Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

This place is a very special place to me.

This will be our fourth time here to do the war.

And I remember many years ago in 2012, Joe Kane, Michael Laredo, my wife and I, and our, at that time, just a couple month old baby David, We arrived here in this town.

It was a last minute.

There had been a last minute cancellation.

God had led us here to this place, and we had no idea what God was setting us up for.

God got us into probably one of the first lunchrooms that I can remember there in town, and God gave us a bunch of recruits.

And when the war nights came around, God showed up, and many people got saved.

There was one young man that I have talked about on this podcast before. his name is Michael Henderson he came there I believe on all three nights of the war but on the second night God worked in his heart and in the invitation he went back to trust Christ as his savior well a year later we came back to Pine Bluff and apparently this young man was on fire for God the youth pastor had texted me some pictures of him actually preaching behind the pulpit in their church and this young man had really caught the heart of God to reach people with the gospel and Michael was inviting his friends.

He’d invite his friends to come out.

And in fact, what the youth pastor told me is he said, Michael would bring in one of his friends and then he would bring them up to me after the service and say, my friend here needs to get saved.

You need to tell him how to get saved like you did for me.

Well, his friends, he ended up bringing many friends who’d get saved.

In fact, when we were there in 2013, he brought many friends to the war.

And in fact, at the invitation, he would tap him on the shoulder and tell him to go back with him. and his friends would end up trusting Christ as their Savior too.

Well, there were several years we were not able to get back here to this church, and we finally did come back in 2016.

And there in 2016, Michael was a graduate now, and he still had a good time.

We had him give his testimony about how he had trusted Christ as his Savior.

But Michael, this was an extra special privilege to me, Michael was available to help in the counseling room, and Michael, he himself actually led several young people to Jesus Christ.

And so this time around, I was very excited that we were going to be back in town, and I was able to connect with Michael.

In fact, I had his number, and we texted, and we met at a McDonald’s just yesterday as of the time of this recording.

And he works for the police force of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

And he has a little boy, and it was just thrilling to get to see him again and to get to reconnect with him.

And, you know, God wants to write those kinds of stories all over.

In fact, just last week, we were in Brownsboro, Texas.

That’s just west of Tyler.

And as we had come into the week, our hearts were full.

In fact, this is going to kind of lead into some of what I wanted to talk about.

We had just come from Garland, Texas, and there God, in direct answer to prayer, had gotten us into a lunchroom, several opportunities in the schools, actually.

In fact, one of my team members, he had been—I know I’m kind of going back a bunch here.

Just track with me.

Before we arrived in Garland, he was looking ahead at the schools, and one of my team members just thought, you know what, I’m going to pray that God gets us into a lunchroom, and I’m even going to skip a meal.

I am so serious about this.

And so one of my guys skipped a meal, fasted a bit, and prayed.

And when we arrived at the church in Garland, we had gone, we got into some ROTC classrooms, and there was this one school nearby.

We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get into it or not.

And long story short, we got into the lunchroom, and the guy that had prayed about it didn’t even remember that he’d prayed about it until after everything had been done.

And he thought, wait a minute, I prayed and fasted about that.

Wow, God did it.

He told me that just before we got to the next church.

And so when we arrived at the next church, we had heard, this is Brownsboro now, we had heard from the pastor that they were not letting anyone into the lunchroom at all, that they weren’t even allowing parents to go into the high school lunchroom.

And he said, you can go and talk to them, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

And he wasn’t being, you know, unbelieving or anything like that.

It’s just what he was told by the principal.

And so on Wednesday night, I was preaching to the folks, and I told them, I said, you know what?

And I told them the story about how one of my guys had prayed and fasted for God to get us into that lunchroom and how God had done it.

And I said, I’m going to challenge you folks.

Why don’t you skip a meal tomorrow morning?

I’m not going to require it, but if God would so lead and God would so burden your heart, why don’t you skip a meal tomorrow morning and let’s all pray that God will get us into the lunchroom of the high school and the junior high.

