Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

Well, this is a milestone episode, young people.

I’m very excited to announce to you that we have just, within the last week, crossed 300,000 listens.

Honestly, I’m blown away by your response and by your faithfulness at listening. and I really trust that our listenership is also a good reflection of those young people that are surrendering to the Lord themselves, that are hungry to live a life of total surrender to God and total dependence on His power.

And so keep it up.

And in fact, in celebration, share the podcast with somebody else, maybe somebody in your youth group, somebody in your peer group.

Share it with somebody and let them know, hey, listen, we’ve got this podcast that’s going all over the world.

It’s an encouragement to me, and I trust it’ll be an encouragement to you.

And let’s see if we can increase our listenership even more.

Because remember, the listeners are not just a reflection of people who hit play, Lord willing.

It’s a reflection of people who have a desire to walk with Jesus.

And perhaps this podcast and this episode and many others like it can actually set people over the edge of letting their lives be used by God to turn the world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For those of you that know my general schedule throughout the year, every spring I do the war, and I’ve given a number of updates about that over the years.

But during the summer, I get the opportunity to lead the Baptist College of Ministry evangelistic team, which is partnering with Minutemen Ministries, the ministry that I am primarily working with throughout the year.

And with Minutemen, we do the Cola Clash.

And so we travel the country, just like with the war, inviting teenagers to come and bringing them out to a three-night competition between the Coke and Pepsi team.

And our goal is to preach the gospel to them and see many young people trust Christ as their Savior.

We’re three weeks in now.

We’ve completed our third week in Ann Arbor, Michigan, just last week.

And right now we’ve got a little bit of an off week, a rest and relaxation week just to recharge and get ready for our seven-week sprint to the end of the semester.

But I wanted to just chat with you.

One of the other things, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you probably know is that I try to take my team through some what’s called Bible exposition throughout the semester.

Not every single tour, but many times we will be working through a certain book or section of scripture together as a team.

And this summer, after having taken a little bit of time off with that in the spring, I decided I would bring my team through the book of James.

And it’s just been exciting to me as we’ve cracked open this book to a group of people that are going through some rough times.

This group of people who had been essentially sent away from their homelands to a strange land around people that they weren’t familiar with and cultures that they weren’t familiar with.

And James’s burden was that they would continue their single-hearted devotion to Jesus Christ and to follow him and his cause.

And you know, young people, as we look at our world today, even though many of us have not been displaced from our homes, and even though many of us are continuing where we’ve grown up, I think we all would agree that the culture around us is becoming more and more unfamiliar.

And the pressures of this world to live for things other than God, to live in surrender to our appetites or in surrender to the pressure of the culture around us, it’s a pretty enormous pressure.

And one of the things that James was burdened about, and again, this is not so much my exact purpose here today, was to teach them how to, instead of crumbling to the pressure, to teach them how to cause their faith to grow in the midst of that pressure.

And again, you can study on your own James 1, verses 2 through 4, and you can see God’s recipe for a growing faith.

But once again, that’s not so much my purpose here today.

As I was just meditating this morning on what God would have me present, I, my heart was drawn to a particular concept, a set of phrases in James 1 and verse 5.

Let me just say this, young people.

I don’t know what you’re going through right now.

Maybe here in the summer you’re going through some transition.

You’re not in school like you normally would be.

And maybe you’ve had some failure.

Maybe you’ve gotten into a job situation and it’s a lot harder than you thought it would be. or maybe you find yourself at home at odds with your siblings or perhaps even your parents, or maybe you’re endeavoring to do something for the Lord and what you seem to be finding is obstacles.

Let me just say this, the purpose of God behind all of those conflicts for all of those difficult situations is what we find in verse 4, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

Let me just say this, young person.

Difficult times sometimes do come into our lives because of bonehead decisions that we’ve made.

There’s no doubt about it.

Sometimes God is chastening us.

He’s correcting us.

