Who Can I Turn to Now?

By James Rhoads

Who Can I Turn to Now, tells the story of my life. I was a troubled child. I was raised by loving alcoholic parents. I was sent to Sunday School where I learned the books of the Bible, but I still always got into trouble.

I was sent to live with my grandparents on a farm where I finished High School on the Deans Honor Roll of Scholastic Students. I joined the air force and started drinking. I soon became an alcoholic like my parents.

I got married and had two children an this marriage ended after ten years, due to alcohol.

I got into trouble and went to prison twice. While in prision I found the answer to Who Can I Turn to Now. I have been out thirty years and married to the same wonderful woman twenty nine years. I believe if you really are at the bottom with your life, you can read Who Can I Turn to Now and find the answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532001383

James Rhoads

I was raised in California by loving parents. I was sent to Sunday School to learn about the Bible. I totally strayed from my upbringing and became an alcoholic. I have been married three times and the last one has lasted 29 years and still going. I went to prison twice and the second time I found my answer and I have been so happy ever since. Read my story and I believe you will find what I did.

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Copyright © 2016 James Rhoads.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible. Used by permission.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0137-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0138-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016910396

iUniverse rev. date: 07/06/2016

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Preface

This book was written over a period of twenty-five years. I gave up many times because I was not an English major, nor am I a professional writer. God spoke to me in 1990 and told me to write this book, and I had every argument in the world to present to Him, none of which worked. He just kept pushing me to write it and said He would help me. I said to Him, Lord, this means I must reveal my innermost secrets and my personal sins, which I would not like to do.

The Lord spoke back to my heart and said, Many souls that are headed for hell because they are ready to give up can be saved and become part of the family of God. You can help them to find salvation and become a part of the family of God that is on their way to a heavenly home, instead of looking forward to the lake of fire for all eternity.

Hell is real, and God did not make it for humankind; He made it for the devil and his fallen angels. Man and woman were made to fellowship with God through studying His Word, the Bible, and talking to God daily. God says we can call Him Abba, which means Papa or Daddy.

Don’t just read the book and throw it away when you get to some of the horrible things I have committed. I’ve shared my worst and my best to show you that if God can use me after all I have done and forgive me, He can forgive you and use you and give you peace and happiness all the days of your life.

Now remember—maybe at first you cannot consider ever forgiving me, but read the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9–15. It says we must forgive for God to forgive us. I hope that you read the entire book and, if you have never asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord, that you do it now! God bless every person who reads this book!

I want to leave you with these Bible scriptures. Second Timothy 1:7 reads, For God hath not give us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. And John 3:16 reads, For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Chapter 1

The Formative Years

As a person picks up this book, he or she might say, Why should I read this, and who is this guy, Jim Rhoads?

To the average person, I am no one, but I have lived such a diverse life. I have found through many mistakes that I have made that there are some good answers for those who believe they are at the end of the road or at the bottom of the pit, against the wall with nowhere to turn. The alcohol wasn’t doing it, the sex wasn’t doing it, and I didn’t care for drugs. I turned to the only answer that truly will work in all cases, no matter the situation. If it worked for me, what do you have to lose by reading this story to see how it holds the answer to your problem?

I realize I speak very confidently in having the answer. Well, my wife and I have worked with many people who believed they could not be helped, and I can truthfully say many persons were changed. I will say it takes being willing to apply what you read to your situation and decide if the condition you are in warrants taking this drastic of a step, but for me, it was help or die. I chose to accept the help.

I was born in the Midwest during the early 1940s, and World War II was the big problem that America had at that time. My dad felt that he needed to enlist in the army and go fight for our country. He left Mom with two little boys on a farm. This made it tough for Mom, and my brother and I had no dad to turn to for a few years.

Dad returned in 1945, and he soon found there was a shortage of jobs, with so many young men returning from the war. So he decided with Mom that we should go out west to California, where many of his siblings had already gone. We settled down in a town called Brawley, California, and Dad found work with one of his brothers-in-law for a while, and then he got an offer to be foreman of a large cattle ranch. I loved that because I loved animals, and soon, I was riding my own horse.

