Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast.

I’m Bobby Bosler and I’m speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where we are getting geared up for the 2024 Thee Generation Youth Summit.

Young people, I want you to know we are not that far away from beginning a very exciting two and a half day competition.

In fact, we are 24 days away as of the time of my recording.

And I just wanted to put a little plug in here.

If you’re a young person and the resources of thee Generation stir your soul, we want you to know there are quite a few other young people just like you.

Young people who perhaps want to serve God with their lives.

Young people who want to be committed to total surrender to God and total dependence on his power to reach the world with the gospel.

And the Thee Generation Youth Summit is an opportunity for young people just like yourself from all over the country to come to Wisconsin for two and a half days of not only competition.

Again, we love the fun.

That is a central part of it.

But really primarily to come and be encouraged to have fellowship with spiritually minded young people from all over the country to get a vision for what God can do in your life. not only in giving you victory, but giving you freedom and peace, and then what he can do through your life in using you to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It has been our desire for the last, I think, eight years now to encourage and inspire many young people, and we believe we’ve done so with many.

And we just wanted to extend, I wanted to extend that invitation to you.

We’ve got a lot of great things in store, particularly I’m excited about our speakers here this year.

Of course, Dr.

Jim and I, we will be speaking.

We’ll also have, again, Joe Mueller, evangelist.

We’ll have Ryan Swanson here, and of course, Mark Gilmore.

And I am delighted to say the Faith Twins will be with us as well, but they’re not going to be preaching per se.

But they will be doing a workshop live recording again, like we did a couple of years ago.

And so if you, I kind of this year really wanted to keep the focus for the most part, not entirely on our podcast team and give an opportunity for you to hear from us in person, to hear kind of not just a podcast, but a progression of truth over those two and a half days for God to stir your heart and your soul and your mind.

And so please come if you want more information about this.

Again, the dates are October 9th, 10th, and 11th in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin.

That’s southeastern Wisconsin just outside of Milwaukee.

And you can go to thegeneration.org.

And probably the easiest way to find it is right at the top.

There’s a little banner.

It says the 2024 Thee Generation Youth Summit begins in 24 days.

It might say a different number when you look at it.

But the important part is that register now button.

So if you click on that, that will take you to the Youth Summit page where you can get the information, like what is the Thee Generation Youth Summit competitions, pictures, speakers, some basic details, registration costs, and so on.

And one thing that’s a little different this time around, I spent a lot of the summer working on this, is we’ve got a new registration process, which honestly, from your standpoint, might not be that big of a deal to you all.

It’s a big deal to us.

I won’t even go into all the details about how much work went into receiving the registrations and processing them and so on.

We’ve got a lot of that automated now.

But we will have everybody just kind of full disclosure in order to help with the registration process and the arrival to streamline things as much as possible.

We are requiring payment in order to register.

Trust me, it may be tougher on the front end, but you will be so glad that that got taken care of.

When you arrive, you’ll be able to arrive and check in and enjoy yourself.

Again, that’ll simplify things from our standpoint as well as from your standpoint as well.

And yeah, we’re just excited.

It’s going to be a great time.

I know God is stirring all of our hearts in a variety of different ways.

I’ve got some things that I’ve been studying and working on in just preparation for this event.

But I wanted to personally invite you on the podcast of the meaning to ask the other speakers for the other podcast episodes.

Hey, say something about the TGYS.

I just forgot.

But it has not been forgotten by us that it’s happening.

We’ve been working on it.

And we’ve got the team captains lined up.

Many familiar faces from last year on that front.

And we’re going to have a great time.

It’s going to be outstanding.

So if you have not yet made plans to join us, please reach out and take a look at that page, thegeneration.org, and check out the info.

Now, that being said, I’ve got kind of a burden on my heart, something fresh, something the Lord’s been doing in my heart and in my life.

You know, young people, the Christian life is one designed by God to be full of great blessing.

There is no doubt about it.

This afternoon, I spent some time, really spent the afternoon just seeking the Lord.

Got away with my little fold-up camper chair and found someplace to get alone with God.

And honestly, I was pleading with God.

I was seeking for His blessing because I knew He had promised it.

Again, God took me all over the map in my Bible and in my walk with Him. one of the places he took me was in Hebrews, both in chapter 4 and in chapter 10.

He talks about the fact that we have access to God, right?

