Bobby Bosler: The burden on my heart here today comes from a verse in Second Corinthians chapter five and verse fourteen. There is a phrase I want to focus on. It says, “For the love of Christ constraineth us.”

After this verse, Paul goes on and talks about the great need that is out there. Jesus died for everybody, and therefore everybody needed Him to die for them. In other words, the world needs Jesus and the saving good news of Jesus Christ.

Paul shares the fact that this is supposed to change our perspective. We do not look at things according to the flesh anymore. It also gives us a new role and responsibility.

Even though God did the work, He has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. Our new title is ambassadors for Jesus Christ: to appeal to people, to beseech people to trust Christ as their Savior.

All of that—the new perspective, the new set of priorities, not to live for myself but to live for Him—flows out of that one little phrase: “The love of Christ constraineth us.” What constrains you to do what you do?

The idea of the word constrain is that it is something that pushes you, something that motivates you. I like this word: it squeezes your heart.

Oftentimes we find ourselves doing a variety of things because we feel squeezed into them. Some people are always very quick to volunteer me to do something, and sometimes we feel squeezed by human pressure. Someone thinks this would be a good idea for us to do, and so we are squeezed into that situation.

Sometimes circumstances squeeze us into something, and we feel like we have no other choice because all the other doors closed. That is not necessarily bad. It is not necessarily bad for us to get into a situation because someone squeezed us into it.

But what ought to squeeze us? I have thought a lot about this over the last several months, especially recently. I did an eight-day revival meeting in Clarksville, Tennessee, at Bible Baptist Church, and we were looking at a progression about the love of God.

We can have everything, but if we miss love, we are failing. God’s love is not just a face we put on, a mask we put on, or a feeling that we work up.

It is actually God’s love in our hearts, changing our perspective and our priorities. It is prioritizing the good of others over and above what is good for me.

Here in this verse, the love of Christ is what is supposed to put the squeeze on our hearts. When we study the phrase “the love of Christ,” we typically come into one of three camps. We think either that my love for Jesus is supposed to motivate me, or that His love for me is supposed to motivate me.

Some people say it is both—my love for Him and His love for me. Grammatically, it could be either: the love of Christ could be His love for me, or it could be my love for Him.

But as I have been thinking about walking in the Spirit—walking in the Spirit, listening to Him, yielding to Him, and depending upon Him to do what He has told us to do—I thought, maybe this is not my love for Him or His love for me. Maybe it is literally the divine love of Jesus beating in my chest that squeezes my heart to do what God wants me to do.

Young person, you need to obey your parents and take very seriously the things that the authorities God has put into your life have to say. They have been placed there by God.

But there is a difference between doing what you do because people have pressured you to do it and doing what you are doing because God has pressured you in your heart. God has squeezed and gripped your heart with something.

In life, there have been many things I have continued doing through great hardship, not because some person thought it would be a good idea, but because God impressed my heart that this was His will for me. When the love of Jesus is what constrains us—when His love in my chest is motivating my perspective, my priorities, and my decisions—I will tell you what, young people: it is freedom. It is liberty.

A person can enable you to do God’s will, but God can. When God is not only the One pressuring us from the inside out to do something—to hand out a tract, start a gospel conversation, or make a big decision about where you are going to go to college and what you are going to do with your life—there is grace and enablement in that.

When God is the One doing it, there is life, power, and liberty, because there is God. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

I fear sometimes, young people, that we bounce from pleasing one person to pleasing another, and it never even enters our minds to seek God. We do not listen to what the Spirit may be saying.

Sometimes we think, “If I heard from so-and-so, I have heard from God.” Maybe you have, and maybe you have not. There is a verse that has struck my heart—the idea of God appealing to His people, essentially saying, “Oh, that My people would listen to Me.”

Sometimes we are so busy listening to what some book says that we are not listening to God. We are so busy listening to what our friends think—even if they are godly friends—that we stop listening to God. We are so busy listening to what we think everyone would want from us that we stop listening to God.

We are quick to listen to what the rules say. We should not ignore them, but we stop listening to God.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not telling young people to be rebels. Do not be a rebel.

Obey the rules. Listen to the people God has put in your life. But if you want life and love, you need to listen to the Spirit of God.

In Galatians chapter five, the key is to be led of the Spirit. If you are led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

When we listen to the Spirit of God, He bears the fruit of love in our hearts. That love is what fulfills the law, God’s expectation. According to this verse, I believe it is that love that constrains us.

I could say on this podcast, “Everybody is dying and going to hell, and you are good for nothing if you do not go out and tell somebody about Jesus.” I could pressure you to go and give you all the reasons why you are a good-for-nothing sack of potatoes if you do not share Jesus with someone.

But that only gets you so far. There is no life in that.

I can guilt-trip you into doing what is right, but I will not be able to give you life in that.

If you will open your heart and your spiritual ears to the Spirit of God and let His love constrain you—let His love bear fruit in your heart and beat in your chest—it is His love that will motivate you and drive you into the harvest fields of the gospel to win the world to Jesus Christ. With that motivation comes His life, His power, and His freedom.

Young people, please do not misunderstand me here. I am not telling you to resist; I am telling you to listen. Listen to God.

Let His love constrain you. That is a life worth living.

In my own personal time, yielding to Him has given me an amazing shift in perspective. I am not just worrying about what people think; I am worrying about what God thinks. There is a huge difference.

This is what Thee Generation is about: total surrender to Him and total dependence on His power to reach the world with the gospel of Christ.