Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Clute, Texas, where the war team and I are embarking on our second week of youth gospel crusades of 2022.

We had a great week last week.

We had over 50 young people come.

We had over 15 trust Christ as their Savior.

We’re glorying in how God answered prayer and how he convicted souls, how he used the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.

We’re looking forward to a great tour.

We’ve got a pretty packed tour here, 12 wars between now and the beginning of May.

We’ve got a bunch in Texas.

We’ve got one in Arkansas.

We’ve got one in Tennessee.

We’ve got two in Georgia and in South Carolina, and we’re just thrilled, thrilled with the tour God put together.

I’m thrilled with how God is working.

In fact, that’s somewhat of what I want to talk about here today.

On the book of John in chapter 14, we have a promise that Jesus gave to us that can be often misunderstood, or perhaps you can say it can be undersold.

In John chapter 14, Jesus said unto his disciples, he said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, shall he do because I go unto my Father.

And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.

I remember as a young person seeing that verse, if you ask anything, I’ll do it.

And I remember as a child, I asked for an elephant.

I don’t know if you’ve been there before, where maybe you kind of get a hold of the fact that you can ask God for anything.

It maybe gets you really excited, and you ask for some silly things as a child.

And maybe your parents sat you down afterwards and maybe talked to you about how we don’t ask for an elephant or a horse or stuff like that in our prayers.

But honestly, I think that those conversations that parents can have with their children, if they’re not handled right, they can actually undercut the amazing potential of this promise that Jesus gives to us.

Just a couple observations I want to give here.

Jesus makes it very clear that he wants our works, the works that we do, to be even greater than the works that he did while he was here on earth.

And it’s funny, I’ve read some commentaries on this, and it almost it seems like they go out of their way to diminish that particular promise.

They say, well, you know, it’s not that we’re ever going to do anything greater than what Jesus did when he was here on this earth, you know, because that would be pretty spectacular.

And I’m thinking, yeah, this promise sounds pretty spectacular.

And listen, I understand the fact that part of the greater aspect of the works that he wants us to do is that there are more people doing it.

But honestly, young people, when you just plain take these words at face value, Jesus wants, get this, he wants your ministry and my ministry to be more spectacular than his ever was while he was here on this earth.

And I recognize there may be some listening.

You may disagree with me on that.

That’s fine.

But listen, you look at this.

He says, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.

In other words, you will do what I did.

That is replicating what Jesus did.

You look at what Jesus did in his ministry.

He did some pretty spectacular things, did he not?

But he doesn’t just say that you’ll do what I did and more of you will do it.

No, he said greater works than these, than the ones that I did shall he do.

And here’s the key, because I go unto my Father.

Now, that may not sound like it’s a key, but what he’s saying here is essentially, and what he says at different times throughout John 14, 15, 16, is that he’s going to go to his father.

It’s going to seem bad at first, but it’s going to end up being a whole lot better because he’s going to send back the paraclete, the comforter, the Holy Spirit of God.

And because you and I have the Holy Spirit of God in us, we have the potential of doing not only what Jesus did, but even greater works than those.

My purpose for this podcast isn’t so much to focus on the greater works phrase here of verse 12, but really the burden on my heart is verse 13, and whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do.

Okay, so Jesus wants us to believe on him.

He wants us to depend on him, not only to do what he did, but to do even greater works than he ever did when he was here in this earth.

Okay, so how does that tie in to asking?

It’s like this, young person.

Asking is the expression of faith.

Okay, faith requires action.

We know that, James 2.

Faith without works is dead.

If you believe God for something, you’re going to step out and act like it.

But listen, you can step out and act like it and not ask.

And unfortunately, in James chapter 4, we find we have not because we ask not.

And here what this verse is doing is it is authorizing us to ask for greater works in our life and ministry.

It is authorizing us, in fact, to ask for whatever we think we need to fulfill Christ’s mission.

Again, I go back to that silly little anecdote from earlier that some of us, when we were little, we ask for silly things.

We ask for a horse.

We ask for a pony.

We ask for an elephant, a hippopotamus maybe for Christmas.

But you know, this here isn’t talking about asking for things that we want.

What it’s talking about is he gives that little clarification, whatever you shall ask in my name.

Well, what does he mean by in my name?

