11.12 Give It To Them Straight

In addition to these gate-keeping precautions, I recommend that you talk honestly with your kids (your boys, in particular) about your struggles. My thirteen-year-old and I have had many discussions about how bad XXX videos are. One day, as we passed a XXX theatre, he said from the backseat, “Dad, you would never watch one [...]

11.11 Protecting Our Kids

So how do we build walls and guard gates for our kids? Build their walls by making sure they practice spiritual disciplines, and take time to talk about spiritual markers with them. Guard their gates by teaching them what is inappropriate and dangerous in computers, video games, magazines, T.V., movies and other media, and then [...]

11.10 Frog In a Pot

You’ve probably heard the metaphor about boiling a frog in a pot. If you put him into a pot of boiling hot water, he would jump out immediately. But if you put him into a pot of cold water and gradually increase the temperature, he will be boiled before he realizes what happens to him.

We [...]

11.8 Build THEIR Walls – Guard THEIR Gates

What if your son were kept free from this draining fever in the first place, and all of his spiritual energy could be spent on God’s call in His kingdom?

~ Every Man’s Battle

I can’t conclude without talking about our responsibility to our children. If you’re a dad, your job is to build the walls for [...]

8.11 GIGO

You may have heard this expression before. GIGO means “Garbage In – Garbage Out.” It mainly refers to computers (i.e., don’t blame the computer…if you put in bad programming, you’re going to get a bad result.), but it applies to our mental computers, as well. If you stock your brain full of garbage, be certain [...]

8.7 Preventing Nest-Building

At times, it seems impossible to prevent our minds from thinking sexual thoughts. Anything can trigger them… an attractive woman, a billboard, a store window… even a harmless comment. I’m convinced that the Enemy plays a part. He whispers thoughts into our mind, and he points out sexual images to tempt us.

While you’ll never [...]

8.3 You Crave What You Consume

There’s another problem with packing our brains with sexual stimuli. We are training our appetite.

Our appetites are the result of our diet. If you eat lots of sugary foods, you will crave the sugar. If you drink lots of caffeinated beverages, you will crave the caffeine. But if you train yourself to eat healthy foods, [...]

7.13 The Dogfight

Maybe you’ve heard the story about the man who raised dogs for the cruel sport of dog fighting.  Strangely enough, he would let his dogs fight each other, and he always bet accurately on the one that would win.  His apprentice couldn’t figure out how he did it, so he asked him one day, “How [...]

7.8 The Inside Man

One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to [...]

7.1 Divide and Conquer

When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it – though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates – Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us [...]