Bobby Bosler: All right, everybody. Welcome. Thank you for coming to the Fear Factor session.

I plan on scaring you all to death. No, I’m just kidding. Turn with me to Acts chapter 18, please.

Acts chapter 18. I’m really excited about this youth summit. I trust the Lord is working in your hearts and in your lives.

I trust that in the previous session, the main session there, I hope you catch my heart. I want to make it very clear. You know, I don’t know.

Everybody processes preachers when they preach on sin differently. And I think a lot of it depends on kind of how you grew up and how your home situation was. I think some people, when they hear somebody get up and go after sin, if they have an angry father,

What they’re going to do is they’re just going to they’re going to wilt and they’re going to shrink back and think that they’re mad at them. Okay. You all need to recognize the fact that you are going to react in different ways to these things.

This isn’t really my message. This is just introductory. Okay.

But some of you here, you had permissive parents. And because of that, you’re going to just kind of whatever. I’ll just do what I’m going to do anyway, because that’s how your parents.

That’s how things worked in your home. But I want you to understand my heart and the heart of every preacher here is to see you succeed in all dimensions of that word. Our heart for you is to see you win in your battle against sin.

It’s to see you win in your pursuit of God. It’s to see you win in fulfilling God’s mission for your life. Our desire, plain and simple, is to see you win.

Now, that being said, sometimes I think we all understand if you’ve got a broken bone, it hurts to set it. You know what I’m saying? When things aren’t right, sometimes in order to make it right, it hurts.

And that’s okay. I think, and one of the reasons why I preached what I preached this morning is because I wanted to see, all right, we’re going to set some bones here in the next few, next day or so.

But it’s purely for your good. It’s got your best interests in mind, and we are for you so much, and you have so much amazing potential. Now, that being said, I want to talk to you about something here that has been an encouragement to me dozens and dozens of times.

I remember back when my wife and I, we were courting. We believed the Lord wanted us to be married, so we had talked about it, and I think we were even engaged. And I remember at one point, we’d been talking a little bit about our futures,

And I remember, and by the way, guys, my purpose is not to talk about relationships here necessarily, but you know one thing that was amazing to me about my wife before she was my wife? We talked about ministry.

We talked about our future. And when we did so, we both said the same thing. We don’t want to have just an ordinary ministry.

Now, that wasn’t a prideful statement. We wanted our ministry and our lives to result in supernatural things that only could be attributed to God. We didn’t want to just eke through life and eke out a paycheck and just exist.

We wanted our lives to count. I remember we would talk about D.L. Moody and how, you know, his life.

It impacted millions of people. And that was the kind of life we wanted to have together. Guys, if there’s a girl that kind of has that kind of a thing, that kind of a vision, that is amazing.

You’ve got a good one. All right. If they’re like, yeah, I just want security in a house.

Well, I’ll tell you this. Being on the road, in the ministry, even in the kind of ministry that we’re in, it’s a very significant barrier to getting a house.

Okay? So you’ve got to be willing to make huge sacrifices. You’ve got to recognize your life is not going to be normal like other people.

But if you’ve got your eyes on God’s will and God’s calling, it’s okay because he’ll take care of you. I asked you to turn with me to Acts 18, and I want to preach to you a message here. I have preached in other places.

But in Acts 18, we find the Apostle Paul is on a missionary journey. Now, if you know anything about the book of Acts and the history contained in it, really the last half of the book of Acts is all about Paul and his missionary journeys,

where he went, the things that God did in and through his life. The Apostle Paul, on his first missionary journey, He traveled primarily to the island of Crete in Asia Minor,

and his desire was to go and preach the gospel, see people saved, see churches started. He wanted to see the Gentiles reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. On his second missionary journey, they wanted to go back through and visit some of the churches they’d been to.

So they went along Asia Minor, traveling west from the Holy Land and Antioch, west across Asia Minor. And Paul had all kinds of plans. Hey, I want to go here.

The Lord would say, no. Hey, I want to go here. The Lord would say, no.

Hey, I want to go over here. the Lord would say, no. And Paul was probably a little bit perplexed.

