Young Adults & Marriage - Part 1

Transcription

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Announcer:  Where do you even start when it comes to preparing your kids for young adulthood? Mike has got a few answers.

Michael Pearl:  Probably the most difficult time is that transition between 15 and 20. Maybe even between 17 and 19, somewhere in there. That time when the girl realizes she's a woman. "You're a woman. I'm an adult, almost. You're an adult, and I have passions, ambitions, expectations out of life. I don't see things the way you do. I don't like the way you see things. I see things differently. I can't be held down. I can't be pinned down. I can't be limited. I've got to go."

They're not old enough yet and smart enough to make all the right choices. They're vulnerable, and they're going to get in trouble. You know that.

But when you try to say anything, you look like an old fogey. You look like the killjoy. That boy, when he gets about 17, 18, and he has all of life in front of him, and here's a momma who wants to prevent him from being a man.

Daddy's preoccupied, Daddy's busy, Daddy doesn't know, and he's ready to go. He's old enough almost to join the military. Go overseas. Walk down the streets of Thailand and Bangkok. It’s kind of bad over there. He's old enough to go out and drink, do whatever he wants to do, and here you are holding him back.

It's pretty difficult to hold them back. Close to impossible, in fact. If they want to go, they can go. They can hit the road. They can put out their thumb and they can go somewhere. That girl can pick up a guy, a guy can pick up her, and she can be gone at 16, and you'll never see her again if that's what she wants.

It's a very difficult time. You can't just spank them into obedience. You can't just intimidate them anymore. You can't just threaten them. They are a bit too sophisticated for that. It's about too late if you haven't done some things to put your values—assuming you have the right values—in them, if you haven't made them to where they want to choose the right path, to where they have the wisdom to choose the right path. Then there's not much hope at that age. Maybe if you'd cry and repent and suddenly have a revival in your own soul, you could bring them to conversion—if not salvation—to a conversion of perspective on the world, and get them to come over to your side and work with you a couple more years before they actually leave home. That's possible. But still, it's tenuous at that age. The battle of 17, 18 years old has to be fought when they're 3 or 4, and 10, and 11, and 12.

Let me address the needs of a teenager, and see if you're providing that now.

What a teenager is going to be looking for when they're 16, 17 years old is they're going to be looking out beyond the family to what is next. What is next is a job, friends, a social life, wife, husband, their own home. What you have to do when a child is very young, you have to begin giving them a vision.

Key word here is vision. Everybody needs a vision. Your teenagers need a vision, and they have to believe that the culture you've provided provides a fulfillment of their future drives and desires. Give you an illustration.

If the social life that you provide for your children does not provide a spouse or potential spouses, they're going to jump the fence. If you get an 18-year-old daughter, say, 19, that gets scary. She looks around and all she's got is some nerds and jerks in the environment that you've provided. There's no men in that little circle. Then she's going to jump the fence because she's in heat.

Maybe not physically, but you know what happens to a cow. A cow gets in heat. She goes up to the edge of the fence and starts bellowing for the bull in the next pasture. One of those fences, or both of them, are going to come down. It's her time that she's going to have a bull.

It may be crude to you. You may not like that, but that's exactly what happens to a 19-year-old girl. She starts needing a man. She doesn't exactly know why she needs him if she's been raised quite innocently. But she knows she needs a man. She might have seen two or three little movies, some rinky-dink stuff. But they're enough to say boy meets girl, lives happily ever after. She wants to meet boy and live happily ever after. You cannot protect them from that. If they've got normal growth and development and hormones, that's what they want.

The guy, it starts a lot sooner with him. When he turns 13 or 14, he starts thinking girl. Eat, eat. When he gets 16 or 17, he's looking around picking him out one. When he gets about 18 or 19, if the circle you've got him in has got a bunch of girls that don't suit his fancy and he believes that there's no hope for him in this circle, then he's going to jump the fence. He's going to find one, and the one he finds may not be very suitable at all.

Young people have to have some fun. They have to have some entertainment. They have to laugh and get rowdy and noisy. Cut up and act silly and stupid, and go out and just wear their self out. You're not going to be able to keep one happy in your home if you don't provide that somewhere. If all you do is want to have devotionals with them and put principles in them, they're going to come to hate you.

The church today, has Christian socials for young people. And any time you get ten young people, girls and boys together, there's going to be some sex. Maybe not copulation necessarily, but there's going to be some sexual talk, some sexual desires. That's inevitable anytime. You meet in a home church, four families, the guys are going to have sexual drives. But when you get them together at nighttime where they can go outdoors or on the way home where they can rendezvous, or one of them is driving or something, you're going to have some problems. If not out of every one of them, out of enough of them to spoil the group.

It's real difficult to have a balance to provide a social life, a culture in which they can get acquainted with females or males, in which they can learn how to relate to the opposite sex, in which they can have some hope of a partner when they get 19 or 20 or however old they are, and at the same time, not spoil their bodies or minds before that happens.

Now, if you say, I'm going to pick out several kids. We're going to bring them to our house, and we're not going to have a really laughing time. We're just going to have a sober, serious time, spiritual renewal here, and separate the boys one night and the girls another. They're not going to come to your house. The boys and girls are going to have to get together somehow.

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Announcer:  Thanks for listening. We hope this helps or encourages you in some way today. As always, remember to check out our ever-changing specials.