Welcome to the Thee Generation podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you here today from Fairmont, West Virginia, uh, where I’m actually in the process of getting ready for a sermon.

And I have been, uh, just ruminating and thinking about a text of scripture.

There’s been a lot of things honestly crowding into my mind, even as I thought about this podcast here today.

But before I share that, I just want to make sure you all know that the Thee Generation Youth Summit is coming up here very soon.

Um, in fact, it’s just a couple of weeks away right now.

Let me put an exact number on that.

Oh wow.

As of today, it is four weeks away.

If you want to keep track of how long there is till the TGS on the home page of theegeneration.org, depending on when you see this is going to say the twenty twenty six Thee Generation Youth Summit begins in.

And it’ll give you a number of days register now, which you really want to pay attention to that Register Now link, because if you’d like to come to the TGS, we’ve got a great set of things coming up, but if you want to come and enjoy it, you do need to register and you do need to make plans to attend with hundreds of other young people.

Uh, we’ve actually been just working through some of the final details of the schedule coming up here recently.

And I am so excited that Dr.

Jim Van Gelderen, of course, will be one of our primary speakers.

I also will be speaking at the TGS.

Uh, we’re going to have Ed Loney, uh, which is a young young man, a fellow evangelist who travels the world.

He’s going to be speaking several times at the event.

And, uh, in addition to that, we also have several other rise up workshops.

Why do I say rise up?

Because that’s going to be our theme.

Because you know what?

Often we find ourselves limited.

We find ourselves, instead of soaring, uh, under the updraft of God’s divine enablement.

Instead, we find ourselves stuck to the ground, so to speak.

And there are many things that we’re going to be covering at the youth summit.

But during those workshops, those are going to be on Friday.

We’ve got one person who’s going to be covering rising above comparison, dealing with insecurity.

Someone else is going to talk about rising above shame, speaking about maybe your past.

Someone else is going to be speaking about rising above excuses and dealing, dealing with the matter of responsibility.

Another speaker is going to be dealing with rising above distraction.

This is going to deal with your attention.

This is a huge topic in today’s society.

And now there’s going to talk about rising above apathy, dealing with your desire.

Um, and then one more is going to deal with a session called rising Above Your Feelings, dealing with your emotions.

Those are just practical things that often keep can keep us pinned to the ground.

When God has designed us to fly, to glide, to soar.

Because Christ lives inside of you young people.

You don’t have to be limited by really anything other than God’s amazing plan for your life.

And if you understand that, I really hope and trust and pray that each one of you will really.

And I don’t say this in a cliché way that you’ll really take off not only in your battle against sin, but in your effectiveness for him.

Uh, maybe that you’ll really take off in the great plans that God has for you, and you’re yielding to him, surrendering to him, depending upon him to do those things that he designed you to do.

Um, the Thee Generation Youth Summit is October seventh, eighth, and ninth in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin.

Uh, registration is open.

It’s been open for a couple of weeks now.

We’ve got a great, very healthy group of people that’s already signed up. registration is one hundred and twenty dollars.

From this point forward here, and we would love for you to come and attend and enjoy your time with us.

Of course, there’s all the exciting competitions, the gigantic four foot ball we use for four way, four team big ball volleyball, spoke tackle, tube tug, and all of the other classic Minutemen competitions that have been scaled up for four team competition in a massive crowd.

So make sure you plan to join us.

I don’t know of any other youth conference, frankly, in the entire world that is quite like this youth conference.

There are other good youth conferences out there, don’t get me wrong, with great speakers and great programs, and they all have their own unique flair about them.

But this one, this one’s fun.

This one’s stirring.

This is truth that God is going to use in your life.

And, um, it also has the whole Thee Generation network as kind of a surrounding support system, just to continue to encourage you throughout the year.

So actually, all of that really has to do with some things.

Like I said a few minutes ago that I’ve been rolling around in my mind.

What is it that limits us often, uh, in our walk with God?

And really, if you could, what is it that you think would be the greatest thing that you could ever do in your entire life?

In fact, if you think of yourself succeeding, if you think of yourself thriving, if you think of yourself and imagine what it would look like for you to be, um, soaring to use our TGS, uh, vocabulary here.

