Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where we are getting prepared for our spring tour with the war.

Many of you may be familiar with what we do, but we travel two-thirds of the year doing youth evangelistic outreaches.

During this spring semester, we will be conducting the war in the southeastern region of the United States.

To find out where we’ll be, please feel free to visit thewar.team, T-E-A-M.

And we’re really looking forward to all that God’s going to do in us and through us here this semester.

Feel free to follow our progress online via the hashtag TheWarTeam.

And you know, as I look forward to our semester on the road, I have to say one thing that is bursting from my heart.

This may sound strange, but I have hope.

Now, what do I mean by hope?

You know, hope is the confident expectation of something in the future.

And as I look forward to these coming 13, 14 weeks together, I am expecting God to save souls.

I’m expecting God to save hundreds of souls.

And, you know, hope is something, as we look at the Bible, that is supposed to characterize our lives.

And while I may have hope now, it wasn’t always that way.

I want to talk to you a little bit about that and give you some encouragement from my experience and from the Bible here today regarding hope.

When I was 12 years old, something happened that radically changed my life.

Some of you have heard this part of my testimony, but many of you I’m sure have not.

When I was 12 years old, my mother, Denise, went to the hospital for a pancreas transplant.

She had suffered of diabetes ever since she was a young teenager, and this was going to cure her of the symptoms of diabetes.

And so she went in for the transplant.

And one night after a couple weeks after the surgery, she was still recovering in the hospital.

And things started going bad quickly.

One day she was talking about what she was going to cook for Thanksgiving when she got home.

And the next thing we knew, her heart wasn’t keeping itself going.

And the doctors revived her several times.

But eventually it was clear she could not survive on her own. and she died.

I remember my dad came home and he shared the news with me there that morning and like a bolt of lightning, it changed everything about my life.

Whereas before I was looking forward to mom being better, now she was completely gone.

I remember talking to my dad and asking questions like, why did God do this to us?

Why did God have to ruin my life?

And what happened was my bitterness caused me to spiral into about four years of very intense darkness.

And if I could give any one word that would characterize those years, it would be hopeless.

Though it wasn’t true, there was a sense in which I felt as if I had nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive forward towards, except maybe getting my driver’s license, maybe getting married one day.

But, you know, because I was hopeless, I lived a very apathetic life.

And by apathetic, I mean I just didn’t care.

All I cared about was right now.

All I cared about was beating the latest level on my game.

All I cared about was doing what I wanted to do.

And I really didn’t have much to look forward to at all.

And you know, when you live in hopelessness, you can’t help but be apathetic about everything.

Apathetic about life.

Apathetic about God.

And that was me.

When I was 16 years old, my dad had been pursuing a relationship with a lady who had been a missionary to Africa for 15 years.

My mom, I call her now Vicki, and she began to pray for me.

They got married, but as she began to pray for me, God began to do a work in my heart.

I was honestly at rock bottom.

No hope at all.

And yet one night as I was in my room, I remember looking up at the ceiling and saying, God, if anything’s going to change this life right here, pointing at myself, it’s going to have to be you because I can’t do it.

And there’s a sense in which that was kind of like me throwing my hands up.

I think there’s another sense in which God was saying in heaven, finally, he realized that he couldn’t do it. and God began to change my life for the better.

I began to see victory in areas that I had not seen victory in for years.

And I started thinking, well, I think I’ve got this under control.

And the moment I began to try and do it myself again, I fell flat on my face, and I spiraled for several more months, I think about a year actually.

But an evangelist came to my church where I grew up, and he began to lay out for all of us what we have in Jesus Christ.

And I know in my podcast back near Christmas, I spoke a little bit about this, but you know, that moment changed my life when I began to understand the hope that I had in Jesus.

I began to realize that I had something to look forward to, and I’m not just talking about heaven.

I began to realize that there was a victory that I could see.

There was joy I could find.

There were obstacles I could overcome.

God had a reason for me being on this earth.

He had a mission for me to accomplish, and that gave me hope.

In fact, as I was thinking about this podcast here today and this concept of hope, I couldn’t help but think of Paul in Ephesians 1.

He’s talking to many of the believers that he had led to Christ.

And he says in verse 15, Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.

In verses 17 and onward, talk about the content of what he was praying for them about.

And this stirs my soul.

In verse 17, here’s his prayer request.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling.

You know, Paul’s prayer request for those people there in Ephesus and some other churches in the region was that God would open their eyes to the hope that they have in Jesus Christ. the fact that they have something to look forward to, and he’s not just talking about heaven.

In fact, he goes on, not only does he want their eyes to be opened to know the hope they have, but he also says that they would know what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

So God wants them to know the fact that they have something to look forward to, and specifically he wants them to know the inheritance that they have in Jesus.

Part of our inheritance is the fact that sin does not have to boss you around.

Part of the inheritance that we have is that we can see God do something in our lives and through our lives, something big, something that makes a difference.

He goes on and he clarifies even further and he said, and what is, he wants them to know, what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power.

And, you know, as I thought of that, I thought, you know what?

There’s a sense in which we all need to have our eyes enlightened.

We need to get it.

It’s a spiritual understanding.

And I remember during those evangelistic meetings, as that preacher was preaching, it wasn’t just a well-explained treatise on a theology of sanctification.

God was speaking through that man. and I was getting it and it gave me hope.

My prayer is that through this podcast, you would see that you have hope for tomorrow.

You have something to look forward to.

God has a mission for you to accomplish because you know, when you do not have hope, you don’t have anything to look forward to and you become apathetic.

So my prayer for you here today is that God would enlighten the eyes of your understanding that you would know what is the hope of your calling and the incredible riches you have in your inheritance in Christ Jesus, that you would know the mighty power of God that can change you and all of those around you.