Bobby: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Viroqua, Wisconsin, where our team is smack dab in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out, WWE-style wrestling match with the Devil. It’s very interesting… the circumstances that have led up to this moment, as of the time of my recording—I’m recording Tuesday afternoon, about 5 p.m. or so. And our team has gone out recruiting, inviting young people to come, just like we normally do. And let’s just say things got a little wonky… Things went a little sideways, and it was par for the course. But before I get into that, I do want to talk about that, and I’ve got a messageーa challenge that I trust will be an encouragement to you. 

We had just come off a very encouraging week where we were in Owensboro, Kentucky. The church there has been going through some things as well. And the Lord specifically spoke to me back in the midst of our trailer and truck trial. When I had heard of some of the challenges they were experiencing, the Lord very clearly spoke to me and said, “It’s going to be good.” I was given an opportunity to cancel the meeting, but I felt like the Lord would have us do it, and that the Lord would bless, not just in spite of the challenges, but even because of the challenges. And so when we came, I had a heart that was full of optimism for the Lord to bless. And He did. On the first night, we had a fairly decent crowd. We had probably in the fifties of young people, many of them from the community, and preached the Gospel. And 12 young people ended up getting saved that night.

But on the second night, it was strange. I’m still not even exactly sure what to make of it. The second night, we had probably 8 to 10 people back in the counseling room, but there was just something that wasn’t clicking. There was a real struggle for the young people to get it or to be convinced, and only one person ended up getting savedーand I praise the Lord for thatーbut I know that was even a wake-up call to our team. And the next day, we got desperate with the Lord and were seeking His face for God to bring the increase. That’s been a theme of ours this summer. We must take part in the planting and sowing process, and yet we must look to God to do the growing of that seed. The miracle in the soil is God’s work to do. And yet, we need to take responsibility for the preaching and the depending in the prayers.

Anyway, that’s not my purpose for this. Our team got desperate, and there that evening, though this isn’t normally the case on the final night of one of our meetings, we had more saved on Friday night than we had had saved combined that week. We had fourteen trust Christ, and it was just a thrill to see God break through in hearts, even young people that had been there all three nights. That finally, it clicked. They woke up, they got serious about the matter of the Gospel, and they got saved. And so, all in all, I believe there were 27 young people that trusted Christ as their Savior last week, and we just give God the glory. He did it all. 

And so that being said, we were on our way, driving quite a distance from Owensboro, Kentucky, all the way up to Viroqua, and we were in Springfield, in Springfield, Illinois, driving my fifth-wheel trailer with my beautiful Ram 3500 that I’m praising the Lord for still. When, all of a sudden, I felt a slight shift, and I looked into the side rearview mirror, and it looked like one of my aluminum panelsーhad just looked like it got grabbed by the wind and bent out or something. And so I thought, “Oh, I gotta pull over and take a look at this.” I pulled over to the side of the road right by an exit and went out to visually inspect to see if I just needed to bend the thing down. And lo and behold, my rear wheel was completely gone. Completely gone. It was not a blowout. It was a bye-bye.

In fact, I looked a little closer at the hub and all of the posts, the studs that the lug nuts screw onto, they were gone; they had sheared off. And once, I was, honestly, though I had no idea what in the world I was going to doーand this is a miracleーI was excited, ‘cause I was thinking, “Man, this week’s gonna be good; it’s gonna be a good week.” If God had taught me anything this year, it’s when the wheels fall offーI have a podcast about that, called “When the Wheels Fall Off”ーAnd I don’t know, that seems to be a theme, but when the wheels fall off, God’s up to something, and God is going to do something great.

So instead of getting discouraged or “Oh no, here we go again…trailer issues,” I had a peace and a calmness, though I didn’t know what to do. I still knew the Lord had it. And the timing, I think, was somewhere in the two to three o’clock hour range. And at that point, all of the businesses were closing or closed. And even there, God was totallyーHe had our backs. We hadn’t been pulled over the side of the road but literally seconds, when two vehicles pulled up behind us. 

One of them was just a person that saw what had happened. The other one was somebody who said, “I saw where your wheel landed. Would you like me to go back and get it?” And I said, “Uh…sure,” and he went back, and he got it. I found out through comparing notes that the tire—and this is scary—the tire looked like it just shot straight up into the air out of the wheel well. And that’s what ripped the aluminum panel off the side there and almost hit the following one of our trailing minivans—the one carrying the team, the girls particularly—and thankfully it missed them, but it wasn’t very far away from them. It could have… Anyway, the Lord was protecting.

