The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. (Proverbs 29:15)

Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds. (Proverbs 27:23)

My wife and I have a small flock of goats. Well, in fact, we have three. One day I went up to the barn and saw that one of the goats had managed to become trapped in the area where we keep a hay bale for their eating pleasure. Her front leg was stuck, and she was screaming up a storm. As I helped her out, I wondered how long she had been in that twisted position. She could not help herself, and her sister certainly did not tell me. How long she was stuck I will never know, but I do know that the only way I found out was to go up to the barn! As parents, we are given a flock to shepherd. It may be small or large, but God expects us to take care of it for Him! At least part of that responsibility is to know what the little lambs are doing, and with whom they are doing it. How do you know that your children are acting as you wish if you are not observing their behavior and conversation? How do you know that they are being kind or sharing if you cannot see or hear them? “I do not need to watch them because they are with good kids,” protests the parent to me. How do you know they are good kids? Do you know how long it takes a good kid to become something less than good? While it may vary as to length of time, Proverbs state that a child left alone will eventually bring shame. How do you know if their legs are not stuck somewhere they ought not to be if you do not check on them? They could be crying for hours and their brothers or sisters may not tell you. Severe damage can happen quickly, so we must be aware. Parents must check on the flocks under their care, and they must do so often.

One of the young men in my church invited me to begin using Facebook on the Internet. I agreed and ventured out into the world of cyberspace as part of my responsibility as pastor to “know well the condition of my flock.” It has been both enjoyable and enlightening. I have since challenged the parents in my church to go out and visit their children’s pages. Do they know who their children’s friends are? Do they know what personal information is being revealed, and talked about, for the whole cyber world to see? Do they know the pictures that are out there, or the music groups their children love? If not, why not? Do the parents know who the children are texting or talking with in the multiple chat rooms that are available? Parents should know so they can assist their children to make godly decisions. Of course, it takes time; shepherding is a time consuming occupation. Parents often ask me in the midst of a crisis, “Where did I go wrong?” My response often is, “You let go too early.” About the time that parents should be more involved, they are taking their hands off and giving away too much freedom to children not ready for it. We would not dream of letting our children drive our brand new cars without instruction and supervision, but we let them navigate the Internet and make potentially dangerous friendships, often allowing them to become emotionally and even physically involved with the opposite sex long before they are trained.

Many debate over the age when parents should let go and I will not settle the debate here. A helpful principle is that as the child demonstrates maturity and the ability to handle freedom, the parent can give more freedom. Some children are mature beyond their years and others are not; a wise parent will know the difference. As far as I can tell, the Bible does not provide a specific age. Eighteen and twenty-one are ages that our society has deemed as sufficient, but scripturally, there are no such arbitrary lines. I prefer to deal with the concept of being under a parent’s authority rather than an age seemingly randomly selected by our secular society. Ideally, a daughter will be able to remain under her father’s authority until her daddy walks her down the aisle to her waiting groom on their wedding day. The same would be true for a son, except that he is the recipient, being given the bride by another father! Some will marry younger than others will, but that should be the parent’s decision, and not based on some random age picked out of thin air. As a child matures and demonstrates the ability to act responsibly, more freedom can and should be given.

It is perfectly natural for girls to be attracted to boys and boys to girls. This process begins somewhat earlier with the girls, but boys catch up soon enough. As our children moved through adolescence, we had many open and honest conversations about these normal desires and drives. If the parents do not discuss such things, where will the children get their information? From the government schools? The Internet? Friends that are the same age? TV or movies? Parents are the best, and, I believe, God-chosen resource to help their children grow and understand the sexual arena. This may be a stretch for some parents, but it is well worth the effort and discomfort you may experience to ensure that your children are well prepared to face the hormonal battle that will soon be upon them.

