Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, speaking to you today from Cedar Hill, Texas, just outside of Dallas. And we’ve just finished our last week of The War, at least the most recent week of the war. Since the last time I’ve spoken to you, we’ve driven a long way. We’ve had a couple of Wars, and we’re thrilled with the 30 something young people who have trusted Christ as their Savior thus far. And we’re excited about what God is doing. 

In my last podcast, I shared with you the end of the story of our whole truck journey. We’re still rejoicing. Every time I see the truck, I am reminded of how faithful God is to his servants and how powerful he is to deliver us. I trust, young people, that you in your own heart are stirred that God is able to deliver you too. 

These last several weeks have been very moving weeks in my own heart. God has been teaching me so many things from our maiden voyage to our first meeting and having a tire fall off the trailer to a long trip up to Wisconsin for the Victory Conference and then our whole family getting sick. Just to be honest with you, discouragement after discouragement hitting us from all sides to feeling like no man would stand with us. I tell you, God has been our Friend. 

It’s really this concept that I want to encourage you with here today, something that God has been encouraging me with. I want to read to you Psalm 62. Psalm 62 has been something even just in this last week I’ve been stirred with. I feel like this kind of pulled some pieces together of a number of things that God has been teaching me. Psalm 62 verse number one, David is speaking. He says, “Truly my soul waiteth upon God. From him cometh my Salvation.” Now if we stopped reading right there, we might think, “Oh, that’s great. David is expecting the idea of waiting, right? He’s expecting God to do something for him.” What is he expecting God to do for him? He says, “From him cometh my Salvation.” So here we see a man who is depending on the Lord for deliverance.

And you know that has been something that has been a theme here on the Thee Generation podcast. Frankly, it’s a theme of the scripture. Jehovah Saves, that’s Jesus’ name. It’s what his name means: God Saves. From the beginning in Genesis 3 when man messed things up through their sin, God was gonna send a savior. The seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent throughout the whole Scripture. The theme is the fact that we men are, as Dr. Jim has put it, the Messer uppers and God is the fixer-upper. He is our Deliverer.

I’m in my devotions right now reading through Exodus and just seeing that God told Moses, listen, you’re going to go and you’re going to say some things, but I’m going to be the one who does the delivering so they can know there’s a God in heaven. You get throughout the scripture, God just wanted his people to look to him for deliverance. And young person, I want you to know you need delivering too.

You need delivering from your selfishness, right? I know I do. You need deliverance from your attitude, you need deliverance from your willfulness, you need deliverance from those temptations that just seem to drag you down constantly, you need deliverance from worry, you need deliverance from peer pressure, you need deliverance from all of these things, this unbelief, you need deliverance, I need deliverance, it is our greatest need as humans to be delivered by God.

But in this psalm, he’s not just saying, I’m looking to God for deliverance. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he is saying that. But in verse two, and he’s gonna express this again a little bit later on in the psalm, he makes one little qualifying word that makes all the difference. So again, verse one, truly my soul waiteth upon God. He’s expecting something from him. From him cometh my salvation. God is the one who gives salvation or deliverance. Verse two, he only Is my rock and my salvation. You know, God wants us to realize not only that deliverance comes from him, but that true deliverance comes only from him. I was reading this Psalm and you know, I’m, I’m going through this year. It’s a little different from what I’ve done in previous years. I’m actually going through just a traditional yearly Bible reading plan, read through the whole Bible in a year. I felt like I needed to change of pace here this year. And man, it’s so easy to skim through these things. And one of the things that I do like to do if I need to slow down is find a good devotional commentary. And I was reading this commentary by James Montgomery Boyce. And boy, that name doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be a very interesting commentary, just to be honest with you. But as I was reading it, oh, my soul was stirred with that word only.

In fact, I’m going to read just a couple things that he has to say here, and I want to make some applications because this has been huge for me here this week, and I think it’ll be huge for you as well. He says this, the most important thing about Psalm 62 is that the psalmist is making God his only object of trust. He is not trusting something other than God, nor is he trusting God and something else or someone else.His trust is in God only and that is why he is so confident. He says here that one word only is the record of conflict and the trophy of the psalmist’s victory. You know young people, it’s one thing to look to God for your deliverance as one piece of the puzzle. But you know, I want to submit to you that true maturity comes, true victory comes, true peace and confidence comes when God is your only object of trust. Oh man.

 You know, so often we have a thick insulation of things that we’re trusting around us and God is the last resort, right? So we’re looking to our parents for deliverance and listen, don’t get me wrong. God’s given you your parents and he’s given them to you for a reason. God, you know, maybe you’re looking to other friends, maybe even good Godly friends. And I’m not down on good Godly friends, but, but God wants to be the sole object of our trust. He wants us regardless of the things and systems that are around us and the environments that we’re in, regardless of even good environments, God wants us and our soul, just us and God, to be looking to him, recognizing he is the only source of true victory.

