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.

Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Viroqua, Wisconsin. I’m at Bethlehem Baptist Church, pastored by Matt Weber, which many of you heard this just a few weeks ago at the Thee Generation Youth Summit.

Pastor and his family are gone for a little bit of an R&R time and he asked me to drive out here and to preach for him today. It’s a Sunday as I’m recording here today. And to be honest with you, I was really excited to get back here. There’s a lot of really great people here.

And in fact, it’s exciting to see. You’re probably aware we did a cola clash here several months ago. And just a week ago, a couple of the people that got saved at the cola clash followed the Lord and believers’ baptism. That was exciting.

And even beyond that, there are a few that are still here that came and got saved at the meeting. So it’s exciting what God is doing here. I’m glad to be here. And I’m actually glad to be recording this podcast because I have a burden on my heart right now.

If somebody were to ask you, how are you doing? I think a lot of times that’s a little bit of a perplexing question to answer. You know what I’m talking about? It’s kind of like this. I live in a trailer. I think most of you know that. And right now my trailer is in Menominee Falls.

And a couple days ago, the temperatures began to plummet. And when things start to get cold outside, my wife and I start to have differing opinions of how things are in the trailer. By that, I mean about the temperature.

I don’t know if any of you are like this, but I’m at least during the winter season, I’m always cold. Like my feet get cold and I need a pair of slippers on. And it’s funny. I can look over at my wife and say, does it feel cold in here to you?

And she’ll be like, no, it’s actually kind of warm. But oftentimes when you’re trying to, you know, asking somebody else how things are, or even when we’re asking ourselves how things are, what we can get is a subjective answer. I feel cold or I feel warm and different people feel things different ways.

And really what’s needed in my trailer and what I did actually is I bought a couple of Eve temperature sensors. They’re just little square temperature sensors that you can place in strategic spots. And so I’ve got one in the kids’ room. I’ve got one in the living room.

And this actually lets our family go from feeling like things are warm or feeling like things are cold to actually getting a number of how warm or how cold things are. It’s been great. And I can connect that to different triggers and so on with my HomeKit automations.

and I won’t bore you with all of my smart home pursuits in my trailer. But suffice it to say, when it comes to that question of how are we doing, by that I mean in our Christian walk, I think sometimes we can give ourselves a very subjective answer.

You know, if you were to ask yourself the question, how are you doing right now? Let’s even say, let’s even get more specific, in your surrender. We might say, eh, good.

And, you know, we can tell ourselves that we’re good and we can think that we’re doing good, but sometimes it takes an objective readout on how you’re doing to really give us a reality check. And that’s exactly what I’m burdened to do here today.

I want to give you a little bit of a reality check about how your religion is doing. In James chapter 1 and verse 26, the writer James says, If any man among you seem to be religious. Okay, so here’s a person on the outside. He looks like he’s doing, I’m doing air quotes here, good, right?

You could say, if any man among you seem to be godly, look like they’re walking with the Lord. If anybody among you appears to be, have it all together. If they look like they’re doing fine, okay, you understand that we can look good on Sunday and not be good objectively. We need an objective readout.

We need a sensor, a spirituality sensor, if I can say it that way. I don’t think they make those, but that would be nice. James has given us a little bit of a spirituality sensor to give us an objective readout on how our religion is really doing.

If I can put it to you this way, maybe a little bit differently, how’s your D-Generation Pledge doing?

you know I think some of you at the youth summit recently or maybe in past times you fill up you filled out the the pledge and said I want to live a life of total surrender to God and total dependence on his power to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ right and your desire your aspiration is to do what God requires of you you want to live a life of total surrender to God right.

And yet if somebody were to ask you how’s that going that’s our question to answer isn’t it Now, we might be able to point to certain struggles and say, well, I’m struggling in this area or, well, you know, I made this decision recently.

That was a good thing. Or you might say, well, you know what? I had a good time in devotions last week or today, hopefully. But those are kind of subjective answers. And by subjective, I mean feeling oriented. Or we can even point to things that we’ve done that make us feel like things are doing well.

But how are things really doing? James says, if any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Do you know there’s a certain kind of religious practice, a certain kind of a religious perspective that isn’t helping anyone?

Now, I believe that total surrender and total dependence is the answer, not just for teenagers but for adults for that matter, and yet even in the aspiration, the desire to pursue that. Is it working for you right now?

And what James is saying is you might claim to be religious, you might claim to be following Jesus, but if you do not control your tongue, you’ve deceived yourself. You’re kidding yourself.

it ain’t working bro okay so as you take a look at your life instead of asking how is your surrender doing why don’t you take a look over the last week and ask yourself the question have I let my tongue say things that wouldn’t please the Lord have I said things in anger in frustration Have I been ill-tempered with people with my words?