Okay, what does God want me to do? Well, God spoke to him in the night by a vision, and he heard and saw in that vision the

man from Macedonia calling, saying, come across the Aegean Sea and help us. So Paul, his desire was just to obey the Lord.

His desire was just to fulfill God’s mission. He wanted to do what God wanted him to do, so he obeyed.

He went across the Aegean Sea to what you would probably know in your geography class as the Grecian Peninsula. He started off in Philippi.

You’ve heard about the city of Philippi, led a bunch of people to Jesus Christ. He ended up in jail by the time things

were through. But even through that, the jailer got saved. And I’ll tell you, he got beat up there.

He got trashed, royally trashed. Well, he went from there, passed through a couple smaller cities to the big metropolis of Thessalonica.

And there in that city, even though he had just literally been beaten up and mistreated in Philippi. He walked into the city and he mentions very clearly in

1 Thessalonians, I was bold in God to preach the gospel unto you. Even though I’d been mistreated in the previous city, I wasn’t going to let that stop me because God had a mission for me.

God had a will for me. I’m going after it.

So the apostle Paul goes in Thessalonica, preaches the gospel. Three weeks later, he’s run out of town by the Jews there in that city. I mean, it was bad.

It was hot and heavy persecution. He gets run out of the city, goes over to Berea, rinse, repeat.

Okay, this kind of thing just keeps on happening in his life. Every city he goes to, people are getting

saved and people are getting mad. That was kind of just the pattern. And I want you to know

something. In your life and in mine, when we endeavor to obey God, when we endeavor to do right, it’s going to make an impact.

But I also want you to understand that when you’re making an impact, some people aren’t going to like it. You know what?

If you make some decisions here this week and you go home and you make some substantive changes

to your lifestyle and the things that you do and the things that you watch

and the music that you listen to and you come into your home situation, man, I’m going to tell you,

God’s going to use your testimony. But there are also going to be other people that aren’t going to like it.

Some of your old friends, they’re going to start saying stuff like, oh, he’s all of a sudden gotten holier

than the rest of us. Oh, boy. You know what?

I got that in high school, when I got right with God, when I began wanting to do right and not wanting to play the garbage video games full of horrible God-hating music and violence, when I began to not want to listen to the kind of music that I wanted to listen to before, I got labeled

as someone who’s holier than thou. I had people making up things about me, and it was just a, it was interesting.

But you know what? The point is, we got to do what God wants us to do. Our

him. Now, I told you to turn with me to Acts 18, and I want you to see he had literally just come down from Athens, which was actually the stop right after Berea, the last city that I talked about.

He went down to Athens. He preached. That was kind of mixed results there as well.

And he came down in verse 1 of chapter 18. After these things, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth and found

So here’s Paul. He came to the next city. God led him to this city.

If you compare Scripture with Scripture, actually this was unusual for Paul to be here in this city by himself. He’d actually sent his helpers, those that were his protection, those that were his physical helpers to just help make things happen. He sent them up to Thessalonica to see how those how those they were doing to see if they were still alive and still following in Jesus.

Again, this is just an example of Paul’s love and concern for others more than for himself. Well, here in this city, he came down here. He’s by himself.

And yet even there, God provided a couple for him to lodge with and a couple for him to work with. And his desire was here in this place to lay the groundwork for the incredible evangelistic outreach that was about to happen. Well, it says in verse 4,

And he reasoned in the synagogues every Sabbath and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. So here he is. If you know anything about the synagogues of those days, if they had somebody, it’d be kind of like a church service, right?

Except for Jewish people. And what would happen is if there was a respected teacher that was there, They would say, oh, respect to the teacher, why don’t you come up and say a few things for us?

And Paul would probably say something like, I’m so glad you asked. I got a few things to say. And he would get up, and if I understand it, he would basically open the Old Testament.

Because that’s the Jews’ Bible, right? He would open up the Old Testament, and he would begin to do some things that I do in Bible doctrines class. I teach Bible doctrines class here in October and November.

I’m in the midst of that right now. Well, not right now. I’m in the midst of this session right now.

