Raising Pure Kids

Richard Durfield

Description

Seventy percent of American teens have had sex by age eighteen. Richard and Reneé Dur&supl;eld--the parents of four grown children--encourage parents to help their teens resist sexual temptation using the practical "key talk" concept and a covenant with God to remain chaste. Includes how to have a "key talk," questions a child may ask, guidelines and goals for dating, praying for a child's future spouse, and more. Originally titled Raising Them Chaste, this edition includes new information gained from the Durfield's ministry to families.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441262899
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2004 by Richard and Renée Durfield
Parts of Chapter 2 first appeared as “A Promise With a Ring to It” by Richard Durfield in the April 1990 issue of Focus on the Family magazine. Used by permission.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
eISBN 978-1-4412-6289-9
Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations identified NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ® . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations identified NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ® , © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission. ( www.Lockman.org )
Cover design by Melinda Schumacher
Dedication
This book is dedicated to each of our children,
Kimberli, Anna, Timothy, and Jonathan,
who continue to live the story….
Acknowledgments
Special thanks…
To our friends at Focus on the Family,
especially Mike Yorkey, to whom we’ll always be indebted
for helping us put our vision in print.
To David and MaryLynne Hazard,
for believing in the key talk concept enough
to pursue its publication.
To Paul Thigpen,
whose godly character and faith
have permeated the pages of this book
as he labored with us in preparation of the manuscript.
Foreword
I like what I hear from Ric and Renée Durfield and we need a whole lot more voices like theirs.
I watched Ric speak to over fifteen hundred Christian leaders gathered at our annual Pastors Conference at The Church On The Way. I studied the faces of teens, parents, and singles the night he spoke to nearly three thousand present at our church. It is clear that I’m not alone in liking these people.
The reason is easily explained: They have a handle on workable reality . They’re more than a pair with convictions they’re people with a practical answer to a real problem, and they have a warm, genuine way of presenting it. Raising Pure Kids communicates a tender truth in a convincing way. It’s another kind of “tough love” that has been forged in the fire of this generation’s hellish attacks on biblical morality.
You don’t need to pastor an urban congregation in America’s second largest city to know we’re in the hellfire-level heat of a revolt against all moral values of proven worth. Like the Second Psalm’s description of the radical assault of mere men upon God’s Messiah, our generation is throwing off every restraint. And the disastrous results are no longer imminent they’ve arrived.
Amid this scene, the demise of sexual purity as a desirable trait has all but swept the entire teenage culture before it. Only the fear of suicide by promiscuity, by reason of the AIDS plague, has dulled the point of this phalanx-like thrust into a whole generation of youth.
But as grateful as anyone may be for anything that dissuades a young person from immorality, there are a lot better reasons for staying pure than simply keeping well. And it’s here that the Durfields begin their own kind of confrontation with a mind-set presenting us with a positive, assertive, practical “ways and means” handbook for leading youth in a new revolution .
I feel it’s important to note that the Durfields are an African-American couple. I mention their race because it is doubly fulfilling for me to see Ric and Renée’s rising influence. As pastor of an interracial congregation, I am especially concerned over the fact that generations of injustice have tended to reduce the black male to a stereotype. It may be the shoe-shine boy of a past generation or the Olympic athlete of the ’90s but in either case, the mind and the leadership of the man is too seldom seen or honored. Ric’s model, and the way Renée so magnificently teams with him, provides a study all of us of every race can learn from and show our families how to live the same way.
From the platform of the church they lead so fruitfully, to the cover of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family magazine, Ric’s and Renée’s faces keep “turning up.” And everywhere they do, they are turning people on! Along with their kids, who dramatically prove the point Mom and Dad make in their lectures and seminars, the Durfields are evidence for a deep belief I hold that God isn’t through with this perverse generation. He’s raising up people like these, through whom I believe He’s intending to accomplish a societal turnaround.
