Speaker 1: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast, an audio resource dedicated to a generation of young people who are committed to total surrender to God and total dependence on His power to reach the world with the gospel of Christ. This podcast is designed to strengthen and encourage through a series of Bible-based practical talks.

Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Downers Grove, Illinois. And I want to speak to you here today just a little bit of a testimony of what God has been doing here recently.

We literally, just a few moments ago, finished up the final night of the Cola Clash here at Marquette Manor Baptist Church in greater Chicago, Chicagoland, Illinois here. And this week was a bit of a battle. Again, I want to just kind of be transparent with you a little bit because I personally find that other people’s testimonies and their unique circumstances many times are instructive to me.

And so I trust that kind of what has happened to us over these last couple days will be instructive to you. We arrived here on Saturday night, and from the moment we arrived, things got difficult. We pulled into the parking lot.

We backed the trailer into its spot. And my trailer, my new trailer I got, you can see some episodes about that in the past. But it has this auto leveling feature where it’s like one button auto level.

You hit a button and all these legs come down and it shifts the trailer all over the place and it gets it level no matter where it is. Well, anyway, it wasn’t working. I tried over and over again, and it was a little bit of a frustration.

But, you know, hey, whatever, you know, live and learn. I figured out what the problem was. We got it solved, got the trailer all fixed up and parked.

Well, fast forward a little bit later. That evening, the kids were all getting ready for bed. And one of my children, who shall remain unnamed, was in the shower, accidentally yanked on something and broke our shower faucet.

in our trailer so that nobody could get showers. He was the first of several that were supposed to get showers that night, and nobody got a shower that night and couldn’t find anywhere in town to get them. Every place was closed.

I couldn’t even find it that would deliver soon that night. Well, that was difficult, but once again, hey, stuff happens, right? That’s life.

Well, the next day, I believe a couple of my kids were sick for one. Not Rona sick, but, you know, just regular sick. And so I knew I normally have like a keynote presentation that I hook my computer up and I show in Sunday evening services just to kind of introduce Cola Clash and all of that.

And they had gotten a new system in their back sound booth on controlling all of their displays and live stream and everything. And we spent like two hours after the morning service trying to figure out how to get that hooked in. And in the end, I had to give up and I had to do something different.

Well, that was tricky. Okay. Well, anyway, the evening service was fine and everything.

But the next day, my wife gets horribly sick. Not Rona sick again, but just regular old horrible sick. And let’s see.

Later on, oh, I almost forgot, Sunday night. So we all come home from church. And about 11 o’clock at night, we start hearing, get notifications on our phone that there’s a tornado watch and then a tornado warning.

And then we hear the local alarms go off, the tornado sirens. And all of our phones started going crazy with immediately find shelter. If you’re in a mobile home or RV, essentially you’re going to die.

And so we got all the kids out of bed and drove over to the church, and we went into the church and hunkered down there for like an hour. The next morning on Monday morning, my wife is sick. I’m in with the team.

Most of us were up late because of various tornado warnings and so on. By the way, everything was fine. Nothing got hurt.

But just literally blocks away, there were homes that were completely destroyed. The Lord protected us. The next morning, we were so tired.

We were trying to pray. We weren’t getting anywhere. Honestly, it was like there was a fog that none of us could clear ourselves out of.

Nobody wanted to go out recruiting. The funny thing, though, is when we went out recruiting, it was great. Like we found people everywhere and everybody seemed to be interested.

It was like there was zero kickback or whatsoever. It was just so awesome and free for most of us. One of my team members, one of the young ladies, she was having a hard time finding anybody, even though everybody else was finding them everywhere.

Okay, fast forward to the next day, Tuesday, Tuesday in the morning. I decided we were going to do some practice with the big ball. So we hit the big ball around in the gym, and then we decided we were going to go outside and we were going to do some practice on the hoops.

And so I’m showing them how you hit it in from underneath the hoop and everything, and I kind of do a fadeaway jump to my left to hit the ball in, planted my left foot down, and my knee kept going. and I felt a big pop in my knee, and I hit the ground. And I, at that point, thought, oh no, I think I may have just torn my ACL.

Well, fast forward a little bit later, a little bit later on, and I really can’t go into all the details here, but I had somebody from the church who was very, very upset with something that I had preached on Sunday night. Not going to go into any of that, but they were mad at me and pretty upset. Are you getting the idea here of kind of how things were going?

It was one after another, after another, after another of terrible, horrible, just seemingly disconnected and unrelated things slapping us upside our heads every time we turned around. And yet when we went out recruiting, it was amazing. And yet all the other time it was like we were like a pin cushion.

We were getting smacked around like a pinata every time we turned around. So anyway, come into Wednesday. Wednesday, it was tricky.