What would that look like?

Maybe you might think, well, maybe one day I’d be an evangelist and get to lead a bunch of people to Jesus Christ.

Maybe it would be, uh, maybe you’re listening and you think, man, I just think to soar would look like being a pastor of a growing, thriving big church.

And maybe it would be, uh, maybe you and your mind and in your heart you think, well, I just think it’d be to be a great soul winner and seeing a bunch of people saved on a regular basis.

And you know what it might be?

Maybe you might think, well, you know, it’d be like being a leader of a youth movement or being in charge of a ministry that’s making an impact on people’s lives.

Maybe you imagine discipleship happening in people’s lives changing.

Maybe you imagine just having a family that loves the Lord.

Maybe you imagine being a solid church member who’s faithful and loves his church and supports the cause and the ministry that his church is after.

I don’t know if maybe you, in your mind and in your heart, imagine the front end of those different examples I got is maybe a little bit more desirable than maybe the tail end of some of those things that I just described.

And this is something I’ve been thinking about because honestly, I think as much as we talk about total surrender to God and total dependence on his power to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said that in my life.

Um, I think it’s easy to get our hearts and minds off of what real success looks like as a Christian, off of what God is really calling us to actually do.

And we can get our eyes onto the glitter and glamor of what might look like a successful ministry.

Now, let me give a little disclaimer here.

God wants our ministries to be successful.

God doesn’t want us to fail in our walk with Christ, in our service for him.

God doesn’t want us to be failures in our witness for Christ.

God doesn’t want our prayers to fail.

He doesn’t want our families to fail.

He doesn’t want our academics to fail.

Right?

He wants us to win.

We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

And we talked about that a lot last year’s Thee Generation Youth Summit.

But I’ve just been sitting here and just asking myself the question.

Okay, well, does that mean then that a regular, average Joe Church member who’s not a pastor or an evangelist, does that mean that they have failed?

Does that mean that, let’s say a deacon who maybe he’s not serving on staff in some glittery, glamorous role, does that mean that he is failing?

Um, and even if you take that and scale it up, okay, so maybe you do lead a ministry.

Maybe you do find yourself in full time vocational ministry.

Some of you might be on the edge of becoming a college student, and maybe you are a Bible college student right now, and you’re looking ahead to what the next steps are for you.

And maybe you feel like in your heart, unless it looks like X or Y or Z, I might be a failure.

Honestly, I think young ladies think about this a lot when they’re thinking about who they might marry.

Oh, I just got some of your attention right there, didn’t I?

And what can happen is their thinking solely about big major deal effectiveness in ministry.

And I think it’s possible that maybe even a young lady can miss the point of her life.

What do you get, Nat?

Brother Bosler.

You might be thinking here, there’s two words that I really think need to be echoing in our minds and in our hearts.

And I think these two words need to trump every single expectation, every single mental picture that we might have about what it means to be surrendered and dependent.

Um, again, we get these glamorous pictures again, you hear the stories in go mission and I think you should you think of a whole country reached and listen, maybe that is what success is going to look like for you.

But these two words, these need to overshadow and shine brighter to switch analogies there than anything else you might think.

I’m looking at John chapter one and verse forty three.

He just got done talking to Andrew and Peter and um, he says this the day following, Jesus would go forth into Galilee and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, and here these two words, follow me, follow me.

You know, young people.

What if following him didn’t look the way you imagined it?

What if following him didn’t accomplish what you thought your life was supposed to accomplish?

Would it still be a success?

These are questions we really need to grapple with, and we really need to answer.

Because if if to you, being a part of Thee Generation means a big ministry.

Big numbers, big anything.

I think you’re missing the point.

Because really, what we’re after here, what this whole movement is about, isn’t about the metrics.

Oh, listen.

Yeah, I love metrics.

I love them, you hear me talk about them.

In fact, even as I’m talking right here, I want to type in one page and I’m going to see what the metrics are for the podcast as of late.

Oh yeah.

Look at that eight hundred and twelve thousand and eighty five downloads.

It’s over three quarters of a million downloads since we started doing that.

Is that success?

Should I look at that and think, well, it should have been a million.

Should I look at that and think, well, it needs to be two million.

You know, we can get so caught up in metrics for you.