As I’ve done a little bit of studying, looking at some things here.

Some folks have said in my name has to do with asking what you think Jesus himself would have asked for.

Okay, that’s a helpful definition.

In other words, if you ask for anything that you full well believe that Jesus would want you to have, God says he’ll do it.

Wow.

Let me take this a step further.

Okay, if you ask for anything that you believe you need to accomplish Jesus’ mission for your life.

He’ll do it.

If you ask for anything that he touches your heart and works in your heart that you need to ask for, guess what?

He’s going to do it.

Listen, young people, I think sometimes in our lives we limit what we ask for to what we think is possible.

And I just want to say this, young people, that is not how we’re supposed to ask.

We don’t ask, kind of lick our fingers and stick it up to the wind and see, oh, it’s blowing that way.

Let me ask for something to happen that way.

No, we need to ask for what Jesus would want.

Well, how do you know what Jesus would want?

A couple observations here that I want to give.

First, if you want to know what Jesus would want, you need to be surrendered to his will.

You’ve got to be surrendered to what he wants.

You’ve got to be in the stream of what he’s doing.

You’ve got to be yielded to what he wants for your life.

Because if you don’t know what he wants for your life, you’re not going to know what he wants you to ask for, if that makes sense.

In other words, if you’re living your life for you to fulfill your dreams and your plans, you are going to have absolutely no idea what Jesus wants you to pray for.

Oh, there are some things the Bible states.

He’s not willing that any should perish.

Okay, he wants people to be saved.

That’s fine.

You know that he promised to supply all your needs.

You know that he’s going to take care of your bare necessities in life and make sure you’re taken care of.

Okay, those are things that he does because he’s our father.

Those are things he does because he’s the Lord of the harvest.

But as for the specifics, if you are not absolutely committed to what he wants, you’re going to be clueless when it comes to asking in his name.

Here’s a great example.

I’m sure many of you have been in corporate prayer meetings where there was no direction.

And by that I mean y’all weren’t in any kind of a battle.

Everything seemed to be hunky-dory just fine.

You felt like you really didn’t need anything in particular.

The church wasn’t necessarily going anywhere at that particular moment.

There was no ministry endeavor that we were fighting for.

And in those prayer meetings, I personally found it’s hard to pray because you’re sitting there and you’re like, God bless so-and-so, you know.

And it’s hard to pray for something in his name if you’re not yielded to what he wants.

If praying in his name is asking for what he would want and you don’t know what he wants, then you’re not going to be able to pray for what he wants.

Does that make sense?

So we’ve got to be yielded to what he wants, and we also need to know what he wants.

How do you know what he wants?

Well, really, there’s no way around it, but you need to commune with him.

You need to spend time with him.

You need to catch his heart.

You need to imbibe his desires.

You might say, preacher, how do you do that?

How do you imbibe his desires and catch his heart?

I don’t know any other way to describe it except for this.

Spending time with him and being involved in his work.

Being seeking to be in tune with what he’s saying in your heart.

Learning how to listen for the voice of the Spirit as he moves upon your heart and the circumstances of your life.

Let me tell you, if you, young person, are the best you know how right now, surrendered to his will and pursuing his plan, as needs, as obstacles, and necessities come up in your life, you’re not going to wonder what to pray for.

Here’s why I’m sharing this, because I’ve had a bunch of things like this happen recently.

Back over Christmas, I shared with you a little bit about how God is working and how he’s providing money for a truck.

In fact, even just recently had another large chunk come in from one source.

And we’re thrilled God’s working.

It’s very exciting.

And, you know, wouldn’t you know it, I had another issue.

Okay, my trailer.

I’ve got a 2018 Open Range 3X 427BHS.

You can look it up sometime.

I think there’s a post from way back with pictures of it when the Lord first provided that for us.

But we had an issue with our big slide.

I think you’re probably aware what a slide is.

It’s the big part of the trailer that slides in and out.

It makes the inside bigger because, you know, essentially your trailer sort of unfolds.

Well, the big slide wasn’t coming back in.

And you really can’t drive a trailer down the road unless the slides come in.

At least I wouldn’t recommend it.

And so this happened just before we left for Christmas.

We were in Menominee Falls.

There was a windstorm.

We tried to pull it in.

Things got caught.

Some things crunched.