So I wasn’t sure what to do, and that guy came back with the wheel, and he said, “Here you go.” And he said, “By the way, this exit you’re parked here, there’s a truck stop right up the exit. If you can limp it up there, you’ll at least be off the main road here and away from traffic.” And so we took the trailer, and I drove it on the rim, and we got to a truck stop there, and the guy followed us. And he said, “Hey, you know what? I’ve been thinking; you guys need to figure out what to do.” And he said, “I just happened to know the owner of a trailer repair shop two miles away from here.” And he said, “They’ve got an open lot. I’ll bet you if you brought it over there and parked it there, I could talk to him, and he could figure out what he could do to help you.” 

And I thought, “Well, I literally have no other plans otherwise.” I had been in contact with a pastor in the Springfield area, an acquaintance of mine from years past. So we got the trailer to that lot, slowly drove it on its rim again about two miles, two and a half miles, to get there. And lo and behold, someone was there. And they said, “Oh, absolutely, you can park it here. Be here first thing on Monday morning, 7.30 a.m. Monday morning, you can talk it through with the boss, and we can figure out the plan of attack.”

I was in a little bit of a quandary though, because, as I had learned, like I podcasted about a couple of podcasts ago, “Keep your hand to the plow; don’t cancel the meeting.” But I’m thinking, “There’s no way.” It was five hours from that trailer shop to the church in Viroqua. And I was thinking there’s no way I can get there and then a 10-hour round trip to come down here and do whatever I need to do. And he told me I needed to be here on Monday morning. And I thought I’m going to have to stay here.

The pastor that I’ve been communicating with said, “That’s fine. I have a place for you to stay.” Okay, well, what about my family and the team? Right? What am I going to do with them? So I contacted my contact person with the church in Viroqua, and they said, “You’ll never believe it. We just have someone, a relative who has a house they’ve been preparing for an Airbnb, and they have not put it on the market yet. It’s just about done, and it could totally house you and your family. Five bedrooms.” And he said, “It’s yours for the week.” And it was like, “Wow.”

So what we decided to do was I decided to send my wife and kids and the team up to Viroqua. I had one of my guys preach the morning service there and kind of introduce things. We just had a Cola-Clash there a year earlier, so that the church was familiar with what we were doing. It wasn’t a brand new church. That would have been a different story. And I stayed down in Springfield. They actually ended up letting me preach on Sunday morning. 

And on Monday morning, long story shortーthe long story even longer, right?ーThe shop took a look at my trailer and figured out what needed to be done, parts that needed to be ordered. The industry standard has been saying that those things are going to take months. Weeks. At least maybe months to get. And I was like, “I can’t do this…I need this.” They contacted the source, and it just so happened it was in stock, but it was going to take 7 to 10 business days to get to that repair shop. So that was a blessing. That meant we were only going to be out of the thing, Lord willing, for about one to two weeks. Probably two Cola-Clashes, but one to two weeks. 

So I gave the go-ahead to do what needed to be done on the trailer, and I hopped in the truck. I pulled out the clothes that we would need. It was kind of like a remembrance of the not-too-distant past, and jumped in the truck with the equipment crammed into the backseat and drove up to Viroqua, Wisconsin. So that’s where things get really interesting. I was honestly in my mind and in my heart, I’m thinking, “Oh yeah, it’s going to be an amazing week. This is going to be great.” 

And about 30 minutes before I arrived, I got a text from my point person with the church, and he said, “You got to check out this Facebook post.” I’ve got to be careful in what I say here, but long story short, the Facebook post was folks from the community that were very upset at us for inviting people to come to the event. Very, very, very upset. I won’t go into much more detail except to say it has been a very big challenge here this week. And we’re still in the midst of it, just to be perfectly honest with you. But I really believe that God is doing something great here. And we’ve done everything we can to be kind and fair to those that have been upset with what we’ve been doing. We’ve made a number of concessions, to be honest with you, at the request of Pastor and the folks in the community. And as I sit here right now…on the one hand, my spirit says this is going to be an unbelievably amazing week. On the other hand, I’m looking at it, and I’m thinking, “Dude, it’s already been torched. Like, there’s no wayーhumanly speaking.” 