He’s, you could say, in a certain sense, disciplining us because we’ve gotten off course.

But if you here listening to this podcast would say, you know what, I’m not perfect, and I’ve certainly not done everything perfectly, and I’m sure there is probably some mixture of imperfection that caused some of these things to happen.

Yet in my heart, the desire of my heart and the direction of my life is I want to be in total surrender to God.

I want to depend upon him to use me to reach this world to Christ.

Well, let me just say that if that is the case in your heart and in your life, then it very well could be that the design of those obstacles, challenges, difficulties, afflictions, tribulations, whatever you want to call them or however you want to categorize them, is God wants you to be all that you want to be.

And God’s putting you through some spiritual resistance training.

And God’s desire is that your faith would grow in the process of all of that, so that at the end of the day, you end up closer to God than you were at the beginning.

So that at the end of the day, your faith is stronger than it was at the beginning of that day.

And God’s desire is to build in you a spiritual grit and an ability to continue when otherwise you would have given up.

And God’s trying to perfect your faith, to increase your faith, to mature your faith with the goal that when you find yourself in those incredible moments, those Mount Carmel moments, you won’t come up short.

Okay, so that being said, when you get to verse 5, this is really where I’m burdened to park on here today.

James says, if any of you lack wisdom.

Now, what’s interesting to me about this little phrase is, obviously a lot of times we look at this and the focus of our mind, you know, what our minds zoom in on is that word wisdom, right?

If we don’t have wisdom, well, then there’s something you can do about that.

But I want you to focus on that word right before wisdom, if any of you lack.

Because if you remember what he just said in the verse before, God’s designed for you in your life and in the challenges, trials, afflictions, tribulations, whatever you want to call them, however you want to categorize them, the resistance in your life was so that you would not lack.

And God wants to, like I said, mature and perfect your faith.

But if we find ourselves with lack, you ever feel that way?

You ever feel like in something in your life you came up short?

Have you ever found where you were endeavoring to do something and you just didn’t have what it took?

Have you ever found yourself maybe in a test or a quiz back in school when school was still rolling along, right?

You came up short when it came to the right answers.

Or maybe it’s in a sports game you were competing in.

You ever find that you came up short in the strength or endurance that it took to drive the basketball back down to the other goal.

Or you found yourself coming short in the skill that it took to block that pass.

Or maybe musically, you came short of the muscle memory in your fingers to play that piece as you were supposed to play it or to play that violin the way that you were supposed to play it.

Again, there’s a lot of ways in which in our lives we can come up short, and I’m not so much talking about the human elements of coming up short.

I’m not talking about those lacks here today.

I’m talking about the spiritual ones.

Obviously, the one that he says primarily here, if any of you lack wisdom.

You ever felt like you didn’t know what to do in a situation?

You ever felt lacking in a clear understanding of God’s will?

Have you ever found yourself having to make a decision that maybe wasn’t a difference between right and wrong, but a decision that was really significant, and you found yourself lacking wisdom.

Well, I’ve got good news for you.

God has an answer for that.

But if I can expand on this word lack, have you ever found yourself lacking spiritual fortitude?

Have you ever found yourself lacking endurance in prayer?

Have you ever found yourself lacking the will to resist a certain temptation?

Have you ever found yourself lacking in spiritual power and spiritual influence to bring somebody all the way through to salvation in Jesus Christ through your witness?

Have you ever found yourself lacking in patience when people tick you off?

Have you ever found yourself lacking when it comes to just a joy that you know you ought to have, but frankly, you just feel kind of cranky today?

Have you ever found yourself lacking in peace when you know that’s what God designed you to have, and yet you found yourself up and down with the storms of life?

Well, if you found yourself lacking in any of those areas, and maybe you could tell me a few other areas that you felt lacking in confidence, security, lacking in a sense of well-being, well, I have good news for you.

There is a command that James gives here that is going to help solve your problem, your lack.