Well, those folks were serious about it.

They prayed and they had sent out a text on their group stream, their church group text to pray and fast about it.

And that next morning, the guys went in and approached the high school.

And the principal said, well, you know, we’re not letting anybody into the lunchroom.

But he said, we can give you a table just outside the lunchroom in the hallway if that’s okay with you guys.

Well, we thought, you know what?

Any foot on the school property with permission is amazing.

And so we got the lunchroom and then they went over to the junior high.

And the junior high principal was even more for what we were doing.

And that junior high principal, he said, absolutely.

Y’all can come right inside the lunchroom and tell as many of these kids as you want about the event and even sign them up to come.

And so on the first day, the guys both got a table.

And I’ll be honest with you, it was a little bit rough because where they were situated in the hallway was not a good spot.

And they maybe got, I don’t know, 60 names and numbers out of a larger school.

But the principal noticed that not a ton of people had come out.

And he told them, he said, well, you know what, guys, would you like to come back tomorrow and do this again?

I’ll give you an even better spot tomorrow.

Wow.

Well, the second day, one of the guys stayed at the high school, and I sent Jeremiah and Hannah to the junior high.

And let me tell you what, that junior high was an amazing opportunity.

Those kids were so pumped.

In fact, my team has never seen a group of young people so pumped about the war.

Well, we come to find out that Saturday night, our first night of the rally, was prom night.

Yeah, prom night.

Like the single biggest, most social event for the high school.

And because of that, we had a ton of people telling us, we’re not going to be able to make it tonight.

We have the prom.

We’re not going to be able to make it tonight.

We had the prom.

And our team was kind of like, oh, no, what’s going on?

But those junior hires, they showed up in force.

In fact, we had 73, almost all of them junior hires there on Saturday night.

And let me tell you what, they were the most rambunctious junior high, and you know what I mean by junior high crowd that I’ve ever seen.

They were immature.

They wouldn’t shut up.

They would not stop talking the whole night long.

But in the midst of that, God gave me a love for those young people, even though they were breaking all the rules and even though they were disruptive.

God put a love in my heart for them that was not my own.

And when I got to preach, yes, it was hard.

Yes, we lost some walk-offs and different things like that, but God showed up in that meeting.

When we got to the invitation, they still didn’t shut up, But when I gave that invitation and invited those that wanted to trust Christ as their Savior to stand to their feet and go to the back, we had 31 go back that wanted to get saved.

By the time the dust had settled there that night, 26 young people had trusted Christ as their Savior.

And God wasn’t stopped moving either.

That next night, we saw another, I think it was like 10, trust Christ.

And then on the final night, we saw several more.

By the time everything was done, that week, 41 young people had trusted Christ as their Savior.

And we were just floored with what God had done.

In fact, on Monday, we had heard a report from one of the teachers in the junior high, either the junior high or the high school, I don’t remember.

They go to the church, and they said they overheard young people.

I don’t know whether it was at lunch or during class.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was during class and they were talking during class, but they were talking in the school about the gospel and the gospel message that they’d heard.

And so God was working.

God was doing something just remarkable there in that place.

So that being said, coming into this week, we were on cloud nine is not the right way to say it because we were very aware of our weakness.

In fact, God made sure to keep us aware of our weakness.

It was about a six-hour drive from Brownsboro, Texas, to Pine Bluff here, And an hour and a half before we were supposed to arrive, I looked out my right rearview mirror and I saw smoke pouring out of the side of my trailer.

I thought, oh no, I blew a tire.

So I pulled over to the side of the road.

And long story short, I blew a leaf spring, which is essentially your suspension.

And the tires were rubbing up against each other because it was the front axle the leaf spring had busted on.

And so it was pushing it back, rubbing into the other tire.

That was the smoke that I saw.

It was the two tires running together going 70 miles an hour down the highway. and so even there though God was so good 1.6 miles away from where we had gotten broken down there was a church that Dr.