But he would talk about how, you know what? in the Old Testament? Isn’t it interesting how God said, let us make man in our image?

Why did he use a plural pronoun and verb for that? Hmm.

Hey, you know, the angel of the Lord, did you know he claimed to be God? Did you know that he let people worship him?

Did you know he let people call him God and didn’t correct him? Hmm.

I wonder what that’s about. And he went throughout the Old Testament.

He said, hey, the Messiah that you’re expecting to come and deliver you, did you know he’s divine? Did you know the Bible says they shall look on him whom they have pierced?

And that was speaking of the Lord. And, you know, he would just lay the groundwork.

He wouldn’t like come out and say, here’s what it’s talking about. But he’d just be like pointing in their own Bible and saying,

hey, isn’t that interesting? Hmm. Hey, look, that’s interesting.

Hmm. Well, where was he going with this?

Well, he wanted to preach the gospel, but he was laying the groundwork for it. Verse five says, And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia,

so his help arrived, his helpers arrived, Paul was pressed in the spirit and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. I’m sorry, I just skipped verses.

Paul was pressed in the spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. Don’t miss it. What he was saying here is he laid the groundwork.

He started setting the charges in the Old Testament, causing them to think, hmm. And then when his personal workers arrived,

and by the way, when they arrived, they told him that Thessalonica was thriving. He was stirred.

He was stirred. And he stood up and said, guess what, people?

The person I’m talking to you about is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. He is your Messiah.

And you missed him. Now, he began to preach the gospel, and for the Jews, that was the dividing line.

That was the dividing line. And you know what happened? It’s what happened everywhere else in Paul’s ministry.

People got saved and people got mad. Let’s continue looking here. It says, and when they opposed themselves and blasphemed, he shook his raiment and said unto them,

your blood be upon your own heads. I am clean. I don’t think I’ve ever said that at a doorstep.

Have you ever said that at a doorstep? I don’t know. Maybe there was a cultural thing here that that was okay.

But hey, whatever. He’s Paul. He said, from henceforth, I will go unto the Gentiles.

So he’s saying, hey, listen, this is on your own heads. I’ve laid the truth. I’ve preached the gospel.

I’ve showed you what you need to know in order to be saved. You’ve ignored it. I’ve done my job here.

All right. This is your decision. He’s putting the decision on them.

Well, he’s then, all right, I’ve done my job. I’ve started with the Jews, and now I’m moving on to the Greeks. It says, and he departed thence, verse 7,

and entered into a certain man’s house named Justice, one that worshipped God. That meant he was what they call a proselyte,

who was a non-Jew who wanted to follow the God of the Old Testament, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. So what happened here is, okay, he left the synagogue and went next door.

Literally. Shared wall next door. And justice apparently had gotten saved and said, hey, can we meet in your house?

Sure. So imagine a church split where you start worshiping and literally the next door, you know, the next door down in the strip mall or whatever. Okay, that’s what happened here.

So here they are in this house and God’s doing miracles. Verse 8, and Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized. So what’s happened here is really simple.

Paul’s coming into the city. His desire is to surrender to the Lord, to depend on him, to turn the world upside down with the gospel. That was Paul’s mission.

He opened up his mouth and preached the gospel. And like I’ve said, people got mad and people got saved. You know, I think sometimes we have a picture that when we’re really living the revived life,

when we’re really living the surrendered life, when we’re really living the God-dependent life, everything’s going to go well. Mm-mm.

No, no, no, no, no. I could tell you stories. I travel most of the year, two-thirds of the year, doing the war and the cola clash.

And as we go from church to church, we come into a meeting, come into a town. In fact, Ben’s going to be traveling with me here this spring, coming up here. We go into a church, into a city, and many of you have seen this.

We go out and we recruit. We invite teens to come. And you know what?

Sometimes people get mad about that. In fact, this summer, we were in Grand Blank, Michigan. Anybody near, anywhere near there?

I don’t have any Michiganders in here. Okay. Grand Blank, Michigan, a little church just south of there in Holly.