 The author here makes this statement. He says, as I see it, our problem is not that we do not trust God, at least in some sense. We have to do that to be Christians, which by the way, let me make an important point. 0/100, right? The unbeliever who depends on Jesus plus his good works, plus his church attendance, plus fill in the blank, his baptism, plus his obedience to the Ten Commandments, plus the fact that he’s got a relative as a preacher. The unbeliever who trusts Jesus plus anything is not delivered by God’s salvation. He is lost. He is still in his sins. He is still on his way to a devil’s hell to burn there forever. And can I say this young person, if you somehow stumbled upon this podcast and your trust in Jesus and something else, pause the podcast now, go on to the battle plan for victory, go to the salvation page. There is a sermon there called The Simple Solution for a Sentence Sinner. I would urge you to listen to where I really go in depth as to why someone needs to depend on Jesus alone to forgive their sins and to give them everlasting life. I think most of us recognize that if a person puts their dependence on God, on Jesus, that is plus anything, they’re not saved. And yet somehow we think that as Christians. We can improve upon that. Right? I remind you, Colossians 2.6 says, as you therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. Back to the commentator, he says, to become a Christian you have to trust God in the matter of salvation at least. It is rather that we do not trust God only, meaning that we always want to add in something else to trust as well.

You know, young person, I want to ask you, what are you trusting other than Jesus to give you wholeness, to give you victory, to help you move forward in your walk with Christ? I’m not saying we need to throw tools out the window. That’s not at all what I’m saying. But I’m asking, where does the victory come from?

Is victory from a technique? Or is victory from Jesus? Victory in Jesus, my savior forever, right? He plunged me to victory. Listen, young person, I want you to know, I’ve just been stirred here today. We have people surrounding us, people who, who love us, but how easy it is to allow at least part of our confidence to come from the fact that people are standing behind us or people are praying for us or people love us and want to see us go on for God. Can I argue, young person, it needs to be Jesus alone that you’re depending on? There’s one quote and I’m going to see if I can find it here because for some reason it just eluded my grasp, my eyes here. Here it is. They trust not God at all who trust not him alone.

Let me read that again. They trust not God at all, who trust not Him alone. Are you willing to step out on God alone? Or do we need some sort of a buffer? You know, there’s a book that was recommended. I’m not going to mention it here because I haven’t finished it myself, but the book was critiquing modern Christianity and how churches, pastors, ministries seem to be shying away from Jesus being the sole source for victory.He argues that we are, instead of trusting Christ alone, we’re adding experiences to that. We’re adding pragmatism to that. We’re adding psychology to that. We’re adding all these other things in addition to Jesus as the object of what we’re trusting in to make the ministry work.

Listen, I run the war, okay? When we have The War, we have methods that we use. I bring two college guys with me, but you know what? I better not trust in two college guys to get the work done. We have nice high quality brochures and nice polos with embroidered logos on it, but we better not trust in the sharpness and polish of that thing. We’ve got an exciting three night event that we’re inviting young people to. We’re going out. We have strategies that we use to get into public schools and to find teenagers, track them down, tell them about the event, encourage them to come and to sign up. But we better not trust in the strategies. You know, when we bring them, we want to break the walls down. We want to win with them. We want to see the force fields go down, right? So that when the gospel is preached, but, you know what we better not be trusting in our winning with them. Our eyes, our hearts need to be relying on Jesus and Jesus alone to do all of the work.

Oh man, young people, how quickly we can get our eyes off of Jesus onto a method that we’ve been trained in, right? Listen, I’m all about training people. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about telling them and helping them be more effective at what they do, but what really makes us more effective? Is it knowing all of what to say at a door or is it trusting Jesus, relying on Him? Again, I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t train or be trained, but I’m arguing when we’re there at the door, what are we trusting in? He says, my soul’s waiting on God. He’s the one that my deliverance comes from. He only is my rock. In fact, he jumped down a little bit later on in the Psalm in verse five. He says, my soul, he’s counseling himself here. My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation.

Listen young people, it is so easy to lean on things other than Jesus. So easy to lean on a system instead of Jesus. It’s so easy to lean on a support system, right? Good godly mentors that are surrounding you. It’s so easy to lean on them and their expertise and to look to them for guidance and to look to them to tell us what to do. And I’m not saying you need to go out and be a rogue and do your own thing, but I’m asking you, what are you depending on young person?