Remember, God’s design is that we would not lack, and that’s why he’s built, you could say, resistance into our Christian lives so that he can work in our faith, James 1, 2 through 4.

But if you lack, if I could say when you lack, here’s what he says.

Let him ask of God.

You know what, young person, when you find yourself coming up short in your witness, in your prayer life, in your patience, in your spiritual endurance, when you find yourself coming up short in your joy or in your peace, in your gentleness, you can ask God to give you that which you lack.

You know, God is a good God.

God is a God who wants to give what we lack.

He wants to supply for us every ounce of strength that we just plain don’t have.

He wants to fill us with patience that is completely opposite of our personality.

He wants to fill up our social tank when we feel like going off and being by ourselves.

He wants to give us administrative skill when we feel like we couldn’t organize anything if our lives depended on it.

He wants to give us what we need to accomplish his will.

Anything you need to do God’s will, here’s the good news.

You can ask God for it and he will give it to you.

Now maybe as you’re listening to this and hearing me say this, you think, well, preacher, that sounds a little bit too simplistic.

I’m just not sure.

Maybe you in your life have asked and you felt like maybe it didn’t quite happen the way it ought to happen, or you felt like God shouldn’t give it to you, or you didn’t feel worthy, or you felt like God was upset with you that day, or something like that, and for whatever reason you didn’t feel like, or maybe you don’t feel like, you can come with confidence to ask him for something.

That’s how you feel.

I’ve got more good news for you here today.

This verse helps us answer some of those questions.

Look at what it says.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

And then he gives two phrases that help us think right about God.

You know, young people, I really am convinced that oftentimes why we don’t come to God in prayer or why we come to God in prayer tentatively is because really we don’t know our God.

We don’t know who he truly is.

Or we come to him with a frame of mind that is unbiblical, that is inaccurate.

Young person, if we really knew what is true about God, we’d come to God incessantly.

We’d come to God every day, every moment of every day.

Our hearts would be one continuous stream of communication back and forth between us and God.

We’d ask for bold things.

We would ask for impossible things.

We would come to God when we feel spiritual and ask him for great things, and we would come to God when we don’t feel like we deserve it asking for things.

Look at what these two phrases are.

He says, Let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally. interestingly he says he giveth to all he giveth to all you know god doesn’t just pick certain people and say you know what i really want to bless them with miraculous answers to prayer but not others no no no no that person no they’re too awkward no i’m not going to answer their prayers uh he doesn’t look at some people and say you know what that person’s going to be a super christian one day so i better load them full of answers to prayer so that they can become that super Christian one day.

And this other person, they don’t really think they’ve got that much potential.

No, that person, they’re too timid.

I’m not going to bless them with answers to prayer.

Oh no, that person, they’re too, they just look kind of funny.

I’m not going to answer them with prayer.

Oh, that person, they’re too insecure.

I’m not going to answer them, their prayers.

No, he says he giveth to all.

And let me just say this, God does not discriminate when it comes to answers to prayer.

I want you to know you may feel like you are the most unworthy person, but God wants to answer your prayers too.

You may feel like you’re the last person that God ought to answer your prayers.

Well, guess what?

God wants to answer yours because it says right here, let him ask of God that giveth to all.

But notice he also says he giveth to all men liberally.

That word, you can have two ideas to that word.

One of the ideas is, without holding back, there is a generosity in God’s giving.

You know, God, sometimes I think that we have this picture of God as someone who is a, you really got to push him to give you anything.

Sometimes we think that God is like that stingy relative that we all have that just meets things out so stingily that you are afraid to ask them any more.

You know, I don’t know.

I think I don’t remember which Dickens novel it was, but you know, the picture of the little boy coming up, could not please have some more.

And then he gets reamed out for asking for more, more, more, or did I not give you enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, sometimes, even though we know God isn’t like that, we know that’s an unbiblical picture of God, we hesitate because we don’t want to ask for too much.