I’ve watched Ric’s life from the days he was in college, through the early years of his marriage and ministry, and right up and into these years of his appearance as an ascending voice to our nation’s parents and teens. And the best thing I can say is this: He’s real, he’s steadfast, he’s trustworthy.
There’s a reason for that: He knows the Man who makes a man, a marriage, and a family. And as Ric stands tall in his life and ministry for Jesus Christ, he’s helping others learn to rise beyond the tide of the times. This book provides a handle a tool for gaining leverage to lift us from the moral quicksand sucking so many downward. And it provides a hope a Rock for solid footing that will stand the test of all our tomorrows.
Jack W. Hayford, D. Litt.
Senior Pastor
The Church On The Way
Van Nuys, California
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
1. A Generation at Risk
2. What Is a Key Talk?
3. The Power of Covenant
4. Questions Your Child May Ask
5. How to Have a Key Talk
6. Praying for Your Child’s Future Spouse
7. Becoming Your Child’s Advocate
8. Dating Goals and Guidelines
9. How Far Is “Too Far”?
10. Wisdom, the Context
11. Wisdom, Part 2
12. Is It Working?
13. Special Hurdles
14. Beyond the Teen Years
15. The Power of Purity
Key Scriptures
Recommended Resource List
About the Authors
Back Cover
Introduction
Much has happened since 1991, when Raising Them Chaste was released. Published reports and journal articles based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, published in June 2001, are acknowledging the positive impact that virginity pledges have had on teenage sexual activity.
The virginity pledge movement began in April of 1990, when “A Promise With a Ring to It” was featured in Focus on the Family magazine. The article reveals how the virginity pledge had its beginnings. It was in 1978, when our oldest daughter, Kimberli, was eleven years old. Renée and I had an idea: to have a private, personal, and intimate time with the child to explain conception, the biblical view of marriage, and the sacredness of sexual purity. It was to be a time when a mom and daughter or a dad and son could candidly discuss the questions, fears, and anxieties of adolescence. We called it a “key talk.”
We also had another idea. At the time of the key talk, the parent presents a specially made “key” ring to the son or daughter. The ring, which symbolizes a commitment with God, is worn by the adolescent during the difficult teen and young adult years.
Since that time, organizations around the world have adapted their own variations of this powerful concept. Scores of individual churches and entire denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Church, have used this concept to encourage millions of teens to commit to virginity pledges, in which they promise to abstain from sex until marriage.
We have always viewed the concept as a gift to the Body of Christ. It is our sincere desire that God will continue to use it to draw families together around the love of Jesus Christ and to preserve future generations that will glorify His name.
1
A Generation at Risk
Ron, a seventh grader whose family is close to ours, seemed to have everything going for him. He was a bright young man, raised in a Christian home, and happy to have a growing friendship with a pretty girl at his school.
One afternoon when he was home alone, Ron slit his wrists.
Why? As it turns out, some older boys at school quite popular with the girls had told him some weeks before that his girlfriend wanted to go to bed with him. He’d resisted the idea because his parents had taught him clearly that premarital sex was wrong. But the boys had continued to badger and challenge him, accusing him of not being “man enough” to do it.
One day after school Ron was particularly confused and upset by their taunts. As he walked home, he thought, “I’m a Christian and I can’t have sex. Why should a failure like me even be alive? I should kill myself.”
The depression deepened that afternoon, and though his parents noticed he was disturbed, they weren’t sure how to help. They had to leave the house for a short while, and while they were gone, Ron sat down on the couch and slit his veins.
We thank God that Ron lived to tell the story. The blood that began to gush from his arms seemed to wake him out of a dream. He bandaged himself and called for help.
Today Ron is in the eleventh grade and still a virgin. He says soberly: “I know now how close I came to tragedy either by having sex or by committing suicide over the words of friends that really weren’t friends at all.”
The greater tragedy is that Ron is not alone. Grim statistics tell the story in disturbing black and white: Pressured or seduced into sexual sin by an increasingly immoral culture, millions of youth in our nation are suffering from the grave emotional and physical consequences of promiscuity. As a result, today’s