Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series by Stephen Arterburn

never forget a conversation
    I (Fred) had with her. “Is it hard to hold such high standards like you
    do?” I asked.
    “Oh, I don’t mind being mocked,”
    she replied. “Christ was mocked plenty. That’s just part of
    it.”
    Wow,
I said to myself. We sat silently for a while
    as I pondered her statement. Then I glanced up at her and found her staring
    wistfully into the distance. Suddenly, her face crumpled slightly, and a large
    tear rolled out of the corner of her eye.
    “I so ache to find a
    friend, anyone, who’s like me,” she whispered.
    How can
    this be?
I thought.
How can we all be so mushy in our standards that
    those walking straight are lonely?
    I asked her youth pastor,
    Larry, “Why aren’t the other youth drawn to Cyndi? I would
    be.”
    “Oh, they respect her to no end,” said Larry.
    “Of course, some will always mock, but her peers rarely choose radically
    committed Christians as role models. That represents too much sacrifice and too
    much risk of not being accepted. They prefer to hang out with guys who play
    sports and have a lot of girlfriends. You know, one who’s both Christian
    and worldly simultaneously.”
    Everyone with beliefs gets mocked,
    not just Christians. Don’t be so afraid of it! That’s just a part
    of life. When I was playing football, I was radical in my commitment to be the
    best quarterback in the state. In the winter before my senior year, I decided
    that I needed to improve my balance on the football field.
    I devised a
    plan. I noticed that the snowplows at school piled up the snow into a huge
    twenty-foot-high berm that ran for the length of the parking lot. On the top of
    this mountain was a ten-foot-wide plateau that jutted with boulders and jags of
    snow and ice. Strapping my cleats on and tucking a ball under an arm, I’d
    take off running from one end to the other. At full speed I cut in and out
    between the jags and boulders, pretending they were linebackers and defensive
    backs.
    Early on, I paid a heavy price. The ice cuts and bruises really
    hurt, and I took more than a beating. Still, as the weeks went by, I clipped
    the jutting ice less often. My ability to cut and change directions became
    sharper and faster with each passing day.
    My teammates sometimes
    dropped by to watch. They laughed and mocked me, all right. But I had faith
    that I would be rewarded for my efforts, and I
was
rewarded. The next
    fall, when it was third-and-two or fourth-and-one, who wanted me to run the
    option play and keep the ball? Answer: The very same teammates who watched me
    run for those tough yards on the snow berm. They knew I’d never go down
    easily.
    I did all that for football, a “god” that existed
    only in my mind. Our own God is real, and He’ll truly reward those who
    earnestly seek Him—or practice for Him! If you would step out for God
    with even a fraction of the commitment I had on that ice plateau, you would be
    an all-star in God’s kingdom.
    And remember one more thing: While
    authenticity has its price, inauthenticity for the sake of acceptance has a
    high price as well—as we’ve seen in the many stories told earlier
    in the book. The effects of your sin will follow you into adulthood. Since both
    have their price, why not pay the price for something great? Why not fight? God
will
reward you.
N O P LANS TO S URRENDER
    We came
    across a newspaper story about a World War II vet named B. J.
    “Bernie” Baker who was told he was dying of bone cancer. Given only
    two years to live, he told the doctors to fight the disease with everything
    possible. “Give me the treatments,” he said. “I’ll keep
    living my life.” Meanwhile he and his wife found time for a motor-home
    drive to Alaska, a fishing excursion to Costa Rica, and several trips to
    Florida.
    Nine years after the diagnosis, he was struggling with
    shortness of breath and loss of strength, but he said, “I’m going
    to keep fighting. Might as well.”
    Those words