God’s a generous God.

God wants to give you probably more than you’re asking for.

God’s heartbeat is to supply not only exactly what you need, but more than you need.

God’s provision is overflowing.

His willingness is unending.

His desire is liberal, according to this verse.

Not liberal like all the people right now that are protesting certain Supreme Court rulings and different things like that.

And if you’re not checking the news, man, the Supreme Court has been on a roll this last week.

But God is a God who is generous with a capital G.

Okay, God is so incredible.

Have you ever known somebody who’s just generous?

So you may not know this.

A couple weeks ago, my family and I, our team and I, we were in Newark, Ohio, and technically Heath, but just outside of Newark.

That’s east of Columbus.

And we were there doing a Cola Clash.

And Wednesday night, in the middle of the night, 1 a.m., actually 106 a.m. to be exact, Some guy rode into the church parking lot on his bike, and he saw that David’s bike, my son, a nice bike, about $200 I bought for him back in March.

He saw that it wasn’t locked.

And to be honest with you, that was our fault.

We didn’t realize it was a crime area and it looked like just a nice little suburban area.

And somebody took his bike.

We have security footage, and he rolled out of the parking lot with David’s bike, and it was never to be seen again.

We drove all over the community looking for the bike.

We asked all kinds of people.

We contacted the police.

We put stuff online on neighborhood watch groups.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Well, you know what?

David was obviously bummed, and he was bummed for several reasons.

One was he was bummed because Daddy had gone out and spent all this money on a bike, and David was bummed that he wasn’t more careful with locking it up and that Daddy’s money was wasted, which was touching to me, that he wasn’t just concerned that he didn’t have a bike anymore, but he was concerned that Daddy’s investment in him was wasted.

Well, he prayed about it.

He prayed for God to do a number of different things, one of which would be to supply a new bike.

And okay, within the next week, I heard from two different sources that folks had heard about it.

And one source said, you know what?

Hey, I heard about this and we really want to help and we want to get a new bike for David.

And another source said, you know what?

If you buy a new bike for David, we’ll pay, we’ll write you a check for up to 250 bucks. for buying a new bike for David.

And what was just honestly touching to me was to see not just God meet the need, but God meet the need doubly.

I told David, I actually haven’t totally talked to David about that.

I want to talk to David here soon and say, do you realize, David, that God not only answered your prayer, he answered it twice.

In fact, the bike that the donor provided was worth much more than the bike that was stolen.

And can I say this, young person?

When we come to God, God doesn’t just want to give us what we ask.

He wants to give us more than what we ask.

He’s generous.

But there’s another idea.

I said there are kind of two ideas of this word liberally.

And the other idea is that God does it with a single-minded focus is another idea of this.

And this is the idea that God is committed to us to supply our need.

He is absolutely just like somebody when they get an idea in their head and nothing can get them off track.

You ever meet somebody like that?

I’m kind of like that.

I’m a one-track mind.

Okay, you could say.

There’s a certain sense in which you can say this word liberally has the idea of God has a one-track mind of supplying your lack.

In other words, just like some people spend all day every day thinking about the sports scores or thinking about how they’re going to make more money or just like how some moms think have this single-minded track all day long on keeping the house clean or cooking the next meal or just like some guys have this single-minded track on maybe praying about a girl, okay, that God’s put in their heart.

You know what I’m saying?

Just like people have a one-track mind about something.

God has a one-track mind on supplying for your needs.

All men, that’s encouraging.

But, okay, so what we’ve learned here is God wants to answer prayer indiscriminately.

God doesn’t look at certain people differently than other people and answer some people’s prayers more than other people’s prayers because there’s something wrong, like, different about them.

It’s not like God favors certain people over other people.

God also gives generously more than we could have ever imagined, more than even we ask.

God gives single-mindedly.

He is one-track-minded when it comes to supplying our requests and giving us what we need.

But there’s one other phrase here.

