Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. And we are a few weeks now since the Thee Generation Youth Summit took place here. By the way, all of the sermons and workshops are posted that are publicly available on thegeneration.org. In fact, just a little announcement I want to mention on the website. You may or may not have noticed this, but there is a little bit of a new module, a new, oh, I don’t know what you want to call it, but we’ve got a new series section on the homepage. If you scroll down past the latest podcast episodes, you’ll see latest series. And one of those series is the Total Devotion series, which contains all of the sermons and workshops in order from the 2023 Thee Generation Youth Summit. I would encourage you if you weren’t able to join us for that youth summit, or even if you were to go ahead and go through those messages and listen to them and let them be a blessing to you, especially if you came. I know that you probably weren’t able to attend. Well, you were not. There’s no way you would have been able to attend all of the workshops. And so I would encourage you to check out those different workshops, which are from my Bible study journey down through Don’t Be a Girly Man. So I’ll let you listen to those through. They’re a blessing, very much so, some very practical on looking at Bible study, others. Also practical, frankly, regarding accountability, biblical praise and worship, biblical application, and then men and women’s roles and how to be a biblical man or woman here in this age. And what I wanted to talk to you about here today, You could say it’s hinging off of what we talked about at the TGYS, but really this is just something that God has been speaking to me about here recently. And this is from Ephesians chapter 5. Here Paul is writing to the Ephesians, and he says, Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. It’s that last verse, verse 16, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Something that I wanted to focus on here for just a moment. Let me just walk through the verse, and then I’m going to give some points of application that God has been speaking to me about here recently. The idea of the word redeem there has the idea of to buy something. In fact, it’s an intensive form of that, not just the idea of to buy or even to pay a price, but it is intensive in the way that it says it. In other words, buying up every available opportunity is kind of the idea of this thing. Buy them up. If you were to walk into a store and you were to find that they had iPhone 15 Pro Maxes on sale for $50 and you could buy as many of them as you want. You better believe I was going to drain my bank account to buy every last one of those and sell them online, right? You can make a lot of money doing that. And here Paul is challenging saying, hey, listen, folks, wake up. Wake up, people, wake. Yes, you need to walk through life cautiously. That is the idea of circumspectly taking care to make sure that your next step is the right step. But you know, young people, sometimes we can swing so far to walking circumspectly that we don’t buy up the opportunities that are right in front of us. Sometimes we can sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity to just show up before we take any opportunity at all, and that is the wrong perspective. Yes, we must be careful. We shouldn’t just bowl ahead into anything or everything. But on the other side of things, he’s saying here that it is absolutely essential for you and for me to redeem, buy up the time. Take advantage of every opportunity. One commentator says the verb redeem is drawn from the commercial language of the marketplace. and its prefix denotes an intensive activity, a buying, which exhausts the possibilities available. What Paul’s challenging us here to do is, listen, take every opportunity. We’ve talked about this before, right? I’ve given the analogy of going out recruiting, right? And when my team is out and we’re out doing the war or the Kola Clash or Dr. Jim’s team with War SF, We have people out there that we’re supposed to invite to come to our event, right? The Cold Clash or the War. And the way we train our teams is you talk to every single team that you see. Don’t worry about whether they’re the right person. You just go talk to them and you talk to them ASAP. You run to them. That’s kind of the idea of this word redeem. Because you know what, young people, time is not an infinite resource. And you have an opportunity. Every moment of time has been given to you by God, and God has given right along with time, he’s given you opportunities. And one of the things that God expects us to do is make the most of every moment and every opportunity that he gives to you and to me. Here’s the reason why I’ve been thinking about this here over the last several days, and I’m not saying this because I’ve done it well. My parents came up. They drove from New Jersey all the way out here to Wisconsin to spend a few days with us. And very blessed to have them here. And when they came, it was cool. My parents got to see me teach. It’s actually the first time they’ve ever witnessed me teaching in a classroom here at BCM, which this is our time of year to be doing that. And so they