In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses the state of young men today and warns them to be wise stewards of their time. He explains the lessons that his father taught him. It is inevitable that our sons will face many challenges as they grow older. Fathers must begin preparing their sons today. Sons must look to Scripture for guidance and wisdom.

Romans 12:2 (NKJV) - "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Fatherhood. This message is entitled Young Men Don't Waste Your Life by Scott Brown. Us practices that are common, that are praised in the world today, that really result in the wasting of young men's lives. And I think it's a disaster, I think it's a tragedy, and it's a reflection of a culture that quit asking what God has said on various matters. This is a very critical subject.

My perspective is that this is a time for bold communication about the subject because if you can save one boy from wasting his life, if you can do that early enough in life, you will save him thousands of hours, thousands of hours. And I think that has something to do with the glory of God. I think that it has something to do with the use of the very precious time that God has given us. I'm very grateful, Jeff, for your comments about this subject because you laid the bedrock for why any of this is important for us to discuss. I think it's a very important subject and I would like for us to really seek the Lord now in prayer and ask for his help that we would all receive wisdom from heaven for this thing.

Oh Lord, Your ways are not our ways, Your thoughts are not our thoughts, and therefore we find ourselves as children, we find ourselves as those who have adopted and thought things that were not right. And I pray, Lord, that you would come and renew our minds that you would come and and refresh us With the way to live that you have established for us that we would be pleasing in your sight in all of our activities I do pray Oh Lord that you would rescue a generation from the foolishness and the waste that is upon them now. And I pray, Lord, that you would cause an uprising in the hearts of men, that they would see how beautiful your ways are, and that we would find it a new generation of young men who are mighty men in the land because they did not waste their youth. In Jesus' name, Amen. I'd like to start by telling you a story about my father.

My father was a small town boy, just 20 years old, when he enlisted to fight in World War II. And he never could have imagined the ferocity of the battles that he would face. And he could not have planned when he was a boy that these battles would test him to the limit and they would leave a lasting impression on his life. And he had no way of knowing that that battle in the battle for Iwo Jima that he engaged in, which was the bloodiest battle in marine history, would also cause his children to actually learn from his experience there and change the course of their lives. For many years I thought about the island of Iwo Jima where my father was fighting and it was a place of unrelenting attacks.

It was absolutely one of the most horrible battlefields in all of history. There never was and there never will be another battle like the battle for Iwo Jima. Here's why. You had 22, 000 Japanese troops underground, and you had the American army on the surface of the ground, each crisscrossing one another, the Japanese soldiers popping up and then going down and then popping up again. The battle lines were almost impossible to maintain.

It was an absolutely horrific battlefield where thousands lost their lives and I had the privilege of going with my father and my daughter and my son back to the battlefield several years ago in 2005 and I could just picture standing there on the top of Mount Suribachi overlooking the battlefield all the things my dad told me all my life, the mangled wreckage on the beach, the craters, just the absolute desolation of this island that had been bombed to oblivion. I was amazed to be there, but what really struck me about this is that there were only boys there. You had 18, 19 year olds flying B-52 bombers and P-51 Mustangs and storming the beaches. Some as young as 15, 16 years old were storming those beaches because they lied about their ages and ended up in that battlefield. It was absolutely the most remarkable place that any boy ever could find himself.

So I started thinking about this whole issue of boyhood because they were just boys on this island. Some of the boys There were the age of some of the boys that are right here in this room, if you can imagine that. And I started to think, how do you prepare sons for battlefields like this, where there's no hope of surprise? How do you prepare boys for battlefields where there's nowhere to hide, where you are sitting ducks. How do you prepare boys for battles where the violence is so fierce and so horrible that it's almost impossible to imagine?

Almost one third of all the Marines killed in World War II were killed in the battle for Iwo Jima. How's that? It's difficult to imagine any battlefield more like the biblical vision of hell than that eight square miles of volcanic ash out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How do you prepare boys for unrivaled violence? How do you prepare boys for the conflicting emotions that they face when there are assaults toward them and questions that they have to answer?