Have I shot off my mouth and maybe hurt somebody with my words? And it doesn’t have to be an outburst of anger. It could be gossip behind the scenes. It could be words sharing privileged information that’s really not your business to share. It could be you planting seeds of doubt or suspicion in other people’s minds.

It could be manipulation with your words and actions. How are you doing? You know, when it comes to this whole matter of feeling like things are going well, that is very subjective. It’s very subjective. Let me put it to you this way. Okay, you might feel like things are going well, and that’s great. Maybe they are.

But do you gossip? Do you gather up the juicy tidbits of what so-and-so said and tell all your little friends? Do you take implications, suspicions, and speculations and just kind of throw them out there in private conversation with people who are not a part of the problem or of the solution?

Do you take your position of authority, maybe you’re a manager at work or maybe you’re over your siblings, do you take your position of authority as a blank check to talk about whatever you want to whomever you want?

Do you slam people in the name of righteousness and holiness, supposing that their ungodly choices are somehow an excuse for your ungodly tongue?

Do you cast doubt on people in conversation because of a gut feeling you have about them and make sure to subtly warn people about them without ever going to them and talking to them about your concerns?

Do your words, especially those around those that you’re comfortable with, regularly tear people down while at the same time lifting up yourself? Do your loose lips sink relationships, hurt feelings, give people and ministries a black eye? Do your words sow discord, break trust, or unnecessarily make enemies?

If so, what James is saying is it really doesn’t matter how spiritual you think you are. It doesn’t matter how well you feel like you’re upholding total surrender and total dependence. it ain’t working for you. Now I’m not saying that total surrender and total dependence isn’t the solution. What I’m saying is it ain’t going well.

It’s not going well. In fact, I would go back and I really do a little bit of an evaluation. Have there been moments of compromise where you have disobeyed the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life? Have there been times where you have chosen to prioritize what you want over and above what God wants?

Have there been moments where you just sought to vegetate, to do your own thing, to decompress and just live according to your lusts, as we talked about in a podcast. Boy, it seems like forever ago now. Listen, James doesn’t care how religious you think you are or how godly other people think you are.

If you can’t control your tongue, there’s something wrong with your version of religion.

it’s not cutting it you’re kidding yourself and you’re a victim of your own deception you know it’s one it’s one thing when somebody deceives us if you ever been lied to before you know maybe there’s somebody they told you that such and such was the case and you find out later they were completely fabricating it making it up that’s hard to take isn’t it you kind of feel dumb you you kind of feel like you know you should have seen it or you’re mad at the person for for lying to you think about this.

If you feel dumb for somebody else lying to you, how dumb ought we to feel when we lie to ourselves? And really what James is saying here, if any man among you seem to be religious, but bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Again, the solution really is Jesus.

In fact, in the next verse, he says, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. And again, the widows and the world are not the point.

The point is this person is so walking with Jesus that he cares about other people, that he actually is taking his walk with Christ and the sin that can separate between him and God, relationally speaking, he’s taking that seriously.

And I think the implication clearly is a person who’s really walking with the Lord, a person who is truly, not just saying it, but actually taking steps of surrender, walking in a surrender relationship with the Spirit of God, depending upon his power to enable him, that person is going to control their tongue.

That person is going to be aware of the needs of the down and outers around them. That person is going to be careful around the dirty world that’s all around them. So, how you doing? Like I said at the beginning, it’s one thing to say, ah, good. but how’s your tongue?

If your tongue is out of control then you’re not living total surrender and total dependence. If your tongue is wagging and you’re hurting people with your words I don’t care who you think you are. I don’t care what your last name is. I don’t care what your daddy does for a living.

I don’t care how much people look up to you. You’re not doing total surrender and total dependence right. Listen, I don’t want this to be a downer kind of an episode. I want this, if anything, to be a reality check, young person.

We can go for days and weeks and months and years, and honestly, the Lord’s working in my heart. Even as I’m sharing this with you, we can go a long time and think things are going well.

But that’s why God gave us his word to bring us back to reality, back from these high and lofty images that we have of ourselves not in line with the truth and to bring us face to face with ourselves. Earlier in chapter one, he said, the Bible’s a mirror. It shows you how you really are.

It’s an objective readout on the real you. So how’s it going? How’s it going? Listen, I would imagine that some who are hearing my voice right now, the spirit of God is convicting you. And let me encourage you to do this when you’re done.

I want you to sit down and I want you to maybe pull out a piece of paper or a notes document or something. And I want you to have a conversation with the Lord. I want you to talk to him. And I want you to identify several areas where your tongue has belied.

It has contradicted what you thought about yourself. Why don’t you have a get right with Jesus moment?

And why don’t you renew and refresh in your heart that total surrender to the moment-by-moment promptings of the Spirit of God and that total reliance upon Jesus who can enable you to control your tongue and to be a blessing to others. And let’s stop deceiving ourselves. Let’s go win the world to Christ.