Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you right now from Menominee Falls, Wisconsin. It’s been two weeks since we introduced the V-Generation Challenge. I want to give you a little bit of an update. I’ve been thrilled at the reports that I’ve seen rolling in from all over the country. We’ve had right now 341 questions asked. Now, if you’re doing the math, 20 times 260 should be quite a bit more than that. And I understand that there are two things that could be happening right now. Number one, which I think is definitely a part of what’s going on. Some of you have asked the question and you haven’t yet reported it on the website. If you’ve asked the question, go ahead onto thegeneration.org, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click that button that says I asked the question.
If you asked it more than once, or if you need to catch up on some of your button presses, your reports, you’ll have to refresh the page for each button press. Our apologies for the limitations of that there. But what I think is probably the case in some of you who are listening is this. You haven’t asked the question. Oh, you took the pledge. You took the commitment. You took us up on the challenge. But through a number of different circumstances and reasons, you haven’t done it yet. Now, there could be a couple reasons why. One of the reasons why could be maybe you live in a rural area. I know one told me, she said, I don’t know how I’m going to ever get out to talk to anybody. Well, if that’s you, I want to encourage you, get creative.
Take every single opportunity that you can to go out, maybe to town, to find people to talk to and to ask the question. Another reason could be you’ve been scared. Well, honestly, I understand this as well. It’s never an easy thing or a comfortable thing to talk to somebody that you don’t know. And maybe you’re petrified, you’re paralyzed, you really want to do this. You have not yet, though, worked up the nerve to go do it. Can I encourage you? Jesus stepped out of heaven to rescue you, and you very well could be the one who needs to tell somebody else about Jesus. He stepped out of his comfort zone, and so can you. Maybe you’re afraid of failure. Maybe you’re afraid of what people will think. I just want to encourage you, as you step out of your comfort zone and talk, God’s going to use you.
In fact, I’ve heard several stories of some young people who stepped out of their comfort zones and went out and asked the question. In fact, I just heard, let’s see, just a couple days ago of a young lady down in Florida. Maybe you’re listening, and I didn’t hear any of the details of the story, but she asked the question. And at the end of the conversation, the person she talked to got saved. And I tell you, this thrills me. And maybe you’re here, maybe you didn’t get off to a good start in your challenge and you feel like, why even bother? I’m not going to be able to do 21 days. Can I alleviate maybe that problem there? I don’t care if you do 21 days. Can you just do one? Can you just step out and ask the question once?
I think what’s going to happen is you ask the question once, on the other side you’re going to realize, oh, that wasn’t that hard. Or maybe God will do something and you realize, whoa, God’s doing something. And that’ll encourage you for the next time. You know, one of the great, okay, some of you, you just plain need encouragement. And I want to encourage you here today. I’ve not been perfect in my challenge myself, but I want to encourage you step out, get out, and talk to somebody. I think sometimes we’re afraid of looking out of place. We’re afraid of being unusual, maybe in our approach. And with that being said, really the primary content for this episode is a story that I’d like to share with you. In fact, I’m not going to be sharing it.
I’m going to be sharing a recording with you of something Pastor Gilmore mentioned briefly in his session. A story is told by Dr. David Gibbs. And I’m really not going to say a whole lot more, except I trust this story will be an encouragement to you as you’re endeavoring to step out of your comfort zone and to be bold.
David Gibbs: A pastor friend of mine and I, we were going to travel together. And he touched my life. He said, David, I’ll get our tickets all lined up, our seat assignments. I said, great. We got to the airport and he said, we’re going to sit in the last row. I said, no, no, no, we do not want to sit in the last row. No, no, no, no, no, no. I said, on this airplane, the engines are in the back, hung on the tail. Our molars will be vibrating for a week.
You do not want to sit back there. he said no for Jesus we’re going to sit in the last row and I thought don’t start this for Jesus stuff what is this about and he said we’re going to get on last I said no no all the bin space will be gone he said do it for Jesus everybody gets on the plane and he turns to me because the girl is saying come on you got to get on you got to get on he said here hold my little Bible I took his Bible case if I live to be 200 I won’t forget what he did he unbuttoned his coat he unbuttoned his shirt and he pulls his shirt back and you know what he has on his t-shirt I can tell you how to go to heaven you don’t have to go to hell is on his t-shirt Now, I’m looking at that, and I’m thinking, sweet Alabama, what is this? We walk up by the gate agent, and she looks at him. She said, can I take a picture of that?
He said, go right ahead. Then she turns to me, and she said, you with him? and I said well yeah kind of sort of that preacher looked at me and he said come on brother Gibbs be bold now we walk down the ramp we run into the flight attendants he’s showing them and man they’re taking pictures now we’re going down the aisle and he’s just one side to the other and people are getting up taking pictures like you can’t imagine and i’m watching all of this and i’m thinking wow if i did this we could put the whole roman’s road on here We got plenty of space. I’m telling you, it took ten minutes to walk down that aisle. Finally, we get to the back. He buttons up. We sit down. And before we buckle up, a flight attendant comes up and says, do not get off this plane until you talk to me. God sent you for me.
Promise me, promise me you’ll not get off this plane. That preacher said, I promise. Now he turned to me and he said, pray, Brother Gibbs, God’s working. Can I tell you what? When you get bold, God gets working. We took off and, I don’t know, 10, 12 minutes later, the seatbelt sign came off. Immediately, seven people got up and came back and said, can I talk to you? You say, well, that’s not my way. It’s not mine either. but just what is your way before we got out of there he led six people to Christ whoa you want great grace it comes with great praise and it comes with boldness.
Bobby Bosler: Well, praise the Lord. I’m telling you, that story stirred me to my soul the first time I heard it. In fact, in case you didn’t catch this, it was the inspiration for our brand new Heaven shirt, which Lord willing, hopefully in the next couple weeks is going to be available for sale here on thegeneration.org. That concept and the shirt, It was the inspiration for the VGeneration tract, which also we’re going to be making available for you as well online. So, you know what, young people, I want you to know God can use you to be bold and to win people to Jesus Christ as well. And that is our battle cry here at VGeneration. Total surrender to the will of God and total dependence on his power to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thanks for listening.