And we went out recruiting. And everything was fine to start. But Andrew, the Dr.

Pepper team captain, he was with me. Andrew Forrester, not you. The other Andrew.

We were in this city, and he was outside of a Kroger recruiting in the parking lot. And he had talked to this one teenager. And the teenager was like, when he talked to him,

Hey, have you heard about Cola Clash? And the teen, like, just ran and walked away, went and told his mom. Well, apparently somebody was watching this happen,

and this person decided to look us up on our email, or on the internet, found my personal email address and sent an email to me. And he said, hey, I really don’t appreciate your recruiting tactics.

Don’t you realize we’ve got a bunch of people who are abducting people and selling them down to Mexico? Human trafficking going on around here. You know, you really need to find a new method.

I’m like, yikes, somebody’s upset. Whatever. I called up the Kroger.

He mentioned something about the manager, and I just talked it through with the manager. And I said, hey, if you prefer us not to be here, that’s fine. I’ll tell my guys not to go there.

Well, then I get a phone call from this guy. Oh, and he said, if I find your scrawny little Andrew again, I will take him by his neck, and I will literally drag him into the Kroger to management.

I’m thinking, whoa, boy. Well, the guy found my phone number on the internet, and he called me up. And he starts talking to me about this, and the guy was so mad.

And I’m talking to him, and I’m saying, hey, listen, sir, I’m sorry. I understand how you might misunderstand, but just we’re a legitimate agency organization here. We’re trying to be a help to your teens.

We’re actually trying to help the community. And he’s like, it’s just so violent in this world these days. And you just got to be so careful.

And I said, well, you know what? You’re exactly right. And I said, you know, to be honest with you, if you’re concerned about violence, I would suggest not threatening violence on my team members.

Thank you, sir. Have a nice day. It might have been a little bit of a dig.

I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I did. Well, you know what?

Later on, and this was just one out of many weeks. Later on that day, that very day, Craig, the Mountain Dew team captain, he was with me, traveling with me. And he was also in a Kroger parking lot.

I don’t know what it was about these Kroger parking lots. And somebody else saw a similar thing. It was a different one because I told the guys not to go to that one.

Is it a different one? And this lady, she saw him talk to some teenagers. And she saw them in a pickup truck.

And she got in her vehicle. she drove over and she took pictures of the pickup truck and the license plate. She posted it on

social media, on Facebook, and said, if you see this truck, call 911. They are predators and abductors.

They tried to abduct my kid in the parking lot, and you need to let this happen. Well, anyway, so this is all going on. Somebody sent me a screenshot of that Facebook post that

of like, oh no, what in the world? There’s a battle going on. And that’s what was going on.

There was a battle. The police called up the pastor and said, hey, we received notification of this.

We traced the plates to you. You know, what’s going on is the pastor’s son’s vehicle. And pastor called the guy, Craig, and said, you all need to come back to the house.

The police want to talk to us. So they came back to the house.

You know, it’d be really easy to be like, your knees knocking like Pastor Savage talked about last night. When they got back to the house,

the police officer found out that everything was legit and okay, and he actually called up the lady and asked her to take down the Facebook post. But you know,

while they were back there, Craig saw a teenager walking down the street. He went up and recruited them. He came on Friday night,

and he got saved. He’s one of many that got saved. I think 20-something

People got saved that week, which was amazing. But you know what? When you are out there and when you’re laboring to turn the world upside down with the gospel,

don’t be surprised when the battle comes. When you’re trying to live for God, just trying to do right, just trying to stay clean, just trying to live wholly in the power of Christ in you,

don’t be surprised when a battle happens. But you know when the battle happens and when things go bad and people get angry and upset at us just for doing what’s right.

We’re tempted to respond in a couple of different ways. In fact, when we look at verse 9, even the Apostle Paul was tempted to fear.

You know what? I think we’re all tempted to fear our peers, right? I think a lot of times we fear our peers looking at us

like we just stepped off of Mars because he just went forward in that invitation. You know what I’m talking about? We’re afraid that our friends at school,

we’re afraid that if we start living right, they might think of us differently. They might think we’ve gone all fanatical.