He says, and upbraideth not.

You know, that word upbraideth, honestly, you might think of a girl braiding up somebody’s hair, but that’s not the idea of this word.

Some others who maybe have been around this kind of lingo a little longer.

They think in terms of, you know, God rebuking someone for asking too much.

You know, you kind of think of that, can I have some more scene, you know, that section of the novel, and you think God does not come back and, you know, rebuke us for asking more.

But there was another gloss, another, you could say, way of saying this word that just for me struck home, And this was that God does not find fault when he answers prayer.

In other words, there are some folks perhaps in your life that you come and ask them and they say, well, did you do this?

Well, did you do that?

Well, did you do this?

Well, did you do that?

And they’re a little overbearing when it comes to things.

And, you know, can I go out and play?

Well, did you do this, that, and 500 other things?

And granted, I understand parents, they need to make sure their children are on task.

I’ve got kids.

You know, this is a part of parenthood. you got to make sure your kids are on track before they go out and do what they’re feeling like doing.

And that’s not so much what I’m talking about here, but what I’m talking about is that God isn’t looking for a reason not to answer your prayer.

Sometimes I think we think that God kind of has this, you know, 200-line checklist.

And whenever we come to him with a prayer request, God takes a few minutes to deliberate.

Great.

Okay.

Let’s see.

Did they do their devotions this morning?

Oh, they did.

Okay.

Maybe I might answer this prayer.

Okay.

Let’s go down a little bit further.

Have they been free from sin for 12 and a half hours?

Oh, they have been.

Well, I mean, not free from sin, but you know, for the most part, they’ve been doing well.

Okay.

Let me go down to my next line item.

Oh, have they gotten mad at anybody in the last three days?

Oh, they have.

Wow, they’re doing good.

I just might be able to answer this prayer.

And then they go down to, you know, the next one.

Have they driven above the speed limit?

Oh, oh no.

They went 56 miles per hour the other day.

Nope, nope, I am not answering this person’s prayer.

And we feel like God demands perfection from us before he will answer our prayer.

Can I tell you, young person, that’s not the God of the Bible.

Now, granted, okay, yes, there are some passages of Scripture that say, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me, right?

If we willingly harbor sin in our hearts, there is a very real sense in which God will hold things back.

God will not hear, right?

Is the Lord’s hand shortened that it cannot save?

Neither is he or heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God?

Yes, but that’s one side to God.

There’s another side to God.

It’s not contradictory.

This is God’s heartbeat here, young people.

It says right here that he upbraideth not.

And again, the idea of this word is he does not find fault.

If I can say it this way, God isn’t looking for a reason to withhold the answer to your prayer.

God isn’t just sitting up there excited about finding fault with you so that he can deny and reject your prayer.

He gets no pleasure from doing that.

God’s single-focused heart of desire is to generously, above and beyond, perhaps even scandalously, do what he probably shouldn’t do, and give an answer to prayer to you who probably doesn’t deserve it.

That’s God’s heart.

Young person, when we come to God, we need to come to him, yes, with reverence.

Yes, we need to come to him, searching our hearts, dealing with sin, getting right where there are issues.

But we also need to recognize that God is a God that really does want to answer your prayers. he’s a God that’s not scraping over every square inch though he knows all yes he knows all but God is wanting to bless let me read to you just a couple things that I have written here regarding this passage here and yet though God wants us to lack nothing we need to do his will there are times that we feel we lack some pretty essential things don’t we like wisdom wouldn’t you say there are moments in time when you don’t know what to do don’t know how to read the circumstances of the moment, don’t know how to proceed in the will of God, we’ve all been there.

It’s not an admission of guilt or inferiority to lack wisdom.

It’s an admission of humanity.

And yet even in this, with God, we need have no lack.

All we need do is ask him for wisdom and he’ll give it to us.

As Jesus said, ask and it shall be given unto you.

Remember, our heavenly father gives good gifts to those who ask him.

