Bobby Bosler: I’m excited to preach about tonight. I’m really thrilled with what God has done in your hearts. And to hear, even from several squad leaders, just the fact that there have been some tremendous testimonies.

It’s clear that God has done a very deep work. And that I really believe that this is a work that God intends to extend far beyond the bookends of this week. You know, young person, I want you to know that God does not just want to lead you to decisions of surrender.

He wants to lead you to a life of surrender. God doesn’t just want you to take a step of faith.

He wants you to take steps of faith all day, every day, till the day you die. And you know what? I really do believe that in this room, in each young person, there is enough potential just in you to bring the entire world to salvation through Jesus Christ.

You might be here, maybe you’re junior higher, and you might think, well, you know what? There’s not a whole lot of potential to me. Oh, that’s wrong.

That’s wrong. I’m looking at some young men, little guys, all right? You’re still called little guy, and you don’t like that, but you are a little guy.

I want you to know, little guy, you can grow up to be a man of God. In fact, you can be a man of God right now, and God can use you right now among your peers, in your family, in your school. God can use you to make impact so much larger than you could ever possibly imagine.

I’m talking to some young ladies right here. Maybe you’re in that awkward stage. You know what I’m saying?

Where you trip and fall on your face while you’re walking down the hallway, you know? Listen, you might think there’s no way I could ever be used by God to do much of anything. That is a lie from the devil.

God can use every last one of you to make a home that brings glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. To encourage your husband to be a man of God. To stay true to the word of God.

to help with those whispers of Satan that sometimes come to men of God, those temptations to talk some sense into them. You know what I’m saying? God can use you to win souls to Jesus Christ, to pray prayers that do big things in God’s world.

I’m talking to some young men who are still bound by the things that we’ve talked about this week. Still, even after several sessions where you’ve been confronted to your face about the fact that this garbage in your life is killing you. And if you would just shine the light on it, if you would just expose it and get honest about it, you could be free from it.

Listen, you who still don’t care what’s said from this pulpit, you young man, I’m talking to you, have enough potential in you to reach your entire school with the gospel of Jesus Christ, to reach your entire neighborhood with the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be a man of God, to reach an entire mission field with the gospel of Jesus Christ. God could use you to start a movement in some country where the gospel advances like a brush fire, faster than man can control.

Listen, I really do believe that in every one of you young men, every one of you young ladies, every parent, every pastor, every youth pastor, Every wife in this room, every child in the elementary years, just trying to stay awake in the surface here tonight. And every one of you, there is world-changing potential. It’s been our desire to help you understand who you are.

Listen, whether you’re here and you’re struggling, whether you’re here and you’ve been told you’re good for nothing, whether you’re here and you fail, it seems every time you turn around, whether you’re here and you feel like you could never do anything right, whether you’re here and you feel like nobody loves you, you’re good for nothing. Listen, I want you to know what you really are. You’re loved by God, as we heard this week.

You are a conqueror through Jesus, and you are a world changer. And you know, as we’ve been discussing here this week, the idea of overcoming impossibilities, I want you to know that every single one of you here in this room can overcome the impossibilities that perhaps you came to this conference that were burdening down your heart. I’m curious, how many of you here actually wrote down some impossibilities?

Does anybody here actually write down some impossibilities on your way here? Okay, some of you did. I hope you’ve been encouraged.

I hope you’ve been stirred. but really I want to hear in the tail end of this conference here, in the tail end of the progression that we’ve been trying to take you through, I want to maybe provide a little bit of focus in this whole matter of unlocking the potential that’s in you. But I need to warn you, the pathway to unlocking the world-changing potential in you, it’s not as you think it may be.

I remember not too long after I was called to preach, God began to stir me, that God could use my life, that he could do something in me, that he could do something through me. I began to understand, as I talked about a little bit earlier, that there was victory in Jesus. I began to understand that God, if I depended upon him, that he could enable me to do what I could never do in my own strength.

God put preachers in my life. In fact, God brought me to Baptist College of Ministry, And throughout my time here at BCM, God taught me day in and day out, chapel service after chapel service, after personal conversations with students, books that were recommended, passages that were preached on. And God continued to show me that I had a potential to reach the world with a gospel.

God could use me to do great things for him in this world. And I know as I was a student at Baptist College of Ministry, I was excited about God using me. In fact, as a student, God was using me, and I was thankful for that.

I was thankful for the times when, as a student, as a student leader, I had an opportunity to preach in homiletics class. You say an opportunity to preach in homiletics class? Yeah, I viewed it very different.

I didn’t view it as a test tube sermon. I had classmates I was burdened for. I had burdens on my heart.

And I didn’t just want to preach these random messages that I was supposed to preach. I was preaching to my classmates, and God used some of my preaching in some of my classmates. I remember there were times when I would preach in Fellowship Chapel.

I remember one time I had such a burden as a student, and I remember standing up and saying something like, and if you’re not willing to get right with God, we don’t want your kind at our college, there’s the door. You can get on out. I had somebody come up to me later and say, you can’t say that.

You’re just a student. I said, Dr. Jim says it.

I guess I can say it. I don’t know.

he doesn’t say it like that but um you know I I preached I remember one time preaching in a fellowship chapel I remember preaching on uh being cold or hot for the Lord I learned later that’s not the precise application of that passage some of you know what I mean by that but I preached it and God used it and I remember there was a young lady in my fellowship I remember she was uh she’d been hiding hidden sin for years and years and years.

And I remember as a result of that sermon, she went home and she unloaded the truck and she got right with God. And I thought, you know what? I could do this.

I could keep on doing this. And you know, I remember in Bible college, just getting the vision that God could use my life, that God could do something in me. I traveled with Dr.

