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Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce
future life? The sensational and emotional are more fully developed
than the intellectual. Everything, my sister, should be avoided that
would exaggerate this tendency into a predominating power. You have
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motive power; let it be uncorrupted and wholly devoted to God. God
has bestowed upon you capabilities and powers to be sanctified and
exercised to His glory.
You have a history, and you are making history. The mind may in
this crisis of your life take a turn, a bias of grossness rather than of
refinement. The contaminating influences of the world may mold your
habits, your taste, your conversation, your deportment. You are on the
losing side. The precious moments, so solemn, fraught with eternal
results, may be wholly on Satan’s side of the question, and may prove
your ruin. I do not want it thus. I want you to be a Christian, a child of
God, an heir of heaven.
Importance of Parental Counsel—You have been giving the
complexion to your life. How stands your case as registered in heaven’s
record book? Above everything else seek for those things which make
for your peace. Place yourself under influences which will not be
deteriorating, destroying the fine sensibility of the soul. Keep your
soul unspotted from the world. Let not any familiarity with young
men put a blot on your life. You are in danger of giving up Christ, of
becoming reckless and unwilling to listen to wise counsel. The counsel
of parental affection is lost upon deaf ears. Will you, my sister, think
seriously whether you will receive advice from the experienced? Will
you be guided by your friends? Will the parental counsel be unheeded?
Will you take your case in your own hands?
Retracing One’s Steps—I hope you will change your course of
action, for if the Lord has ever spoken by me, He now speaks to you
to retrace your steps. Your passions are strong; your principles are
endangered; and you will not consider and will not follow advice
which you know to be good and the only clear, safe, consistent thing
for you to do. Will you resolve to do right, to be right, to heed the
counsel I have given you in the name of the Lord? God has given you
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capabilities. Shall they be wasted at random? Unguided efforts will
go more often in the wrong direction than the right. Will you let years
of waywardness, disappointment, and shame pass, and you make so
many wrong impressions on minds by your course of action that you
can never have that influence which you might have had?