So, okay, I can, with boldness, I am told to boldly come before God’s throne of grace that I may obtain, right, mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

And what we can think of when we think of a verse like that is, aha, God’s going to give me something, right?

So we’re coming to God for mercy, and we’re coming to God for grace.

Now, young people, God wants to give those things to you, okay?

He said it.

He means what he says.

There is no duplicity or deception when it comes to God.

However, young people, can I say this?

God has a ton in store for you.

But it’s so important for us to not lose sight of the giver for the gift.

As I was spending time with the Lord again, I got a lot of my heart, a lot of my mind here recently.

A lot of things I’m wrestling through, even just grappling through our future.

What’s that going to look like?

What are the next big steps that God has in store for us?

We had announced recently that this is going to be our last semester teaching at Baptist College of Ministry.

Nothing bad or anything.

It’s just my heart for several years has been burning to get out and about and to not spend that time sitting in one place, but to continue the itinerant lifestyle that God has called us to be in.

And Pastor Van Gelder and I, we’ve talked about it, we’ve prayed about it together.

And one of the things that we said we were looking for, God kind of put our hearts together in this, was that God would start giving us those meetings during the fall, kind of ahead of time.

In other words, we won’t just stop everything and then hope we get meetings.

We’re back in April of this year, God was starting to supply.

And I called up pastor and I said, pastor, I’m planning on teaching this fall, but just so you know, I’ve, I just got my second request for a revival meeting.

And he said, well, Bobby, sounds like this is exactly what we prayed for.

We’ll give you whatever you need to help you get going on that.

And so I am teaching this fall at BCM.

But I am, again, I, this is, we’ve taken it from the Lord.

This is our last semester to do that.

And so it’s kind of scary.

Again, between you, me, and the sound absorbing panels that I’m looking at right now, teaching at BCM, it is a source of income.

Again, we don’t do it for that, but it is something that the Lord uses to provide for our financial needs as a family.

And to think of not having that, of having a blank slate and nothing, and to go having something that was kind of a given now isn’t there.

I find myself honestly coming before the Lord and saying, God, you have got to supply meetings.

God, you have got to give wisdom.

God, you have got to give opportunities.

And in so many ways, I feel like more than I have in a long time, I’m finding myself standing on the edge of the boat.

And God is beckoning me to step out.

And I’m thinking, I need God’s help.

I need a miracle here.

I need the Lord to deliver.

And listen, we should want deliverance.

We should want the miracles.

If you’re out in the ministry traveling in evangelism, you should want the meetings.

You should want the opportunities.

And so we’re grateful with what God is doing here this fall, three revival meetings in a variety of places in the midst of my teaching.

It’s going to be kind of crazy.

But we’re looking at next year, and it’s like, all right, God, we need you to part the Red Sea here.

All right, Lord, we need you to step in.

And so that’s part of what I was wrestling through here this afternoon, just realizing as much as I can strategize and work and make phone calls and emails regarding our spring itinerary, let’s say, God has to do it.

And if God is the one who has to do it, then I’ve got to get alone with him.

And so today was just a desperation session.

And I’m seeking him in my heart to give wisdom.

I’m seeking him, which again, God promises wisdom.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, which giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not.

He’s not going to slap your hand for asking for wisdom.

I’m asking him for wisdom and navigating situations, for wisdom and knowing what to do, who to call, how to plan.

I got stuff I got to fix on the trailer.

You know, who do I talk to about that?

You know, seeking him for provision.

Again, I’m not trying to just lay out my wish list here for you all.

I’m just telling you, God does promise to supply all of our needs, right?

God does promise that he will give us everything that we need in order to do what he’s called us to do.

That’s why we talk about total dependence, right?

Because God has promised to supply his grace for our needs and our time of need, like the Hebrews 4 passage talks about.

So, okay.

So as I’m talking to the Lord, I don’t know if, and again, this is somewhat of a testimony.

I’ve got a couple of things I want to read here, but as you spend time with the Lord, you know, it’s easy to just kind of throw prayers up in the air.

And what’s going on in your heart, if I could say this way, in your spirit, you just know you have need.

And so you’re just kind of flinging prayers up in the air, like the Swedish chef flings his, you know, his ingredients up into the air, you know, and okay.

