Bobby Bosler: Welcome to The Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, speaking to you today from Somerville, Alabama, where The War team and I are very excited about what God is setting us up to do this weekend. We’ve been inviting in the neighborhoods and particularly in the schools. God has answered prayer in some exciting ways. Yesterday, we were in one high school in the town we’re ministering in and the next town over. We were in that high school this afternoon for their lunch periods. We’re thankful for the way The Lord is opening doors and hearts. If you think of it, on Saturday, pray for us that the Lord would bring many young people to the war event, and we would see many trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

For those who follow us, I’ve got a team with me this semester. Alex Milosevic from the St. Louis area, and Tim Filbrick from Maine, near Clinton, Bangor, that general region. These folks are growing, taking steps of faith. God is teaching them many things—lessons of character, faith, what it means to die to self, and to expect much from God, not from their own capabilities. That’s what I want to talk about today on the podcast.

God has been working in my heart. So here I am, the guy who’s done this before, right? I leader the war, head up Thee Generation, and speak on Thee Generation podcast. I run the Thee Generation Youth Summit. Many of you may think I’ve got it all figured out. I’ll let you in on a secret—I don’t. When I think I do, God sets me up for a lesson in humility. Just last week, we were in a church in Winder, Georgia. I was excited, the Lord was using me, had recruits, and many saved at the war. It’s exciting for me, but often I’m leaning on the guys to do the inviting and the recruiting, but I was involved; the Lord very clearly led me to be involved there, and it was just exciting to see Saul saved as a result of it. But in the midst of all of this,

God is bringing me into situations where I don’t know what to do. One of the things I found myself experiencing over the last couple of weeks was my truck. It was giving me major problems. For those of you who are aware, God has promised us a new truck. It hasn’t been delivered yet, and we haven’t gotten the money for it yet. We haven’t ordered it yet. We don’t know where it’s coming from other than from the hand of the Lord.

In the meantime, God has been keeping our truck running. It’s a 2001 F-350 7.3-liter diesel dually 8-foot long bed crew cab truck, and man, that 7.3-liter engine has been bulletproof. Well, until a couple of weeks ago. My team and I had done all of our training in the Greenville, South Carolina area, and we were driving to our first meeting. I noticed the truck sounded funny. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but all I knew is that partway through the trip, the transmission temperature gauge was starting to get higher and higher. We stopped for lunch, and it cooled down, but then we made the rest of the trip, and it got higher and higher.

I say all of that to say, I realized there’s something wrong, something is not okay. I talked to the pastor; he had done a lot with trucks over the years, and he recommended I get a transmission fluid change. So we tried that. You know, we kind of tried to fiddle with that, and the next travel day, it was doing the same thing. A different kind of sound, and the sound was like the RPMs were going really high. Again, the transmission temperature gauge was going higher and higher. It even got hotter than the week before, and I figured I could slow down and manage the temperature by just not going the speed limit, which was no fun. We made it to the church thankfully, but even along the way, I was calling up friends. I got a diesel mechanic friend. I’ve got another friend who’s done a lot with these trucks, and they’re saying try this, try this, try this. Maybe it’s this, could be this. We couldn’t figure it out. I thought I need professional help, so I called the pastor, and the pastor contacted a diesel mechanic. We got it in the shop a day or so after we arrived.

The diesel mechanic called me, and he’s not sure what the problem is either at first. He hadn’t put his finger on it, and I appreciated him communicating. I’m going to tell you what; that put me in a bit of a tizzy, a bit of a crisis. I was feeling very anxious. I was thinking, man, this guy is going to call me up and tell me it’s a three, four thousand dollar repair; it needs a whole new transmission, and I’m thinking we don’t want to pour much more money into this truck. We need a new truck. As I was looking at the trucks on the market, I don’t have the money for one. If it’s used, the interest rates are through the roof. If it’s new, the payments are through the roof. I’m just thinking, oh, Lord. I do not know what to do.

Thankfully, he figured out what the problem was, and it was one, just one little switch, a little brake light switch that I had swapped out because my brake lights had stopped working before we went on our first trip. Who would have thought that a brake light switch would result in the transmission not locking up into overdrive, which you want it to do at certain speeds, and so it was riding hotter than it was supposed to. It was an easy fix. Honestly, that fix itself, there was another thing that he did for me, but that fix itself probably cost me 50 bucks, maybe if that, for his time and the diagnosis and all of that stuff.

But you know, I find myself in certain areas of my life where it’s like I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know how to find a new truck. I don’t know how to manage all of the payments and looking for the right truck. I’m familiar with Fords, but I have no clue when it comes to Chevys or Dodges which engines to choose and which engines to avoid. Just felt very, very overwhelmed. Looking to the Lord and saying, God, I need wisdom. God, I need your help. God, help. You know what? That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing—to be in a position where you don’t know what to do, where you’ve never experienced some of these things before and you find yourself at the end of your wits and not knowing where to turn and what to do because that is when we look to the Lord.

