Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from New Freedom, Pennsylvania, where I and my team have the privilege of joining an old friend, Adam Burt, and doing the Cola Clash here in this place.

We were here four years ago and I was so thankful for all the young people the Lord brought into this building and for all the young people that got saved and were thrilled again to see that God is still on the move here in this town. The Spirit of God is still working in hearts.

In fact, last night as I preached the gospel, it was just so neat to see that the conviction, just as we had prayed, the conviction of the Holy Spirit was so thick. Literally, there were young people that were trying to leave every five to ten minutes. It was actually kind of ridiculous.

In fact, there was one young man who probably seven times stood up from right in the middle of his team to leave, coming up with all kinds of different excuses, saying, oh, I got to do this or, oh, I got to do that. But you know what? By the time I got to the invitation, he stood to his feet for a different reason.

He went back, went upstairs to the auditorium and trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. I tell you, young people, never take for granted conviction, never take for granted the fact that God is working and go for it when it comes to reaching people with the gospel. But you know, in the process of going for it, I found a lot of times that we can get a perspective that is maybe not totally balanced, definitely not totally accurate.

You know, I’ve got my team with me and I’m training them. I’m trying to help them understand what it means to be desperate with God and recruiting. And this summer we’ve been studying through the book of Romans.

I’ve shared a couple of things on the podcast along the way with our new format. I definitely don’t get a chance to share quite as much as I normally would. But we’ve been going through here these last weeks or this last couple of weeks, Romans chapter 7.

And I want to just take a few minutes. I want to challenge you with something God’s been working in our hearts about as a team. In Romans chapter 7 and in verse number 18, Paul says, For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.

For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. Paul’s been teaching a lot of things in Romans chapter 7. I don’t have time to go into even half of it here today.

But what Paul is in essence teaching us here is he’s saying, listen, Even as a Christian, even as someone who’s born again, blood-bought by the blood of Jesus, on our way to heaven, there is still something wrong inside of us. There is an intrinsic weakness to us. He says, in me dwelleth no good thing.

Now, okay, I understand that Jesus lives inside of us. The Spirit of God is inside of us. That’s why it’s really important that he qualifies there and says, I know that in me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing.

Okay, so that little phrase by saying in my flesh, there is a sense in which in my spirit there is something very good inside of me. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But in this section, he’s talking about our typical experience before we really understand what the spiritual part of us is as believers.

He says, in me dwelleth no good thing. And here’s kind of how the experience that I have. To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find.

Not for the good that I would, the good things that I feel like I should do, that I want to do, I do not. But the evil which I would not, that I do. And he’s saying here, listen, I am in this quandary.

Here I am. I know that I ought to be doing right. Maybe you’re listening to this podcast and you think, man, that’s me.

I know that I need to be living a life of surrender unto God. I know that I ought to be handing out gospel tracts. I know that I ought to be witnessing to my friends and coworkers.

But how to perform that which is good, I find not. My team faces this on a regular basis. They’re going out recruiting, and they’re going running up to people, trying to find people, teenagers, and inviting them to come to the event.

many times they find themselves kind of like this. First, I know what I ought to be doing. I know I ought to be recruiting these people and inviting them to come, but how to actually get it done, I’m not able to figure it out.

And he says here, listen, the things that I ought to do, I don’t. And the things that I shouldn’t do, I do. And he says in verse 21, I find then a law that when I would or when I want to do good, evil is present with me.

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, in my body, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. And he’s talking about this conflict that he experiences. He says, you know what?

There’s a part of me that really wants to do right. There’s a part of me that really wants to succeed for Jesus, who wants to turn the world upside down with the gospel, who wants to see people saved, who wants to make a major difference in this world. And yet, it almost seems like there’s a part of me that trips me up, that messes it up, that holds me back every single time I try.

Is that your experience? Have you ever found yourself in that kind of a Christian walk? I know I have.

I know my team has here at certain times throughout the summer. And I’ll bet if we found ourselves in situations like that, you probably have too. Oh, you want to tell your friend about Jesus, but you know what?

You just can’t seem to get up the courage and step out of the boat and do it. You know, you see other people in life and, you know, they’re spending time with God. Maybe they’re even spending an hour with God.

And you think, wow, that’s great. I should do that. There’s a part of you that really wants to spend time with God.

And yet when you get down to actually doing it, you don’t. You get distracted by your phone. You fall asleep.

You do all these other things except for what you want to do. And so there’s this conflict. I believe that there’s a lot of spiritually minded young people all over the place, you included, you really, really want to do right.

And you really, want to make a difference in this world. But it ain’t happening, friend. It’s not working.

And you know, when you hear a podcast like this and other podcasts like the Go Mission podcast or even Satisfied and you hear these folks about how, wow, look at these opportunities that are out there that God wants to use you in.

You know, even my podcast a little while ago, Your Lump of Dough, and you read about how, you know what, God wants to use you to reach your whole school with the gospel and when you read about victory over, you know, and having moral integrity or you listen to the girls podcast as they talk about peace and joy and you read about how this ought to be what our Christian life should be like and yet our experience is totally underwhelming, almost Es contradictor.

Es a hard place to be. Es a hard place to be when God teaches us that you ought to be winning and we’re losing. Es ahard place And I’m convinced that a lot of times young people, whether they go to a youth conference, a youth summit, which by the way is coming up this coming October 13th through 15th.

