"I had never heard Mother’s voice like that, and I had never heard her call Father “Charles.” I thought my heart would pound itself to pieces while she was telling him what I had done. Hard as Father could spank, he never hurt me so much with a stick as he did when Mother stopped talking. He cleared his throat, and then he didn’t make a sound for at least two full minutes.

When he spoke, his voice was deep and dry, and I knew he must have been coughing a lot on the way home. “Son, there is no question but what the thing you have done today deserves severe punishment. You might have killed yourself or the horse, but much worse than that, you have injured your own character. A man’s character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth."
~ LITTLE BRITCHES, BY RALPH MOODY ~

As I read that excerpt, I can’t help but thinking that we are building today the character houses we’ll live in tomorrow; that what each of us will become later in life largely depends on what we are now. J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) wrote in his book, Thoughts For Young Men, “Youth is the seed-time of full age, the molding season in the little space of human life, the turning-point in the history of man’s mind.” Are we taking that seriously?

We must understand that there’s a tsunami of “advances” coming that will profoundly damage all but the sturdiest character houses. We’ve got to be working now so that when the wave comes, we’re ready for it. Robert Freeman once said, “Character is not made in a crisis—it is only exhibited.” The crisis is coming, what we need to ask ourselves is, “What kind of character will this crisis reveal? Am I strong enough to resist sin? Am I consistent in saying no to temptation? Or do I only get by when there is nothing there to tempt me?”

(Excerpt from http://www.therebelution.com/blog/2006/04/building-a-character-house)