We’re afraid that if we surrender to God, maybe, and again, this isn’t a, we’re afraid that if God leads us to a different college

than maybe our friends are going to, that they’ll just write us off forever. And I want you to know, fear will cripple you.

in your effectiveness at following Jesus, in your effectiveness at reaching the world with the gospel. You know, I want you to imagine here,

Paul’s at the very beginning of his Corinthian ministry here. He didn’t realize that it was the beginning of a year and a half plus that he would have interaction with these people,

but he’s at the very beginning at the cusp of great things here. And evidently, the Apostle Paul was tempted to fear because in verse 9, Jesus had to show up and have some words with him.

It says in verse 9, Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision. And here’s what he said.

Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace. What he’s saying was simply this. Listen, don’t be afraid.

Paul, you’re tempted to be afraid. Stop fearing. Now, I think most of us, if somebody was just to say,

John, just knock it off. Quit being afraid. Okay, that doesn’t always help us, right?

It’s like, man, you’re making me fear more by telling me not to be afraid than I was before. Before you said anything about not being afraid, what do I have to be afraid about? Kind of like that skit.

There is no problem with the wings, you know, or whatever, okay? It’s like, don’t be afraid. What do you mean?

What am I supposed to not be afraid about? You know, just saying don’t be afraid doesn’t help. But Jesus gives three reasons why you don’t need to be afraid.

And these reasons are faith building. These reasons will establish you. They will stabilize you if you’ll get a hold of them in your pursuit of obeying Jesus, living for him, and reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He says, don’t be afraid. And you know why we shouldn’t be afraid? Because when we fear, we keep our mouth shut.

That’s what he says. Be not afraid, but speak. In other words, when you’re afraid, you keep your mouth shut.

If you’re willing to not be afraid, well, then you can speak. You’ve got to overcome your fears so that you can speak and so you don’t hold back. You know, one of the reasons, obviously in the morning I talked about one of the reasons why we don’t care is because we got sin in our lives.

But you know what? Another reason why we don’t speak, not only is it because there could be sin in our lives, but because we’re just plain, as some might say it, scared. Okay?

we’re just plain scared. We’re afraid. Oh no, what are they going to think of me?

Oh no, what if I get fired? Oh no, what if I lose my friend? Oh no, what if my neighbor,

what if I talk to my neighbor is just going to make things awkward forever? What if they reject me? What if they ask me a question I don’t know the answer to?

All kinds of reasons that we can be afraid, but Jesus made it very clear. You don’t have to be afraid, and here’s why.

Verse 10. The first reason is, for I am with thee. You know, the first reason why you don’t need to be afraid is because of God’s presence.

Do you know that inside of you, you have the Lord of the entire universe? Think about that for a second. Inside of you, you have the one that spoke the world into existence.

By him were all things created. Without him was not made anything that was made. Listen, Jesus is the one that created the universe.

He’s the one that created your enemies. He’s the one that created you. He’s the one that created the air that you breathe.

And guess what? He lives inside of you. You don’t have to be afraid because of God’s presence.

But it’s not just the fact that, oh, the guy who made all this stuff is here, so I’m okay. It’s not just the fact that, oh, you know, the big guy is with me. No, God’s presence in you is not just a source of comfort.

It’s a source of enablement. The God who spoke the world in existence is in you, and if you’ll depend on him, he can give you the words to say. He can give you the boldness with which to say it.

He can enable you so that as you speak, the words connect into men’s hearts, and they get it. You know, I find for guys, maybe it’s not the same for girls. I can’t speak for girls because I ain’t one.

But for guys, we fear failure, don’t we? we fear failure we’re afraid that we won’t be able to convince them so we just don’t even try well what if i told you that god promised that he would convince them for you

he does by the way john 16 when he this is the holy spirit is come he will reprove that word means to convince somebody he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment And you know why I think many times we fail in our evangelistic pursuits?

Because we get a different outline than the Holy Spirit. That’s my personal opinion. We get a different outline than the Holy Spirit.

