What my task was this time period here is just telling you kind of the story of what God did in our family and some things we learned from kind of the courting experience and helping find, our children find, the mate that God had chosen for them. And we just, we learned a lot. And to kind of start with the fun part is my daughters, my two oldest daughters, they got married, some of you that don't know us, they got married in a double wedding on September 1st of 2017 to two brothers from a family we'd known for a while. And it was just a special treat as a father to walk the brides down the aisle together. And two girls had just always been best friends and really tried to do things God's way.

And it was so fun and such a blessing and encouragement to see God blessing in the way he did, to allow them to do that together. And then, amazingly, July of 2018, they had their first babies 12 hours apart. And they're in the same hospital rooms next to each other. And my wife had the fun of going back and forth and checking on everything. I was grandmother heaven.

One of them had a little girl. And so I just want to go back before that and talk about some of the ways we try to be purposeful in helping that happen the way God wants it to. Now every family and every individual would be completely different, but hopefully there's just some principles that might be a blessing or things that will get you to think about how you're pursuing that for your family and laying the foundation. I mean, just again like Mr. Brown was just talking about.

What you're doing now, well I've got little kids, you're laying the foundation for who they're gonna marry right now. Because you're helping form who they will be. And I don't care how long you've prayed for God to give you a good spouse, He's not giving you one if you're not an answer to their prayers as well. Everyone wants the great whatever, but if you're not preparing yourself to be an answer to their prayers, it's not going to happen. God's not going to do that to them.

That wouldn't be fair. And Joseph wouldn't be right. So this is very relevant, and it starts with the little ones. And just some of the things we did. Of course, praying about it is so important.

Teaching them at a young age to pray, God, would you provide a good spouse for me one day that loves you and help me to be preparing myself so that I'm answered to their prayer and let me know who they are, help our whole family just to know that's the one. So there's no doubt or questions or whatever. And so that's the foundation that's laid. I mean, the day that baby is born, you should start praying that as parents, God help provide a spouse for them and let us know who they are at the right time. And some of the parts of that too I think then purposefully, again at a young age, helping them learn principles like guarding your heart.

Right? I mean if they learn how to guard their heart and don't have affections just for everybody that comes around like, oh I really like them, or it's like no, no, no, we want to guard your heart. So with my daughter's day, for the one man God has for you, I don't want there to have been 20 different guys you really liked and then you got, we want to do this carefully and purposefully so you're not giving your heart and being hurt and all this stuff, I'm going to pray that God will give me wisdom as a Father to help be able to sort through the jungle and prayerfully and carefully, investing my time in some young men to find out if this could be someone that would be a match for them. And so it's interesting how we've been praying and working on things. But years ago, about eight years ago, the family that they ended up marrying into, the way we got to meet them is they were driving through Idaho on a family trip.

They were singing together as a family, and they just called us out of the blue because they'd seen the film Agenda and wanted to come meet us. Can we come over to your house? We'd love to meet you. We love the film you made. We didn't know them from anybody.

And they were from Iowa. We were in Idaho. So it was a long way apart. They came and had lunch with them and got to start to get to know them. And I encourage you in this part of it too, just as you meet like-minded families, spend the time not plotting and planning, but getting to know them, because you don't know who God has right now for them.

But as many like-minded families as you can get to know is wonderful. And you'll see what God does in the circumstances that you can't force fit any of this. He will do it in his time. But I'd always prayed and he was very kind to answer this prayer and I hope he continues to, but I said, God, would you let every one of my children marry someone we've known for a while, the whole family? I just, I want, I'm so sensitive to my children and to things.

I'm like, if a guy comes up for one of my daughters that I don't know him or his family, I might have spent ten years with that guy to know if he can get near my daughter or not. So I'm like, please have mercy on me because I'm just, that's my daughters. Please help me. And so he was kind to do that. So that family, we had not thinking anything because the kids were little then.