How do you train a boy so he can remain courageous when the chips are down and the most remarkable things are at stake. I'd like to talk about this in two ways. First of all, I'd like to talk about what fathers must do to set the stage for the preparation of sons to live a productive life. And then, because I really do believe that it's so critical that a father understands the issues and casts the right vision for his sons. And secondly, I'd like to speak of a principle, an overarching principle, that every boy needs to embrace early in his life.

And I'm just going to urge you to embrace it as a boy and live it out in the fullest of its implications. Because if you do, you will find yourself making worthy investments, and you will not waste your life if you take this advice. And that's the promise, scripture that we will be taking a look at. So let me first address fathers because it's very important that fathers understand what to do in times like these. And first of all, a father must have a plan, a comprehensive plan, and teach the whole counsel of God to his son.

Fathers can never anticipate precisely what battles his son will face, So he has to teach him everything. He has to prepare him for everything. And the only way that you're prepared for everything is to know the Word of God. This is why the Apostle Paul said, I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Boys need the whole counsel of God.

It's their greatest defense. It's their greatest preparation. And so fathers must have it in their hearts to declare the whole counsel of God to their sons. David said, if your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. Your testimonies are a delight to me.

They are my counselors. There's freedom for a boy who knows what the Bible says about all of the various subjects. And so, man, if you're neglecting the delivery of the whole counsel of God to your sons, make a sharp turn. Make a sharp turn right now. The days are passing by.

You'll never be able to retrieve these days. Pour it out. Make it happen. Do not let anything get in the way of it. If it means you lose your job, you do not want to have a job and then not have a son be able to face the battles that are ahead of him.

The trade is not worth it, but God will provide for you. He will give you a job. But we often make wrong decisions based on outcomes that we have no way of understanding. So, first of all, He must have a comprehensive plan to teach the whole counsel of God. Number two, He must communicate the nature of the battles ahead.

Fathers need to have it in their minds what they're preparing sons for. What kind of things will they face? Well, what kind of things did you face? That's how you answer that question. What were you unprepared for?

What were the areas that you needed help in? You identify those and you teach your son the things that you know that you needed yourself. And of course there are men of faith who subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, ordained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, they quenched the violence of fire, They escaped the edge of the sword. Out of weakness they were made strong. They became valiant in battle.

They turned to flight the armies of the aliens." So it says, Hebrews 11, 32 to 34. Well, what kinds of battles are there to be prepared for? Well, Don't pretend that the roaring lion is not around in this world. And so what kinds of battles are we preparing our sons for? There are conflicts with pagan philosophers and religious authorities and government officials.

That's what you see in the book of Acts and that's what you see today. The battles that we see being fought in the book of Acts are nothing different than the ones that need to be fought today. You know, what are the theological issues that my son needs to understand? What are the world views that he needs to dismantle? What are the bankrupt, unworkable propositions that there are in the world?

There are so many of them, it's absolutely unbelievable. You spend your whole life dismantling these unworkable structures that formed up around us. It is for us to throw them off and to embrace the Kingdom of God. How are they going to defend creationism? How are they going to defend biblical gender roles?

These are two of the great battlefields. We must rise up and fight them to the death. We absolutely should. We are defending the nature of God when we defend the doctrines regarding gender and roles. Because every time the Apostle lays these down, he ties them right back to the doctrine of God.

When you mess with gender and you play games there, you're playing games with the doctrine of the Trinity. So we need to keep our wits about us. There are great things at stake and so men need to teach their sons what the battles are all about. You know, how do you handle things when relationships are in crisis? That's what a boy needs to learn.

How will he handle marriage and family situations? How will he handle pressures in his workplace? He will always have a bad boss. For the rest of his life, he'll never have a boss that stacks up to his vision of bosshood. What are you going to do?

How are you going to help that boy get through that time? How is he gonna handle sin in his life? How is he gonna handle his tongue? How is he gonna handle his passions? Well, to adequately prepare a son, a father needs to see to it that his son doesn't waste his youth by considering things that don't help him to do battle in the future.