We try the apologetics route. We try to, you know, argue from creation. And we try to argue, you know, through logic for the existence of God.

And those are all good and well and have their place. But that will never convince an atheist. That will never convince somebody who’s decided that God doesn’t exist

because they don’t want to be accountable to him. It’ll never convince them. But you know what will?

the Holy Spirit. And what will he convince him of? Sin, righteousness, judgment.

So you know what I preach every time when I get up and preach the gospel? Guess, Chris.

Sin, righteousness, and judgment. That’s what I’m going after because I figure the Holy Spirit’s a lot better pulpiteer

than I am. He’s got a lot better way of crafting an outline than I do. And if, and in fact,

I’d better preach what he’s preaching because when I preach what he’s preaching, I know it’s going to change people’s hearts. Well, that being said, when it comes to this matter of not being afraid,

you could take courage because you have in you Jesus. And Jesus, not only is he in control, he can enable you to do what you can never do in the strength of your flesh.

You know, you don’t have to fear because of God’s presence. Now, secondly, he goes on and he says,

no man shall set on thee to hurt thee. Well, that’s comforting. Nobody’s going to touch you.

Nobody’s going to touch you. You are going to be just fine. But you know what the problem is with that statement?

We think, but what about so-and-so? They got hurt. What about this story I read about?

They got killed. What about Jim Elliot? What about that crew, you know,

that went to reach the Alca Indians, the Weorani in Ecuador? What about them? Did this promise not work for them?

Yeah, I think it’s important to understand the intent of what Jesus is saying here. What he’s saying is, listen, I’ve got your back. It’s been said, and I know we hear this a lot.

This kind of comes across as somewhat cliche. The safest place on planet Earth is to be right in the center of God’s will or something along those lines.

I’m sure if I ask how many of you have heard that, Most of you have heard that before, okay? And it’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you know what? It’s true. It’s true.

You know what? I’m safer driving down the road at 65 miles an hour with 12,000 pounds pushing me down a mountain in my fifth wheel trailer, okay, than I am sitting on my couch at home.

I’m safer standing in front of a crowd of angry people that don’t want to hear a single thing that I have to say that I am doing my own thing somewhere else. But, you know, I want to kind of try to maybe reframe your thinking about this

because I think what we think many times is, boy, you know, okay, sure, God will take care of me. But, boy, I don’t want to be stupid.

You know, I don’t want to go out and do something too crazy. I don’t want to get myself hurt. And what we do is we make our safety our responsibility.

And we say, it’s my job to keep myself safe. You know what God’s here is saying? No, that’s my job.

That’s my job. You know what happens when it’s your job to keep yourself safety? You’ll think twice before talking to that scary-looking dude on a motorcycle.

You’ll think twice before taking the gospel track to that house that looks a little shady. You’ll think twice before engaging that person that maybe you might feel a little bit uncomfortable around. You know, when your safety is your responsibility, you’re going to fear.

But when you recognize, oh, you know what? God’s got my back. God’s got this under control.

God’s going to take care of me. His job is to protect me. My job and your job is to obey.

your job is not to protect yourself your job is to obey you know you think of the children of israel right god told them hey guess what i got this promised land for you it’s amazing and guess what i’m gonna fight for you every place where on the sole of your foot shall tread it’s yours

you know that’s an amazing promise and you know they had a shot at seeing miracles when they arrived at Kadesh Barnea, right? Right?

They step up to the cusp edge of the promised land, the place of blessing. They sent some spies in to

take a look, just to see how things are in there. The spies

go in, they come back, and they say, oh, it’s just as good as God said. But, you know, there’s something you need to know.

They’re really huge in there. They’re monsters. They’re like,

10 feet tall and the walls outside of their city, there’s no way we could break those walls down.

Listen, between the fact that they’re huge and the fact that their walls stretch all the way up to heaven, nope, nuh-uh, it’s not safe.

We’re not going in. You know, some people might look at that and say, well, that was wise.

