Bobby Bosler: Romans chapter 8, please, here this evening. Romans chapter 8. I am excited to be back here, excited to see many of you familiar faces, as I've seen over the last several years.

And it's hard to believe that this is the 11th Thee Generation Youth Summit, and how much God has done in my life since then, and I know how much God has done in your lives. I think most of you know. By the way, greetings from Fairmont, West Virginia, where the Lord has called me and my family to minister to the wonderful folks of Fellowship Baptist Church.

I just sent them a message a little bit earlier and told them, please pray for me. I'm about to preach and I miss you all very much. And I have to say, I don't know, something about becoming a pastor, getting a flock.

You love your people and it's hard to go away from them. That being said, though, I am excited about what God wants to show us here this evening.

When I was a senior in high school, I was a bit of a mess.

I've talked about my story so many times. I had made a big mess out of a lot of things as a young person. I'd gotten a lot of terrible habits in my life.

I found myself not helping myself with the downward pull of sin. And I'll never forget my senior year of high school, not long into that first semester, probably would have been about this time in the school year, a preacher came to our church. And he began to talk about truth that, to be perfectly honest with you, I was very unfamiliar with.

He talked about the fact that you and I and our flesh are incapable of obeying God.

He talked about the fact that God lives in me. These are all theological realities that I knew on paper, I'd heard before in some senses. And yet, in my experience, I was very unfamiliar with them.

And I remember one of the nights he spoke about the reality of the spirit-filled life.

And he talked about the fact that because God lived in me, if I would understand what it meant to surrender to and depend upon Jesus, God could enable me to overcome the law of sin and death and God could give me victory that lasts.

Victory that lasts was something I desperately wanted. I had found temporary victory at times. I'd try and I would fail and I would try and I would fail.

And I remember that night as he spoke, God spoke to me. And I remember God was doing all kinds of things in my life around this time. But I just remember God put the pieces together in a way that not only moved me in the midst of a meeting, but in a way that genuinely changed my life and not for a short time.

It is still changing my life to this day. And what I'd like to do here this evening, if God would help me do it, is I would like to share with you some of those verses and the truth that changed my life back then. Let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, I want to ask that as we open your perfect, amazing, life-giving word, would you give us life? I want to ask that you would do what no preacher could do. What I certainly can't do this evening, would you illumine spiritual realities to each one of us?

Would you show us how good you are? Would you show us how much you have in store for us? Would you show us those spiritual things that you've written about?

Would you connect those to realities in our hearts and in our lives? And God, I want to ask that what you did in my heart, Would you do it in many, many hearts here tonight? In Jesus' name, amen.

Flight is impossible, they said. It can't happen. Soaring through the sky might be a nice idea, but sustained, powered flight is nothing but a fairy tale.

That's what a lot of people thought around the beginning of the 1900s. And I think all of us could probably understand why, I mean, gravity is one of those stubborn realities of life, right?

You throw something up, and guess what happens? It comes right back down again. That's why we say, what goes up must what?

It must come down. Oh, you're familiar with gravity then. For most of human history, that pretty well described man's experience whenever he tried to fly.

He'd go up and he'd come right back down. In fact, as late as October of 1903, the New York Times suggested that it might take somewhere between 1 million and 10 million years before man ever developed a machine that could actually fly.

69 days later. Orville Wright left the ground It wasn't much of a flight, that first flight there that day It lasted 12 seconds and it covered only 120 feet But for those 12 seconds Something happened that men had dreamed about for generations In those 12 seconds Gravity did not cease to exist The Wright brothers didn't discover a way to flip the gravity switch off.

That downward pull that mankind had experienced ever since creation was still fully in play. But here's what happened that day. Another force came into the picture.

Something I'm going to call tonight the law of lift. You understand that when a properly designed wing moves through the air, it can generate enough lift to overcome the downward pull of the airplane's weight. And here's the thing we've got to understand.

Gravity is still pulling them downward, but it is no longer the only force determining what's happening. And once men, those two men and others like them at that time in history, learned how to harness the law of lift. Everything changed when it came to gravity.

Twelve seconds turned into minutes. A few hundred feet became miles. And before long, men were crossing oceans.

Eventually, men broke the sound barrier. And today, we routinely do things in the air that would have seemed completely impossible to the generations that came before us.