Jim had just been at for revival meetings earlier on this year in fact I think back in February and they put us up in a hotel they gave us a place to park the trailer and God just took care of us so well but I got the message loud and clear from God I don’t believe I was prideful or haughty about last week.

But sometimes you can just get so excited about what God is doing, you can get your eyes off of God.

And I’m not saying my eyes were off of God, but I just look at it.

Honestly, God gave me peace throughout the whole thing.

Normally when stuff like that happens, I would be an absolute wreck, stressed out.

But God was just ministering to my heart.

And the whole time I was calm and rejoicing in the Lord.

And I’m telling you what, if you know me, that’s a miracle.

So we came into town here, aware of our need.

And the Lord even did some things as we got here just to humble us even further.

I won’t go into that.

But as we were going out and recruiting, getting ready to approach schools, we were just aware of how much we needed God and how much we needed his intervention.

We were desperate.

And the guys approached the nearest school to here, Watson Chapel High School, which has been historically a very difficult place to get into in our journeys here. and it’s a new principal and he said absolutely come on into the lunchroom and the team while they were in the lunchroom they said this was probably one of the most receptive lunchrooms they’ve had the kids were all about it they said it was unusual how they laughed at every single funny thing they said in the spiel in fact they said we’re just saying it’s like a beach ball on steroids when talking about the four foot ball and the kids would just crack up they said it was actually kind of weird but anyway the kids were pumped they were into it and when they were done, I thought, well, you know what?

There’s such an open door here.

Why don’t you just ask them?

We didn’t get everybody in the school.

And plus there was a junior high right next door.

We didn’t get to touch.

And I said, guys, why don’t you go back to the school?

Why don’t you ask the principal if you can hang out on campus as school dismisses?

Well, they approached the principal and the principal said, let me put it to you this way, guys.

As soon as the bell rings, school property becomes public property.

Now, frankly, that’s just not true.

To be honest with you, that is not a true factual statement.

However, he was giving us indirect permission to be on school property and to recruit.

And the guy’s got a bunch of recruits there as well after school.

They also got into Pine Bluff High School, which is probably one of the rougher schools in the area.

They did that yesterday.

And also, once again, I told him, might as well ask again, ask for permission to be on school property afterwards, and they gave them permission to be on school property.

And by the time everything was done, we had 385 recruits.

And I’m recording on Saturday.

It’s in the morning on Saturday here, a little late into recording here this week.

But, you know, I’m aware of this one thing, and this is really the text.

And again, I’m not going to spend a ton of extra time on this.

But I just want you to think about this one text.

Jesus said this, this kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

What Jesus was talking about there in the context is his disciples were not able to do something that Jesus said that they should have been able to do.

Specifically, it was to cast out a demon.

And I’m not going to talk about demonology here today.

That’s not my point.

But they said, why could we not cast him out?

They were frustrated.

Jesus said we could do this, but we couldn’t do it.

It didn’t happen.

And he said, that’s because you forgot something. you forgot something you forgot prayer and not only did you forget prayer you forgot this very um concrete expression of your dependence upon me fasting now to be honest with you if you would have uh said i was going to say something about fasting even just a couple of years ago i would have told you yeah probably not because back in college and even since graduation i’ve had a a little bit of a physical issue.

I don’t know if it’s blood sugar or what, but I felt like when I tried to fast for prayer purposes, my brain would get foggy.

I would have a hard time focusing and concentrating and I would get just terrible headaches.

And I just, I couldn’t fast.

And I would try to do like a juice fast for prayer purposes.

And honestly, it just wouldn’t really work.

And this is going to sound kind of funny, but I started something back this last November for the sake of just losing weight.

I tried something called intermittent fasting, and I’m not going to bore you with the details of that, but it’s just essentially it’s you choose a window of time when you eat during the day and you just don’t eat during the rest of that time.

And that has actually changed my body.

