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. At the turn of the decade, many are reflecting on the past and considering the future.

In today’s podcast, Bobby Bosler reflects on the past decade and challenges us all to consider where does God want you to be in the next 10 years?

Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Maple Shade, New Jersey. And I want to be one of the first ones to wish you, hopefully, Happy New Year.

It is now the year 2020, and though some might debate this little tidbit, we’ve rolled into a brand new decade. And I don’t know about you, but as I was considering rolling from the 2010s to the 2020s, I was doing a lot of reflecting. And I’m going to say a little bit more about that in just a little bit, but I want to say there are two things that I want to accomplish in this podcast here today.

The first one is I want to start a new segment on our podcast that we’re going to revisit as we have opportunity. And that’s going to be a testimony segment. I think most of you know that on thegeneration.org there is a page called Your Story.

And on that page we have a couple different ways that you can submit a testimony. And I’ve gotten a number of those over the last year or so. And I haven’t always been faithful to put them on.

But what I want to start to do is I want to start reading some of these testimonies on the air, so to speak, on the podcast here. And so we’ve got a testimony here from a young man named Nathaniel, and he says this. This last year has been the worst and best year of my life.

I had been struggling in a lot of areas in my life. But about halfway through last year, God worked in my life, using several podcasts from Thee Generation and several other incidents to lead me to total surrender and total dependence on God to live a victorious, Christ-filled life. Since then, by his grace and strength, I have seen several strongholds fall that I thought I could never gain victory over.

I know the battle is just beginning, but by his grace and through his strength, I know I can have victory. Thank you for what you’re doing, and may God bless you in this new year. Nathaniel, thank you for sharing that testimony and for your transparency, and I pray that God will continue to give you his blessing and victory as you depend upon him and surrender to him.

You know, it’s interesting to me, even about this testimony, that at the end of the year, as we often do, he’d been reflecting back on the previous year, and that brought him to share his testimony. And as I’ve said, I’ve been doing some meditating myself on this last decade. And so I just want to share a couple things by way of personal testimony.

And then I want to just bring a scriptural couple thoughts to you before I let you go here on this podcast. I, as I’ve mentioned before, have been on the road now for, I just finished my eighth year in evangelism. We’re technically in our ninth.

And as I’ve been just meditating on this last decade, I was just thinking about where I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I was still in seminary. I was a newlywed, had no kids, had a 1996 Toyota Camry and a job.

I was working at Custom Service Hardware in Cedarburg, Wisconsin on the phones every day making sales. And to be honest with you, at that point in my life, I was sick of making money and ready to get out of the road and to serve God and to do what he had called me to do. Now, at that point, I was just getting started in seminary, and so I had a little ways to go.

But I wanted to get on the road, and I wanted to serve God with my life. We had no kids at the time, and really, we had a lot of expectation. I remember my wife and I, before we got married, we said that we did not want to have an ordinary ministry.

We wanted our lives to make a huge difference and for thousands of people to come to Christ through our lives and ministry. And as I was thinking about this, I’ll just read something that I had written. In the past decade, I got a master’s degree.

I’ve had three kids. I’ve launched out into evangelism. I bought a truck, a minivan, and two trailers.

We’re still trying to sell the first one. I drove well over 125,000 miles. I’ve gone on four major missions trips to other countries.

I got ordained. I preached the gospel to over 12,000 teens and saw over 3,300 trust Christ. I’ve pioneered a youth movement called Thee Generation, which you’re well aware of.

I started a national youth conference with the help of many others. I’ve started a youth podcast, which to date has had over 130,000 listens in three years. I’ve built around 10 websites in the last 10 years.

I’ve bought four iPhones and one MacBook. If it was a PC, I would have bought three by now, but that’s another story. I’ve lost a mother-in-law.

I’ve gained a stepmother-in-law. I found my birth mom. I gained two siblings and six nephews and nieces.

I’ve taught over 65 credit hours of classes on the college level and graded way too many papers and essays. And if you’re listening and you’ve written some of those papers and essays, please apologize at some point. Anyway, all of that, and I’ve only written three sermons.

Actually, that’s not true. And, of course, I’ve done it all with the help of my wife, who’s the most patient and caring and amazing person on the planet. But, you know, those are just a few small metrics.

I could literally sit here and tell you stories for hours about what’s happened in the last 10 years. But, you know, I hope maybe you caught a couple of those. I’ve been able to preach to over 12,000 people.

Been able to see over 3,000 people saved in this short time. And you know, young people, Lord willing, I got another 40, 50 years left in my ministry in my life. Why do I share that?

I’ll tell you why I don’t, not why I’m sharing it. Not sharing it to brag because that is nothing that I have done. That is what God Almighty has done.

And I’m just someone who’s trying to surrender to Jesus and depend on him and for him to do things through my life. You know, some of you are in different phases of your life. Some of you, Lord willing, 10 years from now, you’re going to be getting started in the ministry as well.

Maybe you’ll already be out in the ministry serving God. Maybe for some of you 10 years from now, I trust many of you will be married. Maybe you’ll have kids.

But you know, 10 years ago, I had a very clear vision for where I wanted to be 10 years from then, where I wanted to be now. And I’ll be honest with you, God has exceeded my expectations in these last 10 years in so many different ways. But young person, it is absolutely necessary for you to understand what it’s going to take to get to the goals that you might have.