And here they thought it was impossible. You know, I think a lot of Christians think about victory over sin like folks thought about gravity back in 1903. We know what the Bible says.

We know that we're supposed to live. We know that we ought to do better and many times we determine, you know what, this time I'm not going to respond to mom and dad. Like I did before.

Or this time, I'm not going to treat my siblings like I did before. Or this time, I'm not going to look at that on the internet again. I'm not going to lose my temper.

I'm not going to give in to that temptation. I'm not going to go back to that habit. And you know what happens?

What goes up? What? Must come down.

We fall again. And the law of gravity seems to be the dominating force in our lives.

And after enough of that kind of experience, it's easy to start believing that this is just the way the Christian life is going to be. Victory sounds good. It sounds good at a conference.

It might sound good on a podcast. It might sound good on a plaque in the lobby of a church.

But soaring above the pull of sin, practically, consistently, this side of heaven, It can start to feel impossible. But the good news, young people, that I want you to understand here tonight, it is not impossible if you understand the law of lift. Romans 8, verse 2 is where we're going to be looking here this evening.

It tells us that there is another law at work. It says, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin, and death. Young people, the downward pull of sin is a genuine factor.

It will exist until we enter into heaven. Tonight, we're not going to pretend that it does not exist, but young people, it does not have to be the controlling force in your life. There is another power available.

There's another law, another force at work. And according to Paul, as we're going to look at tonight, it can do what all of your determination, all of your resolution, all of your decisions could never, ever do in one to 10 million years.

It can set you free, it can make you free from the law of sin and death. That's what I want us to see tonight in Romans 8. We're going to look at verses 2 through 4, a message I've entitled, the law of lift.

I want us to notice first, if you're taking notes first, the law that frees. We're going to see that here in verse number two. He says, once again, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

If you'll notice there in that verse, he talks about two laws. It's very important for us to understand what kind of law he is speaking about. But before we get to that, we've got to ask the question, what is a law in general?

What is a law to begin with? It's important to understand here, he does not use the word law here like sometimes he uses it in other places. He's using the word law here to talk about something different than say a speed limit or something different than say something that Congress passes.

He is talking about an operating principle or you could say a rule for how something works. In other words, he's talking about this principle that under the same conditions, you will get consistently the same results. There are conditions as we're going to see.

And there are, oh, praise God, there are results as we're going to see. We know about these kinds of laws, right? These operating principles we heard a little earlier about Murphy's law.

We're plotting to kill Murphy, right? Because of his law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong is that law.

I just learned this law in studying for this message. Parkinson's law, have you ever heard of that one? That law says that anything, oh no, that's the wrong one.

The longer you have to get something done, the longer it takes. Like freshmen who have all the time in the world and take all of it to get their homework done, right?

Here's another one. Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. This law says any headline ending in a question mark can usually be answered with no.

I can see the headline. Does President Donald Trump wear a wig? No, he does not.

Those are funny laws, okay? And they may or may not work every single time, but they do help us understand the idea of a law as an operating principle. A law is a principle that produces a predictable result under the same conditions.

And again, beyond the silly laws, the laws we joke about, there are real scientific laws that work this way. You know that. Take entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, right?

And I know there are probably folks in the room that could explain it a whole lot better than I'm going to here tonight. But the idea of this is left to itself. A system tends towards greater disorder.

And some of you know that law very personally. In fact, you've done extensive research on that in your bedroom.

In your closet, right? Or your locker at school. Or under your bed.

Right? That's very scary here tonight. Somebody's going to have nightmares.

Nobody has to come into your room every morning and carefully arrange things into a bigger mess, although maybe your little sister does that, right?

Sometimes, though, it just seems to happen. Unless some outside force, like you cleaning your room, acts upon it, things tend towards disorder. That's a law.

That is an operating principle. Things tend towards disorder, or the law that we've been talking about here tonight, the law of gravity. Think about it.

Gravity is predictable. If I was to hold something up here and let it go, where's it going?

And there it goes, okay? I can do it again, right? And take the same thing and let go of it?

It goes down every time. Let's see if the third time's the charm and we can get a different result out of this.

Nope. That's because the law of gravity is predictable. There are conditions and there are results.

