How do negative or positive expectations affect how a young person turns out?
Negative expectations can psychologically program a young person toward failure, drunkenness, or prison, and they often become exactly what is expected. Positive encouragement, by contrast, directs a young person toward constructive achievement and becoming a glory to God, and they quite likely become that.
Les explains that psychology, if used rightly, illustrates this principle. If a young man coming up out of his high school years is told he will never amount to anything, will only be a drunk, and will probably end up in prison, he will almost certainly end up just exactly that, because he is psychologically programmed by those expectations. But if a young person is encouraged that he can be this, can do that, and can be a glory of God in person, he will quite likely become that. The surrounding context contrasts this with salvation: the old body remains corrupt and may bear the ravages of sin, yet God declares believers just as if they had never sinned, seeing them as Adam was before the fall. God wants to reconcile the human being back to what he was in Adam before sin entered.