Jim as a team captain in the spring of 2005. And there that semester, just seeing over and over again, how God could use me to bring people to hear the gospel. How God, I remember the very first week, I don’t know if you remember this, we were in North Charleston, South Carolina.

I went out my first day ever of recruiting, Goose Creek High School. Somehow, someway, I ended up in the JROTC outbuildings. Somehow, someway, they let me stand in front of a whole crowd of JROT students.

and I told them all about the competition and what was coming and how they could come and hear some preaching. And I got a bunch of names and numbers. And I remember there that night, my first rally night, a young man named Matthew came to the War of Special Forces.

He came, he sat, he had a great time on the field. He sat through the preaching. And I remember at the end of the preaching, he went back and I remember I got a chance to talk to him in the counseling room.

And I remember Matthew bowed his head and through tears, all he said was, save me.

I remember seeing that God could use me you know what young people I want you to understand that God can use you it’s a matter how twisted up doesn’t matter how much of a mess your story is it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you’ve made it doesn’t matter how awkward you feel how talentless maybe you think you are God can use you But you know, God has a way in the whole pilgrimage of teaching how he can use a man or a woman.

There’s a danger in that too. That danger is to think that we ourselves are the answer. When you begin to realize that God can use you, we begin to think that, well, you know what?

I am. I am the solution for this world. I am the one that God can use.

And instead of it being God using me, it’s God using me. And because of that, God has built into the process of making a man or woman of God an absolutely essential step. You want to know what that is?

turn with me to John chapter 12 please turn with me to John chapter 12 Jesus is speaking to his disciples God had been using him and I think his disciples were starting to get pretty excited about what was going to happen in and through their master and verse number 23 in John chapter 12 Jesus said this And Jesus answered them saying, the hour is come that the son of man should be glorified.

Now, as disciples, whether they understood it at that moment or figured it out later, the son of man was Jesus claiming to be deity. And but I’m sure what they got, they may not have understood at this moment what he meant by the son of man. But I think they caught the fact that something good was going to happen because Jesus said the hour has come.

It’s now time for me, the son of man, to be glorified. I don’t know what the disciples were thinking, but I imagine they were thinking at this exact moment in his statements, it was going to be awesome. Oh, Jesus being glorified.

Wow, what’s that going to mean? Does that mean that Jesus is going to stand up in front of all of the crowds in Jerusalem and maybe float up in the sky and maybe start emanating light from him and maybe he’s going to have lasers come out of his eyes and maybe just show himself finally to be the answer for all mankind. Maybe that’s what Jesus is going to do.

I don’t know exactly what the disciples were imagining. You know, the disciples, as they heard him say this, the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Am I on, by the way?

I’m not. Now I am. All right, very good.

I don’t know if perhaps the disciples were wondering what that would mean for them. Perhaps they thought maybe as Jesus is floating and glowing and showing himself to be who he was, maybe they also would kind of float and glow. And maybe they might even get some lasers out of their eyes too.

I don’t know. Maybe they imagine Jesus doing some great things and great miracles. And he did many great things and great miracles during his time.

and maybe they began to picture themselves. They remembered back to the times when they cast out demons in Jesus’ name and maybe they thought back to the times when they did great things and how Jesus just did miracles and I wonder if they thought, oh, Jesus is going to be glorified. Maybe that means we’ll get to get a slice of the action too.

But Jesus, as he expanded on what he meant by that, in verse number 24, he said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. Jesus, in this passage to his disciples, and to us here tonight is going to make it very clear, oh, friends, there is so much potential in you.

But the pathway to go from being someone who has the potential possibility of turning the world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ to the actuality of that potential happening in them and through them. There’s something that must happen before the potential inside of us is unlocked, unleashed before it can break free. First, you’ve got to die.

God in heaven, I do pray that you would attend this service in a special way. God, I ask that you would manifest your presence to us right now. I pray as I preach this message, Lord, I pray that you would take it and use it as you see fit.

Lord, I am weak. I know I have potential because I have you. But Lord, I’m still learning this lesson myself.

I learn this every day. And God, I’m asking that you would fill me with the Holy Ghost right now. I’m asking, Father, that you would cause your anointing and unction to rest upon me so that as I speak, it’s not me that’s speaking, it’s you that’s speaking.

And God, I ask, Lord, that you would bring us to a decision of death here tonight so that your unbelievable, world-changing potential and power can flow through us to turn the world upside down with the gospel. Would you bless now in Jesus’ name, amen. You know, people have been trying to cheat death for thousands of years.

Did you know that? According to legend, Gilgamesh. You’ve ever heard that name before?

Gomes tried to cheat death by earning immortality. But ultimately he failed and he died a normal human. The first emperor of China, Qi Shi Huang, tried to cheat death by banning the word death.

It’s kind of a dumb plan. But he had another plan. He also planned to cheat death by drinking an elixir of mercury.

That also was a dumb plan. The elixir killed him. Pope Innocent VIII thought that he could cheat death by injecting his body with the blood of children.

Yeah, that’s kind of gross. But he died anyway. Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, this gets even worse, okay, she took baths in the blood of murdered virgins to cheat death.

And she also felt that it kept her skin very smooth. Do you know what happened? She died too.

Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler tried to cheat death by searching for the Holy Grail, but he never found it. And he ended up killing himself with a cyanide pill. Today, in our world today, the transhumanism movement is trying to cheat death by modifying our genetic code or by augmenting or replacing our body with technology, but I’m going to make a little prediction.

Can I make a little prediction tonight? Every one of them in that movement is also going to die. You see, humanity hates death, and they do everything that they possibly can to avoid it.

