“I dated several girls and enjoyed holding hands and kissing like the rest of the kids, but I never went further. At times I entertained the same thoughts and desires as other adolescents my age, but the Lord used my parents’ strong LOVE, FAITH, and DISCIPLINE — as well as their teaching and EXAMPLE — to keep me on the straight and narrow path. It never really seemed right to me to have sex with anybody but the woman I would marry.
Once in my senior year, when we were in a night rehearsal of a school play at Sharon High, one of the girls in the cast coaxed me aside into a dark classroom. She had a reputation for “making out” with the boys. Before I realized what was happening, she was begging me to make love to her.
My hormones were as active as any other healthy young male’s, and I had fantasized often enough about such a moment. But when it came, I silently cried to GOD for strength and darted from that classroom the way Joseph fled the bedroom of Potiphar’s philandering wife in ancient Egypt.
When it came to alcohol, my father was an absolute teetotaler. He came up with an unusual way to give Catherine and me the cure before we even had a chance to get the habit. At repeal of the Prohibition Amendment, daddy brought home some beer and took the two of us into the kitchen. He gave us each a bottle and ordered us to drink it. All of it! I was around 15, and assumed that there had to be a method to his madness. Both of us instantly hated the taste of the brew and registered our disgust in no uncertain terms.
“From now on,” daddy said, “Whenever any of your friends try to get you to drink alcohol, just tell them you’ve already tasted it and you don’t like it. That’s all the reason you need to give.””
Selah!
“All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children.” – Isaiah 54:13
DA