Bobby Bosler: Welcome to Thee Generation podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Pennsauken, NJ, where I just got back to my family from a very exciting conference. I was humbled and honored to be able to preach at the Spiritual Awakening Conference up at Baptist College of Ministry and Falls Baptist Church. They had asked me about half a year ago to come and speak.

For me, it was very special, honestly, a great honor because it’s been a long time since one of our graduates has spoken at this particular conference. I was honored to be trusted with that opportunity to speak in such a way. One of my good friends, Josiah Kagin, also a BCM graduate, spoke there as well, and it was neat to see God develop a progression not only in our hearts ahead of time but also back and forth during the conference.

There were times as he was speaking, I was thinking, I wanted to say that, but God put it in your message, and it was just so neat to see. He did a series on Daniel, “Living in Babylon.” I had a number of different burdens on my heart that the Lord allowed me to deliver, and it really was a blessing. In fact, I’m going to leave a link in the description to that series, and I would encourage you, if you’re looking for something to awaken your heart, head to the series. I think it would be a blessing and a challenge to each one of you.

Well, I don’t know if I sound differently or not. I’m actually right now recording on a different microphone than I normally do, but I’m grateful to be, for a little bit longer, with my extended family and my dad and mom in New Jersey. We’re getting ready to get back out on the road, but we’re kind of waiting on the truck.

I am delighted to say that the truck began to be built on the assembly line this past Monday, and Lord willing, it’ll be just another couple of weeks. I’ll be flying out to Iowa to speak in a meeting out there in just a little bit. Then we will, Lord willing, go down to South Carolina, train the team, and then get down to Texas for our War tour. I would really appreciate your prayers for us on that.

There’s one other announcement that I want to make here. I really want to thank many of you young people who’ve helped us with Thee Generation Transcript Project. I put out a notice in an email, and maybe another way. I don’t remember exactly all the different ways that I published this.

But one of the things that’s come to my attention and a burden, I believe the Lord has put on my heart, is to get all of the audio content that we’ve been developing over the last seven years in text form. One of the reasons for that is because there’s a whole lot more that you can do with content if you have it in text. It can be quickly translated; it can be used for other materials, even other printed materials if it’s in text.

So we put out a call to our constituency, you young and maybe not so young people that are listening, we put out a call to you. And if this is the first you’ve heard of it, hear me out for a second. We could use your help. I have developed a process that makes the transcription, that is taking from audio, from voice, and making it usable text that really isn’t terribly difficult, doesn’t take a lot of time per episode.

And we put that process together on a page on theegeneration.org. You’ll have to type the address in your browser as thegeneration.org/transcribe. And there you’ll see a bit of a description on why I have it on my heart to do this project and how the actual process works.

What you can do is you can select from episodes that have not yet been transcribed, an episode that you would like to work on, and using a variety of different online tools, some AI tools as a matter of fact, that audio can be transcribed into a rough draft. Then using some more AI tools, that draft can be worked a little bit for grammar, for punctuation, and so on. Then you can listen through that podcast and make any last little edits and a few other formatting things.

But we’ve already had probably half a dozen, maybe six to ten people volunteer and help us out with this, and I’m so grateful for each one of those who has done so. And we would love for you to join us. If you’ve got some time and a little bit of technological aptitude, you can head over to that page, theegeneration.org/transcribe. And there you can find the full treatment on how you can help us out with this project.

We’ve got over 350 episodes that have been published. It’s quite a library of content. And really my burden is to make it accessible to many others. There are some that are deaf that cannot hear these podcasts, and I would love for them to be able to read it. There are people in other countries who can’t read English, and nowadays you can with a click of a button view the transcript and translate it into their language, whether that’s Google Translate or the iPhone’s iOS translation feature. It’s very easy these days, and I’d love to be able to expand our reach and broaden our base and allow other people to be blessed with the content that you have been blessed by.

So anyway, head to that page, and I’ll leave the link in the description to that process, and we’d love to have you help us with it.

That being said, I have a burden on my heart here today, a burden that I think should resonate with everyone else’s heart here as well. I know you probably don’t have your Bible with you, but if you do, I’m looking at a story in the Gospel of Mark that I know I’ve been challenged with not only many times throughout the years but even just recently.

Do you have a sense, young person, that God wants to use your life? I had a conversation with one of my team members not too long ago, and he asked me this question, do you ever have a sense of destiny that God saved you for a purpose and for a big one? And I can honestly say that I really do believe that the reason why God preserved my life and one of the reasons why God brought me through the adoption process into the home that I grew up in, the church that I grew up in, the world that I grew up in, young people is because God wanted to use me.

