[Gary Petty] Chasing bear cubs. It's not a good idea. But my son was young. We were hiking in the Shenandoah National Park. And we come around a bend in the trail that we're on. And there is this little black bear cub and for reasons I really can't understand, my son got so excited he started to run after the bear cub. Of course, the bear cub takes off, and there he is chasing a bear cub. And I was standing there and I yelled, "Stop." And he stopped and he turned around. I said, "Wherever he goes, the mama's going to be there." And he stopped for a minute and I said, "Don't move." And the club ran into some brush, and sure enough, there was mama. And off they go. So he came back and he got a little lecture on learning to control himself and don't get so excited that you just rush off after things. 

Well, probably an hour later, we're hiking and we're among some big timber and I'm sitting on a rock and my son is walking around looking at things. And I hear a little bear bark and I stand up and they turned around and now a full grown black bear comes walking out of the brush, walks past me and I realize is going to walk right past my son. I said, "Hey, Chris, I don't want you to get excited. I want you just to stop and turn around." Well, he turned around and now he's running away from the bear, which isn't a good thing to do with a full grown bear. So now he's kind of running past me. I catch him and I turn him around. And now we're standing there facing the bear. And the bear is facing us. And I have to admit, I was getting a little nervous at this point. And I looked at the bear and I said, "He's only a cub." And the bear turned around and walked off.

We had a long conversation after that. First of all, "Why did you chase the cub?" And second of all, "Why did you run away? You should have faced the bear then." And we talked a lot about that over the years. In fact, I will not let him forget that. But it reminds me of a verse in Proverbs. "Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broke down without walls." (Proverbs 25:28).

You know, we're emotional beings and many times we go running off on our own emotions. I understand the exuberance of seeing a bear cub as a little boy and running after it. I understand the absolute fear of running away from the mama or the big bear that's there. But we have to learn to control ourselves. Or we're like a city without walls. And that means a lot in the ancient world. If you didn't have walls, that meant your city was going to be broken into by marauders or another army that was going to plunder your city. When we don't learn to control our emotions, we don't have emotional maturity, we get plundered all the time. And not having emotional maturity and controlling your emotions, it's like chasing bear cubs. And I can guarantee you from my own experience, it's not a good idea.

That's BT Daily. Thanks for watching.