And so number three, he must give his son meaningful work to do. He must give his son meaningful work to do and to work alongside of him. He does this by making sure of his son's schedule to understand that his son is involved in real work, number one. Number two, stretching work. Number three, work that has some tangible value in this world.

And it can be known immediately that there is value to it. There's nothing worse than busy work. There's nothing worse than working in a way that has no aim. It's wrong to beat the air without aim, but it is right to have meaningful work. A father must lead the way in teaching his son how to work.

One of the mistakes that I believe fathers make is that they get frustrated with their sons, particularly when they hit their teens, maybe mid-late teens, they get frustrated with their sons and it gets really hard. And they find themselves sinning in their hearts and they're angry and they throw up their hands and they say, enough of this, give him to someone else. I think that's a dangerous thing to do. That's the knee-jerk reaction that we all have. Instead of working through the problems, instead of powering through them, crying out to God, asking God for help, what we do is we give up in frustration.

We say, I'm done with this kid. Send him to college. Let them take care of him. I just have serious questions about that whole process because it's often born out of one thing. It's born out of frustration.

It's born out of sin and God is using that conflict with your son to sanctify both you and your son. And if you separate, the sanctification process that God has ordained is upset. Yes, God will continue to love you and your son. He will continue to work in your life all the days of your life. He will never leave you or forsake you.

But on the other hand, we often subvert the sanctification process that God has for us in the midst of our frustration. Now, I do not know one single father with a teenage boy that's not bumping heads in some way. I believe that God means for you to bump heads with your son. It's not a sign that the world is coming apart. It's a sign of many, many things.

And it's at least this. It's a sign of the need for personal growth in the Father and in the Son. And we often, because we hate pain so much, we just want to get away from it. So in frustration, we kick the thing in the head and separate. We rob ourselves of what God Almighty had for us.

And instead of walking along and talking along in our discipleship with our sons and daughters, instead of continuing to be the voice of God for them as we sit in the house, as we walk by the way, as we lie down and we rise up. Instead of that we say, you go sit down with somebody else. You go rise up with somebody else. You go walk by the way with somebody else. I just want to caution you men particularly.

Don't forget this. Make sure If you are going to send your son away, that it's not a sinful thing because you're avoiding a conflict, because you're throwing up your hands and saying, I can't do it. Well, you know, you can't do it. You never were able to do it, and you never will in the future either. You must have the help of God to fulfill the commands of God for your son.

So I'm just very concerned about the throwing up of the hands that happen so easily in our culture. Our culture loves to do it. It's the favorite thing that we do. And we have massive institutions that catch our children when we throw them aside. And I just think we need to pause and say, is this right?

Does this make sense? Does this seem to fulfill the commands of God? Search your hearts on it, brothers. And when your son does get to that point you are bumping heads and you will bump heads. What are you gonna do?

I recognize that there are different levels of head bumping that happen with different sons. You know there are extremely blient sons and then there are sons who have more opinions. All sons are not created equal. What are you going to do with that? My counsel is this.

Don't just automatically flip them over the wall to somebody else. Let God complete the work that He began in you. So He must give a son meaningful work and work alongside him. And then number four, he must illustrate from Scripture how important it is to use the years of youth for the glory of God. We have so many examples of youth that did not waste the days of their youth.

Think of Josiah, the boy king who ushered in revival in a land, who had the courage to stand up and say, those idols are killing us, we will destroy them. Think of Joshua, the young man who assisted Moses all the days of his life. Think of Joseph, the boy who proved faithful in the midst of adversity. Joseph is one of our hallmark heroes of the boyhood. You think of this, from age 17 to his early 30s he was either prisoner or a slave.

You might say the years of his youth were stolen. Oh what a tragedy! Well, God had great plans for a boy. You know, boys should never complain about their situation after reading the story of Joseph. Think of Solomon, the boy who prioritized righteousness.

He was offered everything and he only desired one thing, wisdom, and he got it. Think of David, the courageous boy who feared God more than man. David is famous for killing that vile, philistine Goliath, but we need to remember that when he put that stone between that giant's eyes, a lot had already happened. He was already a skilled musician. He was operating well in his family business.