And I don’t think that’s something that’s unique to me. I believe that my life is intended by God to be used as an instrument for good in God’s process of working all things together for good. I believe that God wants to include me in that process. And I believe, young people, that he wants to use you in that process as well. That is something that drives me every day.

I want to stand for the truth. I want to help people live for God. I want to help be a tool in the hand of God to enact spiritual breakthrough in the lives of others. But I don’t know about you, young people, sometimes I feel like my weakness gets in the way. Don’t you feel that way sometimes? Like maybe you step out into a conversation you believe God would have you to have, and it doesn’t happen, doesn’t go the way you wanted it to. Maybe some of you, you preached a message that you had on your heart, it’s burning in your soul, and maybe it didn’t have the intended results that you believed God wanted it to have. Maybe you’ve tried to step into a gospel conversation and share the good news of Jesus Christ with somebody, and your weakness got in the way.

What do you do when your weakness gets in the way of you living up to the purpose that God has called you to live up to? God wants us to walk worthy of his calling, and yet, I think one of the greatest challenges is knowing what to do with your weakness.

Well, there’s a story in the book of Mark 9:14 and following. It says, “And when he,” that is Jesus, “came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them, and straightway all the people when they beheld him were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. He asked the scribes, “What question ye them?” And one of the multitudes answered and said, “Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit.”

Now, listen. Okay, I love the language of this verse here, but he’s not saying that, oh dumb spirit. It’s a spirit that brought about what we call muteness. This person, this son could not speak because of an evil spirit. Okay, so just wanted to clarify that before I went on.

And the man goes on and he says, “And whithersoever he taketh him, he” (that is the spirit,) “teareth him and he fometh and gnasheth with his teeth, pin-eth away.” So here we’ve got a man or a group of people who’s bringing this child to the disciples. This child has issues. You know young people sometimes God will bring issues across your path because he wants you to deal with them. He wants you to be an instrument like I said in God’s hand to bring about deliverance, freedom, rescue.

And this guy’s situation was bad. He couldn’t speak. In fact, at various times, the spirit would tear at him. What exactly that means, I don’t know, but evidently it was painful. It said he foameth, so this child was foaming at the mouth. Literally, spittle was building up into a froth and pouring out of his mouth. He gnasheth with his teeth. So he’s, you know, scraping his teeth together. And it says here also that he pineth away. And the idea of that is to cause something to become dry. So he was drying up. This child was shriveling up because of this evil spirit that was tearing into him.

I don’t know about you, but that’s an opportunity, right? I hope when you see needs in front of you, you don’t think, “Ew,” and walk away. I hope when you see opportunities for deliverance in front of you, you don’t shy away from them. You don’t leave it to someone else to do it. I hope you try, young people.

But here’s the kind of sad part of the story. This multitude that is speaking says or the representative says “and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out and they could not.” So here what’s going on is if anyone can help their son anyone in the near proximity would be the disciples of Jesus right and so this multitude or their representative brought this child to his disciples. The people had been called to be tools in God’s hand to bring freedom, deliverance, victory, rescue to the world and they couldn’t do it.

Oh, you ever feel like that? Right? It’s what I was describing earlier. You’ve got an awesome opportunity, an amazing need, a dire situation in front of you and you try and you fail. What do you do when your weakness gets in the way? We’ve said this many times on this podcast, but you can’t do the will of God, young people, you and your own strength are incapable of truly bringing change into this world. That is not a statement that’s intended to discourage you. That is a statement that I trust will stir your soul because really the thing that we all need to do with our weakness is recognize it.

I don’t know all the specifics on why the disciples couldn’t cast them out, but there’s something Jesus is going to say a little bit later that I think at least gives us a sneaking suspicion as to why they couldn’t do it. But let’s just go along in the text. Jesus answered him, verse 19, “he answered him, the representative and saith, “Oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me.”

Young people, let me say this. One of the greatest things you can do when your weakness gets in the way is step out of the way and bring that need, that situation to Jesus, bring it to Jesus. Listen, young person, you can’t affect change from behind a pulpit. You can preach the word, but you can’t change people’s hearts. You can’t bring someone to Jesus Christ. You can preach the gospel and you ought to but ultimately at the end of the day, God’s got to be the one to bring conviction. God’s got to be the one to draw them. God’s got to be the one to illumine the truth of the gospel to them so that they can be saved. Without Jesus, they can’t be saved.

Listen, maybe you’ve got a situation in your home, something you feel like it’s a dumb situation. Sorry, I’m not trying to stretch that too much but you look at it and you think it’s not the way it ought to be with a sibling perhaps. Well listen young person, you step into that situation and you try to make it happen, you’ll just make it worse. But you recognize the ability of Jesus to overcome your weakness and to do something great. I’ll tell you what, that is when things start to happen. 