Under the same conditions, you will get the same result. That's what makes a law. But notice again in our verse here, verse number two, he says that there are two spiritual laws at work in our lives.

First, he talks about the law of the spirit of life. And then he talks about the law of sin and death. These are those kinds of laws that he's speaking about.

One of those laws has to do with the spirit of life, right? And the other law has to do with sin and death.

One of those laws lifts you up and the other one of those laws pulls you down.

One of those laws is a lot like the law of gravity and the other law is a lot like the law of lift one of these laws has you rising in the power of the spirit above as we've been speaking of and the other one has you falling like a rock under the power of sin and death I've got to ask you something Which law has been ruling your life?

Which one of those two examples Characterizes how you've been living The experience that you have been having Can I ask you this? Were you sinning or were you soaring in the last week?

Can I say this young people?

You are not soaring. When you're looking at garbage on the internet you're not soaring. When you're treating your parents like trash you're not soaring.

When you're giving in to temptation every time you turn around you're not soaring. When your life is characterized by lust. Young people you're not snore.

Sorry I might be snoring. You're not soaring when you're sneaking off hanging with friends that your folks wouldn't want you to be hanging with. You're not soaring when anger and resentment rage inside of you, even if no one around you sees a glimmer of it.

You're not soaring when you curse under your breath at your sibling. You're not soaring when you're jealous that someone else got picked and you didn't. You're not soaring when you think you're better than everyone else.

You get the picture? Which law characterized your life for the last week. What we're talking about here is the downward pull of sin and death.

But here's what I want you to see. Gravity didn't disappear in history last Monday. Okay, within the last week for me, Monday, I drove up to Clarksburg Airport and I got on a teeny tiny little airplane and that thing went down the runway and lifted up off of the ground.

And you know what? The law of gravity didn't disappear when my plane took off into the air. In fact, I could have proved it.

I did not prove it. I could have jumped up during the flight and made my way to the exit row. I could have opened up the door and jumped out just to see if gravity had stopped working.

And you know what I would have found? Gravity was working just fine. That gravity didn't disappear for a single second during the whole flight.

So how in the world was that giant toothpaste tube with wings soaring at 30,000 feet in the air? I'll tell you because another force was at work. The law of lift.

See, here's the thing. On an airplane, when lift is generated, gravity doesn't keep it pinned to the ground anymore. It soars in the air.

And I really want, as you look at this verse in Romans 8, verse 2, I want you to have that picture in your mind when you read this because Paul isn't saying that sin suddenly disappears out of your body. He's not saying that the downward pull disappears, but he says there is another law at work.

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Notice he says, made me free. What's he talking about there? See, there is a downward, there is a power available to the believer that can counteract the downward pull of sin.

This force can overcome the downward pull of sin. And I want you to know, these are not two equal forces locked into some eternal tug of war. The law of the spirit of life is superior to the law of sin and death.

This law is strong enough to make you free from the law of sin and death. Young people, I want to give you hope tonight. You don't have to spend the rest of your Christian life lying on the runway.

Saying, well, gravity is real. I guess I'm just going to have to live on the runway for the rest of my life.

Young people, there is enough power in this law that you can fly. There's enough power in this law that you can rise above. There is enough power in this law that you can be genuinely free from the things that have been entangling you.

You can be genuinely free from the pull of the world. You can be genuinely free from the pull of peer pressure. You can be genuinely free from the downward pull of sin in you.

You can be free and you can soar. You know, you would think that every Christian would be soaring if they understood this. And I think if they did, they just might.

I think it's important for us to understand and really, really to ask the question of ourselves. If that is true, why do we spend so much time crashing and burning? Why is it that we keep on falling out of the air like a rock?

It'll be fine down there. Why? It's because there's a problem.

In fact, he talks about the problem in the next verse. The first point was the law that frees. And the second point is going to be this, the flesh that fails.

Look at what he says in verse three, first part of the verse. He says, for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. There's a couple of things I got to point out here.

We just talked about how there was a law, really two laws in the previous verse. We talked about the fact that Paul used that as an operating principle or a rule that works consistently under the same conditions. But here he's using the word law in a different way and probably the way we typically expect it to be used.

Here it's not a law. Here it is. The law is what he's talking about in verse number three.