But anytime we drove through Iowa, we'd stop and spend a day with them and get to know them. And so we just ended up bumping into them over the years on a regular basis. And then things came about. But another thing I would encourage you to do that was, this is a list, I just love this, It's a list I made with Cassidy, one of my daughters, when she was nine years old, we went to Elmer's for breakfast, and writing down so she could start praying for what she was wanting in a husband. And I helped direct her path in this, but it was her sweet little spirit.

And the number one thing she goes, she needs to love Jesus, which I've like, that is the number one thing. And she goes, evident in his actions, no debt, no TV. That was, you know, I'd obviously given him a lecture on some of those things, so she's nine years old, yeah that's right. Money and savings showing he has self-control. It's a nine year old.

Respectful, and she wrote down, I said to who? Pastors, parents, elders, ladies, and others. And then she said, he needs to pray. And I said, how often? She wrote, at least five times a day.

I was like, are you looking for a Muslim? No. So, but I mean, he witnesses regularly, and she said he's at least led one person to the Lord. So he is faithful in that where God has blessed that. And it just, it goes, what's so neat, he's truthful, he eats healthy, he'll live on our property with our family unless they're missionaries, but little things that were so sweet.

But this is what's fast-forward 12 years, and the young man she married, you couldn't find someone closer to all that. God answered her prayers. I mean, I looked at Joshua and I showed this to him, and for Billie being a 20-year-old young man, she was 20 when they got married, he just loves God's Word. He loves sharing the Gospel. He just—all these different things.

I go, God was faithful as he always is, but he answered this thing to the T. I mean, even from a nine-year-old. And we need to be asking him for that help. He loves it. We're his children.

So I encourage you to get them, even at a young age, be thinking, what should I be looking for? So they have the right view of what they're looking for and not. I mean, the world's list would be good-looking, rich, it'd be all these other things, Popular, has a nice car. Well, that's nothing on her list. She didn't care about any of that.

And so it's just, That's what we need to do to help this thing get a vision and get some feet to it and start moving in the right direction. God will do the right things at the right time. Now, some of the ways I had some different young men come to ask about my girls before, and I took that so seriously because I'm like, I want to be the first line of defense here, but in a serious way. And I'm telling you, some things, I guess my one blessing of Facebook is you go on there and look at someone and you'll see who they are in their heart. There were some nice young men from nice Christian families that came and talked to me.

I was even kind of positive about it. I thought, well, let me pray about that. I said, oh, I'm going to just see who they are. What I saw on their Facebook page, I was like, oh my word, do their parents tell this junk is on here? And all the things they've liked and stuff.

And so I knew it, but it was a blessing. I was like, come the next day, no thank you, we're not interested, have a good day. You know, it was, No, I mean, it was really sad, but it was very helpful. I then nipped those things before the girls even had thought about it or heard that they were interested so they could protect their sweet, innocent, pure hearts. And so as you are inputting into these children, teach them to guard their hearts, just because it's gonna have more consequences than you can see.

Just like this training, if you do it now, it's going to bear more fruit than you can perceive at this time. And if you don't do it, it's going to have more consequences than you could ever imagine. And the same thing with this. Let's see some of the different little notes I just wrote to talk about this to you. Once then Joshua came to me first, and kind of a funny story.

We were at this family camp in Iowa and their family was there, we were there, and Joshua said, Mr. Bowers, could I talk to you sometime? I said, sure. And he had had other conversations with me before about do you think I should do this online college and different we'd had many good deep conversations just in fun over the years so I just thought it was something like that I didn't realize he was getting ready to ask me about Cassidy and so I didn't think it was urgent we were gonna be there a whole week so I wasn't you know But I found out later I had gone back to my room, or to our bus, to take a nap. I was just exhausted from our travels before the camp.

And I went in there and I took the first nap I had probably in a year and I fell asleep for three hours just out like a light. It was in the afternoon before the evening sessions. Well I come out of the, I'm in the bus and one of the boys said, I think Josh was still looking for you, he said, oh okay yeah I know you wanted to talk to me. I come out of the bus, and right when I close the door, I hear their bus, they live in a bus too, some of the time, their bus door open. And somehow God put it together for me then, and my mom like, okay, this is a serious conversation.