But, the Lord reminded me of this verse that I want to share with you here. In 2 Corinthians 4,ーI was actually in a conversation with a family member about this on the ride upーPaul is writing to the Corinthians, and he says, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry,” and he’s referencing the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the chapter before, the ministry that means he can just forthrightly declare truth and the Spirit of God can change hearts in the process. He said, “…Seeing [as] we have [received] this ministry,…we faint not. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Cor. 4:1-2) 

It’s just a good reminder. You know what? We’re not doing any bait and switch with Cola-Clash here. We’re upfront with what we’re about. We are clear with what we’re doing. We are not being deceptive. We’re being forthright. We want to invite you to come. Yes, there are awesome competitions. There’s a Gospel message at the end that’ll show you how you can know for sure you’re on your way to Heaven. And he’s saying, “Listen, we’re not being deceptive. We’re just straight-up declaring the truth. We’re presenting it and letting the Spirit of God use it.” And he says in verse 3, “But if our gospel be hid,”ーif it doesn’t get out thereー“it is hid to them that are lost:” The stakes are high. He says in verse 4, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” And he’s essentially saying the modus operandi of Satan is to keep people from hearing and understanding the Gospel. Even if they hear it, he does his very best to blind their minds so they don’t get it, so it doesn’t click with them. And he says in verse 6, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

One thing that stirs me, even as I read it: God designed the light to shine in darkness, even out of darkness. Darkness can be a very catalyst from which the light shines. Honestly, we’re in a dark meeting here. This is a difficult time. I’m not gonna lie, young people, this is a hard moment. Probably one of the biggest spiritual battles we faced. Okay, but get this next verse, verse 7. “‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;”

He’s saying, “Listen, it may be tough, but God’s doing something.” The very design of us being fragile jars of clay, that’s the idea of that earthen vesselーthat’s who we are. We are the earthen vessels. We have a treasure. There’s a treasure inside of us that God wants to bust out of us. And what God does to get that out of us is: He allows trouble. He allows some perplexing situations, even sometimes some persecution. Sometimes He lets us be tossed to the ground. But that’s not the end. 

And he says in verse 10, “Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus.” He says, “Listen, you want to know what the constant state of my life is? Dying. I’m dying. Constantly. All the time. Every time I turn around, I’m dying.” Why? Why?! “That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.”

And he’s saying, “Listen, I die every day.” He’s not just talking about, “I make decisions that are saying yes to God and no to myself,” but, “God isーHe is killing me. And it’s so good. It’s for the sake of the Gospel. It’s so that God can manifest his power in an even purer, almighty, unbelievable way.”

So young people, I’m recording this podcastーI was supposed to record on Saturday, but things kind of got in the way of that with the trailer and all of that. I hope that makes sense to you hereーso I’m recording on a Tuesday; I’m several days late here. And I’m recording in the midst of a battle. And I’ll be honest with you, young people, I don’t know the end of this story. There’s more I really can’t share in this public venue here that doesn’t look good, but death never does look good. It always looks really bad. In fact, Jesus dying on the cross, that looked really bad. That was the end of the road for the disciples. They thought they were toast. It was all done. But there’s a resurrection on the other side that totally changes everything.

I know I’ve preached on this theme before. I just feel like God continues to bring it back to me over and over again. And, you know, young people, he does say “always.” This isn’t the kind of thing where you’re going to experience once, and “Oh, glad I got that behind me,” though there may be moments that are important and set the stage and set the table for your future. It doesn’t stop, because God doesn’t want His life to stop gushing out of your jars of clay.

Young people, I again, I don’t know the end of the story, but I do know this. God is good. I don’t know how this meeting is going to turn out. I don’t know if Satan’s going to win this particular battle, though we know God is going to win the war. I don’t know, but I really feel like, in my soul, that God did not set this week up for a failure. He set this week up for a supernatural victory, and that’s what I’m trusting Him for. 

And I’d appreciate your prayers for us, if you think of it. This week: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So let’s see what would that be? That would be 19th, 20th, and the 21st of July 2023. Pray for Viroqua, Wisconsin, and the surrounding communities. Pray that God will bless in an unbelievable way, and that it will all make sense on the other side. Pray that God will vault this church forward in the community, that God will somehow vindicate them, and that they will have many long-term opportunities with the community as a result of this week’s meeting.

So, well, young people, listen, you may not necessarily be experiencing the same kind of battles that we’re experiencing at this point on the road, but you will, especially if you’re living a life of surrender to God, especially if you’re living a life believing God for the impossible to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Young person, you can live a life for yourself and to make money and to have a comfortable life. You probably won’t experience this kind of battle then. Enjoy your nice little life.

 But there’s a world out there dying and going to Hell. And as long as God gives me opportunity and breath, I’m gonna spend my life trying to reach it. Will you join me?