By this time, Mom had given birth to another son, so there were three boys now. Dad’s boss’s wife was the Baptist church Sunday school teacher. Before long, all three of us boys were attending Sunday school. This worked out good for Dad and Mom because even though my dad’s dad was a pastor and Dad was raised in church, while in the army, Dad had started drinking and smoking, and with us boys in Sunday school, they had a chance to go drink with their friends. Church provided a perfect babysitter, and after church, we were to go to the theater and catch the afternoon matinee. We learned the books of the Bible and memorized many scriptures.

All of this was good, but it did not prepare me for what to do when a teacher at middle school talked me into going by his house after school to eat some cookies and work on my homework to raise my grades a little. I went only to find that I did not know how to defend myself when he began to molest me. Then I was so ashamed that I couldn’t tell my dad because I didn’t know what he would do. The teacher threatened me, saying, If you tell your dad or mom, I will tell them you are lying and that you have been causing trouble in my class and that I am about to report you to the principal. I thought my dad would believe him over me, so I let this go on a couple of times a week for about two weeks.

Then the teacher showed me pictures of a place called Sea World and said he wanted to take me on a weekend trip through Mexico, from Mexicali through the mountains and coming in at Tijuana and into San Diego. I was scared to death. I asked my older brother to go with me, without telling him what had been going on. He said, Yes, sounds like fun!

Dad and Mom loved the idea, and so off we went. We stopped at a restaurant in the mountains of Mexico. I knew I had to tell my brother and see what he would do. When my teacher went to the bathroom, I told my brother what had been going on, and he went outside to a pay phone and called Dad. My dad surprised me; he wanted the teacher on the phone immediately and explained to him that if he did not get back into his car and bring us home right then, Dad would hunt him down and call the police.

The teacher got us into the car and drove as fast as he could back to Brawley and our house. He found my dad and mom, the school superintendent, and a local police detective. In those days, they had no big laws to protect kids, and all they did was fire him and tell him to get out of town before the sun went down and to never come back or try to contact me in any way. The thing was they just told me to forget what happened and that time would heal everything. I had no idea where to turn at that age, so I entered into my life of pornography, which led me down a worse trail.

I tried to get Dad and Mom to come to church with us, but they only came a couple of times, for a Christmas play or something like that. My dad got tired of me asking him, so one Sunday, he picked me up at church after it had let out. He took me to a local bar and said, Look; there sit your church deacons and elders.

What a bunch of hypocrites. I quit church and began to run with a bunch of wild boys who were always in trouble. Dad was a real hard person on discipline. He kept a straight razor strap hanging in the bathroom and used it more to whip us with than to sharpen his razor. Now that I ran with these friends of mine who were pretty wild, Dad always had a reason to beat on me.

When my dad changed jobs, we moved into town. This was hard on me because I had a horse I liked, and I had to find a place to board him and feed him. I had one friend, Eddie, who rode with me a lot, and his dad said they would keep my horse.

My dad leased hay equipment from my uncle on a verbal agreement and began to grow alfalfa for feedlots in Chino. He would take me with him at night sometimes, and we would drive all over the Imperial Valley from field to field. Something strange happened on these nights when he would go by some women’s houses and tell me to sit in the car while he visited them and to not tell Mom about it. The problem was these were the mothers of kids I went to school with, and especially problematic were the ones who had girls in my class. This confused me even further.

I began running away from home at the age of fifteen, and I would hitchhike to San Diego and look for work. I found a job working at KC Steak House washing dishes. I would sleep in a hammock stretched across the kitchen until I got a paycheck. Then I moved into a dorm across the street in the Fremont Hotel. I shared one bathroom with about forty men.

I began to worry about Dad and Mom, so I sent her a card to say, I love you, and I don’t want you to worry. Well, being about fifteen years old and unaware that each piece of mail had a stamp on it saying where the mail originated, I never thought about my mom knowing immediately where I was. I had a cousin whose husband was a San Diego policeman. Mom called and told him about this card she received; she believed I was still in San Diego.

It was only a few days before I heard a voice that I recognized while I was cooking one morning say behind me, Jim, don’t you think it is about time you went home and quit worrying your mother? My boss, who was there in the restaurant, attempted to convince my cousin to let this thing go, but my cousin said, No way. He explained how he was sworn to uphold the law, and that meant that I needed to go back home.