And he had been sitting in the front seat of that bus for over three hours waiting for me to come out just nervously anticipating this conversation. And we've laughed about that so many times since then. I came over and I go, sorry, he goes, oh, could we talk now? So we took a walk through the forest there, and he told me that he was interested in Cassidy. And he's a boy that I already loved.

And I told him, I said, man, I was wanting to yell at someone and tell them, get away, or whatever, have the fun of that. But I said, you know, we need to pray about this and see what God wants to have happen in this, but you're the kind of young man I've been praying for. And I know it's the kind of young man she's been, because I already knew him. That's what was so nice about it. I hadn't thought about him in that way.

I just, I love young people anyway. But so one lesson that is you men, you need to be invested in other young men anyway, but you never know when God's gonna bless one of those relationships you've had inputting into some young man, and all of a sudden you can realize, oh, I've been inputting since he was nine years old, but he's the right one for my daughter. And what a blessing that is. You're already like, I already love this guy. You know, And so that was the story that which I'm so grateful for.

But some of the purposefulness is I've always tried to any young man or young lady, I've tried to just be a blessing to them and their parents. I know their parents are trying to teach them what's right, so I'm gonna try to back that up any way I can by encouraging them and just motivating them to go for the gold for Jesus and just do it. And he was one of the ones that I'd spent many hours with over time, which was a blessing. And then we started going to breakfast. I took him to breakfast, you know, every once a week, one day.

We'd spend two hours talking for 11 months until they got married. And we would just talk about—I wish I would have recorded these. I think it would have been a great book, because God just directed our path to the right. Every single week was, I'd left just going, God, thank you. He just gave me the right questions to ask, the right things to say, and it was just a powerful time with them.

But I also learned through that time with them. And that was just Joshua I'm talking about, and I'll mention the other one in a second. And that he was so teachable, which I think is the greatest quality someone can have. Because then whenever they're lacking, they're happy to learn it. They want to learn it.

They want to get better at what they're doing. And he was so deep, taking notes, and the next week he'd go, Mr. Bowers, last week you were talking about that. I've been thinking about that. I had these great questions, stuff I can tell.

It was going into his heart. It wasn't him trying to impress me because well I want to wear his daughter it was him learning to love me and to love wisdom together and to listen and in which then the blessing of that men is that when you transition into marriage, they're already used to talking to you. I get calls from them all the time. Hey, Mr., you know, now, Daddy, oh, I have a question for you. And I, yeah, just what do you think about this or that?

And I just give them my opinion. I've always told them, I go, once you're married, you're the head of that family. All my advice is just to consider as you make the decision God wants you to make. So I never want you to feel like you're intimidated to come to me because you think, well, if I don't do what he says, then he's gonna be upset. I will never be upset.

But I'm happy to share what I've learned in my life on any subject, any time, and there's no strings attached. And I think we need to learn that too. So they feel free to come, and they don't feel pressure at all. If they decide something totally different, that's great. I want you to do what God wants you to do.

You're the head of that family, I'm not. But I'm happy to impart whatever I can to you. And so that was a great blessing. Just that time that I invested with, It was just some of the greatest memories of my whole life. Well, a couple weeks, well, some funny things happened too.

So this is that family camp where Joshua spoke to me was in September of 16. We were just spending, we'd spent 10 months in our bus on the road promoting the films, trying to have an influence before the 2016 elections. And so, The whole trip, we'd sold our home in Idaho, we'd rented a home in Tennessee, but then the rent had come up on that. I said, let's just be on the bus and make impact people's lives. And so we did this whole much.

And the whole ten months, people, my wife, especially, and others, where are we stopping when this is done? We had meetings set up throughout October. I go, I don't know. I'm not sure yet, but God does. He'll let us know when we're supposed to know.

I just, I know he knows where we're going, and so, but I mean, it's September now, and our tour is done in four more weeks or whatever. Where are you going? I don't know. You know, I'm not sure. But the day Joshua asked me about Cass, I'm like, we're moving to Iowa.