He said, “bring him unto me.” You know, I’m convinced that if folks would spend more time seeking the face of God and trying to get this situation before the eyes of Jesus and bring it to Him and rely upon Him to do the work, I think we’d see a whole lot more delivering in our world these days. 

But you know, it’s interesting what he says here. He says, “Oh, faithless generation.” Why in the world did he say that? I think we’re going to see why. in just a minute. 

So here’s what happens. Verse 20, “And they brought him unto him.” So this crowd, this group of concerned individuals brought the son, the child here unto Jesus.” And when he,” Jesus, “saw him, the child, straightway, the spirit tear at him and he fell to the ground in and wallowed foaming.” 

Oh, whoa, good night. You know what else happens sometimes when you bring a situation before Jesus, before it gets better, it gets worse. this happens so much. You know, you got a situation you’re burdened about, you’re concerned, and maybe you step in and try to do something and it goes bad and you say, God, you need to deliver. We need you. I can’t do this. You’ve got to be the one to do it. And it almost seems like things go sideways and get worse and it’s like what is going on? I’ve said this many times before, God’s setting you up for a supernatural victory. That’s what’s going on. That’s what’s going on. You know, the situation got a little worse and okay. 

Hear what Jesus said “and he asked his father, how long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, “of a child.” so we’re not dealing with something that just cropped up here; we’re dealing with something that this father has been dealing with for the entire life of the child. Wouldn’t you think it’d be easy to get discouraged? Wouldn’t you think it’d be easy to start thinking, well, maybe that’s just the way it’s always gonna be? How many other people did this dad bring his child to over that lifetime? I don’t know; the text doesn’t say, but I would imagine any loving father would try to fix the problem sooner. I don’t know; maybe he brought his child to the priests at some point and they couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe he brought them to some other teacher, some other master, some other rabbi. Maybe he even tried inappropriate things to help deal with this situation with the son, I don’t know, but I do know this at this moment in time, the crisis was a crisis of whether the father believed change was even possible.”

“Why do I say that? Verse number 22, the father says “of a child,” right? The verse before in verse 22, he says, and oftentimes it, that is the devil, hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 

Do you sense the hesitancy in that father’s voice? Do you sense that reticence to get his hopes up in that ordeal because again at the very least we know he asked his disciples to try and they could not. I would imagine like I said he had asked other people to help him prior to that but they couldn’t do it either and here he’s fine even though there was a long line of “deliverers” before the one who was standing before him. He was asking himself the question in his mind. “Can he? Really?” He says, “if, if there’s anything you can do, please do it.” But I’m thinking the biggest word, the biggest question mark in that man’s mind was if, if. 

I’m wondering if he was wondering if this guy was just another teacher, just another hopes up disappointment, or whether things could truly change, whether there could truly be divine intervention here at this point “if thou canst do anything” 

In verse 23 Jesus gave some of the greatest instruction I think any of us will ever receive. “Jesus said unto him ‘if’ okay I gotta stop there I gotta say this the man was asking if he can right if you can and Jesus said “if you can.” You know, the big if in your life is what Jesus is about to say. He says, “if thou canst believe. all things are possible to him that believeth.” Wow! Here Jesus is saying, “Listen, I will deliver if you can believe.”

Now listen, I recognize some folks can go to seed on that and you know, oh I’m going to believe for a million bucks or I’m going to believe for this that or the other thing. Listen, Jesus is the one driving here. This is a need that he fully intended on meeting and yet an indispensable ingredient no matter which way you cut it according to the words of Jesus Himself here in this text is if you can believe and what he’s implying is I will deliver. 

Can I tell you, when you find your weakness in the way, not only do you need to step out of the way and get the person to Jesus, but you need to actually believe that Jesus can do something in this situation. You need to get past that hesitancy of whether this is possible or not. I recognize people have choices, okay, and no one will overrule the free will choices of other individuals, but so often we can think, “Oh, I know how this is gonna go. He’s going to try and fail just like everyone else before him.”

Young person, let me tell you, you’ll never get your weakness out of the way and see God overcome your weakness if you don’t think that anything can be done, if you don’t think the deliverance is possible. If you can believe all things are possible to him that believeth, but even there in the matter of our, our weakness and this matter of trusting and believing that God is able and depending on Him to do it. 

Verse number 24, we find this crisis in the heart of this father. It says “And straight way, the father of the child cried out and said with tears,” Here is an emotion of a man who’s been on this roller coaster for so many years, on a man who has just been so utterly convinced of his weakness. He doesn’t even feel like if he’s able to believe if it’s possible or not. But here he says in this outburst of emotion, “Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.” 

