While watching some younger boys learn fire-building skills, I began reminiscing to when my son was that age. It’s been amazing to watch the troop continue to grow in such dark times. I’m so grateful for Trail Life, but it didn’t come easy. The transition was hard. It was inconvenient and grueling.
For us, it came with giving up hard-earned accomplishments in other organizations and starting over. It came with trading the ease of activities close by for hours of driving every week. It came with trading the familiar for the unknown. It came with losing old companionship for the stress of finding new friends. It came with trading security for flexibility. It came with trading American dreams for spiritual realities. It came with trading materials and vacations for small spaces and travels to campouts and weekend workshops. It came with trading the comfort of lukewarm compromise for battles with the enemy’s hindrances and interferences.
This seems like a lot, but it also came with trading transient merits for eternal treasures in heaven. It came with trading a task-driven mindset for fruitful character that leads to better friendships and future family. It came with trading female leadership for male leadership. It came with trading individual competitiveness for iron sharpens iron fellowship. It came with trading generalized instruction for biblical life application every week. It came with trading worldly wealth for following the richness of Christ.
At the time, the change seemed so challenging, practically unfeasible, but years later, all of it seems small and insignificant compared to the avalanche of blessing.
Still, the road hasn’t been easy because the devil hates Trail Life. The thief wants boys stuck under female leadership and weakened by the deceptions and wiles of the world. He wants them focused on fleeting achievement, not eternal character. He wants them making friends with lukewarm followers or unbelievers to lead them to immoral choices and behavior. He wants them internally confused, not stabilized by wisdom and truth. He wants them to grow into insecure men who destroy families and lead women and children astray. He wants them to be followers, not leaders equipped for protecting women, children, and nations and for fighting spiritual battles.
There’s many places to learn survival skills, but a man equipped solely to survive a worldly wilderness may lose the battle to survive a spiritual wilderness. Suicide rates for teen boys and men have been rising.
So, yes, discipleship comes at an immense cost, but it’s full of God’s guidance and protection. It saves lives.
The world will teach that masculinity is dangerous to societal progress and that the solution is to give up Godly obedience in order to give into the comfort of fleshly desires, but our job as parents is not to sacrifice our children for a false sense of belonging.
Our job is to become a living sacrifice to plant seeds of everlasting hope in their hearts, to teach them humble submission to their Creator, and to prioritize getting them into heaven over Harvard. Our job is to teach them fallibility, depravity, and repentance, so maybe when facing suffering or disappointments in this life, instead of chasing escapes, they will fall boldly at the feet of the risen Savior.
Our God-given duty is to raise boys into Christ-fearing men, to make them lovers of truth and courageous ambassadors of the soul-saving gospel, and to set them on an unshakable foundation in a chaotic, ruthless, and perishing world.
Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Proverbs 13:20
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
Proverbs 27:17
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:10-14
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 5:6-11
