Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Ocala, Florida, where we are gearing up for our first night of the war this coming Saturday.

Last week we ministered in the Fort Myers area, and boy, let me tell you, God did a great work.

We were working with a church that had a Christian school attached, and the way the school worked, many of the young people came from unsaved homes, and many of them had not trusted Jesus alone to be their Savior.

And so as we worked in the school during the week and in the rallies in the evening, many of those young people came to Christ as their savior.

In fact, I remember on the final night of the war this past Monday, we had one of the longest tug of wars that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Almost four minutes for the all-star tug to finish.

And on the back of one of the lines was a big old boy named Chris.

Chris tugged as hard as he could.

In fact, he tugged so hard later on in the night, he lost his dinner.

But Chris sat through the preaching, and in the preaching, God did a deep work in his heart.

He went back in the invitation, and when I met him there in the counseling room, tears were streaming down his face as he looked at me and told me, Preacher, I’ve heard about Jesus.

I’ve known what I have to do to be saved, but I haven’t done it until tonight.

And there that night, it was a privilege to see Chris trust Jesus and have him wash his sins away and to know for certain that he was a child of God.

All in all, the Lord gave us 19 precious souls who came to Jesus.

And we’re looking forward for him to give us more here this week.

So if you think of it, please pray for us as we minister here at Memorial Baptist Church in Ocala, Florida.

Now, as far as what I want to talk to you about here today, if you could turn with me to Ephesians chapter four, and I want to point something out that the Lord pointed out to me here this morning.

Ephesians four is all about living up to your potential.

In verse one, Paul challenges them to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called.

And in order to do that, there’s going to have to be humility.

There’s going to have to be unity.

There’s going to have to be a common goal amidst the diversity of gifts that we all have.

But in verses 14 and 15, I thought there was something very interesting.

And there’s a concept I wanted to park on and talk to you because I think this could be a blessing to you.

Verse 14 basically tells us that instead of being tossed around and thrown by deceitful doctrine that instead, in verse 15, that we should grow up into Christ.

Now, as I saw this phrase, that we may grow up into him, in verse 15, this morning I thought, huh, what does it mean to grow up into Christ?

And you know, as I was thinking about it, I began to think about my son.

Now, my son is five years old.

You may or may not know him.

His name is David.

And my son is growing like a weed.

And because of that, we’re constantly having to buy new clothes and shoes and different things like that for him.

And one of the things my wife has to do is buy clothes that are a little bit too big for him.

In fact, not too long ago, she bought him a new pair of shoes.

And I remember when he first put on that new pair of shoes, he complained that they were too big.

Maybe you’ve gotten shoes like that before.

And maybe your mom said to you what my wife said to David when she said, you’ll grow into them.

You see, the fact is my son possessed the shoes. they were his, but he had to grow into them in order to fully benefit from them.

In other words, to get the maximum benefit from his possession, he had to grow into it.

Now, here’s what I’m getting at.

As we think about this matter of growing into Christ, I think we can all agree that we possess him.

If you’ve trusted Jesus as your Savior, Christ is your possession, or shall I say you’re his, But either way, he is yours.

You are his.

You are united together with him.

But, you know, just because we possess Jesus, just because he is our Savior and he resides inside of us, doesn’t mean that we fully benefit from him.

And I think part of what Paul is driving at here is that we would learn how to fully possess or benefit from all that we have in Jesus.

So that brings the question then, okay, how do I benefit from what I have in Jesus Christ?

A number of years ago, I was taught how to drive a car with a manual transmission.

Now, I’m not going to claim that I’m an expert at that by any stretch of the imagination.

However, one of the things that I learned as I practiced was there’s an extra little pedal on the floor called the clutch.

And what happens is when you push down on that clutch, the vehicle disengages the gears so that you can shift from a lower gear to a higher gear or vice versa.

And the end is so that you can get the vehicle in a gear so the engine can move that car at the rate that is desired.

Well, this morning as I was gathering together with the team and I was thinking about this concept of growing into Christ, benefiting from what we have in him, it hit me.

You know, many times in our Christian life, we actually have the clutch down. and thereby we are disengaged from the engine.

In other words, my team members right now, one of the things we’re praying about and really pressing towards is to talk to teenagers out and about in the Ocala and Bellevue community.

And, you know, it’s possible to go through the motions of recruiting without benefiting from Christ in us in this matter of recruiting.

And in the same way, it’s possible for you to go through the motions of personal devotions and Bible reading and service for him and prayer without engaging the motor of our Christian life, which is Jesus.

And, you know, as I was talking to my guys this morning and as we went to prayer, you know, one of the things that just hit us was, you know what?

You can coast downhill with the clutch pedal down.

But as soon as the road begins to go uphill, you’ll stall.

You’ll stop moving forward.

Gravity will take over and you will not continue going forward.

But you know, if the gears are engaged and you’re in first, second, third, fourth gear, the engine will move you forward no problem.

And as we were talking today and just thinking about this, We were just discovering together the fact that Jesus, as our engine, if we will just simply depend upon him, reach out in our spirits and take his life as our own, if we’ll step forward, not just hoping things turn out okay, but expecting them to be influenced by the power of God Almighty as they go out to invite teenagers, not depending on themselves, not just freewheeling it, but depending on Christ to give them traction, to move their efforts forward, the engine will do the work, not them.

And, you know, one of the things that we’re passionate about here at the Thee Generation is that your life and my life would be powered not by ourselves, that we wouldn’t be in neutral or with the clutch down, just freewheeling it, as long as we can coast, but that Jesus Christ, our omnipotent engine, would move us forward in great supernatural success for him.

So what about you?

How are you going to grow up into Christ?

Well, I’ll tell you this, engage.

Put the thing in gear.

Stop coasting.

Stop depending on yourself and depend on Jesus for him to take you up whatever that hill is coming up. down the road.

If you’ll depend on Jesus, He’ll enable you, He’ll use you, and it’ll be supernatural.