He's talking about the law that God gave through Moses, the commands that God gave his people that reflected his own holiness and perfection. I'll tell you, we got a taste of that in the last session this afternoon, didn't we? Dr. Jim talked about the law and the fact that the law condemns you to die when you disrespect your parents, at least under the old theocracy.

And I don't know about you, I felt heavy. And you know what?

I honor my parents, but I felt heavy anyway. And if you're here and you treated your parents like trash, you felt heavy too, because what you were feeling was the holiness and righteousness of God in this room.

The commands that God gave were good. We know that. There are no bad rules.

In God's law. But the problem is that the law had a very significant limitation.

What's that limitation? It can't generate lift. Look at what he says.

He says, for what the law could not do. The law, literally, the idea in the Greek here is it is incapable.

The reason why is he says because it's weak through the flesh it is strengthless to accomplish what needed to be accomplished and it's important for us to get the point here there are some things that we could think would make us fly that are completely incapable of getting us off the ground you know I don't know if you've ever seen videos like this before men really understood sustained powered flight, people came up with some absolutely crazy flying machines.

You ever seen these before? Okay, these crazy flying machines. I've seen old footage of contraptions with umbrellas pumping up and down over the car.

You've seen that before. I've seen machines with giant bird wings flapping furiously while the whole thing just sits there and shakes. I've seen guys with explosives strapped on a steel plate on their back.

Whoever thought that was safe? None of those contraptions worked, and most of them hurt.

No matter how elaborate the contraption, and no matter how much time the person spent tinkering with it, no matter how much money they spent on it, no matter how much they really, really wanted it to work, those contraptions did not work. You know why? Because they didn't take advantage of the law of lift.

They didn't fulfill the conditions necessary for flight.

The person who operated the contraption remained on the ground, and sometimes he got chucked to the ground, and it hurt. That's what Paul's saying here. The law can tell you what righteousness looks like.

It can tell you how high you ought to be flying. It can tell you exactly where you are falling short. But it cannot give your flesh the power to get you there.

It is incapable. It could not do that. It cannot do that.

It never will be able to do that. Now can I say something very carefully here tonight. No rule can make you soar.

Do you hear me? Do you hear me? No rule can make you soar.

No handbook can lift you off the ground. I'm not preaching against the handbook. It's just limited.

No standard can overcome the law of sin and death. No restriction can change the downward bend of your heart. No screen time setting can flip off the lust in your soul.

No dumb phone can fix a wandering heart. Do you hear me? That does not mean that rules are bad.

Please don't walk out of here thinking that. Rules can protect you. Boundaries can be wise for us to implement in our life.

Restrictions can oftentimes keep us from putting ourselves in a stupid situation. But a rule, it may be able to restrain your behavior, but it cannot put you in the air.

You know, you can put a rule book on an airplane, but it won't make it fly, right? You can tell a plane how high it ought to be, but it won't get it off the ground. You can threaten to fine a plane for staying on the tarmac, but that won't get it up and soaring.

Do you hear me? Friends, the law can prick you in the heart. The law can flick you in the ear.

It can at times kick you in the rear. But it can't put you in the sky.

In fact, I would say the more you pretend that the rules are the answer to the law of sin and death in your life, the more you're going to look like the moron with dynamite strapped to his back.

It'll hurt you. Why? Because the law is, as he says here, weak through the flesh.

See, the flesh is the problem, young people. That's what you got to understand. There's no problem with the law.

It's limited in its ability to lift you off the ground. But the real problem is your flesh. You see, the law isn't weak because God's standard is defective in some way.

It's weak because our flesh is incapable of producing what the law demands. That's what Paul's been talking about. If you look at the context here, even back in chapter 7, verse 18, Paul says, For I know that in me that is in my, what?

Flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me. But how to perform that which is good I find not? In verse 19 he says, The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.

That's a person trying to obey the law and the power of the flesh, friends. That's the person trying to soar without meeting the proper conditions, without the law of lift. You aren't getting anywhere.

You're going to remain under the control of gravity for as long as you do not operate under the principle of lift.

Kind of sounds like one of those failed flying machines. I really want to fly, yet I'm still on the ground.