Cuz I wanna have that time with them. My daughters are worth that. I can't think of a state I'd least rather live in. I don't care. My daughters are worth this.

And so we found the little, and God blessed with it. My wife and I, we came from a family camp, driving on our way to Florida, where We had three weeks of touring around. And we just had a couple hours to go see the bond traders and talk to some of them. And we said, oh, let's just go, our wife said, let's go just look and see what kind of homes are here. We drive down this road, nothing, we finally see this little old farmhouse, and the people were sitting on the front porch, they had it for sale sign.

And she goes, let's just stop. I go, okay. They have a realtor, though. They're not going to want to show it to us, but let's stop. We stopped, ended up saying, hey, we're only in town three more hours, and then we have to go to Florida for a month or so.

Is there any way we can just look around?" And they invited us and showed us. They happen to be Christians too. And by the time we walked around everything, we bought their house and said, we'll take it. And we're closing a month and whatever when we come back from our trip. And God put us there.

He knew that home was for us. He's got things planned out better than you can imagine. We need to trust Him and be willing to do what's important. We were willing to go, yeah, I'm moving here. I don't care.

My daughters are worth it. There's nothing more important than I'm doing than helping make sure they get the right one that God has for them. Well, so family camp, Joshua asked me to, or a few weeks later, we just, we finished our three or four week tour, come to Idaho, and Carson, another brother, calls me, Mr. Bowers, could we go to breakfast tomorrow morning at 630? He's one of the early birds that gets the worm, you know, he's a farmer, he's always working at, I'm like, oh I'm so tired, but I'm like, sure, I'd be happy to.

And so I go there. We actually didn't go to breakfast, he didn't invite me to breakfast. He invited me to meet him at a restaurant where he already had a meeting set up when the restaurant opened at seven o'clock with someone else, business thing or whatever. So I pull up at the parking lot at 6.30 in the morning, which tells a lot about his kingly personality. It was really funny.

I've teased him about this since then, too. And he said, you know, I was wondering if I could get to know Carolina better. And I'm like, you guys are stealing my daughters. But we had a nice talk. I didn't know him quite as well, but I knew a lot about him.

And Lauren had always just admired his work ethic, the way he loved his younger brothers and sisters. She had pointed him out to me before going, that's a nice young man. But I hadn't had as many talks with him. But he just had a sweet spirit about him. So I started having lunch, breakfast with him one day a week too, so that was two days a week for different breakfast.

I met separately because I wanted to get to know them individually, and then I started doing that with the girls. I had like four days a week while I was having breakfast. To spend that quality time of preparing and planning and in making sure we were doing what God wanted us to do. And they were both so teachable. They were both just, I don't know, they've been even since the wedding, God has just opened up so many other things I've seen now in them that I didn't see ahead of time of knowing they were the perfect ones for my girls.

And it's so encouraging because it is overwhelming, and I know you know that, to go, how in the world am I supposed to know? Well, he will direct your path, and it's tough, but you have to take it seriously. I guess that's one of the main points of this, is to just let you know it's not a 30-minute conversation or hour conversation. Don't you count on there. A lot of people are perceived differently than they actually are, And so you put too much confidence in other people's opinions of them or whatever.

You need to get to know them. You need to pry in there and find out who they really are. It is very easy to pretend to be someone that you're not, especially when it's just little windows of life. You meet this time, you meet this time, you're not living there with them, you're not seeing them, And so I just, I want to encourage you to keep praying about it, keep pursuing that. But the main thing you young people can do is to be in obeying your parents, honoring your parents, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy path." If you want to have the best spouse possible, you become the best spouse possible. With a sincere heart to love the Lord, love his ways, he will not let you down in that. And as some of you might be, oh, I'd like to get married, He knows that. He knows that. And he, one thing we have noticed as we've traveled, it's very sad, but it's true.

It appears to me in this country there's many more quality Christian young ladies than there are men. And I don't know what our conclusion from that should be, but it's true. And that's our fault for not raising men that love God. It would be an answer to those girls' prayers. If you're a young lady that's older, not married, that's not your fault.

