Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Me and my team finished up our summer tour with the Cola Clash just about a week or two ago. And boy, it was an incredible summer.

I shared just a few things a couple of weeks ago that God had been doing. And I guess if I could just summarize the work that God had done, oh, he worked on so many different levels. But as far as our main goal and purpose of reaching young people with the gospel, I’m praising the Lord that 914 teenagers heard the gospel and 238 trusted Jesus Christ as their savior.

And you know what, I’ll be honest with you to say that I was able to spend a summer of my life working, praying, and seeking God for seeing souls saved, that I’d be able to say that over 200 came to Christ in a three-month period. I don’t know if I would have even thought that was possible 10, 15 years ago. But you know, God has been increasing my faith and he’s done it through a number of different venues.

God has given me confidence that he can work through the word. I know in Bible college I was constantly pointed to the optimistic faith-filled expectation that we can and should have. Not just for future glory in heaven one day, but for God delivering, God breaking through in whatever barrier or situation that we’re seeking Him for here on this planet.

But another thing that’s brought me to the point where I can have confidence is experience. Being able to actually see God do what He said He could do in the Scripture. It takes some risk to see experience pan out before your eyes. But you have to be willing to step out in faith and attempt something that’s impossible without God.

And when He pulls through and when He does something, that experience can give you even greater confidence for the next time. But you know, here today in the podcast, I want to talk to you about something that’s somewhat along these lines, but something that pertains not only to your outflow, to your impacting other people, but actually relates to the Thee Generation podcast.

And just to warn you, we are going to need some feedback from you before this week is out. Now here’s what we’re going to do. If you look in your Bible at Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, here is an amazing passage, a passage that’s been central to me and my hope and expectation for ministry. It says “but ye shall receive power. After that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and under the uttermost part of the earth.” And you know there’s a couple of things we typically focus on when we look at this verse. We focus on the necessity of the power of the Holy Ghost to properly reach the world with the gospel of Christ. And I want you to know until you realize how and how powerful the Spirit of God is to enable you to tell people about Jesus, you’ll never reach the world with a gospel of Jesus Christ. Many times we focus on the need for power. Sometimes we also focus on the fact that we’re supposed to go out and meet the needs all around us. The fact that we’re supposed to be actively talking to people who need Jesus Christ. He focuses on your immediate circles, Jerusalem, just outside of your day-to-day life. In other words, reaching out to people that would take intentionality in the community around you. That would be Judea. Going to people you would never have otherwise gone to. That’s Samaria and then the uttermost parts of the earth. This is having a global vision for your outreach. 

We could talk about the need for power. We could talk about the needs of the world, but I want to focus on one other part here. And this is going to segue into something I’m going to need your help with. He says, “You shall be witnesses unto me.” Now, the word witness, many times I think we think of witnessing in the sense of sharing the gospel. And that certainly is a massive part of what he’s talking about here in this verse, sharing the news that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that he paved the way for us to find forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection for us alone.

But that’s not all that it means to witness. In fact, if you think about the word witness, the idea of it is bearing testimony about something. It’s saying, “Hey, I saw something,” or it’s saying, “Hey, listen, in a courtroom, a witness is someone who’s brought up to the witness stand.” And they’re brought up there because they personally had some kind of interaction with the facts of the case. Whether that means they saw the person climb out the window, or they saw the person kick in the door, or they heard them say something, or they were there at a certain time when someone was there that maybe would corroborate the story. But to be a witness is basically you experienced something, and you are sharing that experience with someone else for a particular purpose.

And you know, to be a witness is not just to say, “Hey, Jesus died on the cross for your sins.” But really, I would say even primarily to be a witness is to say, “There was a day in my life when I realized I needed forgiveness. There was a day in my life where I had a need and I found the truth that Jesus is everything I need to meet that need.” In other words, you came into contact with Jesus. He did something for you that changed everything. And it’s taking your personal encounter with Jesus and sharing it with someone else to help in their situation.

Now, why do I say that here? Well, primarily when we think of being a witness in the sharing of a personal experience, we think about the fact that we got saved. And you know what, we’ve tried from time to time here on the podcast, have some folks come and share their testimony of their salvation. And we will continue to do that in the foreseeable future as God gives us testimonies that we believe will be a blessing to you.