One of the things God’s been doing in my heart is, okay, and I don’t mean this in a weird way, but in my spirit, God tells me I have the right to enter into his throne room.

So in my spirit, I step into God’s throne room.

But you know what’s easy to happen when you step into God’s throne room?

You look down at your feet and mutter some requests.

God, I kind of need this.

I kind of need wisdom here.

God, I kind of need grace to help me in this thing.

And God, I need patience because I’m not a very patient person.

And God, I need gentleness because I contend to roast people’s socks off.

And God, I need, and you fill in the blank.

And listen, God, like I said, I want to say it over and over again.

God wants to supply your needs.

I’ve been reading a number of different things here recently.

A couple days ago, I started a book, The Printer and the Preacher.

It’s kind of a story talking about the interactions of George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin and reading about the ways that God lifted up George Whitefield, the way, the great ways in which God even providentially brought this man, Ben Franklin, across this path.

And there was this mutually beneficial relationship that they had and God used, even though he’s an unsaved man, Ben Franklin, to move George Whitefield’s ministry forward and to publicize the sermons and the Great Awakening and the newspaper that he was doing.

Oh man, it was God, the fingerprints of God all over it.

And I found my heart burning.

God, do that for me.

Then I picked up just yesterday, the new biography of John R.

Rice by his grandson, John Himes.

He teaches here.

He’s a member of Falls Baptist Church and teaches in the college, and he’s a good friend.

And I helped them get it up on the website and all that stuff.

I just hadn’t read it.

So I thought, you know what?

I want to read about John R.

Rice.

Somebody recently had told me a story about how John R.

Rice was told not to preach about something, and he stood up and preached on it anyway and said, nobody’s going to tell me what to preach.

Okay.

All right.

And I don’t know, I just got to thinking about him and I thought, you know, let me pick up that biography.

And I’m reading about his early years.

And I’m reading about, and some of this really touches home because I’m reading about him going to Dallas with $10 in his pocket.

And setting up a tent and preaching his guts out and some of the spiritual battles that he went through. and how it went from no church to a church of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

I think at one point it had a membership of 1,700 people.

The reason why this hits close to home for me is because I’ve done the war for that church many times.

It’s not running 1,700 people, that’s for sure these days, but they’re great people and they’re trying to do a work.

But I’m looking at that, I’m thinking, man, I want God to do that through my life.

I want his divine blessing.

I’m reading about how God stirred him to fast and pray for God to reignite opportunities for city-wide revivals again, like in the days of D.L.

Moody and Ari Torre and others like those and how God did that and didn’t initially use him.

He used another man, but God answered his prayer and how he stayed up till 2 a.m. fasting and praying and seeking the Lord.

And these were things that God had used over these last couple of days just to inspire my heart that I have to seek him.

Because you know what?

I want God to use my life in a big way.

And I know I need his blessing.

Okay.

I know I’m belaboring this a little bit, but But as I was praying, I took my Apple Watch off and set it to the side.

I took my Kindle.

I set it off to the side, took my phone, turned it on Do Not Disturb, set it over to the side, just me and my Bible sitting in my lap.

And I spent some time, and it’s like at one point, our church here is going to be going through the book by Roy and Ravel Hession, We Would See Jesus.

I read that book years ago.

Honestly, it was life transforming.

I will leave a link in the description because I think you’ll probably be interested in reading it yourself once I read some of these quotes.

And I picked up my phone.

I don’t have it on Kindle.

I have it on Apple Books.

But anyway, and I was reading through the preface.

And I just want to read a couple of things that God used to just blow the socks off of my prayer meeting.

In the preface shortly into it, it says this.

He, this is Jesus, is both the blessing we all seek and the easily accessible way to that blessing.

If we concentrate on trying to make a certain aspect of things, quote, work, it will only, it will become a formula for us and will only lead us into bondage.

But the Lord Jesus has come to take from us every yoke of bondage and to set us free, to serve him in freshness and spontaneity of the spirit.

And all this by the simple sight of him, which the Holy Spirit gives to the eye of faith.

I tell you, I’m reading these words and my spirit is resonating with truth statements here.

I mean talks a little bit about grace a little bit about revival but I want us to see another quote that I highlighted that just stirred my soul again he’s talking about grace the fact that it is unmerited and he says if what we receive from God is dependent even to a small extent on what we are or do then the most we can expect is but an intermittent trickle of blessing but if what we are to receive is to be measured by the grace of God quite apart from works, then there is only one word that adequately describes what he pours upon us, the word which so often is linked with grace in the New Testament, abundance.