That is a curse on our country because the Christian men refuse to obey what God has said to do. But he will use your time anyway. And so you be faithful to serve him right where he has put you in whatever he's given you to do in your family, in your local church, and he will be faithful to do what is best always. And so you can trust in that. Some of the things I was surprised in, again with other young men I talked to, is How common it is for our Christian young men to be defiled by pornography.

You fathers and young men, Don't you do that. Why would you destroy your own life and your own soul by doing that? It's a lie. It's a total lie. Be pure and clean, and God will bless you.

Have all the joy God intended you to have with your wife and with that sweet lady that's yours. And I'm just telling you, and men make sure you're not doing that. I think God almost puts a curse on a family when a father is doing that and acting like he's not. Because it's the inconsistency. We need to be who we really are, and we need to pursue being who God wants us to be, and not be so foolish to act like God is a liar.

When he says, there is a way which seemeth right into a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death, you can believe him on that. The world, of course they're into all that stuff. The world, the flesh, and the devil, control them like a puppet because they're lost. They're spiritually blind. They can't see those things.

The veil has not been lifted. But with us that know Jesus, that is unacceptable. And if you have that problem, there's good Christian men that you can get help, and God can give you help in that. But it goes down through the family tree. Sins, just like the story of those families, the, was it Jonathan Edwards and the other, the crook.

The fruit just continues on, generation after generation, for good or for evil. And we want to be laying a foundation that is just, that is the way God intended it to be. Just making sure there wasn't any key points. But I just, I wanted to tell you that God is faithful, as you know, but to answer our prayers in those areas, to direct our path, and to help us be wise as fathers. He's our Heavenly Father, and we know how He takes care of us.

And He wants us as fathers to do our best to mimic that to our families. And I know he will help us because that's what he's asked us to do. And it's impossible if he doesn't help us, so I know he will help us. But be encouraged. You young people, do it God's way and let him pick your spouse for you.

Don't you be a look at, let him pick your spouse for you, but be preparing yourself to be an answer to their prayers. And then when you get married, you're gonna have the blessing that a lot of us didn't in here, of having been raised so different, and know so much more about this book, just what you heard this weekend. My dad, who's 85, I remember bringing up some stuff to him, teasing him about being my father and different things. He goes, do you realize back when we were raised in the 60s and 70s, there was almost no advice, Christian or otherwise, kind of expounding a lot of this stuff. He just wasn't there.

He goes, nowadays you have— he was just talking about some stuff I was watching, I think, on how to build a strong family or different things. He goes, man, what a blessing that is to have other men that are further down the road kind of give you some instruction. He goes, we didn't have any of that. We didn't know what we were, we were just trying our best to read this to you every day and practice and he did a really good job for having had no foundation really in those type of things. But you guys have been given a solid and sure foundation and you and you the families you can raise it's just it's gonna be it's gonna be neat to see it's gonna be such a blessing but we've really enjoyed our the two grandchildren we have so far, and just the blessing of seeing things start to unfold out there.

That's what you have to realize, you ones with a lot of little ones, it seems like it's all just right here and before you know it, all of a sudden they start going and things start changing and you'll start to see all that hard work that maybe didn't seem like it was making a difference. You'll start to go, it sure did. It made a huge difference. And God will start to let you see that as it opens up and opens up out through the generations. And so, anyway, I think we're gonna do the question and answer time now, but I hope that was a blessing.

Just kinda hearing one man's experience in doing that, and just some key principles involved. But take it seriously, man. It's not a, oh yeah, I think he's a nice guy, or seems good, or his pastor says he's a good guy. It's you need to get to know him well. Which again will do nothing but be a blessing to you through the whole marriage as long as you're living.

So I'll close in prayer here and then I think we're gonna do a Q&A time or Don Hart might come up and talk to you. Dear God, we just thank you for this weekend. Thank you that we are here where we can learn more and understand better of the way you've laid things out and the path to follow. And thank you for that. And I pray that every parent here and every child here, you will help us practice these things.