But you know what, the purpose of this podcast is not just to share our salvation testimonies, but I wanna challenge you with the need to share a testimony of how God has impacted your life. We’ve had it mentioned on the podcast from time to time, your story. In fact, on the website on theegeneration.org, that’s theegeneration.org, you’ll notice in the menu there is an option there called Your Story.

And when you go to the Your Story page, if you scroll down, you’ll see a couple of different options. You’ll see that you can type your testimony there in that entry field. If you’ll just type out your testimony, hit submit. We will get that, and we’ve actually put several testimonies on the website already as a way to be an encouragement to other young people with what God has done in your life.

But there’s also another one, and that is talk it, say it. And here’s what. Here’s what I’m after here today. Here’s my burden. I don’t know if you realize this, but this is podcast 99. And next weekend is going to be podcast 100. One hundred podcasts! And I’ve just been thrilled as I’ve looked back through the list of the different topics and guests that we’ve had on the podcast have been thrilled. But you know, I’ve heard little tidbits here and there of ways that God has used the podcast in young people’s lives.

But what we’d like to do here is in preparation between now and next Friday, I’d like for you to help us with the podcast next week. For our 100th episode, what we are going to do is we are going to invite you to either send in a written testimony via the Your Story page or we will also invite you to call up the testimony hotline. And I’ll get you the number here in just a second. But what I want you to know is on this hotline you are not going to talk to somebody!

I think sometimes folks haven’t used it as much because they’re afraid Oh, no, somebody’s gonna pick up the phone and I’m gonna have to talk to them in person. No, no what we’re gonna do. The testimony hotline is actually not directly connected to any phone. It’s not going to ring anybody’s phone at all. It’s actually a Google voice number and it will go directly to voicemail. And all we’re going to ask you to do is if God has worked in your heart at all through the Thee Generation podcast, can you do us a favor?

Can you either go into the Your Story page and either type it out in the form or you can just send an email to share at theegeneration.org. You could even text us at 262-355-THEE that’s 8-4-3-3 so again just leave an audio testimony here’s what I’m looking for for a testimony you don’t have to give me the exact podcast though if you remember which podcast it was that would be a help.

But if you can just say something like this, “Hi, my name is,” and just give us your first name, and I was listening to the podcast and God spoke to my heart about this. It can be brief, honestly, if you just give us one or two sentences of specifically how God worked in your heart through Thee Generation podcast, that’ll do a couple of things for us. Number one, it’ll help us know how we’re being a blessing. It’s always an encouragement for us to know that this particular talk on that day was a help and a blessing. It will also help us know even what to focus on for the future. But I think more importantly, it would be an encouragement to other people. I don’t know if you realize this, but there are young people that are listening to Thee Generation podcast all over the globe. On every continent, I have seen lots of listens. And your testimony can make an impact globally. And so I want you to take a couple of days and think about it.

In fact, why don’t we go ahead and do this next Thursday, which is going to be September 6th. If you can try to get your testimony in via those resources by September 6th, that’ll give us a little bit of turnaround time to be able to get those and process those for next weekend’s podcast. But I trust that next podcast, not only will you be blessed, we’ll be blessed by your testimony of how God has used the podcast and Thee Generation in your life.

I honestly don’t know what to expect. I don’t know how many young people are gonna take us up on this opportunity. But if God has worked in your heart in any way, think up a brief summary of what God’s done in your heart through the podcast, even if it’s just saying, “Hey, it was a blessing. I was challenged in this area or whatever.” But go ahead and give us a call. A recording would be optimum.

If you’re not comfortable with the vocal part of things, you’re more than welcome to go ahead and send an email. And in fact, maybe you’re in another country and you’d like to give a testimony of how God has used the podcast in your life. Go ahead and just record the audio on your phone if you can figure out how to do that. And then you can email it to that email address on the Your Story page, share at theegeneration.org. 

Either way, any which way you go, I’m trusting that God is going to use your witness, bearing testimony to what God has done in your life, to encourage other young people to take a step of total surrender and total dependence to turn the world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thanks so much for listening and we’re looking forward to episode 100 next week.