That was really prudent. Good job for being careful. But you know what God said?

you know what God called it? God called it rebellion. Jim, Elliot, Nate Saint, that group of missionaries that went to reach the Weorani tribe,

they went and on their first encounter, their first actual official meeting with the tribe, they came and they all made it very clear that if they attacked them,

they were not going to shoot their weapons at the tribesmen. It’s amazing to me. They went there onto that beach.

The Alcas came out of the woods with their spears raised and charged them. I think I read some accounts.

The men did fire the guns up into the air, but not once did they fire the guns at the men. You know, they could have saved their own lives,

but they were there to reach the Alcas. They were not there to kill the Alcas. They were determined, we must obey.

We must obey. You don’t have to fear because of God’s presence. You don’t have to fear because of God’s protection.

And thirdly, at the end of the verse here, it says, for I have much people in this city. You know, thirdly, you don’t have to fear because of God’s plan.

You know, God has a great plan for your life. God wants, listen, I’m looking at young people who are at the brink of blossoming into the man or woman of God that God wants you to be.

If you were to have looked at me as a 16-year-old, you wouldn’t have thought I had much potential. I have a picture of myself still. When I was a 16-year-old, standing with a skateboard in my hand, a white A-shirt, the wife beater shirt on,

Okay, a pair of crazy sunglasses and my hair all spiked straight up. Okay, baggy jeans, that was the style back in my day. It’s not the style anymore.

It’d be nice if you’d have a compromise between the style now and that. But anyway, you know, if you were to have looked at me then, you’d have thought, nah. But you know what, I’ve traveled now for eight years doing the war and the Cola Clash.

Who’d have thought that a crazy, extreme sports-loving, video game-addicted rebel like me could ever lead over 2,500 young people to Christ in such a short period of time? Who would ever thought?

And I want you to know it’s not because I’m so amazing, because I’m not. Listen, the kids around here, they know that. They know that.

I won’t ask for them to agree with me because I really don’t want to hear it. But there is nothing special about me. But what is special is that God has a plan for every one of us.

And that plan is probably a whole lot bigger than you think it is. That plan is probably going to impact a whole lot more people than you think you ever could. And you know, we don’t have to fear the future.

We don’t have to fear failure. Because you have inside of you the limitless resource of Jesus himself. He’s got your back.

He will protect you. He has got a plan for your life. Our job isn’t to figure it all out.

Our job is right now to obey the next step. I appreciated how Victoria gave her testimony this morning and how she just emphasized the fact that, you know what,

I just took the next step that God wanted me to take. I just took the next step. And you know, I would imagine with this morning’s message

and then whatever workshop you were in last time and maybe something in here, maybe God’s putting his finger on something in your heart.

Maybe he’s pinpointing something in it. Can I tell you, you’ve got a next step. Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid to take it. You might think, but my parents will kill me. They will literally kill me.

Don’t be afraid. God’s got your back. you.

He’ll protect you from your parents if he needs to, but he probably won’t need to because your parents love you. They brought you into this world.

They can take you out of it, but I assure you they really don’t want to, okay? But listen, I guess if I get anything across to you here today,

fear is the enemy of faith. You really have no reason to fear because you have everything you need.

God is on your side. He’s got the plan. Just follow him and take the steps as he leads you.

All right, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to close in prayer, and just so you know, I’m not going to be, when I pray, accidentally praying for the food.

I’m actually praying for the food on purpose because the next thing on the schedule is lunch. So just a logistical detail here

when you’re done here, head on down where breakfast was served. I hope all of you know where breakfast was served.

So you can go around there and through that line to grab breakfast. You will sit with your squad for lunch.

Okay, so let’s go ahead and pray, and then we’ll dismiss you for lunch. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the fact that you’re on our side.

Thank you that we don’t have to fear. I pray, God, for these young people. I pray that whatever things you’re leading them to step,

whatever steps you’re leading them to take, that you would give them boldness, that you would even in their heart. Give them that subjective assurance

that you’ve got them. And I pray, Lord, that you lead these young people to follow you with all of their hearts

and to make a difference in this world through your strength, not theirs. In Jesus’

name, amen. All right, thank you, everybody. You’re dismissed.