I really mean it this time And yet You're still on the ground Oh, I built a better contraption I got a new rule And yet you're still on the ground I tried harder But you're still on the ground You see, when we operate with the wrong principle When we operate with the wrong law The very thing that you want to do be incapable of doing because you're using the wrong power, the wrong force, the wrong law is in control of your life.

Lift does not overcome the law of sin and death by a rule or a regulation or a responsibility or a restriction. It overcomes by the law of the spirit of life in Christ. Please do not miss this.

In fact, he describes it as the law of the spirit of life. Where? In who?

In Christ Jesus. That leads to the third point here this evening, the son that saves. The son that saves.

Look at the last part of this verse. He says, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin. In the flesh, the idea, the grammar here is what the law couldn't do, God did.

God did something and it involved Jesus. And Jesus is the key to the law of lift. What is it that he did?

It says he became flesh. Here's the thing. Your flesh, my flesh, our flesh is the problem.

Our fallen human nature was incapable of producing the kind of life that God's law demanded. But then God sent his son in flesh.

Not sinful flesh. He says in the likeness, right, of sinful flesh. You know this.

Jesus really did become a man. He really had human flesh. But unlike you and me, there was no sin in him.

Christ who did no sin, neither was there guile found in his mouth. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh without becoming sinful himself. And notice what it says he did.

It says, coming in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He dealt with sin.

He came to deal with the very thing that was dragging us down. You know, we've been talking a lot about Rise Above and the video focused a lot on the things that drag us down. And you know what, young people?

Jesus came when he came, when God sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh? It said he dealt with that. He dealt with the things that trip you up.

He dealt with the things that cause you to fall flat on your face. How did he deal with it? It says God condemned sin in the flesh.

Whose flesh? In Jesus' flesh. And if you think about this, it's very profound.

The law was weak because of my flesh. So God sent his son in his. Flesh.

And in the flesh of Jesus Christ, God dealt with the problem of sin at the cross.

Your flesh was the place of failure. It still is. It is every day.

But his flesh was the place of victory. See, that's why I think he said at the beginning here, the Spirit's life is in Christ Jesus. You see, the Spirit is not giving you some life that is independent of Christ.

It is the very life of Christ. Jesus came in human flesh and dealt with sin and came out victorious and he gives you his life. The life of Christ is the key of victory over the law of sin and death.

He is the key. As verse four is going to show us, the spirit works it in us though.

Which brings us to the fourth point, the spirit that fulfills. Notice at the very beginning of verse number four, he says that. That's a really important word.

It's the point. It's the aim. It is the purpose or the goal of why Jesus came and dealt with our sin.

He did it so that something could happen. What did he want to happen? Look at what he says in verse 4 that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.

Oh, there's so much that I could say about that statement here tonight. See, the very thing that the law was incapable of doing, of producing within us, is being fulfilled in us.

If I could say it this way, the whole point of why Jesus came was to make you soar.

That's why he came. The Christian life is not God handing you a list of righteous expectations and then telling you to try harder to live up to them. It's God by his spirit producing in you what you could never produce on your own.

But I think then the obvious question is, how does it happen? Right? If a law, like the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, is a law that has predictable conditions and predictable results, what are the conditions necessary for the Spirit of life in Christ to overcome the law of sin and death?

He answers that question in the second half of the verse. Look at what he says. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not, After the flesh, but after the spirit.

The key is walking in the spirit. The word walk is very important because walking is a way of life. It's not just a dramatic moment at a TGYS.

Right? I'm grateful for every one of those moments, friend. But if all you do is take a step, that's not walking.

You can't walk without a step, but friend, if you stop stepping after your first step, you are not walking. It's something that has to happen while you're here at TGYS. It's something that has to happen on the van ride home from TGYS.

It's something that has to happen when you walk back in your front door at home. It's something that's got to happen at school on Monday. It's something that's got to happen at church on Sunday.

It's something that's got to happen every moment of every day for the rest of your life.

It's a moment by moment relationship with the Holy Spirit of God I see there's two sides to this relationship and both of them have to stay together and these are going to sound a little familiar to some of you all here the first side is dependence we could say total dependence right it has to do with where the power comes from where the lift actually comes from.