What does that mean when you go to Bible college?

Is that all A’s?

Listen, you ought to try your best to do well and trust the Lord.

Does that mean that you are in a full time, fully paid ministry position by a certain timeline.

After college for you.

Does that mean your life will not be a success if there wasn’t a certain number of people saved?

What is success?

What are we striving towards?

You know, I’d argue that if you get your your heart wrong on this, if you get the goal shifted, then you’re going to actually stop following him and you’re going to start following other things.

Think about it.

If the goal is numbers, you’re going to stop following Jesus and you’re going to start following numbers.

If your goal is soul saved, then you might stop following Jesus and you might start following souls saved.

And you might think, well, what’s the problem with that?

Well, who’s the one who makes you a fisher of men?

In fact, Jesus talked about that.

He said that he was going to make us fishers of men.

If you follow him, you’ll be a fisher of man, a men, young people.

But it’s easy to get our eyes and our hearts and our minds with a different picture of success.

I’m not here at all saying that if you follow Jesus, people won’t be saved.

I think they will be.

I’m not at all saying that if you follow Jesus, you won’t.

You won’t be an incredible prayer warrior.

That’s not at all what I’m saying.

I’m saying like, we’ve got to keep our eyes on the right place and our hearts in the right goal.

I’m studying right now for a message, and this kind of all ties together.

I’m about ready to finish up a series on Galatians.

I’ve been preaching this through here to the church.

It’s been a wonderful pleasure and privilege to be able to go verse by verse, phrase by phrase, word by word, throughout the entire letter of Paul to the Galatians.

And we’re almost to the very end.

We’re in Galatians six, verses sixteen.

And um, here Paul says, and as many as walk according to this rule, peace on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

I’m not going to get into all the theological discussions about that last part.

The Israel of God.

But as I’ve been looking at that, he says that, you know, whoever walks according to this rule, essentially, um, he’s going to have peace.

He’s going to be blessed with peace.

He’s going to be blessed with mercy.

And there’s so much I could say here.

I’m going to leave for my own sermon tonight here.

But the thing that connects me is what’s the rule?

And what does he mean to walk according to that rule?

If you look at the whole letter as a whole and recognizing he’s kind of giving the invitation here at this point in the letter, I think what you’d gather is that Paul is calling for them to live, really keep in step with.

That’s the word walk there.

He’s calling them to keep in step with the whole point and thrust of this letter, which is walking in the spirit, being led by the spirit, keeping in step with the spirit so that he can bear his fruit in their lives.

And what’s a synonym for walking in the spirit and being led by spirit?

Well, I think it’s those two words that Jesus gave.

Follow me.

You see, we’re not talking about a church manual here.

We’re talking about a relationship with your Savior.

We’re not talking about secrets to success here.

We’re talking about walking in a genuine surrender relationship, not just to a list of, uh, a list of expectations, but to a person.

Young people, if you walk with Jesus, if you truly seek to follow him, to listen for his voice as the Spirit of God speaks to your heart, to say yes to his leading, to depend upon him as he calls you to do things that are just plain impossible outside of your comfort zone.

Things that you don’t think you’re capable of doing.

I’ll tell you young people, your life will be a success as defined by him.

You know, I say this because you know what?

And I know this isn’t something we talk about or even say a whole lot here on this podcast.

Um, we’re all called to follow Jesus, but we may not all be called to be an evangelist or a missionary or a pastor or a pastor or missionary or evangelists wife, but we are all called to follow Jesus.

And guess what?

If you get your if you get eyes for him, he’ll put you right where he wants you to be.

You know what that might mean?

That you might maintain the facilities for some secular business in your town.

And if that’s what following Jesus, if that’s where it puts you, that’s okay.

In fact, it’s not just okay. that is success.

That might put you in a sales job, that might push put you as a stay at home mother.

In fact, ladies, it probably will put you there.

Um, that might put you as a Christian school teacher, maybe without all the glamour that might make you mean that you are busier than you ever wanted to be.

And if that’s where following Jesus leads you, wonderful.

But that might also put you out into a little country church in the middle of nowhere, where there’s not a whole lot going on, and where half the town already goes to your church, so there’s not much room for building it.

And you know what?