Young people, don’t run from those kinds of situations. Don’t resist things that you’ve never done before. Don’t conclude that you can’t do it, at least in the way where you don’t even try. Don’t hold back because you feel incapable of doing something that God has clearly placed in front of you or an unavoidable situation. Don’t resist that because, listen, if you refuse, you’re going to miss out on a miracle. I’ve talked about some of those things on the podcast before. But you know what I’m finding? What I’m finding in my own life and in my own ministry? The areas of unfamiliarity, the areas where I feel my need the most, the areas where I’ve not yet experienced God’s major deliverance, those are the areas where God shows up. Those are the areas where I’m aware of my need, and I look away to the Lord for His direction, for His guidance, for His help, and for His deliverance. But it’s in the areas that I have experience, sometimes. That’s where I fail.

Okay, so last week we were in Winder, Georgia, right? This is northeast of Atlanta by about an hour or so. We’re here, and I tell you what, on the first night, everything was going wrong. I’m telling you, I mean, we had a lot of my recruits come. That was exciting. But when we got down onto the field, the sound system wasn’t ready. Again, this is just a learning curve. The guys had put it down with air, but they hadn’t plugged it in, and the cord at the top of the hill wasn’t plugged in. So I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get this thing ready. I call the teens down, and they come down. I’m explaining the rules, and my brain, I could not shift my brain into gear for some reason. I forgot to mention a few rules here, and those rules happen to kinda make a difference in the way things panned out. And it was chaotic. I’ve never had more tube tug rounds that ended in a stalemate as I had that night. And it was cold. The kids just, there was an unsettled spirit.

We got inside, (and I’m not even joking) during the cheering contest, one of the judges accidentally knocked one of the scoreboards, and the thing fell off, and we couldn’t get it back on. I eventually grabbed both the scoreboards and sat them on the ground because I didn’t want one down and the other up. But then we got around to the final score, and I had to have some guys from the back come up and hold the scoreboards. How cheesy is that? Oh, I’m telling you, it was like everything was going wrong. Even in an area where I’m familiar with, in my heart, I’m just like, ah, God, help!

Well, I got up to preach, and I felt I had nothing. You know, I felt like I had nothing. The pastor even remarked later, he said, “Yeah, Brother Bosler, about a quarter of the way through your sermon, something happened. It wasn’t anything I changed, but about a quarter of the way through that sermon, God was there. It was as if you could see it in the crowd. They went from listening to locked in. Went all the way through the message. At the end of the message, 10 young people walked back and trusted Christ as their Savior. And you know what? That kind of thing never gets old. The reason why I mention that is because even though that was an area I was familiar with, God was bringing me to a point of discomfort so that I looked away to Him.

But you know what? The second night was very different. And by very different, I meant I remembered all the rules. Even though it was raining outside, there were challenges. We had it under control. The guys did great. They just did phenomenally in leading their teams. We had great team spirit. We came inside, and oh man, everything was just clicking on all cylinders. The program was running really well. I got around to the sermon and I cried out to the Lord. Don’t get me wrong, I know I need God, but you know what? I’ve also done this a thousand times, you know? I get around to the preaching, and I’m telling you what, when I started preaching, I don’t know what came over me. I was a ham. The kids were loving it. I was loving it. I was preaching, and I was funny, and I was making the points so clearly, and the sermon was just going great. At least that’s how I felt. I’m not being down on the sermon necessarily, but I remember at one point, I had this twinge in my heart. I had this twinge in my mind. Too much Bobby. Too much Bobby. Oh, I’ve been there before. I’ve been there numerous times throughout the years. I kept preaching. I finished the sermon, gave an invitation. A couple of people went back, maybe one or two. I think it may have been two. And you know, the contrast between those two nights for me was a stark contrast. You know, I know how to run a war night. I know how to preach the gospel. I know how to tell stories, I know how to put together a persuasive sermon. But good night, that’s not what it takes to see people saved and to see God come down. 

You know, I came out of that night…Again, I’ve been here before. The Lord has taught me this lesson. I wish I wouldn’t have to learn this lesson anymore. But the Lord in my heart was speaking to me just this very simple word of scripture From John 3:30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” You know young people, all of us are expected to grow. All of us are expected to in circumstances that are beyond us to look away from ourselves to the Lord and in humility to yield to him and submit to him, surrender to him, depend upon him and he comes and he helps and he delivers and he guides and he does the work that we can’t do. And you know what? We grow and we learn that God can and we learn that God can will if we yield to him and depend upon him total surrender total dependence you guys have heard this a million times by now okay, and and we grow and you know what we grow in our experience we grow in our expectation we we grow uh in our maturity we we grow in wisdom and in so many different ways we grow and we go from being a an immature timid cowardly, fearful, clinging, Christian to being one who knows how to access the power of God to do the will of God and we ought to grow like that. But young people, there is a danger in growth. And the danger is when we get our eyes off of the one who made us grow in the first place to the one who delivered us in the first place. And when we get our eyes onto our experience.