got a chance to see that. And we had plenty of time where we sat around as a family and talked. Or other times, you know what? You don’t have to talk all the time. You know, we did other things. We got things done. But we took a couple days where we took my parents and drove them up to Door County, Wisconsin. That’s on the Lake Michigan side. It’s the thumb, that peninsula that sticks out of the east side of Wisconsin. It’s a beautiful place. And especially during the fall season with the fall colors, it was gorgeous. And we got a, I don’t even know what you want to call it, an inn. We got a couple rooms there. And I had some good times, made some memories, and came back here. And my parents just early, early this morning as of the time of my recording started their journey back to New Jersey. Well, you know what? As my parents were here, the thought was going through my mind, I got to take these opportunities. I got to take advantage of these opportunities while my parents are here because I may not have them forever. And, you know, I’ll be honest with you, just perfectly honest with you, I don’t know that I spent every moment as intentionally as I could have or should have. In fact, I know I didn’t. But I do know in my mind there were several times and opportunities where I did go out of my way to spend time with them. And we played some games. Dad took me out. We had a lunch together. Again, there were things that we did. We went out to an apple farm on one of the days. it was good. It was a good time that we got to spend. And you know, honestly, young people, there are opportunities for ministry all around. Opportunities for spending your moments in a way that is truly important. And there are ways that you can spend your moments that are not important. And I’m telling you right now, this is a huge conviction to me. In fact, honestly, as I was looking at this verse, I was thinking, this is not the kind of verse that I really should be out right now because I don’t do this very well sometimes. You know, young people, like I said, time is a finite resource and God is expecting for us to buy up, to take full advantage of every moment that he gives to us to not squander an instant. And you know what? When we do squander those times. You’ll never get them back. And you will regret wasting time. You know, one of the greatest enemies of time and buying up the opportunities these days are our cell phones. I think if you know me, you know, I’m a techie guy. I like new stuff. I follow some tech news. Again, I do the D generation website. So I’m very interested in the latest developments and in the and browsers and HTML and CSS. I love that stuff. It’s just a hobby. It’s an enjoyment to me. But you know what? It’d be so easy for me to get so absorbed in it. This happens. I’ll just be straight up with you. This happens sometimes to so get absorbed in those things that it just takes up hours of my time when I really ought to be doing something else. You see, redeeming the time isn’t just being productive in every moment. And this is something I think I can fall into you know, I can justify doing a lot of things with my time, right? I can justify this little project over here, that little project over there. Oh, I’m researching this for such and such a thing. But I think redeeming the time isn’t just doing something with your time. It’s doing the right thing with your time. I’m going to be candid here for a moment. Over the last several months, I think you know we’ve had this huge trial with our truck. And during the last part of August, really most of August and September, a lot of my discretionary time has been taken up with dealing with this, whether it’s phone calls, whether it’s research, whether it’s trying to figure out what to do, trying to document what was going on, whether it’s just calling folks, talking to folks, or honestly, at other times just decompressing from the stress of it all time and prayer time of worry um what has ended up happening is that was a period of time that really my discretionary time needed to be dedicated to scheduling meetings for next year and because that time elapsed there are meetings that would have normally been scheduled at this time that honestly are not scheduled. And we’re in a point in time where right now, as much as I’m teaching pretty heavily, I’ve got a bunch of other projects in the fire. I’m trying to get some people to help, which by the way, if there are folks that’d be willing to help or have ideas, let me know. I could be doing a lot of projects right now, but really the projects that I need to be doing have to do with scheduling. And it’s funny, you know what the big things are in front of you, right? What the important tasks are that you need to be spending this limited resource, buying up every opportunity, right? You know what those things are. And yet so much, so often we spend our time and our energy and our days and our minutes and hours on something that really isn’t the most important thing right now. Our productivity may be high, but our priorities are not properly placed. This is really where total surrender comes in, young people, because we can look at this and say, oh, redeeming the time. I need to buy up every opportunity. I