But you know, I know another group of people that hates death too. You know what that group of people is? Yeah, it’s us.

It’s Christians. See, when Christians are confronted with an opportunity to follow Jesus to his death, oftentimes Christians recoil. They dig in their heels.

They hold back. They do everything they can to avoid it. And I believe the reason why is because Christians unfortunately sometimes do not believe their Bibles.

because Jesus, he had a very different understanding of death. Look back at our text. Jesus said, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.

Listen, if you want to live your life and simply live based on what you are capable of, then go ahead and resist death. If you want to experience purely what is humanly possible, then go ahead and resist death. But if you want to live for the impossible, if you want your life to do that which is humanly unexplainable, then I can tell you what the pathway is.

The pathway is to follow Jesus to his death because Jesus here in this verse says, See, Jesus knew that his death, him, him, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, him, Jesus, the God-man who came so that he might stand in the place of sinful man so that he might suffer the consequences that man and their sins earned. Jesus, he knew that his death was the path to eternal life.

He also knew that our death is the path to abundant life. Listen, some of you young people have been living a very humanly explainable existence. Your life can be explained by addition, math, subtraction.

Your life can be explained by human ingenuity. Your life can be explained by manipulation. It can be explained by you just pushing to get what you want.

But I want you to know God has something so much better for you. God wants you to slay giants. God wants you to cause impenetrable walls to topple.

God wants you and your life to do that which could not be done unless God did it. And I think sometimes we get a vision, we realize God can use me. God can use me.

That’s exciting. And then as we begin to take steps of faith and as we begin to follow Jesus, what inevitably happens is Jesus begins to talk to us. Jesus begins to place us in situations where in order to follow him, it would mean a decision of death and it would mean pain and it would mean suffering and it would mean sacrifice and it would mean that we, the very part of us that we love, would be shaved away and would have to die.

And sometimes we think, I’m not sure I’m up for that. I want to change the world. I don’t want to die, but I want you to understand that the only way you will ever change the world is if you’re willing to follow Jesus to your death.

See, the pursuit of doing the impossible is a pursuit of death that results in supernatural life. And if you want that supernatural, world-changing, God-sized kind of a life, you’re going to have to die. I’ve got three areas here briefly here that I want to talk to you about.

Three areas of death. Three things that you need to die to if you want to experience this supernatural, world-changing life. Number one, you need to put your sins to death.

You know, I’m talking to some young people here in this room. God’s working in your heart about a lot of different stuff here this week. And I’m thankful for every one of you that have made decisions, whether that’s in the privacy of your heart or whether you’ve gone and had conversations with people and endeavored to, as we said, shine the light on it and deal with it and get counsel on it.

I would imagine probably some of you maybe even chatted with your parents here and you’ve unloaded the truck to them. I hope if you haven’t done it yet, you’ll do it immediately after the service. And that’s great.

That’s wonderful. But there are some here in this room, you’re not interested in dying to your sins. You love your sins.

I’m talking to some young men here in this room. Maybe you got a girlfriend back home and you’ve been hearing preaching here this week about purity. You’ve been hearing preaching here this week about how God wants to deliver you from that which is dirty and unclean.

And maybe you in your mind, you do your very best to tune it out because frankly, you don’t want God to talk to you about that You got a girl to go back home to. Listen, I want you to know you can keep living for your sins. You can keep living for yourself.

You can keep doing those things that bring you pleasure, but only for a season. You can keep living for your phone. You can keep living for your music.

You can keep living for whatever it is that God has been talking to you about this week and you’ve not wanted to deal with it because it is too valuable to you. You can keep on doing it. and you can keep on living a humanly explainable life.

I remember as a high schooler, God began to stir me. Like I said, my senior year, God began to stir me that God could use me. And I remember the evangelist that came, he preached a message called A Clean Heart.

And I remember God was burning in my heart during that sermon. And I’ll never forget at the end of the sermon, and God was so talking to me about my sin. God was inspiring me that he could do something in my life, that he could do something through my life.

But the preacher said that if I wanted God to use me, I needed a clean heart. And I remember responding to that invitation. I remember actually talking to that evangelist, and I remember asking him this question.

I remember saying, you mean I have to deal with everything? Because there were some things I was willing to deal with. There were things I was not.

But I wanted God to use me. And I remember he looked at me and in a very kind way he said, well, the Bible seems to indicate that you should. Everything.

Remember, I dealt with what I knew at that moment in time. I dealt with everything. I had some conversations with my parents there that week about some stuff.

But you know what? even later on. That was in the fall.

In the following summer, another evangelist came to my church. He actually brought the war to my church. It was one of my predecessors, Billy Ingram.

He came to my church. I remember he did more than just preach to the teenagers, the lost teenagers in the war. He spent several sessions with the War Blitz program preaching to us Christian teens.

And at that point, I was already signed up to come to Baptist College of Ministry. At that point in time, I was already surrendered to the ministry. At that point, I’d already begun to see God do a few things where God used me in the community and leading a few young people to Jesus Christ.

And I remember as he preached, as only Brother Ingram could have preached at that time in his pilgrimage. Some of you know what I mean by that. Some of you have no idea what I mean by that.

He could really rip face. That’s what I mean. He’s got a lot more balance than his old age.

Don’t tell him I said that, please. I’ll get a phone call and he’ll rip face again. Okay.

He went after us. Do you ever associate people with animals? I don’t know.

Are there any people that you know that when you think of them, you’re like, that person is totally a turkey. They look like a turkey. They walk like a turkey.

And when they laugh, they sound like a turkey. Okay? There are people.

I remember there was a kid in high school, the brother and sister. I hate to say this. I shouldn’t say this.