And he was able to sling stones. Hey, these boys in Scripture did not waste the years of their youth, as far as I can tell. They served God, they rose up, and they served their generations. I think they're in sharp contrast to the thousands of boys who spend hour after hour involved in games and entertainments and fantasy stories. And this kind of youthful diversion does not promote the glory of God.

God did not create us for fantasy, God did not create us for games, He created us for dominion. And I believe that the six year old boy needs to be thinking about how he's taking dominion every day. And he needs to take dominion every day of his life. You don't turn 21 and start taking dominion. You start taking dominion because you're a human being, and that should start at the earliest moment of understanding of it.

And all of life should be about that one overarching service to God that the glory of God would be declared through the service of men on the earth through the taking of Dominion. Women take Dominion as well. Men and women are taking Dominion together and they wrap up their little families and they take it all together. And it's so critical that we understand that. I mean, think about, there's so many amazing youth presented to us in history as well.

Think about Charles Spurgeon preaching at age 16. Think of Richard Baxter at 23. John Calvin was in Chaplin at age 11, and he began preaching at age 22. I mean, John Quincy Adams was a diplomat as a teenager. David Farragut commanded and captured a ship at age 12 and had a bunch of 45 year olds reporting to him.

What's that all about? Well, something happened in these boys' youths. They threw off silliness. They threw off the fantasy world, and they took on the real world, and they decided they were going to take dominion. So when there was a big job to do, there was a man who said, that boy can do it, and he did it.

Let you be that boy who so shines in your father's house that there are men in the church and men in the committee look around him and say, that boy can do that. That's the kind of boys we need today. And you know, I'm comforted. I'm seeing lots of these boys cropping up in our day. I am so encouraged.

In the same way that there's a new crop of young women that the world has never seen, there is also a new crop of young boys that the world has never seen. And you know what? I've got a bunch of them in a church that I go to as well. I cannot believe what these boys are able to do, and it's so encouraging. Well, a father must illustrate from Scripture how important it is to use the years of youth for the glory of God.

There are so many dramatic stories of young people in the Bible. I would love to just spend the rest of the time talking about them. Some of my favorites. It is for youth to be involved in meaningful, helpful things. Hey, okay, I can't resist the temptation.

Here's one of my favorite boys in the Bible. We don't even know what his name was, but he was the Apostle Paul's nephew. Do you remember the story of the 40 assassins who decided that they were not going to eat or drink until they killed the Apostle Paul and they were skulking around with their daggers behind their cloaks, but we don't hear anything about them. I think they all, Either they starved to death or went off and decided to do something else. But while all this was brewing, where these 40 assassins had committed to kill Paul, in the midst of the crowd is a little boy who was probably 8, 9, 10 years old.

And he heard the assassins speaking. And he went to his mother and the Apostle Paul and the officials. This little boy is speaking to the officials and telling them what the plot is all about and changed the entire course of the story after that. But here's this little boy, he's not off in the playground, he wants to know what's going on. He's in the midst of the tumult.

He's in on the action, absolutely. And that's what our boys need to be in on all the action. You know, I want my son with me in all of the most erratic moments that I face. I want him sitting with me when someone is angry with me so that he can see what it's like to respond to an angry person. I want him to be with me if I'm meeting with an attorney or an accountant or a friend.

I want him to see it all. I don't want him to miss out on the action at all. So, hey, boys need to see smoke and fire. They not only like smoke and fire, they need to see it, and they need to see it going off in your life. Hey, every boy needs to see that the exemplary boys in the Bible were like that.

They were in on the action. George Washington wrote his rules of civility when he was only 14 years old. Did you know that? Jonathan Edwards wrote his resolutions when he was just in his teens. Let's don't underestimate what boys can do.

You know Alexander the Great conquered the world with a bunch of boys. He was a boy himself when he did it. Let's don't underestimate what these boys can do. The Bible gives you many stories about what a boy can do. So that's number four.

Number five, he must teach his son a biblical understanding of time and help him to redeem the time. Boys need fathers to help them redeem the time. And fathers know more about how time can be wasted. Every boy needs a father who says to him, son don't waste your youth. Every boy needs every day when he wakes up to understand how important it is to walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.