I don’t know how it’s changed my body, but it’s changed my body so that I can fast now and I can do it for prayer reasons and without huge headaches and different things like that, which again, I don’t know how or why that happened.

But you know, the reason why I spent all the time that I spent here in this podcast talking about these stories of God’s intervention and even tried to mention some of the prayer and fasting aspects of it is because young people, it works.

You know, I think sometimes we want to believe God for great things and we in our hearts know that we can’t do it and we’re leaning on God to help us, but I want to challenge you.

There are some times and some situations where you’re not going to see the breakthrough you want or need to see until you get so serious with God that you’re willing to lay the normal course of life aside and just seek the face of God.

Sometimes that might mean that you just set aside food for maybe a meal, maybe a whole day, maybe even a couple of days.

I’m not saying that you need to do it three days before, boom, fasting starts to work for you in religious ways.

But it is just another expression of how much we need God.

I was reading a couple things about fasting before I sat down to record here.

And I just want to read a couple things.

This one is actually a Bible dictionary, but it’s good stuff here in this Bible dictionary.

Fasting is a means of physically lowering oneself.

Oftentimes in the Old Testament, folks would fast to express their grief at things that had happened.

They would refrain from eating.

And this was just a means of them lowering themselves and saying, God, I can’t do this.

During the Day of Atonement, God commanded the Israelites to fast in preparation for that.

And there was a certain sense in which this would be an outward sign of inner repentance for breaking God’s law.

There was a sense in which this fasting was connected with brokenness.

In fact, it says this, this is a quote, Another purpose of this fast may have been the belief that the temporary suspension of normal activities, such as eating, allowed one to focus on God and acknowledge dependence on him.

In Psalm 35, verse 13, the speaker said, he afflicted or humbled himself through fasting.

There were other mentions of fasting in the Old Testament.

Here is just a statement this dictionary makes.

Fasting was a means of asking God to have pity and relent from inflicting punishment on the person or people praying.

He gives the example of David praying and fasting for God to have compassion on his newborn son.

In the New Testament as well, or actually in between the Testaments, there was a belief, and I’m not saying this is Bible, so please don’t misunderstand me, but this was just what they thought during this time.

During the second temple period, it says, fasting was associated with experiencing God’s presence.

I thought that quote was interesting.

Jesus fasted often.

It says here that the Gospels record Jesus fasting perhaps to express reliance on God in times of temptation or spiritual warfare.

There was fasting often in the book of Acts.

They fasted before they sent out and chose those that would go out to be missionaries in Acts 13. they also seemed to focus as they were choosing fasted to focus to help them get God’s mind on choosing leaders for their church and in fact in the early church folks would regularly fast in fact a number of the early documents devotional works would mention prayer and fasting as well in fact it says the early church fathers might have believed that fasting could conquer temptation and prepare people for worship.

And so I mentioned that to say fasting and prayer.

Listen, if you want to see just remarkable things, I’m not saying that every situation requires it, but if you’re serious about seeing breakthrough in certain areas of your life, I would challenge you to consider not only praying, but fasting as well.

The old preacher, Charlie Kittrell said, I had him in my prayer class at BCM.

He made this statement.

He said, there has never been a time when I’ve prayed and fast and God has not given me what I asked.

I remember that time thinking, wow, that is an unbelievable statement right there.

Obviously, if we ask for our own purposes, God’s not going to give us what we ask.

He have not because he asked not, and he ask and receive not because he asked amiss that you may consume it on your lust.

Don’t expect God to give you just necessarily what you want in your own personal desires, but if you are surrendered to God, and if you recognize that you need him and you are so desperate to see God do in and through you what you cannot do, that you’re willing to skip basic sustenance, I think God’s going to line your heart up with his, and I think he’s going to give what you’re asking.

Really frankly, to be honest with you, the whole point of this podcast is total surrender to God. and total dependence on his power and a willingness to stop at nothing to see God turn the world upside down with the gospel.

Thank you so much for listening.

God bless you.