If that’s what following Jesus means, guess what?

That’s the best thing in the world.

If following Jesus puts you outside of your comfort zone and in the limelight, then praise God that success.

But if following Jesus puts you on the backside of the desert, then that’s what.

That’s what success looks like according to Jesus.

See, we need to get out of our heads the glitz and the glamour and the gigantic human aspirations.

Can I say this, young people.

If your goal is to have the biggest church in America, you’re probably not following Jesus.

If you’re following Jesus, you might end up pastoring the biggest church in America.

You might say, I want to have the biggest, the most successful fill in the blank goals are to be lauded, but the biggest goal needs to be him.

He says if you follow this rule, you’ll have peace.

You know what peace is.

You say peace is the absence of conflict, Brother Bosler.

Well, that’s a part of it.

But peace comes from the Hebrew mindset of shalom.

That’s how they greeted each other in every greeting was a wish upon that person Shalom, shalom, shalom.

And that was the desire for that person to not just have an absence of conflict, but to be whole.

What does it mean to be whole to you?

You say that mean would mean to be married and have kids.

Okay.

No.

Hold on.

Peace needs to come from following him.

You might say peace to me means I’m going to have a house and a nice car.

No, I don’t think that’s going to make you whole.

Following Jesus will make you whole.

It’ll make you exactly as you ought to be.

You’ll be like the tree planted by the rivers of water.

You’ll be like the sheep having no want.

Because you have your shepherd there.

See, sheep aren’t making big money by following their shepherd around.

They have what they need to eat, and that’s everything they need because they have their shepherd.

Listen, I guess what I’m trying to say is this.

Stop trying to accomplish something And follow Jesus.

Now when you follow Jesus, if you’re listening to him, he’s going to tell you to do some things.

He’s probably going to have a vision for you that is bigger than your vision for you.

But you know what?

There may be times I think that his vision might be different than yours.

And instead of shoehorning Jesus into your vision or shoehorning your vision into his, maybe you just need to take his and let that be the greatest thing that you could ever do.

In fact, he says, as many as walk according to this rule, peace be upon them and mercy.

I’m going to talk about this when I preach this here, coming up soon.

Um, mercy is related to the Hebrew word.

Of course, I know this was written in Greek, but the Greek word here is the word that is almost always translated from the Hebrew word hesed.

And hesed is God’s committed love to you.

It’s his loving kindness.

It is his covenant love.

It is God’s choice to love you no matter what you say.

Oh hold on.

Do I have to follow Jesus in order for God to love me?

No.

No.

Not at all.

God will love you whether you follow Jesus or not.

But you’re not going to enjoy it very much.

You see, I think this is the experience that is contingent on our following him, on our living, according to this rule.

Listen, I think sometimes if we get our eyes off of Jesus and onto success, we’re going to live in stress.

We’re going to live earning, trying to earn God’s favor by measuring up to this external standard that we have set for ourselves.

Or maybe we believe that God has set for us, but we’re really not focused on God, and therefore this could be our own goal, our goal that’s been imposed upon us, or I hope not, but a goal that maybe we caught from even something like Thee Generation.

Young people, we don’t define success for you.

I don’t define it.

This podcast, this website, the TGS, does not define what success is for you.

Jesus does.

So the greatest thing you could ever do, the greatest thing that you could ever aspire towards is to obey his command.

Follow me.

Peter, a dumb fisherman, followed Jesus and ended up being one of the greatest preachers with one of the greatest invitations that there has been, that there had ever been at that point in history, and many others since him, have determined to leave all and follow Jesus for whatever that means, whatever that looks like, whatever outcome that might, that might end up in And some have been humble servants who’ve just served faithfully, quietly.

And yet, because they were following Jesus, it was successfully.

Others have been in front.

Big names, well known, giant works accomplished.

But the common thread that made them all a success was following him by living according to that rule.

I don’t know how this hits you young people.

I know how this is hitting me and a number of other things that I’m thinking about.

But I’ll tell you what, you cannot go wrong by completely surrendering your heart, your life, your goals, your vision to Jesus Christ.

And depending upon him to do whatever he might call you to do, whether that be big or small, that is where true success lies.

Thanks for listening.

God bless you.