Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

I and my son David have flown up here to be present for the Victory Conference coming up here this week, which, by the way, if you’ve never heard of the Victory Conference, I would really encourage you to get onto the Internet to victoryconf.org and check out what’s going to be happening here this year.

It’s still not too late to register.

Pastors and other folks from all over the country and the world are coming to hear revival preaching.

There’s a sense in which the heartbeat behind the Victory Conference is very similar to the heartbeat behind thee Generation.

It’s just geared towards all age ranges and pastors and other laymen in the church.

But if you’re able to come and join us for Victory Conference, we’d love to have you.

But the purpose of my podcast here today, and I won’t be long, But you know, it’s occurred to me that as you and I are on our journey of faith and our desire to live a life of total dependence upon the Lord and total surrender to him, sometimes things just plain get hard.

Now, there could be a couple of reasons for that.

The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard.

Sometimes the difficulties in our lives are because God is chastening us, because there’s something that’s come into our lives that we know is wrong.

We’ve been justifying it, though, in our minds, and God’s trying to wake us up.

However, there are other times in our lives when we’re just plain trying to do the right thing, trying to serve the Lord.

The best we know, our life is right before God.

The best we know, there are not things that displease Him in our lives.

And of course, we’re never perfect this side of heaven.

But the best that we know, we’re doing right.

We’re walking with him.

We’re surrendered to him.

We’re trusting him.

And then the wheels fall off on our life.

Has this ever happened to you?

I am probably speaking to a few young people.

You kind of feel like this.

Good night.

Seriously, I’m trying to live my life for Jesus.

I’m trying to live independence on him.

God, why is everything falling apart in my life right now?

Well, I’ve got good news for you.

Sometimes God doesn’t bring difficult things into our lives because we’ve done something wrong.

Sometimes he brings them into our lives because we’re doing something right.

In the book of James in chapter one, verse two, the scripture says, my brethren, Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.

Now, that’s not the way we normally think.

When hard things come into our lives, the last thing we typically think of is, hey, this is great, but he gives us a reason why in the next verse.

He says, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

Now, if you just look plainly at those two verses, falling into diverse temptations, as far as conceptually, is parallel to the trying of your faith.

So in other words, when the wheels fall off in our lives, when the axle gets bent on your trailer, so to speak, when you’re in the midst of a gospel campaign and you come down with the flu, when every part of your paper research for your class gets deleted and there is no autosave.

You can rejoice because God’s trying to take you to the next level.

God’s trying to expand your faith, your dependence on him.

It’s like this.

You want to be a part of thee Generation.

You want to live a life of total surrender.

And God knows that you want that.

And so what God’s going to be doing is, just mark my words, God’s going to say, okay, he’s doing great right now or she’s doing great right now.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

I am going to give them a shot in the arm for their faith.

How does God do that?

You say, he lets the wheels fall off of our life.

And it’s during those times where we get on our faces before the Lord, where we seek His face, we depend upon His grace, and even though sometimes we don’t feel it, sometimes the feeling is completely absent.

All there is is numbness.

On the other side, when we have depended on the Lord and continued to trust Him and count on Him for the deliverance, we’ll see God was there all along.

In verse 4 here in chapter 1 of James, he says, but let patience have her perfect work.

There is a great temptation to shortcut this process.

A couple of different ways that you can shortcut the process.

God’s putting you into a situation where the water is boiling, where the sea is raging, the winds are howling.

And here’s our temptation.

Run away.

Get out of the situation. situation, but I want you to know that’s not going to help your faith.

All that’s going to teach you is when life gets rough, run.

And that’s not, I guarantee you, the lesson that God is trying to teach you.

No, God says, let patience have a perfect work.

And the implication there is stay where God has put you.

Stay where you’re supposed to be.

Continue independence upon Jesus to do what you know you’re supposed to do.

And the whole net result of this process, the process of here we are, we’re just serving the Lord, doing what God wants us to do.

Depending upon Him, God lets the wheels fall off.

We may be tempted to run.

We may be tempted to question or complain, but instead we say, all right, Lord, I know you’re doing something, so I’m going to instead rejoice and I’m going to stay under this situation. the net result is given in the end of verse 4 that ye may be perfect and entire wanting or lacking nothing you see young people God wants your faith to be complete he wants your faith to be mature he wants your faith to be as the army says all that it can be and so God’s going to work on you and it’s going to be good I’ve recently been through some challenging times to be honest with you the past several weeks I don’t need to go into all the details but it has been a challenge it’s been tough but you know what as I stand here looking forward to this conference as as we’ve got a number of young people that have been saved though yes there have been challenges yes there’s been sickness yes things have not worked out the way that I thought or hoped exactly they were going to work out at the time.

I do know this.

God is good and he’s faithful and he’s still got a great plan for my life.

And there are fruitful days ahead.

There are days ahead where God’s going to come down and he’s going to do supernatural great and mighty things because I know by God and my God is good and he is great.

And I’m my job.

My job isn’t to be great.

My job is to continue pending on the Lord.

My job is to continue doing what he told me to do.

The temptation is to run, and I just want you young people to know when things go bad, when the wheels fall off in your life, God’s actually getting closer to you.

He’s actually even more interested in you and your faith than he was when things were going great.

So take courage, young people.

Do not be discouraged, but instead rejoice and depend upon the Lord and stay where he’s put you.

And God will only increase that total dependence that I know is your heart crying as you desire to live a life of dependence and surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanks for listening.