You've got to get a jump on time. You've got to buy it up. You've got to use your time well. You don't just let time happen to you. You get up in the morning and you have a list and you start working it hard.

And you go to the end of the day and you can see the fruit of your labor. Do not begin a day without a list and times that are associated with the accomplishments of the day. It's so critical that we redeem the time. We have a biblical view of time. Of course the Bible says every man's work will be made manifest and the day shall declare it but it'll be revealed by fire.

That includes the work that's done when you're five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old. I don't believe that this begins, this calculation by God begins when you're twenty-one. I think it begins when you're one. And every man's work will be made manifest. Fathers need to help their sons use their time well.

I believe fathers sin against their sons when they don't help them. I believe fathers assist in the piling up of wood hand stubble when they don't help their sons to know how to direct their time. Even a child is known by his doings whether his work be pure or whether it be right, says Proverbs 20-11. Jonathan Edwards, I think, had it. He nailed it in Resolution No.

5, Resolved. Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it to the most profitable way I can. Well, Father needs to teach Son that understanding of time. That's the right understanding of time. It's so important that we do it.

We never know when we'll pass off this earth. As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. A man is like breath. His days are like a passing shadow.

And therefore, it is only right for us to use the moments of time in this world as well as we possibly can. God will judge the use of our time. We dare not be like Isaiah when he said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught. This is a tragedy. God will put a match to your work and it will be consumed and only that which was done for the glory of God will remain.

And so it's so critical that we walk in wisdom that we are redeeming the time that we no longer live the rest of our time in the lusts of our flesh but to the will of God and that we realize that the Lord will come quickly as He said in Revelation 22 and He will reward every man according to His work. And again a Christian father needs to help his son understand in every way possible how to use the years of his youth. Okay, so those are some general principles. Now I want to give you five things that fathers must do to set the stage, and you've got that in your outline. Five faith-building investments a father can make in his son to help him redeem the time.

First of all, oh I'm sorry we've just done that. Now I want to give you a principle. We just talked about what fathers must do to set the stage and now I'd like to talk about a principle that sons must embrace if they have any hope of this refusal to waste their youth. This principle comes from Romans chapter 12. If you could please turn in your Bibles to Romans 12.

Romans 12, 1 and 2. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Now these two verses not only summarize the doctrine of sanctification, but they call the church out of conformity with the world. And there are six things here that need to be understood by every boy. He would not waste his life.

I would just like to work our way through the text here. And first of all, we see there is an urgent plea for it. There is an urgent plea for it. And he says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren. This is a very solemn call here.

There is urgency here and there's also kindness and compassion. The word that he uses here is the word parakolo, to come alongside to help. He's saying, I come alongside you to help you. I'm standing with you, but I am urgently appealing to you on this matter." So he is exhorting them. It's the same word that the apostle Paul used in Acts chapter 2, and he said with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation.

Exhorting is the same word that's used here for beseech. This is just a strong exhortation for this principle of sanctification. Paul believes something about the presentation of the body. He says that there is a reason for the plea, and the reason is because of the mercy of God. I urge you, brethren, by the mercy or by the compassion of God, in view of God's mercy.

Because his mercy is so great, here's why I'm giving you such a great appeal. So the motivation for the exhortation is rooted in love. Paul is saying here that the reason he is bringing such a mighty exhortation is because of this ocean of God's mercy that exists that needs to be released in the world. And so this exhortation is founded on the greatness of the mercy of God. Knowing that God is good, knowing that His mercies are perfect and they are fit for the world.

We must attend to this appeal. So He's giving us a reason why He is being so passionate in His urging. And then there's a command regarding the body that you present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Now this is the heart of the matter. This is the principle right here.

It's about the presenting of your body. What you do with your body matters. And again, what you do with your body doesn't start mattering when you're 21. It matters when you're one. And every human being must understand that God has called them to present their bodies.

What you do in the body makes a difference. We are always yielding our bodies up to something. Right now you're yielding up your body to, I don't know actually what you're yielding up your body because you have a mind and you have ears and you have eyes. You might be yielding your body to something a thousand miles away from here right now, but we are always every second of our lives presenting our bodies to something. We're presenting our eyes to something.

