children left home, we raised the grass in the front yard. When our children reproduced children, we raised the grandkids two weeks every summer and called it Camp Grandpa. When we reached our senior years, we rediscover our ancestry and heritage and document our genealogy by raising the dead through the telling of family stories and "the good ole days". The funny part is that when we die, if we are Christ's, we are raised to heaven to experience eternal life. I don't have to do any raising except for my hands in praise to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Maybe that is one of the many reasons (along with the feminized worship services and intimacy issues) why men have a hard time in the worship environment. We spend our lives raising something from the ground up too often instead of learning that surrender to God by the raising of hands in worship and adoration to Jesus does not decrease your manhood. In fact, you can surrender without prayer, but you can never pray without total surrender to God. We fight without ever winning sometimes. But we never truly win and enjoy the spoils of the blessed without a fight. We have been duped to believe that everything is pie in the sky free or that to fight for spiritual victory is fleshly.

What about mentors?

I look for a friend and a mentor that is loyal, trustworthy, and reliable. My best friend Rick Stoker (aka "rolex rick" from my "Thank You's" page), has been this way to me and I have been this way to him. Within the past year and a half, we have been to "Hell" and back. I was there for him when his ex-wife decided she "no longer loved him" and took everything. I was with Rick through the sudden and drastic weight loss, making ends meet, the warfare, the heartache, tears, wailing, and the pain.

WHY BE THERE FOR RICK IN THE BAD TIMES?

Very simple. Rick was there for me when I was forced to resign from my previous job due to "internal politics", workplace oppression, and corporate evil. He saw me through my darkest depression, my hopelessness and desire to not live anymore, numerous job rejections, the re-birth of desire and creativity, the anger, etc. We have known each other for the past fifteen years. We were there for each other before. Why change now? What attracted us together as friends was the fact that we go through some of the same issues and we always thought that "there was a better way to live Christianity to the fullest". While I discovered my giftings in the prophetic, apostolic, and wisdom areas, Rick found his giftings in evangelism, helps, and drama. While everyone else within our church body was content on playing church and doing the stuff, Rick and I had to be different, but be "supernaturally natural". In other words, we had to be natural people possessing supernatural impartations of God in our lives. Rick was doing "everyday relationship evangelism" before it was the latest "thing to do". In the 1980's and early 1990's, where others met a sinner and tried to cram the Bible down their mouths saying "Ye are going to Hell, Whoremonger", Rick would instead become his friend, hunt and fish with him, and share the love of God one on one in a civil tone without compromising the Gospel when the time was right. It's just what Jesus did.

Today, Rick practices "everyday relationship evangelism" in the streets of Wilmington, NC by fulfilling the Great Commission to reach the homeless, prostitutes, alcoholics, and the stoned through Wilmington DreamCenter. If you have read Matthew Barnett's new book The Church That Never Sleeps, this is the same Rick featured and highlighted in chapter 11 of this book (pages 117-118).

Click Here for part five of A Rock Feels No Pain, And An Island Never Cries