See, if I'm walking in the spirit, I'm not looking to myself as the source of lift. I'm not trying to produce lift in my own strength. I'm not trying to manufacture purity or cough up love with that hard to love person.

I'm not trying to just grit it out in patience. I'm not trying to just work up courage or self-control by sheer force of will. I'm recognizing Spirit of God.

I cannot produce this. I need you to do in me what I cannot do myself. That doesn't mean that you become passive.

Oh, that's the danger of understanding the Spirit-filled life. Paul doesn't say sit in the Spirit.

He says walk in the Spirit. One of the problems that I noticed of the early flying machines is they tried to fly while sitting still.

And that doesn't work. It's not how the law of lift works. There has to be swift movement.

There has to be the certain shape of the wing or the rotor if it's a helicopter. And there has to be the vacuum that's formed on the top side of that wing to lift that thing off of the ground. And friends, I want you to know sitting still doesn't work for the Christian either.

You have to move. You have to obey. You have to take the next step.

But here's the thing. You do it depending on his working and not your own working.

That's the first side of it. Dependence. Total dependence.

But the other side is surrender. Total surrender. Here's the thing.

Walking after the Spirit. If you think about if you're walking after somebody, you're following them, right? You see where they're going and you go after them.

You're letting them lead you if you walk after someone. And listen, friends, walking after the Spirit, as he says here, means that he is the one who's setting the direction of your life. See, a person who's walking after the Spirit isn't out in front deciding what you want to do and then asking the Holy Spirit to give you the power to accomplish it.

See, here's the thing. He needs to be the one who controls you. He needs to be the one who leads you.

Oh, I just finished for our church, finished preaching through Galatians, the whole book. And I love preaching through chapter five. Because listen, friends, listen, you might be here today, you might say, I don't believe in all that Holy Spirit stuff.

Can I just say something kindly? You need to read your epistles. Because Galatians chapter five makes a very clear, walk in the spirit and you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

He defines it by talking about being led by the spirit. Then you're not under the law. Later on, he says that you need to walk, This is a different Greek word.

Has the idea of keep in step with the Spirit. I think that actually has the idea of corporately, not just one person, but a body. Listening to the Spirit of God and letting Him determine the direction.

Not just of individual lives, but a whole body's life. Friends, if you don't believe in the leadership of the Spirit of God, rip the book of Galatians out of your Bible and throw it in the garbage. Because it's all over the book.

You have to surrender to Him. You need to give the Spirit of God the right to interrupt you.

You know what can happen if you don't believe in all that junk? Then God's not going to get your attention when He wants to.

Because you know what? You might be sitting in your office studying, pastor, and absorbing the Word. And don't bother me with that.

I'm busy studying the Bible. When the Spirit of God is trying to get you out, talking to somebody about Jesus.

Listen, young people, you might be so enamored with the things around you, right in front of you, and not listening to the voice of the Spirit of God. You won't walk in the Spirit unless you listen to the Spirit.

He has the right to redirect you. Maybe God led you this way at one point in time, and if you turn your heart and mind and spirit off to His leading, and he wants to make you take a quick left, you'll miss it. I did that once.

I had a boss tell me to meet me at a certain job, and I missed a turn, and ended up halfway to the New Jersey shore. My boss was not very happy with me. But listen, friends, you stop listening, you're going to end up far from God, from where he wants you.

Oh, you can listen to God in a youth summit like this, and God can be speaking to you in this time, but if you go home and stop listening, friends, you're going to end up drifting from exactly where God wants you to go. See, God has the right to put his finger on an attitude in your heart or in a relationship that you're excusing.

God has the right to put his finger on a habit that he doesn't want to be in your life. God has the right to put his finger on an app in your phone and say, Get rid of it!

God has the right to tell you to have a conversation or don't have a conversation.

God has the right to put his finger on something hidden in your heart that nobody knows about and say, You need to change that.

And if we'd get better at listening, surrendering to the Spirit of God, we would discover the law of lift.

You know what surrender says? Surrender says yes. Every time.

College students, you can find yourself studying, and the Spirit of God says get up and go win somebody to Christ. Surrender says yes.

You know you might be sitting in an invitation and the spirit of God says go to the front surrender says yes an offering plate might be passed and the spirit of God says put something in it and you say of what shall I put in it Lord I have nothing put in what he tells you surrender says yes every single time. See, the Christian life is him leading and you following.