And I had something new to keep me up worrying at night.

Okay, so I’ll just go into some of the specifics.

I called up as soon as I got out to New Jersey to be with my folks for a couple weeks.

I called up a bunch of RD repair shops back in Wisconsin where we had left the trailer to try to coordinate a job, somebody who would take it in, who’d be able to identify the problem and fix it.

And a bunch of places were telling me there’s no way I can get you in.

We’re scheduled out through February.

And that wasn’t going to work because I had to leave Wisconsin on, I think it was like February 17th, 16th, 15th, something like that.

And so that meant that I had to essentially have the trailer back in hand fixed by January 14th.

So I honestly, if you know anything about scheduling this kind of thing, I needed a miracle.

I called up one guy and he said, you know what?

All I do are repairs and I think I could get you in.

I think I know what the problem is.

But sir, here’s the problem.

The part that I need is on back order and I have absolutely no idea when it’s going to come in.

Well, here was my thought process in my own mind.

I need that trailer to do what God’s called me to do.

I need dat slide fixed.

Like literally, if I can’t get the slide in, I can’t bring the trailer with me.

If I can’t bring the trailer with me, I can’t bring my family with me.

If I can’t bring my family with me, my family doesn’t have anywhere to be, I told the guy on the phone, again, lots of things were going through my mind, but I told the guy on the phone, I said, I’ll tell you what, I’ll pray that the part comes in.

You plan on me bringing that trailer in as soon as I get back.

And he said, okay, sounds good.

We’ll do it.

So when I got back to Wisconsin, actually right after New Year’s, he told me, call him back.

I called him back and he said, hey, that part still hasn’t come in, but I’ll get you in on such and such a day and I’ll see what I can see, see what I can do.

I thought, okay, one step at a time.

Well, I, and I asked a few others to just really lift this up before the Lord in prayer.

I had my church praying, had my family praying, I was praying.

And you know what, to be perfectly honest with you, I remember as I was praying, thinking, Lord, I’m not asking this because I just want my slide fixed.

I’m not asking this because I think it’d be nice and I just want my trailer to work perfectly.

Lord, this is mission critical, to do what you’ve called me to do.

So Lord, I think this is something that I can ask for with confidence.

I think this is something I can almost demand that you do, Lord.

I need this to happen.

Okay, so we get back up to Wisconsin.

I drive the trailer into the shop.

He still hasn’t gotten the part.

Okay, he said, well, I’ll look at it early next week.

So early that next week, I had like literally five days for him to have it in the shop and fix it.

And he called me up on day two of the five days and he said, it’s all fixed.

And I remember on the phone I said, wait, what?

It’s all fixed?

You mean you got the part?

Yeah, it came in yesterday.

The first day I went to look at your trailer, all my backordered parts, they came in.

I didn’t have any indication they would, but they just showed up.

And I remember thinking, wow, that’s a huge answer to prayer.

Take it one step further.

Sometimes God does more than you asked.

He checked and turns out my brakes were completely gone on the trailer.

So my truck was pretty much stopping the trailer.

Brakes were literally about ready to fall off the hub.

And so we got all those brakes replaced.

It’s amazing how much better it stops now when you have brakes.

But I remember thinking, wow, wow.

God can give me anything I need to accomplish his mission.

If I ask anything in his name, he’ll do it.

Again, I could give other instances of even since we’ve been back on the road, just God giving us exactly what we needed when we needed it as a team, whether that was a recruiting opportunity or even this morning.

I’m recording right now on Thursday, January 27th, 9.56 p.m. in Central Time.

This morning, the guys we were praying forgot to give us open doors into the public schools here.

Previously, we had gotten into the ROTC classrooms here at the high school locally here.

And so I told the guys, I said, why don’t you go?

There was a football practice early morning.

And then after you’re done talking to the coach and seeing what you can get there, then go into the public school and ask for the ROTC commander.

So the guys talked to the coach, and that was great.

He actually told them, come back tomorrow at 6.50 in the morning, no, 7.20 in the morning.

And we’ll give you the whole football team.

You can recruit the whole football team.

So that was an awesome answer to prayer.

But then get this.

The guys, they talked to the ROTC commanders, and really quick, they immediately ushered him right to the guy.

They got to the classroom, and the ROTC commander was like, oh, oh, you guys, okay.