Young person, maybe some of you one day will become an evangelist like me and get a chance to preach the gospel to dozens, if not hundreds of people at a time. And maybe some of you are going to fail early on and learn how much you need God in the pulpit and you’re going to look away to Him and He’s going to deliver you. But you know what? For I hope there are going to be some, if not many of you, that do this a lot, that in whatever method or mode of ministry he leads you into, that you are going to see God work regularly. But beware of the day when you think you’ve got it all figured out. Beware of the day when you think you know what you’ve got to do in other people’s lives. Beware of the day when you feel like you are the answer, or at least you have the answer.

I tell you, and again, my guys are doing great. Don’t get me wrong. But you know, with every team, I’ve got goals. I’ve got things that I want them to learn. I’ve done this a lot. I’ve had dozens and dozens of guys travel with me, and I’ve seen them learn these lessons over and over and over again. It’s so easy for me to think I know what they need. There’s a sense in which I know where I really believe we need to go, and I know sometimes some of the processes involved, but I am not the answer. No matter how many times I’ve said the same exact things to my guys, the things that I say are not the answer. Jesus is the answer. The answer isn’t, yes, I want them to run to their recruits. Yes, I don’t want them to pass up a single recruit. Yes, I want to see them learn how to give the spiel and to do it fast. I want to see them… you walk into a lunchroom and come out with 75 to 100 names and numbers. Yes, I want them to believe in God for those things, but my counsel, my input, my direction, my guidance is not the answer. Jesus is the answer. He’s the answer for me in my leadership. He’s the answer for them in their growth.

But the great danger of growth is when you have grown so much to the point that you think you are now the answer or you think that the answers you give to them are the answers. I don’t care how much you know. I don’t care how much theology you’ve got. I don’t care how many sermons you can preach. I don’t care how many people have been saved through your ministry. I don’t care how many people you have under your tutelage, Jesus is the answer, not you. I suppose what God is speaking to me about here even recently is that He must increase, and I must decrease. If my guys walk away from my tour thinking, “Man, Mr. Bosler’s great,” oh, I failed. I have failed. But if my guys walk away from this tour thinking, “Jesus did amazing things,” that’s the stuff right there.

As you grow, you need to grow. You gotta grow. Young people, you gotta grow. You gotta step out of the boat and experience God. But you know what? Think about this. You step out of the boat a bunch of times, right? You might get kind of confident. Confidence in the Lord is a good thing. But you might turn around and say, “Hey guys, watch this. Jump out of the boat, and maybe Jesus will help you. Maybe you’ll walk on the water.” But you know the moment you say, “Hey, look, here’s how you do it,” look at me. Oh, don’t get their eyes on you. Don’t let them get their eyes on you. He must increase. I must decrease.

Oh, young people.You know, if in your mind and in your heart, you have a vision of success in the ministry where you are the guru, where you are the one that everyone seeks out for wisdom and for guidance and for direction, your eyes are on the wrong place, and you got the wrong goal. I can’t tell you how many times even here this semester God has been humbling me and teaching me the greatest thing I can do is point him to Jesus. He’s the answer for them. And if they’re looking to me for answers, I’m not pointing them in the right place. The danger of growth is that we grow to the point that we become the focus in our own hearts and in our own lives and in the lives of those that we are leading. 

So young people, I trust that as you learn that Jesus is the answer for you. That you will learn how to point other people to Jesus as the answer for them. That’s the whole point of total surrender. It’s not like those words total surrender are the magic words that make you a guru. No, the point is surrendering to a person. His name is Jesus. He’s God. He knows everything. He knows the best for you. He knows the best plan for right now, for five minutes from now, for an hour from now. The point is not surrender; the point is Him. Total dependence likewise. The point is not that this is some formula that gives you supernatural strength like a superhero. The point is not that this is the magic key and secret to becoming a pastor of a church of a thousand or an evangelist who sees thousands of people come to Christ. The point is the one to whom you’re yielding. Has a mission for you, and you can’t do it. The point is His power, His strength, His blessing, His will. The point is Him. He is the point.

You know, Jesus is not only the means of Christian growth; he’s the point of Christian growth. And so young people as we yield to him and as we lead others to do the same, as we depend upon him and lead others to do the same, may it be said of us, as John the Baptist said of himself, he must increase, but I must decrease.