I think there was some rain that thankfully cleared out in time for things. But we had to get a tent set up so there’s a whole lot of extra things on top of us, the kind of area it was. We couldn’t set it up ahead of time.

It had to be set up the day of. And so we’re getting all this set up. I can hardly hobble around.

I’m having to lean on the team to do all of that and come into the rally night, right? First thing that happens is during registration, a big ball pops. Boom, $120.

Literally popped. Then I sent somebody in to fill up our backup ball, and as she’s bringing it out full, not over full, but just regular full, it’s over her shoulder, it pops. and so now we’re down to one ball.

I literally have no more backups on me. I normally keep three big balls and anyway okay so again this is all crazy right so then fast forward ahead a little bit later and during tube tug one of our tubes they’re pulling on it boom it blows up and we’re down to three and out of four tubes honestly. It was almost getting comical at how many things were happening.

Now, I’ve got to say this. Rewind just a little bit to Wednesday morning. Our team, we got together, we met for prayer.

We were already feeling like pin cushions, like pinatas. We were already feeling like what’s next. And as we met together for Bible study and prayer, the Lord just spoke to us that God was indeed setting us up for something great and for something good.

Well, on that first night, honestly, even though we had two big balls pop in a tube, all I can say is we all had freedom in our souls, freedom in our hearts. We knew we were in a spiritual battle. We knew we were over the target.

God was working. And even though things seemed to be going on around us, we were confident in our hearts that we were doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing. And you know what?

God delivered each night. We saw people saved. Each night we saw God work.

In fact, here this evening at the end of the night, I gave a surrender invitation and 43 young people stood to their feet and said that they wanted to surrender their lives to Jesus. They were willing to do whatever he wanted them to do. And you know what?

All in all, as much as this week had its challenges, it was a good week. It was a week where we really learned what it meant to find strength in the midst of our weakness. You know, a lot of times we don’t like to be weak.

Frankly, my knee’s getting better. I don’t think I tore my ACL. I think I just sprained my knee of sun some way.

Definitely doesn’t feel back to normal, but I’m walking on it with a knee brace. But you know, even this, I’m excited about this because I feel like it’s actually making me more weak. And so many times we rebel at that.

We don’t want to be made weaker. We don’t want the circumstances to go bad. That doesn’t mean we intentionally make things bad.

That doesn’t mean we intentionally make ourselves weak. But when things like that happen, I think the best thing to do is to recognize God is setting us up for something great. I think a lot of times when things go bad, we give up.

We roll over and die, so to speak. We stop expecting anything from God. But on Wednesday morning, this is my main point.

This is not so much of a biblical challenge here as much as it is a testimony from myself on Wednesday morning during that prayer meeting. I remember I came to 2 Corinthians 12 verses 8, 9, and 10. And I remember I came and I told the Lord.

I said, Lord, I want you to heal my leg, but frankly, I’m actually excited that my knee is killing me because I know you are going to show your strength tonight in a remarkable way. We were in a spiritual battle, no doubt about it.

All of those things that happened were all a part of Satan’s plot to discourage us on the one hand, and it was part of God’s design to bring us to a a keen awareness of our weakness on the other. And through the process of all of that, God did something great.

I believe there were eight young people that got saved this past week, and while that may not be the largest set of numbers that we’ve ever had, we rejoice at what God has done. And so young people, I want to encourage you, you may be finding yourself in a series of circumstances that you don’t like, a series of things where everything seems to be going wrong. Don’t be discouraged, and please don’t get dismayed.

Satan may be trying to discourage you, but God is trying to bring you to a point of weakness so that he can show his strength in a demonstrable way in your life. Don’t expect defeat in those times. Paul said, essentially, now I’m thrilled when I have sicknesses and weaknesses and necessities and all of those things, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

But we’ve got to expect God’s strength. We’ve got to expect God to work. So be encouraged, young people.

Again, I don’t know what you’re facing. I don’t know where you’re at currently, but do please pray for us. Pray for God to continue to show himself strong for us.

I believe this summer already we’ve seen, oh, I think it’s over 60, maybe close to 70 people saved. And we rejoice for that, that how many people have gotten saved in the first three weeks. We’ve got eight weeks left.

Lift us up in prayer. If you get a chance, you can head to colaclash.org and head to the bottom and see if we’re anywhere nearby. And if you’re nearby, come by and see us.

Our rallies are typically Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, somewhere in between 6 to 9 p.m. We would love to get to see you. Let us know, hey, I heard about it on the podcast.

And really just please, if you could, pray for us. Pray for God to keep us weak. Pray for God to continue to use us and pray for many souls to come to Jesus Christ.

So thank you so much for listening, young people. Remember, no matter what happens and no matter how weak you feel, surrender, total surrender to God and total dependence on his power to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thanks for listening.