FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. The Deadly Traps of Adolescence Day 3 of 10 Guest: Dennis and Barbara Rainey From the series: Sex________________________________________________________________ Bob: If you're a parent, have you challenged your son or your daughter to wait until marriage to become sexually active? Barbara Rainey says maybe you haven't given enough of a challenge. Barbara: We've realized with our kids that the standard of maintaining their virginity is not enough, because when a young girl and a young boy get together, and they decide they like each other, and they begin holding hands and hugging and kissing and other things, what's happening is they're damaging their purity; they're losing their innocence. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, July 11th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. As parents, how can we challenge our teenagers to a high standard of moral purity? We'll talk about that today. And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. This week we are spending some time looking at the traps that have been set for our teenagers throughout our culture and what we can do as parents to help steer our children around these traps so that they don't become ensnared. And what we're talking about comes from a book by Dennis and Barbara Rainey called "Parenting Today's Adolescent," and Barbara joins us in the studio today. Hi, Barbara, nice to have you back with us. Barbara: Thanks, Bob. Bob: Dennis, these traps that face our teenagers can be invisible to us, as parents, but they can also be deadly to our kids. Dennis: They can, in fact, I think that's why much of the scripture is warning us about snares and traps. There are more than 50 references in the Old Testament and New Testament to avoiding the snare of the enemy, or the trap of the evil person, and over in Proverbs, chapter 7, there's the warning against the adulteress, and although it's talking about a married man, I think it relates to our teenagers as we help them navigate the dangers of all the traps set before them. It's speaking of the adulteress here in verse 21, "With persuasive words, she led him astray. She seduced him with her smooth talk. All at once, he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter, like a deer stepping into a noose, 'til an arrow pierces his liver like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life." Then Solomon says, "Now, then, my sons, listen up, listen to me, pay attention to what I say. Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her path." Why? Because there's a snare there – there's a trap there, and it may cost you your soul. It may destroy your life. And, Bob, I think, as parents, we need to assume the responsibility that Solomon was with his son when he penned this book and sought to instruct his son in the way of righteousness. We need to help our children isolate and determine what those snares are, where the traps are being laid, and then help them understand how it happens, and he described the harlot here of persuading the young man with her words and then with her eyes, and he explained to his son how it all happened, and, you know, that's a picture of how we, as parents, are to help our children around these traps. Bob: And, Barbara, the trap that Dennis has illustrated from the scriptures for us is the one that we're going to be spending time with today and tomorrow – it's the trap of illicit or premarital sexual relations, and whether it's a young lady who is subtly enticing our sons to be sexually involved with her, or a young man who is putting pressure on our daughters to be sexually involved with him, our kids are undoubtedly going to experience, going to face this temptation, this snare, of how involved they're going to be with a member of the opposite sex. Barbara: And it starts earlier than many of us would ever expect, and that's what I think catches us, as parents, off guard, is that it begins in junior high, and our kids, our girls and our boys, our sons, are faced with this temptation very early on by children who are more grown up, who are raised in a more promiscuous background than we were, who have been exposed to more things in the sexual area than our children have been, and our kids are exposed to that, and they need to know what to do, they need to know what their standards are, they need to know how to make a decision about it. Dennis: One of the reasons why we have come up with this material, ...