It's him supplying and you depending. I think the airplane gives us one last picture of this. An airplane doesn't fly because a cockpit sits in the airport and grunts harder.

Now, flying isn't passive, though. The airplane has to be moving at a certain speed. It has to remain in the conditions where lift operates.

And of course, the pilot, he's active. He's controlling the movement of that airplane. He's involving himself in the various instruments that are on there.

But he himself, sitting in that cockpit, controlling where that plane goes, He is not personally producing the force that holds the airplane in the sky.

And young people, you are in control of your life. Your decisions do matter. But can I tell you this, friends?

You cannot produce the force that causes you to soar. You don't produce it. You move, you obey, you take the next step, but you do it under his direction.

You do it in dependence upon him. That is what total surrender and total dependence looks like. Friends, surrender says, Spirit of God, you have the right to lead me.

I yield to you and will continue to yield to you every step of my life. And dependence says, you alone have the power to enable me.

When those two things come together total surrender and total dependence the spirit of God begins to produce in you what no rule book or restriction or resolution or fleshly effort ever could produce that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us you know what happens?

You soar young people that's what God wants When I think of Rise Above, this is what I think of. My heart for this conference is not that you would come and just think about all of the things that are pulling you down. Listen, if you leave here and the only focus in your mind are, oh, I got to avoid the things that are pulling me down.

It's like you walking around saying, got to avoid the law of gravity. Oh, the law of gravity is bad. I went to a conference.

I learned about the law of gravity and I hate the law of gravity. Rah, rah, rah.

If you leave here determined to escape the law of gravity But you don't know how To access the law of lift I'm just setting you up for frustration. If all I do is stand up here and say Don't be worldly Don't go back on standards. If I just stand up here and say Well you know what Don't treat your parents like trash.

Those are all great things. It's that the law shows us that is right. But friends, the only thing that will lift you to be able to soar and let the righteousness of the law be fulfilled in you is if you walk after the spirit.

If you miss that, you miss everything. I'll tell you, some of you, listen, walked after the spirit. You haven't even heard this message yet this week.

Because you know what? Earlier on, when Dr. Jim was preaching, the law was doing its work.

It was showing you, you've been treating your parents like trash. You would be dead in Old Testament Israel.

And God was convicting you. You saw the righteousness of the law and you knew, man, I'm toast.

And when the Spirit of God began to speak to you and say, go back in that invitation, you know what you did? You said yes. And you yielded.

And if you'll combine that with dependence, not just during the invitation time, but every day and every moment of your life, you will soar.

When Orville Wright lifted off that beach in 1903, he only stayed in the air for 12 seconds.

Sometimes I felt like that early on. I would depend on the Lord and yield to him. And I would fly for a week.

You know, 12 seconds is a pretty terrible flight, right? And yet that flight changed the world.

Because for 12 seconds, those men proved that man did not have to stay on the ground.

The law of gravity didn't change, right? But there was another force that was strong enough to overcome it. Can I say this here tonight?

Some of you came into this room convinced that spiritually speaking, man has to stay on the ground. You've tried. You've made resolutions.

You've added all kinds of rules into your life, and you've promised God that you would do better, and you're expecting those things to give you lift, but they never can, and they never will. Maybe you've gotten pretty good at looking like you're flying. But now even after this first day you know you're not flying.

You're not soaring,. You saw that God spoke to you about that here today. You just keep coming back down to the ground.

And maybe after enough crashes you also have quietly begun believing. This is just who I am,. Nothing's going to change.

Right?

Victory sounds good in a sermon or on a website But it's not going to happen in my life And what we just saw says Your life doesn't have to be that way The answer isn't another attempt to improve yourself It's to walk after the Spirit Young people, you need to quit insisting on running your own life And you need to yield to Christ's life You need to yield to the Spirit's direction.

You need to depend on His power to produce in you what you never could produce on your own. And that means tonight or tomorrow morning, in the next temptation, in the next conversation, you need to listen for His leadership. Say yes to what He says and depend on His power.

You know what? I don't know what the downward pull might look like in your life, but I do know this. Man does not have to stay on the ground.

By the power of the law of the spirit of life, you can soar.