I hope they’re not watching a live stream. The sister looked like a bullfrog. And her brother looked like a turtle.

Okay, posture and everything. I really could picture him pull his neck back into his polo and back out. I don’t know.

He had the lip. I don’t know. It was interesting.

Brother Ingram, I’ve always associated with a bulldog. Because, man, he could go after it in the pulpit. He went after my sin.

And I remember there was a whole other list of things that I had not yet come clean about. But I remember there that week, it was not just the sin that he preached on, but he preached on the answer. He preached on the potential that was in us.

And I desperately wanted God to use me. And really, to be perfectly honest with you, that is why I dealt with all of those things. I went home, I had some uncomfortable conversations with my parents about things I didn’t think I’d ever talk to a human being about.

Stuff that I wasn’t necessarily resisting the Lord about earlier. just he didn’t talk to me about it back then. I literally had earlier dealt with everything that I knew, but later on God was like, okay, that’s good.

I got more for you to deal with now. And I dealt with more stuff. I remember coming to Baptist College of Ministry and here as a BCM student, God would be working in my heart.

I remember several times around Victory Conference and when Dr. Jim and Brother Ingram would come into town to preach, God would work in my heart about some other things I hadn’t thought about. And I remember over and over again, I was presented with a decision of death.

Are you going to continue to hide this? Or are you going to die by going and getting right? I remember while I was on the road with Dr.

Jim in Apopka, Florida. They were building a new auditorium. They hadn’t used it yet.

I remember at one point in time, there was one thing that God was working in my heart about. One thing that I needed to deal with, and I needed to call up somebody to deal with it. And to be honest with you, I thought, there’s no way.

I can’t do this. There’s no way. I don’t want to talk to this person about this.

Uh-uh. No, no. Here I am.

I’m training for the ministry. No, I don’t want to talk about this. And I called up this person.

And you know, it’s kind of one of those things, hey, how you doing? Yeah. I need to talk to you about something.

And I made a choice. I was going to deal with it. I told him what God had told me to tell him.

I dealt with the sin. Confessed it to him. And you know what happened?

You know what happened? I’ve given this illustration in different ways before. I was current.

I had dealt with everything. Sometimes I think when folks live, you know, years and years and years without dealing with their sins, without being willing to take those steps to die to their sins, I think sometimes we build up such a backlog, God knows that he can’t necessarily put you with all of it at one time. So what God does is he works in your heart about a subsection of them.

And to you at that moment, it’s everything. It’s everything. It’s all of it.

And God is saying, are you willing to follow me by dealing with this? I’ve got so much potential in you. I see so much potential in you.

I can use you to do great things, but here’s a list of things you’re going to have to go and talk to somebody about. And we in our hearts, we think, if I did that, I think I’d die. And guess what?

Yes, that’s the point. I was current. Oh, it’s not that there weren’t other things that happened later that I didn’t have to come clean about, but as far as the backlog of stuff that had been in my life, of the garbage of things that had happened in my elementary years, in my junior high years, in my, even my senior high years, it was all dealt with.

I’d had every conversation I could think of to have, and God showed me to have. There wasn’t a single thing that I was hiding from anyone where I had committed an offense against them, for I had sinned against them. And I want you to know that to deal with those things.

I didn’t want to do it. But I did it. Because I wanted God to use my life.

See, there are some things that if you don’t put them to death, they’ll kill you. Some of you, the movies that you watch, they’re killing you. The stuff your parents do not want you to watch, And you know full well they don’t want you to watch it, yet you find a way to watch it.

You get the app on your phone. You find a way to watch it on YouTube. You do it and you hide it, and it is killing you.

Listen, if you want to live, if you want to fulfill your full potential in God’s kingdom, if you want to see all of that potential energy inside of you burst out from you, you’ve got to put your sins to death. Secondly, you’ve got to put your sons to death. You’ve got to put your sons to death.

You say, what in the world are you talking about, preacher? I want to remind you, don’t turn there for the sake of time, but I want to remind you in Genesis chapter 22, God had done an amazing thing and provided the son of Abraham, Isaac, for him. That very provision was a miracle.

It should not have happened. And it was an example of how God could do that which man cannot. It was a foretaste of all that God was planning to do down the road in more ways than I can even count here today.

And there was a point in time when God showed up in Abraham’s life and God said to Abraham, Your son, your only son, I want you to offer him as a burnt sacrifice to me. And Abraham found himself in a situation where he, Well, he had to make a decision of death. You see, all of what God had promised to Abraham was wrapped up in this son.

God had promised that through him, and not through Ishmael, that was the product of his own manipulation and human machinations. No, through his son, the child of promise, the child that was a miracle, the child that was given to him by God, It was through him that he would have descendants that were as numerous as the stars of the sky. It was through him that all of the families and nations on the earth would be blessed.

It was through him that God would do what he had promised to do. And yet there was a point in time when God said to Abraham, your son, your only son, I want you to put him to death. And that didn’t make any sense to Abraham, I’m sure, there at that moment.

And yet Abraham was willing to make a decision of death and take that which God had provided for him, to take that which seemed to be the very answer to his prayers, he took that which seemed to be the advantageous thing for him, a thing even from God’s own hand, and to put an end to it. See, there are some things that God might ask you to kill that don’t make a lot of sense. Maybe it’s something that’s precious to you.

Maybe it’s not evil. Maybe it’s not wicked. Maybe it’s not something that is overtly sinful.

Maybe it’s not even something that’s bad at all. And yet in the pursuit of God and his will and his plan and achieving his potential, there are times when God says, I want you to give this up. And sometimes that’s a hard choice.