The verse that I’m thinking about is Ecclesiastes chapter 12, just starting in verse 1. Here, the author, who we believe is King Solomon, he had gone through many years of his life trying to figure out what life was all about. He’d spent his life on pleasure, on money, on fame, notoriety, trying to figure things out.

And really, at the end of it all, he declared, it’s meaningless. It’s empty. It’s not the point of life.

And into chapter 12, he’s kind of starting to get real with his readers. He’s been kind of leading them on this somewhat of a wild goose chase, kind of inductively throughout the book. And here he says, remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth.

While the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. And what he does is from the end of verse one down much later here, he describes the process in very poetic and flowery terms. Basically, he says, you get old, you can’t see, you can’t move like you want to, your joints creak, you get to the point where you can hardly get up in the morning.

And he says, listen, while you still have energy, while you still have the ability, remember your creator. Now, remember that as we go further down in the chapter, he says at the very end of the chapter, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. And, you know, if you want to know how 10 years from now you can have a life that’s made a huge difference in God’s kingdom, let me tell you how. Remember, you’re creator.

You need to listen, fear, take great consideration to what God has to say. You need to care more about what God thinks and about what your friends think than about what anybody else in your life thinks. And you’ve got to have that healthy respect and fear for God.

You know, another way that you could phrase fear God is to be totally, completely sold out and surrendered to what he wants. to care more about what he wants for the next two years, for the next five years, for the next 10 years than what your friends want. You got to fear God, but also you got to keep his commandments.

You know what? You need to take his words very, very seriously. I find today a lot of people, they’re explaining away what God says because they don’t feel like the spirit led them to do it or whatever.

And you know what? I don’t care. Listen, if a spirit leads you to do something different than what the word of God teaches, it is not the spirit of God.

And you’ve got to take what God says and what God wants very, very seriously. And you know, I think we all recognize the fact that when God reveals his will to us, we’re incapable of doing it in our own strength. And I think implied here is total dependence.

But notice the last verse here, he says, for God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. And I want to Reminds you, young people, there will come a day when God’s going to assess your life, and you need to live in light of that every single day.

There’s going to come a time when God’s going to take a look at your life, what you’ve said, what you’ve done. And I believe he’s not only going to judge it based on whether it was right or not, but he’s going to be judging it based on whether it was God who did it or you. And, you know, here he explicitly says whether it be good or whether it be evil.

God knows all the secret corners of your heart and of your life. He knows your motives. He knows what you’re really after and the decisions that you’re making.

He knows why you’ve decided to go to that Bible college. He knows why you decided to take that job. He knows why you’re pursuing that occupation.

You might give a spiritual spin on it, but let me tell you, friends, God knows the inner details of your reasoning process. And God’s going to bring it to light. He’s going to assess it one day.

And if it’s good, great. If it’s evil, well, I wouldn’t want to be you in that circumstance. And so that being said, if you will every day of your life live caring more about what God thinks, paying close attention to what God has said, depending on God to enable you to do what he wants you to do, I believe that you can end up on that judgment day, however many decades that’s going to be from now.

And you can stand with confidence knowing you’ve done what God wanted you to do in God’s strength. We’re not necessarily talking about the end of time here. We’re talking about 10 years from now.

Where are you going to be 10 years from now? Are you going to be one of those young people who’s on fire for God when they’re a teen or maybe when they go to college? But afterwards, they begin to fizzle out.

They begin to make little compromises in their lives and things they allow themselves to watch and do and listen to. Are you going to be one of those people that becomes really good at justifying sin? Are you going to be one of those people that allows pursuing a girl, I’ll just say it, to knock you off the path of pursuing God?

Are you going to be one of those people that lets your expectation be diminished, who settles for a comfortable job, a secular occupation, instead of what God has called you to do? Are you going to be one of those people who lowers your expectation? Ten years from now, some of you are going to be in your 20s to 30s, depending on the age you are right now, obviously.

And listen, the direction of your life is going to be very much set. And the decisions that you make now, the expectations and goals that you set now will determine where you’ll be ten years from now. And my challenge to you is just as you’re considering maybe the last 10 years of your life, the last year of your life, maybe you’ve made good steps, maybe you’ve made good decisions.

That’s great. That’s wonderful. But I’m telling you, you need to set yourself up so that 10 years from now, you’ve led thousands of people to Jesus Christ.

So that 10 years from now, God is using you to make a huge difference in this world. So that 10 years from now, you are closer to the will of God, not farther away from the will of God. And, you know, I trust this challenge will not just be something that you hear and let go in one year and out the other.

I want to encourage you as you’re starting this year, you need to sit down and I would encourage you to actually write out. In fact, if you want to, I would love for you to email me, email in to Thee Generation on the Your Story page where you believe God wants you to be in 10 years.

I think that would be absolutely awesome just to put it in writing and set it out, send it out to us and we’ll pray with you about it. But listen, you need to think big and you need to expect great things from God because God is a great God and God deserves our faith and our expectation and he deserves every last person on this planet to come to Jesus and he wants you to be a part of it.

But that will never happen unless you fear God. You surrender to him, to his expectations, to his will and depend upon him to do it. Thank you so much for listening here today.

Don’t forget, please send in your testimonies. We’ll try to feature them on future podcasts on the Thee Generation website, thegeneration.org slash your story, or you can find the link in the navigation bar. But Happy New Year.

God bless you. And we’ll, Lord willing, see you on the next one.