You see, God is both generous and genuine in his desire to give his children precisely what they need to obey him.

His single-minded devotion to his children means that he won’t think twice about meeting any and every need when asked, including the need for wisdom.

And furthermore, he doesn’t look for reasons not to give it to us either.

Sometimes we can tend to think that when we ask God for something, he pulls out his magnifying glass to see if we’re worthy of his blessing, but that’s not how our Father works.

He doesn’t withhold his care because we lack some deed or virtue.

His aim is to supply, not to scold.

He doesn’t ration wisdom only for the most holy or for the most deserving.

In fact, he’ll never refuse us wisdom because of a deficiency in our character or a blemish on our record.

If we ask, he will give.

Therefore, in prayer, focus on God’s willingness, not on your worthiness.

Young person, understand this is a tension truth.

Like I said a moment ago, yes, we want to be clean and we need to be clean.

We shouldn’t be regarding iniquity in our hearts.

But on the other side of the equation, we should not come to God with an insecurity.

We shouldn’t come to God with an uncertainty about whether he wants to answer or he will answer.

We need to come to God expecting him to supply, expecting him to provide, expecting him to enable.

Because remember, God’s design in our life is that we lack nothing.

And if we find ourselves lacking, we need only to ask for that which we lack.

Young person, the Christian life is not a life of scraping together divine provision, hoping that we’ll come up with just enough change to get the deal closed.

The Christian life is an abundant, overflowing God who wants to give us more than what we need.

And if we’ll recognize that, I really do think it will totally change the way we come to God in prayer.

I think we’ll ask a lot more than we did before.

I think we’ll ask with a confidence we never had before, and I really do think we will get a lot more than we got before.

Listen, yes, we do need to be surrendered to his will.

We need to be dependent upon his power, but we also need to recognize that the God that we serve is often different than the God we have in our heads.

We need to let the Scripture determine who our God is in our minds. because only the painting we see painted in the scriptures is an accurate painting of who our God is.

I hope this has been an encouragement to you as much as it’s been an encouragement to me.

Young person, I will be praying that God will bless your lives, that God will give you what you need.

And if you’ll pray for our team, we’ve got an off week here and then we’ve got seven weeks to the finish.

Pray for our team that God will help us and enable us.

If you want to see who our team members are, you’re welcome to go to colaclash.org and scroll down to see who’s on the team.

In fact, I would encourage you, go on down to the very bottom, look at our schedule, and if you’re anywhere nearby, you are more than welcome to come join us for any of those COLA clashes.

We will be in Menominee Falls next week, Wisconsin.

Then we’ll be out in Millerton, Pennsylvania.

We’ll be in York or Brogue, Pennsylvania.

We’ll be in Wilkes-Barre.

We’ll be up in Penfield, New York.

Then we’ve got a long drive to be out in Tomah, Wisconsin.

Then we’ll be in Viroqua.

That’s Western Wisconsin.

We’d love to see any of you.

And so if you’re anywhere nearby during any one of those nights, come on by and say hello and join us.

And I would love to let you see what God is doing first person on the road with the Cola Clash.

Also, I do want to mention, I haven’t really said much about this, but registration is open for the Thee Generation Youth Summit this fall.

For information, you can go to thegeneration.org slash youth summit or slash summit, or just go to the homepage and click on Youth Summit up in the navigation bar.

Registration is open and available.

I do know that our dorm lodging is limited, so get signed up sooner than later if you’re planning to attend.

We do also have church housing available for free.

Otherwise, you can purchase your own lodging at a hotel or something else nearby.

But we’d love to have you come and join us.

We’ve got a great theme this year.

I’m excited about what God’s going to do in it, And we’ve got some great things planned as well.

And that’s kind of our big annual get together from young people around the country and around the world to join together to really determine and be inspired for the future of our movement.

And so please plan to join us and I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

God bless you.

We’ll talk to you later.