Sometimes, perhaps, it’s a job that you’ve worked very hard to get, and God says, I want you to give it up. Perhaps it is a talent or a skill that you’ve invested a lot of time and money into developing, and God says, I want you to give it up. Perhaps for you, it is maybe even a financial provision.

Maybe something you’ve prayed about for a long time that’s dedicated to a very specific purpose, and God says, I want you to give it up.

and in those moments it’d be easy to think but wait god i prayed for this you gave this to me in answer to prayer i can’t give this up or or wait lord i’ve worked so hard for this god do you know how long i’ve sought this or or god do you know how much energy i’ve put into this do you know how much blood sweat

and tears i i i i’ve exhibited in order to get this or to achieve this or to learn this and when god shows up on your front doorstep and says I want you to give it up. It’s a decision of death. There’s all kinds of stories that I could tell.

The Lord taught my wife and I many things. I remember years ago, back right around graduation, God had called me to be an evangelist, particularly to teens. There’s all kinds of stuff that I could say specifically about how God did that, but I won’t now here for sake of time, but I remember God made it very, very clear to me that he wanted me to go and preach the gospel to teenagers.

It wasn’t but a couple days later, Dr. Jim approached me in the hallway here at school and he said, I was a Bible college student, he said, Bob, Minuteman needs a graphic designer and a web designer. Would you be willing to join staff with us?

And that was the first of many opportunities that God gave me to fulfill that. Eventually I ended up taking over the war. Eventually I ended up taking over the Cola Clash.

but you know I remember not long after I had graduated from high school I had a plan that Dr. Jim and I had come up with and that plan was okay I graduated in the spring of 2008 the plan was I would get married that fall and we already had that all figured out by the way okay Dr.

Jim didn’t figure that out for me but I’ll get married that fall and then the following spring I would travel with him as both a team captain and a trainee to lead one of the teams, the war and so on. And I remember as we made that plan, we had it all planned and booked and it was ready to go. And I remember I came back here.

We were getting ready to get married. And two people got in the way. Two people got in the way.

And they’re in this room tonight. One was Pastor Micah Schultz. Where is he?

He’s somewhere in here. And one was Pastor Van Gelderen. They got in the way.

Totally messed up my plan. You know what they said? They said, Bobby, if you’re planning on doing seminary at all, we recommend that you get it done before you launch out.

And we really think you probably should get it done before you launch out. And I remember thinking, but we have a plan. But God called me.

to travel with men and men, and God called me to go and do this thing, and this is the thing that we’d worked out, and I’m going to travel, and I don’t want to put him in a bad spot, and this was your answer to prayer, and this was your direction, and this was how you were leading us. And I got so mad.

But I remember not too long after that, I got alone with God, and I prayed about it, which by the way is a good thing to do more than say you’ll pray about it. you actually probably should pray about it. And when I prayed about it, you know what God said?

They’re right. They’re right. I remember that moment in time I made a decision of death and I said, all right, that’s fine.

We’ll do that. In this case, it wasn’t dying to it permanently, but it was dying to it temporarily. And I will tell you what, during those seminary years, God did so much to carve away me.

Listen, I still got plenty to carve away, okay, in my life. But God did so many deep things in my heart and in my life and in my family. We went through so many deep valleys of trial and challenge during those years.

There were so many things that I made mistakes, and other people in this room confronted me about them and really were instruments of revival in my life. And to be honest with you, if I had ignored what the Lord and some that God had put in my life had said, I would have gone on to do the big things. I would have gone on to be the answer to this world.

I would have gone on to all the glitz and glamour of whatever I thought it was going to be. It’s not as glitzy and glamorous as you think, by the way. Okay, there’s a lot of challenge out there in the ministry, especially traveling itinerantly.

I would have gone out, and I really do think I would have gone it myself. I would have been able to see what I could do. What my human potential was.

Listen, you’ve got to put your sons to death. Maybe good things, maybe great things, maybe even things that God really does intend for you. Of course, you know in the example of Abraham and Isaac, God ultimately did not let him go through with it, but in Abraham’s mind, he had gone through with it.

We find in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, He believed, he accounted that God was able to raise him up from the dead. And the author of Hebrews says, from whence he actually received him in a figure. He actually kind of did receive him back from the dead.

But you know what? If you want to achieve that world-changing, overcoming of impossibilities kind of a life, you’ve got to die to your sins, and you’ve got to put your sons to death as well. But there’s one more thing that I want to touch on.

It really is the focus of this passage here in John chapter 12. He says, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

And I do want to remind you before we dive into this point, there is a supernatural product that results. There is a fruit that is so much greater than the initial contribution. When you and I are willing to die, What happens is far more than what we ourselves could have ever accomplished.

The potential inside is exponentially larger. See, the third thing that needs to die is you need to put yourself to death. See, the greatest thing that God wants to die isn’t just your sins and it’s not just your sons, it’s you.

See, God knows the amazing potential inside of you, but the husk of self is keeping it bottled up. God wants you to let that husk be broken so that the life of Jesus can gush out from you and bring forth much fruit. This is not suicide, but sometimes it feels like it.

And it’s not just death to this or death to that. It’s letting God kill you. It’s giving everything up to follow Jesus.

Look at what he says in the next verse here, verse number 25. He says, He that loveth his life. And really that’s the problem right there.

That’s what’s holding back the unbelievable potential that’s inside of you. Because the potential that’s inside of you isn’t you. It isn’t any intrinsic quality of you.

What is special inside of you is God in you. It’s the power of Christ within us. It is the unbelievable power that God promised.

You shall receive power after that. The Holy Ghost has come upon you. It is that power that’s within us.

