 I'm grateful to be here in the studio and grateful again to speak with our WTLN listeners. And here in the studio at this time, I wanted to let you know about a conference that we're gonna be hosting. That conference is May 29th through the 31st, 2015. And it's our call for discernment conference entitled A Call to Arms. And the conference is gonna be speaking to protecting children and families from media's menacing dark side. Protecting children and families from media's menacing dark side. And if you're like me, you've noticed the staggering advancement of technology in our day, just how quickly technology has advanced. And this being a blessing from God, there's just so many resources at our fingertips that we can learn more about the Bible. And we can learn more about God that we can use to bless our families, bless our children. But as the Bible teaches often what God intends for good, men corrupt for evil. And media and technology are certainly no exception to that. And so at the same time that media has become a blessing in many ways, we see also how that's been corrupted to be a horrible influence sometimes on our teens, a horrible influence on our family. And often because of the very ways that we parent or the very ways that we fail to parent. And so we wanna use this conference as an opportunity to get more information to you about how to protect your children and family from the negative side of technology. We're very grateful that for this conference we have guest speaker Trace Embry with us. And Trace is a nationally syndicated radio host of License to Parent. And also a long time experience at running a residential counseling program for troubled teens called Shepherds Hill Academy. We're blessed to have Trace in the studio with us. Trace, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, sir. Fantastic. We look forward to having you at the conference and just look forward to all the information that you'll be able to provide. I would pray that that will be a great blessing to our parents, our kids, our families. And one of the questions that I wanted to ask you while we have opportunity is Trace that I guess related to technology, we're also gonna spend a little bit of time talking about the influence of music in our homes, the influence of music on our teens. We all grew up listening to secular music and popular music. And we may have some experience ourselves with understanding how that influences us maybe mentally or spiritually. But speak to our culture today, Trace, and how music and even technology has advanced that influence that music has on our teens. Sure. Well, certainly technology has advanced our opportunity to be influenced by music. Music is a tremendous, Frank Zappa said that music is a tremendous indoctrination tool. He's right. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle all had something to say about the deep power and influence that music has in societies long before it was even electrified. One of those three guys, I figure which one, actually wanted to have music regulated by the state. I thought it was so popular. And as you harken back to the 1960s, rock and roll music was used in the cultural sexual revolution to advance that agenda as well. But technology with iPads now where kids can, they can't really go from point A to point B without headphones. And so, and they can hear these sounds, these words, these beats and rhythms and chord progressions. And you'll never know what they're listening to unless you monitor these things. I mean, in my home, we have a no headphones policy. You're not, if I can't hear it, either can you. That's the bottom line. But music is incredibly powerful. Matter of fact, I was having a conversation with Dr. Norman Geisler. And if you don't know who Dr. Norman Geisler is, you might know who Robbie Zacharias is, or Lee Strobel, or D. James Kennedy from your neck of the woods, late D. James Kennedy, Josh McDowell. These guys are all Christian apologists who took largely a lot of their cues from a guy named Dr. Norman Geisler. And when I was talking to Dr. Geisler, I said, Dr. Geisler, I'm gonna make a statement. I want you to tell me your thoughts on this. I said, from my experience, I believe that music is probably the single most overlooked, powerful tool of the devil used against our teenage population, our families, our church, and the American culture at large. How do you respond to that, Dr. Geisler? And he did not miss a beat. He said, I couldn't agree with you more. Above and beyond internet pornography. Now, that was before smartphones came out. So it might have been eight, 10 years ago when I had this conversation with him. And since internet pornography is now on everyone's hip pocket with smartphones, that's debatable. I'll probably go back with pornography, but music is way more powerful than anyone believes. I've heard people say, well, you know, I listened to this, and I listened to that, and I turned out all right. And I'm gonna tell you something. You haven't yet turned out, and you don't realize how many hangups and strongholds in your life that you currently deal with that you would never have tied, tied into the things that you allowed yourself to be exposed to via music. And the music was what got Lucifer kicked out of heaven. He was a worship leader back then, took a third of the angels with him. He's still working through music today. Now listen, God works through music today too. And that's the confusing thing. A box said that all music should be for the refreshment of the human spirit, the glorification of God, and the refreshment of the human spirit. And unfortunately, we've used it to one of the cathartic purposes. Our kids today use music to justify some of their anger, their rage, there's some of their perversions. And rather than for the art form that it is, and you can package it up an art form, you can legitimize anything when you call it art. Yeah, amen. And we're definitely gonna be talking about that more at the conference, May 29th through the 31st Call to Arms. But I heard you mentioned also, Trace, that within your own home, you have rules set up for how music is to be accessed or listened to in the home, because I know you as a parent care about your kids and wanna protect your kids and family. So what might you say to a parent? I know parents are often, for one reason or another, fearful about setting up too many boundaries for their kids, or they're concerned about what their teen might think or the response they're gonna get. How might you advise a parent considering that and how do they get started? Well, there's a fine line between legalism and just good sense. And we wanna be careful that we're not legalistic. A lot of people falsely look at the things that I'm teaching their kids or sometimes the kids even say, you know, well, you think I should just listen to all Christian music and listen to me. When you come to this conference, you're gonna find out that some of the most dangerous music out there is being played within the church. Yeah, amen. The devil, it was a Christian lyrics. It's all about Psalms and Proverbs. It might sound like it comes from the jungle, but it's got all these great Christian lyrics. Well, first of all, you have to be able to understand the lyrics, number one. Number two, don't forget who the devil is and what he did. He used scripture itself, the word of God. He spoke it to the word of God, Jesus. But he did it in the spirit of the enemy to accomplish the enemy's ends. Now, he was speaking to Jesus himself, so he wasn't gonna win that one, but our kids aren't quite as equipped as Jesus was. They're very naive. We're naive as parents. And when we let our kids listen to some of this stuff, we're gonna have to stand before God, I'm afraid, because we have not exercised just what should be called common sense, which I realize in a post-modern world, there really can't be any common sense, but I think we're gonna have to answer to God for some of the stuff that we've allowed our kids to be exposed to and engaged in, because I think a lot of stuff grieves the heart of God, and it's not just the lyrics. It goes deeper than that, and these are some of the things that we'll be discussing. Thank you, brother, and yeah, it grieves us as well. We wanna be well informed, and I just wanna exhort and encourage parents out there listening to put off being naive about these things and get informed. Our conference is May 29th through the 31st. It's our 2015 Call for Discernment Conference entitled A Call to Arms, and Trace, if folks out there want more information about your ministry, and I would encourage parents out there to look up this information. You can find much that is helpful at Trace's website. Trace, where do they go to get more information about your ministry there? Well, there's some very valuable resources. They can go to license2parent.org, license2parent.org, and if they wanna know more about our residential program in school, Shepherd's Hill Academy.org is our website, but because we're over the radio and people probably won't know how to spell Shepherd's Hill, go to helpmytroubledteens.org, helpmytroubledteens.org, and it'll get you right to the Shepherd's Hill Academy website. Fantastic. Trace, thank you so much for your ministry. Thanks for all that you do to help parents and kids, and really looking forward to having you at the conference. For you out there listening, go to protectthefamily.net to register for our 2015 Call for Discernment Conference entitled A Call to Arms. It's May 29th through the 31st. It's a ministry of Cornerstone Baptist Church. You can find more information at their website as well, cornerstoneorlando.org, or you can call our church offices at 407-971-7685. God bless you.