Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Fairmont, West Virginia, and I’m telling you what God is at work. I don’t know if I mentioned this last time, but for the last four weeks or so, our church has been doing Netcasters personal evangelism training in our Sunday school hour.

And it has been just such a privilege to watch our people get serious about the gospel, to, in a certain sense, take what I was used to doing with my team and training them to be prepared to go out on evangelistic journeys and to train a whole church like that. It’s been very, very exciting. And we’re going to be actually restarting our planned outreach time coming up here in a few weeks.

I’d appreciate your prayers for the Lord to just give us some great divine deliverances. But hey, how about you? How are you doing?

You know, I feel a little bit more disconnected in a certain sense. There’s a lot of you all that I don’t hear from or see as much as I used to when we were up in Wisconsin. And yet I have heard from some of you all over WhatsApp, over some other different venues.

And I’m just grateful for the fact that the Thee Generation movement continues to move forward. God is still calling young people to completely surrender their lives to Christ in total surrender and to completely depend upon his power in total dependence, which, as you know, is our core value. Those are our two, you could say, twin values as a movement and as a ministry.

And yet, young people, I want you to know a lot of times as you are seeking to move forward for the Lord, things get difficult. And I had a particular psalm I’ve been meditating on over the last couple of days. Not something for any specific reason other than it was the next psalm in my Bible reading plan.

And I was, my curiosity was piqued by a few things. And so I decided to do a deep dive into this. So I just wanted to share a few things that stood out to me and were a blessing.

Psalms chapter 46 and verse number one, as soon as I start reading it, you’re going to be familiar with this. The psalmist says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And here we find that the psalmist is immediately characterizing God as something.

He’s characterizing him as three things in this verse. Number one, God is our refuge. What’s a refuge?

A refuge is a place of shelter. It’s a place of security. It’s a place where you are protected.

You could say a refuge is a place where you can be safe. Do you have a place like that in your life? Maybe your safe place is being inside the four walls of your home.

Maybe your safe place his person, someone that you feel safe around that you know, they know everything about you, and they accept you anyway. This characteristic of God is what I really think we need to actually take seriously. God is a God that you are safe with, young person.

Depending on your viewpoint, and depending on the kind of home that you grew up with, if you grew up with a father that was not safe, a father that was unpredictable, a father that perhaps would lash out at you with words or with his actions or, God forbid, even violently, it’s hard at times to picture your heavenly father as any different.

And you see folks like that oftentimes see God as unpredictable in the sense they never know when God is just going to haul off and wallop them. But I want you to know, young people, God is not like that. God is a safe place.

He’s a place of protection. But not only does he say God is our refuge, but he also says God is our strength. What does this mean?

The idea of this word strength in the Hebrew isn’t just physical strength, though that’s definitely a part of the word. It also has an idea of emotional strength or mental strength. In other words, God is not only a place of safety, he is a source of strength.

Young people, I want you to know that when you enter God into the equation, you can do God wants you to do. You might feel weak. You might feel as if you don’t have what it takes, physically speaking, to accomplish something.

But when you depend on the Lord, you can do anything that he wants you to do. But I mentioned the mental thing, because maybe you’re in the midst of school right now, and you know what? You’re in the second semester of the year, and things are probably getting to an intense time in projects and papers and so on.

And maybe things are starting to pile up and you feel like you do not have the mental strength to get everything done. I understand when I eat simple carbs, I don’t feel like I have the mental strength to put five words together, let alone accomplish something serious and mentally taxing. But I want you to know, young people, if you depend on the Lord, he will give you the mental strength that you need to get your schoolwork done.

But not only that, he’s your emotional strength. That’s another aspect of this meaning of this word here.

You know, sometimes you find yourself in situations where you are being worn down emotionally, whether it is incredibly difficult times, right, that just wear on your emotions, whether it’s certain people that you’re around that just tear at the edges of your emotions, whether it’s an intense season where you feel like, you know what, I, boy, I just don’t have the emotional strength to go on. Praise God for this concept of total dependence.

You have in your God everything that you need to physically succeed, to mentally succeed, to emotionally succeed. And of course, we’ve got spiritual strength in there too, but that’s somewhat of a given. I want to go on here because the next line here in this psalm was something that really, really gripped me as I was studying this a few days ago.

He says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Now, the word order in the Hebrew, it starts with help in trouble. So I love this.

So this is something I think we somewhat understand. When you find yourself in a difficult situation, God is there to help you. In fact, the word in the Hebrew, Edzera, is related to that word Ebenezer that we sing about, that we never know what it’s talking about.

It’s not talking about Scrooge, okay? It’s talking about the stone of help. And God is the help that that stone was talking about.