God designed the attraction between male and female, and parents are the proper resource to explain how best to channel that attraction until it can be righteously fulfilled. Boys need to be careful about stirring up emotions in girls and girls need to be aware of how they dress their temple of the Holy Spirit. One of my daughters is very affectionate and loves to hug and touch people as a sign of affection. We had to explain to her that touching a young man’s knee might not mean the same thing to her as it does to him, especially if he is lovesick! She needed to guard herself around young men and be aware of what she was doing in order to protect them. This same daughter wanted to wear a miniskirt. We asked her why she wanted to wear one and her reply was interesting. “The guys are all attracted to the girls that show more skin and I want them to like me, too,” was her explanation. We could not deny the fact that the young men did follow the young ladies around who were dressed in that way, but we encouraged our daughter to check her heart motives. “Is that really the type of man you want to marry? Do you want to chuck your values simply to get some guy to goggle over you?” Many such questions were asked and multiple conversations followed. She eventually saw our logic and agreed that it was more important to please God and her parents than some young man that she most likely would not end up marrying. For the record, I would not have allowed her to wear the skirt outside of her bedroom anyway, but I was more concerned about her motives than the clothing.

Underneath our choices rest multiple motives and we must understand and deal with these motives. Simply putting a bunch of rules in place without understanding motives can lead to legalism. In my opinion, many parents allow their children to become involved with the opposite sex excessively early. Relationships can become very passionate and emotionally binding at a young age, while, realistically, neither party is ready or able to marry. We attempted to acknowledge the attraction that our children may have developed toward someone, acknowledging that it was part of the normal developmental process, and then began to discuss what to do with it.

When children are pre-teen or early- to mid-teen, they cannot marry, and encouraging them in relationships with someone is setting them up for heartache and potential disaster. Parents need to be aware of what their sons or daughters are thinking, and with whom they are involved, even if only in their minds. Children need their parents to help them process the confusing emotions that they will inevitably face. We attempted to avoid the sexual problems associated with traditional dating by encouraging our children to wait until they were old enough to consider marriage before becoming involved in relationships. Dating and going steady often prepare someone better for divorce than for a life-long marital commitment. I believe it is wiser to wait until it can be righteously fulfilled before awakening love and sexual desire in our young people.

As a pastor, I do a significant amount of pre-marriage counseling and most young couples struggle with sexual desire for their soon-to-be spouses. This is natural and increases as the honeymoon approaches. The young people who have drawn clear lines on physical touching, and have practiced parental inclusion, are usually successful. The ones who do not protect themselves through parental involvement, and do not have clear lines drawn regarding physical contact, usually fail morally.

What are your children watching in their rooms or listening to on those headphones? Who is your child e-mailing or texting? When they go out at night, do you know where they are going, and with whom they are spending time? Do you have access to your child’s e-mail account or cell phone records? Do you know what websites your child has visited lately? Some may call this snooping; I call it being involved. If your child is resistant to your knowing, shouldn’t that bother you? What is there to hide anyway? Typically, things done under the cover of darkness and secrecy bring death and destruction. If your child were viewing pornography already, wouldn’t it be better to help him or her get over it now, instead of waiting until it is an addiction? Parents must be involved and active in order to assist their children in developing the necessary skills to survive in this lust-crazed world. The training must begin when children are young and be consistently applied as long as they are under their parents’ roofs.

Even with patient, consistent instruction, children can still make foolish choices; after they have grown up and left your home, however, they would be choosing against what they know, instead of simply making an uninformed choice. We must give our children a fighting chance to make it in this world, and it begins almost from the day they are born!

“Well, I agree with some of what you just wrote, but it sounds like it will take a lot of time,” you may be thinking. You are absolutely correct! Talking, the willingness to interfere, confrontation, the challenging of incorrect assumptions and what I call “intense fellowship,” are all part of an involved parent’s tasks. No one ever said that parenting was easy. To be effective, it involves a great deal of self-sacrifice and time on the parent’s part. The training of their children has been delegated to parents from the very hand of God, and we must be willing to invest ourselves completely in the task (See Deuteronomy 6). In the scripture, children are referred to, as “gifts,” and “fruit,” and we must take care of them with all diligence. Investing time in our children will not guarantee that they will never fail, but if they do fall, it will not be because we did not attempt to train them. Our efforts can help them get ready for the world they will face as they leave our home. We must prepare them. If we do not, who will?