But the problem is, is we love our lives so much that that power is trapped inside of us. He says, he that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. And maybe you’re here and you’d say, well, you know what, preacher, I got that one solved.

I already hate my life. That’s not what this passage is talking about, okay? That’s not what this passage is talking about.

He’s using the Semitic idea of contrast here. And the idea of what he’s talking about is essentially this.

your willingness to follow Jesus needs to so exceed your desire to follow your own desires that it looks by hatred it looks like hatred in contrast one commentator said this the person who loves his life will lose it it could not be otherwise for to love one’s life is a fundamental denial of God’s sovereignty, of God’s rights, and a brazen elevation of self to the highest point of one’s perception, and therefore an idolatrous focus on self, which is the heart of all sin.

Another man said, John means us to understand that loving the life is a self-defeating process. It destroys the very life it seeks to retain. You know, one of the ways I like to state this is to die to you is to die to self-preference.

You know, I’m looking at young people out here in this room. You’ve got your own sense of style. You’ve got your own sense of the things that you like and the things that you do not like.

You have your own appetites. You have your own preferences in so many ways. And there are things, there are ways that you dress and there are things that you listen to and there are ways that you talk and words that you say and they are all wrapped up in your self-image of yourself.

And oftentimes when God shows up in our lives and he begins to try to carve those rough edges off of us, when God shows up and tries to shave away that which is you and your self-preference, we say, ow! That hurt! What are you doing?

I need that! That’s my arm! And what God’s doing is he’s saying, listen, I know this is you, but I want you to understand if you keep on insisting on you and what you want, it is a self-defeating process.

The very act of you living your life for you, the very act of you trying to preserve whatever sense of identity or uniqueness that is about you, the very desire to just, you know, you be you, is loving your life.

and if you love your life you’ll lose it see what god is calling us to do it’s not saying that god needs to uh to lead you to not like pepperoni pizza anymore i love pepperoni pizza like we travel in youth evangelism and it’s like heaven because we get pepperoni pizza almost every week and i could probably eat it every day of every week i’d have to upgrade the leaf springs in my trailer, but I would do it. I love pepperoni pizza. Oh, man.

I just love pizza in general, but pepperoni pizza, for me, that is the sweet spot. Amen is right. That’s right.

There’s also certain kinds of music that I used to love, too.

In fact, after I got right with God in my high school years there were certain kinds of Christian music that I would begin to listen to and there are certain styles and genres of music that I would listen to and to be perfectly honest with you in my growth and in my I would say immaturity to me this was the next step of doing the spiritual thing it was a whole lot better than the garbage I

used to listen to before but I remember as I began to grow and as God began to give spiritual discernment and as God began to place people in my life that had better spiritual discernment than I did as they began to point out the worldliness of some of the forms and genres of music

that even to me were the next steps in my spiritual growth I remember getting mad boy that’s a commonality sounds like I get mad all the time I don’t get mad all the time okay but you know when God confronts you about things sometimes we do. And I remember at one point in time I was told I couldn’t listen to a certain CD. Oh man.

You know what? I came to a point where I thought, you know what? If that’s what it takes for you to work in my life and do great things in and through me, so be it.

So be it, God. I’m willing to give anything up to follow you. You see, your love for God and for His will and for His plan and for His purposes in you has got to exceed your love for your preferences.

In fact, I would argue it needs to so exceed your love for your preferences that it would seem hatred in comparison. See, there needs to be a death to self-preference. But look at the next verse, verse number 26.

He says, if any man serve me, let him follow me. See, this call to follow Jesus to his death is to follow Jesus. In fact, I think it’s interesting that he says, and where I am, there shall also my servant be.

In other words, he’s saying, listen, if you want to see this amazing dynamic of the seed, this little husk of something fall into the ground and something exponentially larger and greater happen as a result of it, if you want to see the potential that is inside of you, unleash. You’re going to have to follow me and in the process of following me, this is going to sound really profound, you’re going to end up where I am. Where I am, there you are too.

And as much as this sounds kind of like a no-duh statement, Let me put it to you this way. Not only do you need to die to self-preference, you also need to die to self-guidance. I’m talking to some young people here in this room.

You’ve got your five-year, ten-year plan all mapped out. You’ve got it all figured out. You know where you’re going to be in three years, two months, and a day.

And you know what you’re going to be wearing that day, too. I am totally not a planner like that, by the way. In fact, this conference is a miracle that it happens, okay?

Because there are other people around here that are planners, all right? But so often we decide what we’re going to do. We decide where we’re going to go.

We decide what profession we’re going to go into, how much money we’re going to make, where we’re going to live, what kind of car we’re going to drive. And what really drives our life is not the Lord and his guidance. What drives our life is where we want to go.

We set the destination point and we really hope that God lets us get there. So oftentimes I talk to young people and even when it comes to the matter of college, right? I hate this question.

Where do you want to go to college? In fact, I remember in high school. In high school, I remember coming to a chapel.

I mentioned earlier this morning that there was a school that I was going to go to that everybody in my church went to. And if you didn’t go to that school, you were probably not right with God. It’s kind of one of those things, you know what I’m saying?

And I remember there, I remember I went to my Christian school, and there at the Christian school, one day the rep came from that school. And remember, he stood up in front of everybody, and he said, I want a question for you all, and I really want responses. What do you want in a Bible college?

And oh man, people raised their hands. I want a good sports program. Well, you know, we’ve got this and that, and this and that, and this and that.

What else? Over here, I want to date all the girls. well you know what we’ve got this thing and that thing and the other thing and I want you know however many majors well we’ve got 3,543 majors or something like that I don’t know and people were all going into all of the things that they wanted in a college and I remember there was one kid and I will grant him this he was a nerd.