You know, it’s so hard because there’s a knife edge balance on this thing, right? If I can say anything, what God has been doing in my heart over these last couple weeks, as He has been shedding layer after layer after layer of things that I’ve been tempted to trust in, and I’m not going to go into all the details on all of that, but I’ll give you one example.

I told you I mentioned this at the beginning here I am in my brand new 2024 F-350 truck in the last podcast I said it was the end of our truck journey and thankfully our truck is fine don’t worry okay but we’re driving down I-65 in Alabama just south of Montgomery and I look out my rearview mirror and to my shock I see the rear tire of my trailer chasing me in the passing lane. Yeah the tire flew off and I’m telling you, all of the anxiety from last year, it was like all of a sudden, all of that that had been healing, it was like the bandage under which the scab of healing was desperately trying to clog up, that bleeding wound was ripped back off again. And I’ll be honest with you, the first week of The War, I was a mess. I didn’t want to be on the road anymore. I didn’t know how I could keep doing this. If big major things like that were still gonna happen. Now praise the Lord, he was even in the midst of that, he was taking care of us. It just so happened the part, which last summer we had to wait two weeks to get, was 10 minutes back up the road. There was a mobile mechanic who hot swapped out the part and we were back on the road in a matter of an hour or two, which wow, that was God, that was God. But you know what I think God was teaching me? “Hey, you got this brand new truck, praise God. Now look to Me. Look to Me. Don’t get your eyes or your dependence even on my amazing, unbelievable provision”. You know, listen, God, God can have a way of getting your attention and  getting you to stand on Him alone. Where you have to step out into uncharted territory, where no one can hold your hand.

Where no one can tell you what to do, where it’s you and the Spirit of God. You know, I was stirred here last week. I spent some time just walking through Galatians with my team and just the two paths. Theology is how I describe the book of Galatians. I’m not gonna go through all of it except to say the only way that you and I can please God is if we have supernatural love in our hearts, a love that we can’t work up. And the only way we can have that love in our hearts is by bearing the fruit of the Spirit. That’s God’s fruit in our life. And the only way we can bear that fruit is if we walk, that is continuously led by, that is listen to the Spirit of God and yield to Him in reliance upon His guidance and His strength and then keep up. That’s the idea of the second instance of walk in the Spirit. It means keep in step with the Spirit, stay in military formation. Keep in lockstep with the Spirit of God.

And you know, young person, when you listen to the leadership of the Spirit of God and he begins to lead you, you might find yourself in circumstances where you think, “Whoa, how’s this gonna work?” I’ll tell you how it’s gonna work: Only God. Listen, the messes God gets you into, only God can get you out of them. The impossibilities God leads you to, only God can take you through them. The valleys of trial God brings you into, only God can get you to the other side of those things. A life of total surrender to God and total dependence upon Him is a life that can only be accomplished by Him. If you try to start this journey of following God and yet you are looking to yourself or some other thing in some way, that’s a journey begging to be quit. You know, sometimes I wrote this down in my journal as I was just journaling about this. I said, may the faith in my faith steps never be in my steps. In other words, I don’t want my faith to be dependent on my stepping. I want my steps of faith to be depending on my God.

Listen, we shouldn’t want to trust in our own efforts, our own schemes. We shouldn’t want to trust in our own strategies, our own plans. We need to be looking to him for the increase. I recognize many of you are in maybe junior high, high school. I know we’ve got a good bunch that are maybe just out of high school. But as you approach those major decisions in life, those opportunities to serve Him, don’t be looking to anything other than God for your deliverance.

Again, pray for me, pray for us. Even here, we’re looking to God for his leadership and guidance, we’re looking to him to open things, open the doors for us into his will and just be seeking him for us as we seek God for his forward movement. But you know, I was stirred. Once again, one other thing I’ll mention here in this passage, verse seven of Psalm 62, he says, “In God is my salvation and my glory.”

I don’t remember where I read it, but just the idea that God is the one who lifts up his servant. You know, obviously we want all the glory to go to the Lord, but in the process of us following him, He lifts up his servants and so often we want that, right? We want deliverance, we want to look good. But we’ve got to recognize that our job is to look to him for his breakthrough, for His glory, for His will, His outcomes, His way.

I don’t know how this may have touched you here today, but if you are leaning on a philosophy, if you’re leaning on a system, on a mentor, if you’re leaning on something, anything other than Jesus, can I challenge you? Take a step back and ask yourself, where does the deliverance really come? Where does the deliverance really come from? Because as far as I read it in my Bible, it says from Him cometh my salvation. He only is my salvation. Wait thou only upon God for my expectation is from Him.

Listen, this really is what we’re talking about. This is what the generation is all about. It’s total surrender to God and total dependence on His power to do His will turn the world upside down with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Hope this has been a blessing to y’all. Thanks so much for listening.