Parents need to help their children understand from a young age what lust is and how to defeat it. We need to teach our sons the law of first glance, and train our daughters the proper way to handle their bodies around men. We need to instruct them about the proper role of sex inside of marriage, and not let them be trained by Hollywood or the Internet. As our children move into puberty, parents should be the ones discussing what is occurring in them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The task should not be left to some perverted producer of pornography or some other humanistic purveyor. Our sons will be exposed to an almost constant barrage of sensuality; are they ready? Will our daughters be part of the problem, or will they be part of a group that helps raise up a new standard of modesty and decency?

I sometimes marvel at fathers and husbands and wonder if they have forgotten what it is like to be male. Perhaps it is more complicated than that– maybe they are fearful of confrontation, but allowing their wives or daughters to dress sensually is foolish at best, and opening the door for immorality at worst. I wonder why some men do not look at their wives or daughters and place themselves in the mindset of other men. Do you really want other men’s eyes drawn to your wives’ or daughters’ cleavage, or skintight clothes highlighting their chests or rear ends? Are you secretly proud of how they look, perhaps wanting to show them off, and encouraging them to wear clothing that is excessively tight? If that is true, or even partially true, what kind of motive is that? Have you forgotten the struggles that you have with someone else’s wife or daughter? Perhaps it would be beneficial to take another look at what we allow or encourage and recheck our motives. Is purity our goal, or sensuality or pride? Are we comparing our styles and actions to the world’s system or to God’s Word? Are we adding to the degradation of our culture or attempting to present a higher standard? Only you can answer these questions for yourself, but your family desperately needs you to do it! The church needs you to do it, and our society needs you to take a second look and make sure holiness and modesty are the goals.

Changes come slowly, but perhaps they would take place more quickly if each family addressed these issues in addition to the organized church. If we addressed these issues, we would present a very clear difference to the world around us. Based on what is currently popular, there is very little difference between the Christian and the world. I hear men and women of God both young and old saying to and about each other, “You look hot!” or, “That is such a hot dress.” I wonder if the people who are saying such things are actually aware of what they sound like. Is the goal of a godly woman to be “hot”? What does that mean anyway? In my BC days (Before Christ), we used a numbering system of sorts, with ten being the best looking, and one being on the other end of the scale. What were we evaluating? The scale was really a lust meter and Christians have adopted it! When a husband tells his wife that she looks “hot” in the privacy of their home, that is one thing, but does he really want other men looking at what he alone is allowed to enjoy? The same would hold true with our daughters.

Have we adopted the world’s system of lust and embraced it so much that we do not even think about it anymore? Is there any connection between these issues and the skyrocketing divorce rate of Christians? What do we stir up in our wives if we encourage them to be seductive? What will happen if a wife is “hot” and ends up running off with some other man who enjoyed her “hotness”? Will we then be glad that we promoted this philosophy? What about the well-documented fact that the vast majority of young people cast off their parents’ faith, and many end up in immorality, shortly after they leave the home? Are there any connections? We must find the answer as parents if the church and family are to survive. We must be willing to go before the throne of the King and ask His opinion of such matters. I already know some of God’s views on such topics. Carefully consider the following verses and think about what our sensual world system promotes, and if we as believers in Jesus Christ should imitate that philosophy:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (I Corinthians 2:12)

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. (1 John 2:15–16)

Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. (3 John 1:11)

We need to evaluate seriously our standards and desires in light of these verses. The world system stands in direct opposition to the Kingdom of God, and we must be careful not to imitate our enemy. We must train our children to recognize the world system and how it wants to dilute the Christian message. We can only serve one Lord, and it must be Jesus! We as parents must be involved with the lives of our children and help them navigate in the sexual realm. If you have been on the sidelines, it is time to get involved. Many have fallen into bondage and more will join them in our lifetime. Maybe you are one of them. One passage that constantly gives me hope is:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (Titus 3:3)

The “at one time” means they were no longer living for those things and the same should be true for all believers. What are we living for? What are our children doing right now?