You will help us be faithful and protect and guide and direct and you will just help the fruit in this room alone 50 years from now. Help it to be multiplied 10, 15, 20 times over in young people that love you, love your ways, love what is right and hate what is evil. And just bless our obedience in trying to do things your way. And thank you for all you've done and all of our families, that we would even be at a conference like this and care about things like this, and thank you for that. And we love you, in Jesus' precious name, amen.

I do not have much to add on the topic that Brother Curtis has shared with us about and so grateful for his testimony and just transparency to share his heart and his experience. It's really true sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and you get to see some of these things happening in people's lives and just seeing it. So precious. I am blessed to have had a daughter married within the last year, myself as well, And I'll just piggyback on one thing that Brother Curtis mentioned. It is, and really piggybacks on several things actually that you have mentioned, It is alarming and heartbreaking how much our culture has been affected by social media, by some of the things that we've been warned about today, how caught up in the sins of pornography, so many men, so many professing Christian men and some genuine Christian men fall into some of these traps of pornography and the traps of wasting their lives with social media and losing the kind of time that we've heard described as being lost, and just so many things that are so precious and so limited, of which we are to be stewards, and how those things are being handled as you seek to evaluate someone who's interested in one of your daughters as we walk that experience sort of similarly and having daughters married recently.

I will just tell you, my firstborn daughter, the man to whom she is married, when he came to me, had never been on social media. Not once, not ever, not one time. He had a phone because of work, but he purposely had a flip phone and not a smartphone, and one that did not send email. I'm not sure he had ever sent an email. Now, obviously he's not in technology.

This is a ranch-raised young man and a man who's involved in ranch management as his livelihood. But I would just tell you young men, if you desire to be the answer to a young woman's prayers as a husband, a man who would be faithful, a man who keeps himself pure. Avoid not only that heinous sin, but avoid every single avenue that might lead in that direction. Guard yourself. Be accountable.

Avoid the things that make those things possible. Be careful not just about social media, but be careful about access to the internet at all. And granted, there are dominion-taking things happening with technology, but there's also so much sin, and so much harm, and so many dangers. And really, for a young Christian man to be the answer to a young Christian woman's prayers, This is not something for which there's not repentance. It's not something that's not redeemable.

But oh, how much better to completely avoid the issue. Completely, completely avoid it. And we, the scripture is full of admonitions about those with whom we walk and the circumstances in which we are and the accountability that we either seek and accept and rejoice in or that which we avoid and hide from. And so just to add a little bit to what Brother Curtis shared and to express my agreement with so much of it, what a blessing that the Lord is still preserving Christian men for a Christian seed, a godly seed, and that He can, as with any other sin we commit, there is redemption, there is forgiveness, there is repentance in these things. But may we never presume that we will just receive that and enjoy it while we spend a season in sin like we are somehow entitled to it, just because our culture is doing so much of it, or there is just so much around, or it is so pervasive, or so easy to come by, or because it pursues us.

Friends, that's what sin does. We don't always have to go seeking it out. She will come seeking you out, men, young men. And so, if I could just add a word of exhortation to avoid that like the plague, because that's what it is. And heed the counsel that we've heard today about being a, not just seeking an answer to one's own prayers and a spouse, but being the Christian who would be that answer to someone else's prayers, being faithful before the Lord.

And be faithful now to the husband or the wife that you don't yet have. Guard your heart, guard your mind, Guard your affections. Your faithfulness to your spouse does not start when you meet or when you're married. It starts a long time before that. Treasure it.

Be faithful. And cry out to God. Pray. Cry out to God for His grace because it's it's harder man those of you who are my age know how much easier certain kinds of sin that that we would have had to pursue very intentionally and actively just you know is waiting on a phone or pursuing or, you know, seeking someone in an email. It's crazy.

Some of the dangers, some of the sin into which we can fall, and some of the traps that our young people can find themselves in. Just be completely humble. Be as accountable as we can. Avoid the temptation. Sexual sin especially.

We're so warned in Scripture to flee from that. Flee from anything that could even lead to a path that might lead to another path that might lead to another path that might lead to that. Be intentional about being faithful to your spouse long before you have her. Long before He's yours.