We're presenting our ears to something. We're presenting our mind to something. We are unceasingly presenting our bodies to something. And the Apostle Paul is giving us, I think, a secret for the empowerment of boys and adults. And it has to do with What are you doing with your feet?

Where are they taking you? What are you clicking on? Every time you click on something, you're presenting your body to something. Every time you listen to a song, you're presenting your body to something. Every time you read something, you're presenting your body to something.

My appeal is this, brothers do not present your body to anything except what is profitable. I realize that I'm one of the minority in the world. I call into question the thousands of hours that people present their bodies to fantasy, alternative realities, worlds that don't exist, maybe worlds that God never intended us to meditate on. He has told us what to meditate on and is it lawful for us to meditate on so many things that are alternative realities. We are constantly presenting our bodies.

Our bodies cause us many problems. That's why the Apostles said, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? We have so many problems with our bodies. We will never cease from struggling with our bodies in this sense. This is not a war that you win today and never fight it again.

You fight it every day of your life. What are you going to present your body to today? There's always a great struggle in the members of our body. That's why Paul said, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts. He said, if you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

And that is so important that we understand that God has given us bodies for a reason and that we would present them to Him. And the key to our sanctification, the key to our productivity, the key to freeing ourselves and its conformity to the world is found in what we present our bodies to. It isn't just a spiritual thing that happens to you. It's something that you do to yourself by the presenting of your body. It is both for sure, But it matters what we present our bodies to, and it's so critical that we are wise, not fools, walking circumspectly.

There are diverse ways that we present our bodies. There is the presenting of the mind. And so that helps us to ask the question, where's my mind share? What has captured the thoughts of my mind? This has to do with whether you are wasting your youth or whether you are building something for the glory of God in your youth.

Your mind, What are you thinking about? I was just having a conversation with one of the men here this morning and I said, hey, so what would you tell these boys? He said, you know, one of my concerns is the computer. You know, these computers are such amazing resources. I can see how they can suck the life out of a boy.

Answering emails, going to Facebook or whatever book, it doesn't matter what it is. How many of you are having this struggle in your own home? You threw the television set out that it has a lovely replacement, doesn't it? In our house, here's the rule. It is unlawful to use computers for anything but the glory of God.

No games, we do not play games on our computers. If I find out anybody's playing using that tool for something, because it's the presenting of the mind, it's presenting of the body. Entertainments are severely restricted in our household. I just want to report the happiness that comes from that. I want to report the productivity that arises out of that.

I am grateful, I am pleased for the results of kicking the games in the head. I encourage you to consider doing that. Kick games in the head. Forget them. They take you nowhere.

But what's that all about? Well the issue is games. The issue is mind share. What are you meditating on? What is your mind grinding on?

You might think it'd be enjoyable to spend, you know, your mornings doing crossword puzzles and playing around, but what is the value of it? I mean, I'm actually disturbed when I see people spending hours on their crossword puzzles. You say, well, it increases my mind, increases my vocabulary. Please do that for the glory of God. If you can do that for the glory of God, then do it.

Do it with all your heart and soul. If you're doing it to expand the kingdom of heaven, Do it. If you're doing it to sharpen your mind for the glory of Jesus Christ, do it. But if you can't do it for that, then don't do it. Because it is the use of time as a fool would use as time, not circumspectly, not being careful with the use of time.

There's mind share, the presenting of the mind, that's one part of your body. We always have to be thinking about whether this is the right way to go. That's not legalism. That's just living in the world with thousands of opportunities. Which door will you go in?

There are thousands of doors. A believer has to say, not that door, yeah, that door. And that's not legalism, OK? That's holiness. That's faithfulness to God.

It would be so wrong for us to just say every door is lawful for me. That's not true. Not every door is profitable and some are patently immoral. So we have to be very careful with mind share. Then what about your eyes?

What are you letting your eyes rest upon? David said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. How about that? That's the principle that boys must have in their minds. I will set no unclean thing before my eyes.