need to spend my time productively, and we can invent our own set of priorities that are not God’s set of priorities. In other words, you could buy up a lot of things, right? You could buy up a lot of opportunities. The older you get, the more you realize there are a ton of ways that you could be spending your life. There are a ton of things you could be doing with your time. Some of those things make money. Some of those things cultivate relationships. Some of those things increase skills. And you only have enough time for a limited subset of the possibilities. So really redeeming the time not only involves taking advantage of every opportunity, it not only involves taking advantage of the right opportunities, but it involves taking advantage of the opportunities that God wants you to be taking advantage of right now. And why is this so important? Why is it so important that we redeem the time? Well, he tells us because the days are evil. I was reading this just up on this just a little bit and trying to figure out what in the world is he talking about when he’s saying the days are evil. I think we get the general sense, right? Days will squander themselves. It’s kind of maybe in my mind, one of the first things that comes to mind. The days are bad in the sense that they just get quicker and quicker and quicker. And if you don’t lasso those things and slow them down, they will get away from you. And let me tell you, young people, the older you get, the worse it gets. But I was reading some that talked about the fact that another part of what he’s talking about here is the fact that this age that we are in is a wicked age. And really this put it in a bit of a different light for me. It’s not just that the days will slip away from you, but it’s that this current world right now, the day today is a wicked day. And at the end of the road, a wicked day is full of wicked people who, if they are not reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ, will die and go to a sinner’s hell for all of eternity. There’s so much going through my mind right now, and if you know what I’ve been dealing with recently, you probably know some of what it is. Listen, young people, I want you to know hell is real and hell is forever. Don’t let anybody ever convince you otherwise. And anyone who tries to, tell them you’re a heretic and avoid them like the plague. But young people, I want you to know that today’s world isn’t getting any better. And really the whole purpose of the generation is we believe that God is raising up a generation of young people like you and like me who are committed to God’s priorities for their time. and are committed to depending upon God to do his will, to preach the gospel to every creature, to go and make disciples and to tell people that Jesus loves them and he died on the cross for their sins, that he is the Savior of all mankind. And if they will trust Jesus alone, he can be their Savior and apply his blood and his righteousness to their account and they can personally be forgiven and be given eternal life, which is forever. You know, young people, I guess I’m saying all this to say if we do not have this attitude, if we don’t wake up, and yes, walk carefully, but at the same time, snatch up the opportunities before they slip through our fingers because it’s an evil day. The evil world will not hear the message that they’re supposed to hear, and they will die and go to hell. So, young people, that motivates me. You know, when I look even at my itinerary for the spring, it’s not about my income. It’s not about my reputation. It’s about souls that need Jesus. It’s about a world that needs reaching. It’s about a God that needs to be glorified by me doing what I’m supposed to be doing. So I’d appreciate your prayers for us. Where things are at with the truck is currently the dealer is going to give us money, not as much money as we paid for it, but they are going to give us money for the truck, and I need to place an order soon for a new truck. Appreciate your prayers for wisdom and any ideas you have. You can send them to me at bobby at thegeneration.org, but would love any thoughts that you might have for me there. There’s a strike going on right now, at least there has been, that has made the lead time for getting these things very, very long. I heard from one person, They said, if you order a truck now, it might be three to five months before you get it. So I may be doing a bit of a tour without a truck. I don’t know. We’ll see. Just appreciate your prayers for that. Appreciate your prayers for me that I’ll spend my time wisely. And I’ll be praying for you, young people, that you will be surrendered to the Lord in every moment of your day, snatching up those opportunities for the gospel, those opportunities with your siblings, those opportunities with your parents, those opportunities to do what God has called you to do and develop as he has called you to develop so that as you surrender to him and depend upon him, you can reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope this has been a blessing and a challenge. I hope it’s been as convicting for you as it has been to me as I speak it. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll catch you later.