Okay, my heart is like about ready to beat out of my chest as I’m reading these things, but this last quote here is for me what met the need of my heart.

He talks about revival, and he says it’s not just a spectacular movement of the Holy Spirit in which many are saved and the church is built up.

He said, I’m not saying that’s an illegitimate use of that, but we want to get to the essence of it.

And he says this, this work, the work of revival, is both personal and immediate for each believer who recognizes the decline there has been in his Christian experience, who bows to the dealings of God with him and who sees Jesus as all he needs and believingly apprehends him as such.

Okay, let me give a little testimony to what happened in my heart there as I read those words.

I set my phone down and I looked up and again, I pictured myself in the throne room because of the blood of Jesus Christ standing there knowing God has everything that I need.

And if I could say this, the spiritual eyes of my spirit lifted up and I looked upon the throne and I saw not just the one who gave what I need, and that’s going to sound cliche And I really hope it doesn’t because this distinction is huge.

I saw not just the one who would give me what I need, but the one who was what I needed.

What I need.

I want to tell you, young people, in that moment, it was as if our spiritual eyes locked.

And there was a, I don’t know, words can fail to describe. sometime, okay, we were studying this morning in our Sunday school table, Ephesians 3, that you might comprehend the length and breadth and height and know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge that she might be filled with all the fullness of God.

I felt like in a way that just to be perfectly honest with you, I have not felt in a while.

Again, feelings aren’t everything.

Please don’t misunderstand me here. but there was a very special time of not getting something out of God, but of, I don’t know, I kind of in my heart thought of it as an umbilical cord that essentially ties me to God that was pumping spiritual nutrients into my soul, that was pumping divine blessing into my spirit and into my life.

And this tether, this connection was one that brought every scrap of joy that I was asking for, every ounce of peace that I so desperately wanted.

I found myself sitting there thinking, all right, Lord, so you’re going to tell me what you want me to do now?

And it was like God said, be with me.

Just be with me. and I was saying, okay, okay, so you’re going to tell me what you’re going to want me to do regarding this, that, or the other thing?

And he said, in time, just sit with me.

This vital link between us and God, I think is probably the essence of what the Bible talks about when it says pray without ceasing.

There is a communion.

There is a fellowship that by nature of this relational, not just communication in the sense of exchanging words, there is a link, there is a plug in on both sides when you recognize the one sitting upon the throne is the one who I’ve been desiring all along.

He is the one who I want.

He is the one who I need.

He is not just a path to blessing.

He is the blessing.

He is my deliverance.

And again, I find as I’m even saying this, I’m thinking, man, this sounds so cliche.

I hope you’re catching the spiritual reality of the things that God has been talking to me about here.

I’ll be honest with you, it took me an hour and a half or more to get even to that point, but I want to live there.

I was walking out of the woods.

God told me to go and I knew I needed to record this podcast and needed to get ready for the service here tonight.

And as I’m walking, I was thinking, wow, this gives new meaning to thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.

And again, it was like every thought I had, it was like there was a biblical connection and a spark of life and just hope and joy. and the peace that I could not have concocted had I been able to set the entire stage of my life and control everything.

I think what I got is a little dose of revival, to be honest with you.

And I want to stay in that.

Young people, I hope I’m giving you heartburn.

I hope the words that I’m saying are stirring you like those stories from George Whitefield and John R.

Rice stirred me.

I’m trying to get you thirsty so that you can receive, not from this podcast, what you need, but so you can go and stand before God and find him as all you need.

I want to live in this.

I want to walk in this all day.

I’m sure I’ll shift in and out of it.

We all do, right? but young people I really want to encourage I’m going to leave some links to some of the books that I’ve been reading down in the description in the show notes perhaps the Lord will stir your soul as well through some of these things but young people I am really encouraged right now very much stirred with the possibilities you say but Mr.

Posler did a thousand people send you emails and did you get booked up for all year next year?

No not yet we’ll see how that goes but I need him more than I need that see when I have him I have I have everything young people this matter of total surrender and total dependence isn’t just a means to an end it’s a relationship with God embrace that relationship and you will find that he’s all you ever dreamed he could be