None. Zero. Turn away from it. Flee. Flee immorality.

That's what you should do. And that means that you might be alone more because of that. Be alone. But don't subject your mind, your eyes, to things that would defile you. God has given us these eyes.

They're so marvelous. They are nourishing. I often pray in a certain location overlooking ponds and trees. It is so nourishing to the eyes. It is so beautiful to sit there.

It just reminds me every time I go out there how nourishing the eyes are. They make you feel a certain way. They make you think certain thoughts. Your eyes are marvelous. Think of the amazing power of the eyes.

It's absolutely remarkable what God has done by giving us these things that can acquire all these shapes and textures and colors and it's marvelous what God has done. But it matters what our eyes rest upon. That's why David said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. Let's make that. If you want to waste your life, boys, set unclean things before your eyes.

You will waste your life, I guarantee it. You will become a loaf of bread. God would not have that for you. Then there's the presenting of the ears. Let's call that ear time.

We talked about mind share, presenting the mind. We talked about presenting of the eyes. Now how about the ears? Let's talk about ear time. Stop listening to the voices of the world.

I've traveled all over the world and every corner of the world that I've ever gone, you walk on the streets of these cities in the world and what do you hear? You hear the sounds of the world playing on the streets and these sounds all come from America. It's playing the rock and roll generation message all over the world. It doesn't matter what city you go to, you will hear the sounds of the world playing in your ears. It's a consistent sound.

It's a consistent message. But what are your ears listening to? God has given you ears that you would acquire wisdom through those ears. And it's a wrong use of the ears. Think of the preciousness of these ears and how amazing they are and how easily defiled we are by what goes into our ears.

What you listen to you will become like. That's just a principle. It's a promise. It's just the way that you're wired. You cannot stop it.

You know, for some reason, God wired us this way. We are made in the image of what we see, what we hear, and what we think about. It's unavoidable. God made us this way. He did it so that we would have the capacity to enjoy far more than we could ever imagine.

Philippians 4-8 is the place to go to discern whether you should think of or see or listen to it. Please turn to Philippians 4-8. I think this is one of the most critical passages of Scripture for the deployment of boys. If a boy would not waste his youth, then he must understand Philippians 4-8. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.

That's the filter. That's all you need. If you want to know whether it's lawful to see that movie, listen to that song, or watch that thing, Philippians 4-8 is all you need. And you will know, the Spirit of God will tell you whether it is of the quality that these things are. The language is very distinct here.

Whatsoever things are this way. And that excludes everything that is not, okay? The common culture of our churches has completely rejected this principle. I think somebody needs to stand up and say that clearly, and I hope you do. I hope you do to yourself, and I hope you do to the rest of the members of your family, And I hope you do that to the rest of the members of your church, that you would assist in the presentation of the body in the right direction.

There's the presenting of the mouth as well. The mind, the eyes, the ears, and the mouth. It is interesting that the Bible says that what we say makes a difference. James makes it very clear that the things that we say take us in a direction. Our tongues are like rudders, and they take us in a direction.

So we have to be very careful with the body. Boys, if they ever hope to keep themselves from wasting their youth, they have to understand their bodies. God gave you a body. We're not just spirits. We are flesh and blood.

And what we do with these bodies makes a tremendous difference. Before our eyes, we are watching the stupidification of the church because of a wrong presentation of the body, because the opportunities are so winsome and attractive. We're watching the silification of the church because the boys in the church have spent thousands of hours playing games and looking at stupid movies, and they are stupid boys, okay? Some of you are making stupid boys perhaps I hope not but if you're allowing your boys to be involved in any of the things that are contrary to Philippians 4-8 you are still a fine and stupid if I your boys you're probably feminizing at the same time you be very careful you're the governor your house Be very careful what you let in your house. Be very careful what you say is lawful.

Yeah, your children will put pressure on you. You need to lead to the clearest waters. You need to lead to the best pastures. There's a lot of murky water out there. There's a lot of bad pasture out there.

God would have us beautified, not scillified. He would have Himself and He would have us glorify, not stupid enough. To proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life, and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. Ncfic.org