{"id":434,"date":"2014-06-30T14:40:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/?p=434"},"modified":"2014-06-30T14:40:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:40:51","slug":"millennial-monday-sowing-your-wild-oats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2014\/06\/30\/millennial-monday-sowing-your-wild-oats\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennial Monday: Sowing Your Wild Oats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>News broke on Sunday of a cocaine-related arrest involving the son of a major movie star. Though occurrences like this aren\u2019t exactly rare, what was surprising about this particular instance is that the suspect in question was Indio Downey, the son of <em>Iron Man<\/em> star Robert Downey, Jr. While he proudly claims he has been sober since 2003, it\u2019s no secret that Robert had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse prior to that time. While I don\u2019t know enough about yesterday\u2019s situation or about the Downey family to speak in detail, I do want to focus on one part of this story that seems strange. Wouldn\u2019t you think a parent who struggled so mightily with substance abuse would do everything in his power to keep his child away from the same temptations? Obviously he can\u2019t control his son\u2019s life, but every parent would want to work his hardest to keep his child from making the same mistakes that he did, right? Well, not exactly.<br \/>\nOne very sad thing I\u2019ve observed in a number of congregations and among a number of parents is an attitude that kids just have to \u201csow their wild oats.\u201d You hear phrases like \u201cEverybody does it,\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s just a natural part of growing up,\u201d or, especially, \u201cWe all did it when we were their age.\u201d<br \/>\nFirst, parents can NOT glamorize a lifestyle of sin. They cannot and should not recall their days of wandering away from God by getting into \u201cmischief\u201d at prom, partying at college, and other similar scenarios as the good old days or the time of their lives. When parents talk nostalgically about their days of sin, what lesson do we think kids are going to learn from that? They\u2019re going to see that it\u2019s something to desire. They\u2019re going to see the attitude that their parents had to \u201cgive up\u201d a lifestyle they enjoyed to submit to God. Paul would have used his pen to slap these people in the face, just as he did in Romans 6 (and 1 Corinthians 6, to a certain extent). We have DIED to sin. Why should we want to live in it any longer? Why should we look back on it positively? We were doomed to hell! Parents lease, don\u2019t ever talk about past sinful escapades with a tone of yearning.<br \/>\nSecond, expectations have to be raised. Look at those men and women in the Bible who are shown to be young either by the text itself or by history \u2013 people like Joseph, Esther, Mary, Timothy, among others. How different would our Bible and even our world look if those people were given the \u201csow your wild oats\u201d or \u201cboys will be boys\u201d or \u201cthey\u2019re young, they\u2019ll grow out of it\u201d free pass that we so carelessly hand out today? By the age of 18-20 the young men and women in our churches need to be actively involved in the church and learning to lead through service and teaching. Our lack of expectations for young people and our willingness to make excuses for them are massive factors when it comes to young people leaving the church. If they can be expected to make decisions for college, voting, and their careers, then they are more than capable of making the right decisions for sex, drugs, alcohol, and companions along with decisions about serving in the church, praying, and studying their Bibles.<br \/>\nThird, we have to stop letting the culture dictate the terms of a child\u2019s life. Our culture says they NEED to see what is out there. They NEED to be exposed to the world. While sheltering to the point that young people are ignorant of the world around them isn\u2019t helpful, on the other hand it\u2019s ridiculous to think that someone has to experience sin to make a decision. One can know both the path and the destination of two roads before making their choice as to which one they\u2019ll take. Of course, the parent can\u2019t ever make the decision to follow Christ for their children. What they can do, and what they are called to do (Proverbs 22:6), is make the decision so clear that they would have no reason to choose otherwise. Allowing them to make decisions that lead away from faithfulness with hopes that they\u2019ll get done sowing their wild oats and come back once their life settles down a little bit isn\u2019t working too well for us. Our goal should not be to hold on to hope that eventually they\u2019ll figure it out. Our hope and aim should be that they become life-long Christians who have the full ability to choose for themselves and choose to live a life of obedience to Christ.<br \/>\nAs we continue to lose Millennials year after year, we have to start looking inward for solutions, and this is one area that must change. Our expectations have to be raised. It\u2019s not just a natural course of life for someone to go explore all the options of sin, and we can\u2019t look the other way when that happens. Giving them the freedom to wander into the world from a young age in hopes that they\u2019ll eventually figure it out is taking a gamble against long odds, and most families are losing that gamble. Young people often hear 1 Timothy 4:12\u2019s call to be an example of a Christian in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, and it\u2019s time that we start expecting that of them within the church and (especially) within the home.<br \/>\n<strong>By Jack Wilkie<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"en-NKJV-29196\" class=\"text Gal-6-7\" style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.<\/span><span id=\"en-NKJV-29197\" class=\"text Gal-6-8\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><span class=\"versenum\" style=\"font-weight: bold;\">\u00a0<\/span>For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.&#8221; &#8211; Galatians 6:7-8<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News broke on Sunday of a cocaine-related arrest involving the son of a major movie star. Though occurrences like this aren\u2019t exactly rare, what was surprising about this particular instance is that the suspect in question was Indio Downey, the son of Iron Man star Robert Downey, Jr. While he proudly claims he has been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,179],"tags":[23,215,180,216,217],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-millennial-mondays","tag-jack","tag-millennial-monday","tag-millennials","tag-robert-downey-jr","tag-sowing-wild-oats","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Millennial Monday: Sowing Your Wild Oats - Focus Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2014\/06\/30\/millennial-monday-sowing-your-wild-oats\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Millennial Monday: Sowing Your Wild Oats - Focus Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"News broke on Sunday of a cocaine-related arrest involving the son of a major movie star. 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