Kind of like it wasn’t what he was expecting.

Apparently, he was waiting for some actual military Navy recruiters to come in, and he was going to give them all of his class periods all day long, but my guys showed up.

Well, he told the guys, he said, hey, yeah, I remember you guys.

You guys are cool.

You can recruit the class here, but I’ve got real recruiters coming from the military, and they’re going to take the rest of my classes for the day as soon as they show up, so I’m not sure how much more I can give you.

So right after the guys got into the classroom and he told them that, the real Navy ROTC military recruiters called the office and said they weren’t going to be able to come. so this ROTC commander who had no lectures planned for the day because he was expecting these other people just happened at that moment to have my war guys in his classroom and he told the guys guys why don’t you just stay in all my classes all day today why don’t you just take as much time as you want as you need to tell them about this I’m telling you my guys were putting videos up on the screen from our website they got to just spend time with these kids and tell them all about it build some bridges, get some relationships going there, and it was just a miracle in answer to prayer.

Why do I tell these stories?

Because I want you to know, listen, if you find yourself in the pursuit of God’s will facing a need, an impossibility, an obstacle, and you believe that Jesus would have that obstacle moved out of the way, you have the authority to ask God for that.

And this verse says, whatever you will ask in my name, that will I do.

Listen, yes, we need to ask according to the will of God.

But listen, if you believe that it is the will of God, ask for it with confidence.

Listen, I know we’ve all had moments in our lives where maybe we asked for something and it didn’t come true.

I remind you, God is the Lord.

His plan is always better than our plan.

But here’s the thing.

We often just don’t ask. and because we don’t ask, we don’t have.

You know, young people, maybe you right now are contemplating whether you ought to go off to Bible college because of finances.

Can I challenge you with something?

Ask God for a miracle.

Ask him for a miracle.

If you believe that Bible college is where God would have you to be, maybe BCM or some other great Bible college out there, listen, start following God’s will and ask God to provide.

I remember sitting in my interview my freshman year right before my interview before I started at Baptist College of Ministry way back in 2003 a fellow named Helmut Steckman looked across the table and asked me in his thick German accent how do you plan on paying for your school bill and I looked right across from him and I said sir I’ve got $2,000 in my bank account I don’t know where the rest of it’s going to come from I’m willing to work and I’m going to pray and I’m going to believe that God is going to provide for the rest of it.

Listen, you know what that was?

That was asking in his name.

I knew God wanted me to go to BCM.

I knew he wanted me in Bible college and I didn’t have all the money for it.

And yet I wasn’t just going to sit out and not do what God wanted me to do.

I figured if God had ordered it, he was going to pay for it.

And so, young person, just don’t let those obstacles stand in your way.

Pursue God’s will and ask him for every scrap, every ounce, every dollar that you need to do what he’s calling you to do.

You know what I’m praying right now?

Again, I’ve talked about the truck and everything.

My truck is making funny noises when the trailer lowers down on it.

Again, I’ve checked it all out.

But, man, I’m telling you what, the park gear doesn’t work when I put it in car park and the trailer is on a hill behind it.

It goes click, click, click, click, click.

And I’m thinking every time I drive it, it’s like, oh, Lord, come quickly, provide quickly.

But you know what?

I’m not demanding a certain timing.

In fact, I was praying and I was saying, God, you let the manna that you provided for your children last over the weekend until the new batch came in.

God, you got to keep my truck working until the new truck rolls in.

And so I believe he’s going to do that.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be some hard times and some things we got to fix.

But I know that if I’m working for God, if I’m asking for whatever I think I need to accomplish God’s mission, I have a promise in God’s word.

Whatever you’ll ask in my name for my cause, for my mission, according to my will, I’m going to do it.

Listen, you just need to ask, young person.

You just need to ask.

Get close to God. be surrendered to his will, understand his heart, and ask.

Listen, young person, I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

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

I don’t know what needs you have in your life, but I do know this.

If it’s God’s will for you to be where you are doing what you’re doing, God’s going to take care of you.

But you’ve got to ask.

Stay surrendered to him, young person.

Be dependent on his power, and I will tell you what he’ll use, you, me, and everyone who will, to turn the world upside down for Jesus Christ.

Thanks so much for listening.