continued from part 1
When his first wife filed for divorce in 1998 after 20 years of marriage, Ned says he pushed past the pain. “I’m a rock climber and a mountaineer, and I’d always pushed past pain in my live through sheer strength and willpower.”
Among those who were a support to Ned during his divorce was Christina “Tina” Kuo, who had joined the East Gates International staff a year before as director of training. “Christina had a great heart for China, and she became a great fit with our indigenous Chinese team. We became very good friends as we traveled with our team throughout China.”
Back home, Ned says he would often take his two sons, Alex and Sam (then 13 and 10), and his dog, Pugsley, into the East Gates office with him. “Sam and Pugsley would somehow always end up in Christina’s office,” he says, “One day Sam asked me, ‘Dad, if you ever decide to remarry, would you ever consider Tina?’
“That was the last thing on my mind at the time, but I ended up falling in love with her and even traveled back home to North Carolina to seek my mother’s counsel. Mom said: ‘Ned, if you love her ... follow your heart. Just make sure your heart is following God’s.’”
In February 2001, Sam’s request was fulfilled and Ned and Tina were married by his father in his parent’s Montreat home. One year later, at his father’s request, Ned and Tina returned to the North Carolina mountains to care for Ned’s mother, who was hospitalized and said to be dying.
Having worked as a certified nursing assistant throughout his educational pursuits, Ned was well-qualified to assist in the physical care of his mother. What he wasn’t prepared for was the spiritual warfare taking place on the mountain. “When you think about it, Satan would love nothing better than to attack Billy Graham and his family, as evidenced by his attack on me very early in life.”
Although Ned dedicated himself to caring for his mom during the two years he was at Montreat, he says he was still struggling with his own physical and spiritual issues. “I had torn my thigh muscle playing tennis, and I remember Anne telling me I was like Jacob wrestling with God.”
When Ned and Tina returned to Seattle in 2004, Ned’s depression deepened. “I came to a point where I gave up on everything,” he says. “I stopped caring. I no longer feared death or life. I no longer feared failure or success. It was at that point that God could interact with me.”
Although Ned knew nothing about deliverance, he agreed to see a well-known deliverance minister after a friend suggested it. The attempt to free him from his demonic affliction failed, Ned says, and caused even more damage to his psyche.
Tina says she didn’t feel comfortable with the idea in the first place, “And things got much worse, afterwards,” she says. “When you stimulate the dark side in a person and don’t resolve it, it worsens.”
Anne recalls, “I was in Seattle around this time doing a Just Give Me Jesus conference. When I saw Ned, he was barely hanging in there. I thought he was having a complete inner breakdown, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. It was very scary.”
Deliverance and Freedom
Through Tina’s urging, Ned began meeting with inner-healing minister Rita Bennett, who led him through about 15 sessions of soul-healing prayer. Ned says he let go of bitterness, anger and resentment, and allowed Jesus to bring healing.
Then one morning he knew the time had come for him to be fully delivered. He called two friends, who had been present during his healing sessions with Bennett, and arranged to meet them at a church. While traveling the freeway to meet the men, he had to pull over to vomit several times, almost wrecking his car.
“The deliverance was difficult because what affected me since childhood was extremely powerful and there was an apparent hierarchy [of demons],” he says. But several hours later, he says he was laughing and giggling and praising God. “I was a totally different man,” he confesses.
Ned says he was also immediately delivered from the addictions that had plagued him for years, as well as some long-term health problems. Anne say she immediately sensed the change when he called to tell her of his deliverance.
“His voice was calm and strong and clear,” she recalls. “And when I next saw him, I knew I had seen a miracle. Everything that he was as that sweet little boy was shining through with maturity, character, grace and strength.”
At the time, Tina was on a trip to China, so Ned spent the next several weeks alone, reading God’s Word and studying about the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare. About the third week into his study, he says he was praying when God suddenly gave him a prayer language that has strengthened him in his prayer life.
“Ned now has a straight pipeline to the Lord,” Tina says, “and he listens a lot more. When he was tormented, it was too painful to listen to the Lord. Now when he faces challenges he doesn’t try to escape them. He hunkers down, gets into the Word, and uses his prayer language,” a gift which Tina says she has also received.
“My parents couldn’t help but notice the positive changes in me,” Ned adds. “My mother totally understands what I’ve been through.” When asked about the changes she has seen in her son, Ruth Graham told Charisma: “Ned has been so much more thoughtful and attentive, and he exhibits more of the Spirit of God.”
Although Ned describes this period of his spiritual journey as “coming out of evangelicalism and recognizing and accepting the power of the Holy Spirit,” he told Charisma he does not call himself a “charismatic Christian”; rather, he sees himself as “a simple follower of Jesus.”
Ephesians 3:14-4:16 tells us that the gifts are to be used to glorify God, build up the body of Christ, and to unite us, not to separate or draw distinctions between us,” Ned says. “God did not create denominations. Man did.”
Reflecting on how God has worked in his life, Ned stresses that there are no cookie-cutter relationships with God. “Each person’s relationship with God is unique. I know, because Jesus and the Holy Spirit have uniquely worked in my heart and soul to heal and weld together the little boy that I was into the man that I am now, and into the man that I’m still becoming.”
Sandra K. Chambers is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Charisma. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
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