The idea of the word help is the idea of assistance or someone who fulfills a need. I think this somewhat parallels or mirrors the idea of God being our strength. Can I tell you this, young people?

Whatever it is that you need, God is your solution. You might find yourself in life thinking, I need money, right? You got a college bill.

Can I say this, young people? What you really need is God. Maybe you find yourself in a situation and you think, I just need to know something, right?

I need a break or a lead. No, what you need is God. You might say, but I need a different method, right?

A new method to get this particular thing done. And I say to you, young people, what you really need is God. God is the one who fulfills the need, but he fulfills the need, it says, in trouble.

He’s your help in trouble. Trouble is distress. It’s adversity.

It is either physical, mental, social, or economic anguish or pain. You ever feel in pain in life? You feel as if there is serious difficulty?

Maybe the pain in your life is your brother. Oh, wait, I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe the pain in your life is that teacher at school.

Maybe the pain in your life is that pimple on your forehead right now. Maybe the pain in your life is your weakness, right? Physical weakness.

Maybe the pain in your life is that habit you can’t seem to kick. Maybe the thing that causes you anguish in life is some shortcoming in your personality, some unchangeable in your appearance. And can I say this, young people, the issue isn’t the issue because what you really need in whatever distress you find yourself in is you need God because God is the one who fulfills your need.

Okay, but this is where this verse gets really, really good. Not only is God our help in distress. In the Hebrew, the word order, the very next word is being present or nearby or in proximity so that it can be found or it’s discoverable to you.

Okay, I got to let you in. When I was first studying this in my bedroom at the house that we’re staying him. I have a lazy boy recliner.

That’s where I do my devotions in the morning. I kick back, put up the feet, and in the morning, got a little blanket on my legs and a cup of coffee next to me and my laptop on my lap. And if I’m doing Hebrew work, I’ve got my iPad sitting right next to me there and kind of writing it out, sketching things out to get my brain engaged there.

And so as I was sitting there as I was writing down this word and this phrase here, um, my children got up and, uh, in the house where we’re at, again, the children getting up, I can close the door. Okay. Uh, but one of them, particularly when she gets up, she just makes noise and she asks for stuff.

I’m sure none of you have a sibling like that. Right. Um, but, uh, she’s, she doesn’t wake up with quiet or with peace.

She wakes up with a bang. And, uh, so I’m sitting here and I’m trying to focus on this and I think, oh, I know what I need to do. What I always do when the kids get noisy and I need to focus and study.

I’ll get out my AirPods Pro 2. Okay. And I reached over to where I normally keep them on the little tiny table next to my chair and they were not there.

And I looked across the room and I saw them on my nightstand across the room. And I remember the thought occurred to me. Those AirPods, the things that I need are nearby, but they are in my proximity, but I can’t reach them.

Okay. This is where the next word comes in. So God is a God who is our help in distress or in trouble.

And it says that he is present, but there’s one more word. And that word means strong or quite or very. We see it in our English Bible here translated as very, which is a great translation here.

He says, God is not just help in trouble. He’s not just help that’s in proximity to you in trouble. He is a God who is very in proximity to you in your trouble.

And I remember as I was studying that, it hit me. Sometimes we know God is our help, but we think he’s out of reach. Sometimes we know that God is near, maybe in the same room or the same region, but we don’t really feel like we can reach out and take him.

And I thought, you know what? There’s a big difference between my AirPods being across the room and then being on the table right next to me. One is when it’s near.

The other is when it’s very near. And I don’t know, that mental picture helped me because I realized God was saying here in this psalm that God is very near. He’s very present in your difficulty.

That means he’s very discoverable. He’s very findable. He is within arm’s reach no matter where you are, no matter what you’ve got going on, young people, no matter how hard it is, no matter how distressing it might feel or how much anguish or pain it might cause you.

God is like the AirPods sitting right next to you. He is exactly what you need and he’s right there for you to take. Oh, I loved this.

And in fact, we had a discipleship group there that evening and we were talking about prayer and I just shared that that evening. I could tell it was an encouragement to the other couples in this group. And, you know, the matter of surrender is essential.

You do need to surrender to the Lord, but sometimes we need to surrender to what God says is true. God is not across the room from you, young person. He’s right there.

He’s right there. And you can depend upon him.

You don’t need to get up and walk across the room to depend on him. you can depend on him right where you are right now oh young people this is encouraging this is encouraging to me I hope it’s encouraging to you I don’t know what you’re going through young people but I do know this God is your safe place he is your strength and he is right nearby when you need him.

Listen, that’s a God that we can surrender to. That is a God that we can depend on, and I’m not going to go into it today, but that’s a God that no matter what changes in our unchangeables, no matter what moves in our immovables, you don’t have to fear when you have a God like that who’s at hand.