Here’s a man who’s humble, who doesn’t walk in or ride in on a white horse with a bright, shining, armored-plated get-up and a sword in his hand. The warrior of faith who’s just got it all together, who knows how this works and thinks he’s going to ride into the show and fix everybody’s problem with his heroic faith. Here’s a man who says, you know what? I don’t got this. I was hoping you would do this, right? You’re telling me my faith, my willingness to believe is an essential ingredient?” I don’t even know if I can do that, but I know what I can do. I can even ask you to help my unbelief? You see, this statement is so funny. This veiled statement of unbelief is actually a veiled statement of faith. It’s a humble statement of faith. 

We need more humility in our faith these days. I think sometimes we can walk into a situation or a need and just think, “Aha, here I am. I shall believe and make this problem.” And you know what, God is so good. Sometimes he recognizes the need and may even see a little bit of pride in us, but he says, “You know what, this situation needs deliverance,” and he blesses. But you know what can happen? We can get a little bit of a superhero complex about it and think that you’re the answer for everything. You’re not the answer for everything. Jesus is. If you can get people to Jesus and step out of the way, and if you can be willing to believe him, even in spite of your great weakness, that’s many times when Jesus steps in. 

Sometimes we see our weakness, our unbelief, our hesitancy, and we stop, right? We stop because we don’t want to get disappointed. You not only need to believe that it’s possible but don’t let your weakness stop you. If your weakness stops you, it’s unbelief. Nothing is possible to someone who is in unbelief.

Yet, unbelief sometimes just feels so real. We just don’t feel like the situation will ever change. We don’t feel like the deliverance could ever come because of history, because of a track record. Don’t let your weakness stop you. Even if you don’t think you can believe God for breakthrough in this situation, don’t let your weakness stop you. Believe that it’s possible. Don’t let your weakness stop you.

And look what happens. Verse 24, “And straightway the father of the child,” as we read, “he cried out, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him and enter no more into him.” And the spirit cried and rent him sore and came out of him. He was as one dead, in so much that many said, “He’s dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose.”

Once again, underlying that other point, sometimes it looks like it gets worse in the midst of deliverance. Yet here you need to let Jesus learn to let Jesus do it. Learn to let Jesus do it. 

Listen, you would be shocked with the breakthroughs Jesus wants to bring into your home, into your life, into your workplace, into your community. You are an essential part of the equation, yet you need to learn to let Jesus do it.

I’m sure the disciples are standing there thinking, “What in the world? What’s going on?” In fact, I know they were because in verse 28, just kind of a little addendum and epilogue here to the story, it says, “And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast him out?’ And he said unto them, ‘This kind can come forth, but by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.'” 

And here, Jesus is making it clear. You are not the deliverers. I am the deliverer. And if deliverances are going to happen, they’re not going to be by your hand, though you’re an essential part of this equation. The only way they’re going to happen is as you believe, and don’t let your weakness stop you, but let Jesus do it.

He’s saying, “Listen, prayer is, as has been said, the breath of dependence. It is us going to the only one who can truly change the situation anyway.” And really this matter of fasting, we could say a whole lot more about it. For the sake of time, I won’t, but fasting is essentially saying, “I’m not willing to let you go, God. I’m going to stay here and even neglect some basic needs in my own life because the deliverance that is in front of me that I’m seeking you for is so important.”

Young people, these three points that I’ve given you, the three primary points here, they’re all involved in that verse: believe that it’s possible. Sometimes in the process of prayer as you’re seeking the face of God, perhaps looking at scriptures and promises that God has given you, sometimes God will give you an assurance in your heart. And you’ll know, “I can believe God for this.” Sometimes in those times of prayer as you’re seeking the face of God, He shows you that your weakness isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning.

But at the end of the day, that prayer, that seeking of God is letting God do it, requesting His intervention, and letting Him do the essential working in the crisis that’s in front of you. 

Listen, young people, when you find yourself with weakness staring you in the face, when your weakness is getting in the way, don’t stop. Don’t get discouraged, don’t give up. Get on your face. Get before the God who can, who has always been able to, who will, if you trust Him to do the work and believe that He can and let Him do it.

This is a matter of surrender, right? Looking to God, yielding to His amazing plan of deliverance, intervention, and total dependence upon Him to do the work that you know you can’t do. 

I don’t know who this was for. I know this challenge was for me, but I trust this will be an encouragement and a blessing to you as you continue to be instruments in the hand of God, tools to bring great good into this world and many to Jesus Christ. Thanks so much for listening. God bless you.