Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series Read Online Free PDF Page B

missing a portion of one of my molars. He went to
    work, and within an hour I had a temporary crown capping my chicken-fried steak
    saga…or so I thought.
    Over the years that tooth continued to
    bother me. When I finally said something to Dr. Farthing, he peered at the
    tooth for a long time. Then I heard him utter the word
    “bifurcation” to his assistant. Then he explained it to me.
    “Bifurcation means that something has completely split into two separate
    parts. A cracked tooth is one thing. A bifurcated tooth is another. Cracks can
    be fixed, but bifurcated teeth must be pulled because they’re either dead
    or dying.”
    I nearly needed a diaper when I heard him say the word
    “pulled.” Not only did he yank the offending tooth; he also had to
    perform a bone graft and set an implant. In the midst of all this oral
    construction work—and the accompanying agony of our new
    “painless” dentistry—I had plenty of time to meditate on
    bifurcation. I began to realize that this word described the way I once thought
    about life in general. I’d always assumed that the school years and the
    adult years were completely bifurcated—split apart and completely
    separate.
    The bifurcation myth says that you can do what you want as a
    teenager because after you move into adulthood, it won’t matter. That
    myth caused me many problems, and it will create havoc for you as well, if you
    believe it.
    You see, there’s no line that you step over from the
    teen years to the adult years. God knows that; it’s why He sees you as a
    man right now. You must begin to see yourself this way too, because the person
    you become as a young man is the person you’ll drag into adulthood. Your
    likes and dislikes—from food to music to movies—will follow you.
    More important, your character will be formed, just as a concrete foundation
    outlines a house.
    Since life-bifurcation is a myth, the decisions you
    make today
will
impact everything in your future. The sexual desires
    you feed as a teenager will be the same desires you’ll want to feed when
    you’re forty. Decision-making is a two-edged sword: The right decisions
    you make today will help you make the right decisions when you’re older.
    Wrong decisions today get you traveling down a path that leads to more horrible
    mistakes tomorrow. These decisions will carry right over into marriage, and
    you’ll live one life in front of your wife and one life behind her back,
    trapped by the sexual habits you form now. You likely haven’t even met
    your future wife yet, but know this: If you believe that today’s sexual
    decisions are harmless to your future, bifurcation is rotting the roots of your
    future marriage right now.
    Because of this bifurcation myth, you may
    not be one bit horrified by the story of my (Fred’s) college
    years—the porn magazines, the multiple sex partners, the all-around good
    times. You may even be a bit jealous. “Wow, Fred had it all! He had sex
    anytime and anywhere, then he fell into God’s arms and walked off
    scot-free. That’s for me!”
    We’ve heard upperclassmen
    return from college totally frustrated because they “missed out” on
    all the excitement. “My friends lived it up while I missed out on all the
    fun and wild times,” exclaimed one college graduate. In his mind, he had
    a free get-out-of-jail pass but, like an idiot, he didn’t use it. He
    believes that missing out on a backseat rendezvous with Betty Jo “B.
    J.” Blowers actually screwed up his life.
    It’s as though he
    was raised by watching the Disney animated classic
Lion King.
Remember
    the young lion Simba in that film? (Okay, we know you prefer more manly fare
    like
Gladiator
or
Pearl Harbor,
but humor us.) If you recall,
    Simba took off and turned his back on the Pridelands and everything he knew,
    hooking up instead with some buddies for some R&R in
    “paradise.”
Hakuna matata…
no worries. He and his
    buddies did whatever they pleased, whenever they