It’s the War Max, but I won’t say any more about that right now. But you come to a place and you hear about all these expectations and all that God could do through you, and you decide to give it a try, and you give it a try, and it doesn’t work. It can be so infuriating.

It feels like there’s a battle going on inside of you, And it feels like on the one hand, you know, you’ve got this amazing technology that ought to give you the victory. You have Jesus inside of you, right? And you are surrendered to God.

You really do want to do what God wants you to do. But every time you set out to do it, it seems like you’re sabotaged on the inside from actually getting it done. And, you know, that is the experience that Paul is talking about in the first person here in this passage.

He’s not just saying this is what everybody experiences, though it is, and that’s a part of the reason why he’s sharing this. He’s saying this is what I experienced. The good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do.

He says I delight in the law of God. I want to do what God wants me to do. on the inside, but there’s this other principle, like the law of gravity, that just keeps pulling me down.

It just keeps pulling me down. You know, it’s like he’s saying, you know, it’s like this, just imagine the laws, laws that we think of, laws of gravity, right? You think about it, you imagine you go outside and, you know, you look up and you think, man, I ought to be, I want to soar like a bird and so you jump and you flap your arms.

What happens? You certainly don’t fly. You may go up for a quarter second, but you’re going to come right back down and sometimes that’s what it feels like to try to be surrendered to God.

You’re like, man, God wants me to soar through the sky and so you jump and flap your arms and you come right back down again. And you say, oh man, that was tough. Maybe I got to jump harder and so you jump harder, flap your arms a bunch more times, but you still hit the ground.

And it’s like, no matter how hard you try, it just seems like the law of gravity is pulling you down. And in the same way, young person, you try to do right, you try to serve God. And it seems like no matter how hard you try, there’s this contradictory force that keeps dragging you down.

What’s God doing? What in the world is going on? Is there something wrong with you?

Yeah, there’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong with all of us, but not something uniquely wrong with you. Here’s what’s wrong.

It’s just you. In this passage, you don’t hear the Spirit of God mentioned anywhere. In this whole section, it’s about me trying to do it.

He says, listen, I want to do it, and maybe you do want to do right. You want to do what God wants you to do, and you’re trying to do what God wants you to do, but you fail and you fail and you fail. What’s God doing?

What’s going on here? What is this experience supposed to lead us to? Why is Paul even talking about this here in this passage?

I believe the whole thing is leading up to verse 24. In verse 24, Paul says this, Oh, wretched man that I am. God is leading us, and God is letting us fail over and over and over again because he’s trying to bring us to the end of ourselves.

The idea of the word wretched is miserable, pathetic. And he’s saying, I’m pathetic. I am miserable.

I can’t do this, no matter how hard I try. You might say, preacher, tell me something I didn’t know. The reason why God, I think most of us realize theoretically that we can’t do it, but God many times has to teach us practically through experience that we can’t do it.

And in verse 24, Paul, in his recounting of his own experience, is saying, listen, I had to come to the point when I realized that I was pathetically miserable wretched. I can’t do it, and I’ll never be able to do it, because until we come to that point, we’ll never look away from ourselves for someone else to deliver us.

In fact, as he continues in verse 24, he says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? See, God is trying to bring us to the point where in our experience we try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail so much that we get to the point where we say, oh no, this ain’t going to happen. I can’t do this.

I’m hopeless. Because when we get to the point where we realize we are completely incapable of getting it done and that we are hopeless, that’s when we can begin to look for a solution outside of ourselves. That’s when we can look to Jesus.

You know, young people, I’ve said this before in youth summits and in other podcasts, total surrender by itself is a very miserable place to be. Because total surrender is yielding to the expectations of God. It’s saying, God, I want to do right.

I want to do your will. But total surrender is only half the equation. And if you try to do total surrender without total dependence, you’re going to live in Romans 7.

You’re going to live in that experience of, I want to do right, but I can’t. It’s not happening. You’re going to live in a place where you try to do things for God, but they don’t work.

It doesn’t pan out. You fail, and you fail pathetically. And all of that is God trying to teach you that you can’t live the Christian life in your own strength.

See, the whole point of this section is to get us to Romans chapter 8, where we learn to walk after the Spirit, to live in the victory that is provided by the Holy Spirit of God who lives inside of us. If we depend on ourselves and our own wanting and trying and attempting, we’re going to experience failure every time and we’ll be miserable.

But when we get to the end of our own selves, the end of our own strength, When God brings us to that point of desperation where we’re sick of failing and we know we can’t succeed, that’s when we look away to Jesus. That’s when we break. We break.

We snap. And we realize God still wants me to succeed. God still wants me to win.

But I’ve got to look away to somebody else to give me the victory. Young people, you can’t live the Christian life. You’ve never been able to.

You never will be able to. But Jesus can. The Spirit of God in you can enable you to overcome the weakness of your flesh, to obey God, to do great things for Him, and to turn the world upside down with the gospel.

Young people, this is an encouraging message here today. God’s trying to bring you to desperation. so that he ultimately can bring you to deliverance.

But if we refuse to get desperate, we won’t end up finding deliverance. This, oh, wretched man that I am, moment of desperation is the key. Young people, total surrender.

That’s what God wants out of each one of us, and I want to encourage you, don’t just surrender to God. That’s a miserable place to live, but you also need to depend upon his power. That’s the only time when God will show up and God will enable you to do what you could never do in your own strength.

Listen, don’t just talk about it. Don’t just think about it this week. Live it in the power of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for listening.