He was. He looked the part. He dressed the part.

Pocket protector. up above his belly button. I’m not even joking, all right?

The whole thing. He raised his hand. Apparently he came from a conservative home, okay?

And he said, strict dress standards. And I remember everybody in the room burst out laughing. And it wasn’t kind of like, ha, ha, ha, we’re with you.

No. it was a derisive mocking laughter including the rep you know he spent I don’t know 15 20 more minutes talking about what do you want in a college what do you want to get out of your college experience how is this going to further your life and at the very very end three to four minute little spiritual ditty kind of cracked open the scripture said a few things so that it could be said

that he came from a Christian college I’ll be honest with you I had walked into that chapel session pretty much planning on going to that college and I walked out of it thinking you know what Lord do you have something else for me because I’m not sure they’re really serious about training servants of the Lord I remember not too long after that my friend oh man my friend

and I we’d gone to a leadership camp my senior year of high school and there at that camp, Dr. Tom Farrell preached, and all God worked in all of our lives. God did such a deep work, and there was me and two of my friends, all three of us.

Man, we dealt with stuff. We made serious, significant decisions, and all three of us came back on fire for God back to the school, and I remember one of my friends told me he was going to go to a particular Bible college, and I thought, well, you know, we’ll be making decisions together. I guess that’s where I ought to go as well.

And so I made the decision that I was going to go off to that Bible college. Then not too long after that, my parents planned a college trip. And they planned that college trip so that we would go one night to the Bible college that I was wanting to go to with my friends and five nights at Baptist College of Ministry.

We knew somebody here, the Holloways actually at that time. And I don’t know if that was a subtle hint or what, but I remember when I came here, there was a freshman that took me under his wing and spent time with me. He prayed with me.

He actually had devotions with me in the morning. He took me out soul winning. I had never done that at that point before, really.

Not at least the way that he had me do it. I remember knocking on the door in Milwaukee. Somebody behind the door said, Who did?

I’m Bobby, and I’m not sure what the name of the church is that I’m from. I haven’t learned that yet, okay? I remember while I was here, I remember Dr.

Berry preached actually on moral integrity. I happen to remember that in the chapel. I even ended up going on a shopping trip with the ensemble.

Here I was in my Hawaiian shirt, not joking, walking around with this sharp group of college students as they’re picking out suits, and I’m over on the rack saying, wow, this Hawaiian shirt, this would be awesome. Mrs. Van Gelder remembers that.

Nobody thought I’d ever come to BCM. Nobody. I didn’t think I’d come to BCM.

In fact, I bought a $50 hoodie at the other school to wear around this school so everybody would know, I’m taken. But while I was here, God spoke to me. And he said, I want you to come here.

Oh, I didn’t want to do it. My best friend and I, we were going to go to school together. I already made a spiritual decision, right?

To go where it seemed like God was working, right? Back when I got home, God kept pounding me over and over and over and over again. This is my will for you.

This is my will for you. This is where I want you to be. And finally, I broke.

He was in Bible class. Actually, one of the professors that comes here on an adjunct, he was teaching in my Bible class and going off on a rant about how resisting God’s will hardens your heart. He had no idea what was going on in my heart.

But in that Bible class, God, well, he broke me open. And I remember I turned to my friend and I said, I can’t go to Bible college with you. I’m sorry.

God’s calling me to go to BCM. You know, we need to have a death to self guidance. Just because it’s what you want doesn’t mean it’s what God wants.

Just because it’s what you’ve been planning forever doesn’t mean it’s what God wants. And this death to self, this you dying, is essentially saying, God, my future is not my own to shape. It’s not my own to plan.

It’s not my own to plot and chart. It is yours to determine where I will be in six months. It is yours to determine where I’ll go for my life’s work.

It is you, God, who is the one who guides. And one last point. Verse number 27.

Here Jesus says, Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.

But for this cause came I unto this hour. You say, what does this have to do with death? Remember, Jesus was going to be, he actually is the seed that went into the ground produces abundant fruit.

In the direct context here, I do believe that illustration applies to every one of us. That is the point of this message, and I think it’s the point of Jesus. But Jesus was the first fruits, so to speak.

And Jesus is saying, okay, what should I do? Should I pray that God would deliver me from death? Should I pray that I wouldn’t die?

Would that be the best thing? That I wouldn’t die. No.

No, that’s why I’m here. I am here to die. This is why I came.

And I see one more area that we need to die to self. We need to have a death to self-preservation. A death to self-preservation.

So often we try our very best when we begin to realize what Jesus really wants. When we begin to realize in this road to becoming a world changer when God begins to shave away the layers and we realize he’s not going to stop with our arm, right? We realize he’s not going to just stop with the outside, the exterior trimming, when we realize what he’s really after is to get all the way down to your heart and to stop it from beating.

When you realize God is not just after adjusting your lifestyle. He’s not just after changing a few of your habits and standards. When you realize that God isn’t just about changing the externals, but He’s actually after you on the inside.

Sometimes I think we can go in that fight or flight mode.

okay i’m sorry i just just stick with me all right i remember in colorado greeley colorado i was with pastor unru there some of you know him he’s a great man and while we were there at one point we were in his church and i remember looking over the side and i remember seeing uh oh what is a prairie dog prairie dog over just outside his glass doors there and he had told me those prairie dogs are pests. They may be cute, but they’re pests. Okay.

And we kill them like rats and mice. Okay. And so I said, pastor, there’s any, they had been ruining his field outside the church.

And I said, pastor, there’s a prairie dog. And he said, go corner them. I’ll go get the shovel.

