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Key Bible Verse: My son, if your heart is wise, then my heart will be glad (Proverbs 23:15 niv). Bonus Reading: Proverbs 23:15-26

At the end of my first year in college, my dad had "the talk" with me. I had a job, I had a girlfriend, I was in school, I went to church—what else should a 19-year-old be doing? But Dad sensed, the way men sense things about other men, that I was floundering. He could have said, "I did my best; it's time for Don to grow up on his own." But he chose to step in. 

To this day I can't tell you why I went. Perhaps it was divine providence, a son's obedience to his father, a sense of adventure, or a combination of all three. But the decision to attend Youth With a Mission's school in Switzerland was made. I went—and thoroughly hated it for the first three months. My room was little more than a closet; the teaching sessions were painfully long; and my girlfriend broke up with me.

Then, when I was feeling as low as a man can, my spoiled middle-class attitude began to crumble. The transformation had finally begun. I eventually returned home drastically changed. Back at college, my run-of-the-mill grades became As and Bs. My attitude toward others softened. My heart became more pliable. And it happened for one reason—my dad pushed me.

—Don Otis in Whisker Rubs

My Response: How can I be deliberately involved in the lives of my children as they become young adults?

Thought to Apply: What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity. —Jean Paul Eixhter (French writer)

Adapted from Whisker Rubs (AMG Publishers, 2007) by permission.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Help me, Lord, to model a true masculinity that spurs the young on to achieve without making my loving acceptance of them conditional.

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