And so I run outside and I chased the prairie dog around the air conditioning enclosure and chase the prairie dog all the way into the corner. He had kind of a similar texture outside wall as we do here. And remember that prairie dog backed into the corner.

I’m not joking. Normally prairie dogs, you know, like this, it stood up on its hind legs and put his back into the corner where, where the, where the wall was. Okay.

Back like this. And I thought, whoa, I didn’t say hands up, you know. And I remember I said, pastor, I’ve got him cornered.

He’s like, I’ll be right there. And I, you know, he’s, he’s coming around and this prairie dog, I don’t know what happened, but, but he got that big eyes, those big eyes, and his body tensed up, and no joke, he took his arms, and he started going like this, and climbing up backwards, the corner of the wall, he got almost all the way up to the gutters.

I never knew prairie dogs could do that, but it was doing it right in front of me, desperately trying to get away. The pastor came around, got that shovel, and whack! He didn’t climb.

Another life, okay? There was that moment, that moment of intense desperation to get out of there, and I think sometimes when we really realize where God’s going with his desire to bring us to our death, I think sometimes young people, maybe who even come to a conference like this, and maybe they’re willing to make a few changes and alterations, but really they got their eye on something.

And when they begin to realize that God might change all of it, that God’s after them, that God is after a fundamental shift in who they are. Sometimes I think people get spooked and they run. You know what happens when they run?

They abide alone. They live their existence on the purely human level. They do not overcome impossibilities.

They live a life that is merely the possible. But God has called us to so much more. Listen, you know what, young people?

This is supposed to be an encouraging message here tonight. Believe it or not.

As you make these decisions of death, the good news is that when you’re willing to die, God makes you live when you’re willing to die when you’re willing to surrender unconditionally absolutely you’re willing for God to dig in not just to the externals but dig into the core of who you are on the other side is an unbelievable supernatural world changing power that can be unleashed in and through you that can bring thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people face to face with Jesus.

Years ago in Pennsylvania, there was a young lady who had huge potential. She was a believer and a Bible college student who was training to serve the Lord and had just finished her freshman year. But she also had a huge problem.

She just slept with a guy she didn’t even know. She went back to college not knowing that her problem would get even worse because she was pregnant. Shortly into the semester, she took a pregnancy test and discovered that she was pregnant and her college plans were pretty much ruined.

Or were they? She knew that it would be easy to hide her sin and terminate the pregnancy, but she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t right.

It was right then and right there she made a decision of death. She called her parents and unloaded the truck about what she had done and brought her sin out into the open. Her parents forgave her and made arrangements for her to leave Bible college and settle down in a family’s home in rural Pennsylvania for the duration of the pregnancy.

But she had another decision of death, staring her in the face. Whenever she looked down at her growing womb, what would she do with the baby? She knew that the selfish thing to do would be to keep the baby for herself.

She couldn’t expect her parents to support her. And she certainly didn’t have the means to support the baby herself as a 19-year-old. A choice to keep the baby would be a purely selfish choice and would not have the child’s best interests in mind.

The child, though a product of fornication, was precious to her. She didn’t want to give the baby up, but she knew that she must. She knew that God wanted her to do it, so she chose a placement family with a reputable adoption service.

After nine months, she delivered a healthy baby boy and immediately was faced with another decision of death. Would she stick to her decision to give the baby up? In the hospital room with her new baby in her arms, she died to her preferences, her own wisdom, and her own ability to hang on to any influence she might have on the child.

She signed on the dotted line to give up her rights to the child, to deliver him to the adopted family, and to seal the records in what was known as a closed adoption. And just like that, he was gone. Thirty-three years later, after years of wandering and wondering, she received a letter in the mail from the adoption agency.

They wanted to speak to her on the phone and ask that she call them as soon as possible. Curious, she called and they said that someone had left a message for her. The message was from her son, and this is what it said.

I want you to know that I’m saved and serving the Lord as an itinerant evangelist. Thousands of teenagers have come to Christ through my life. My parents raised me for the Lord, and now I’m married and have three wonderful children.

Your decision to give me up was the right decision, and God has used it for great good in my life and in my family. I’ve prayed about making contact for years, but haven’t wanted to risk any negative repercussions in your life or family by making contact. As much as I would like to meet you, I also want you to feel the complete freedom to take what was just shared and be encouraged without making contact.

If, however you feel, it would not jeopardize your current relationships, I would be very much open to the possibility of connecting. After weeping for joy, she told the agent that she would most definitely like to reconnect. They, in response, told her her son’s name, and you probably already figured this out, Bobby Bosler.

On the first Mother’s Day, after our reunification, I wrote this poem for my birth mom that I think summarizes her decisions of death and the supernatural results that followed. To plant a seed into the ground where I can no more view, where love’s sweet gaze of tenderness is blind, it is hard to do. You find the seed beyond your grasp, beyond your loving care.

you’re powerless to do a thing except to kneel in prayer you feel as if you’ve given up a task that should be yours your weakness fears and dark regrets as one great army war against your faith your hope the love that led you to this plight but yet you know deep down inside the choice you made was right. While seed lays dormant in the ground, all hope has not been lost. For God, the Lord of life and death, has taken up your cost.

The miracle within the soil is not man’s task to work. And yet, without surrender’s choice, the seed be lone and dark. We never know just what will come when to our will we die.

But God who raised the dead, that seed will greatly multiply. So thank you for your step of faith to plant me in the sod. Your love and your surrendered choice have brought much fruit to God.

You know, when we talk about Thee Generation, total surrender, total dependence, this is what we’re talking about. being willing to die to your future being willing to die to you because when you die God can do in and through you an impossible