Everyone, good? Yes. All right. I hope you're excited.
I hope you're excited to say we're back in Prosper. One will who? Man, this has been good. Come on.
We're back in Prosper today. Can you say Prosper? Yeah. Come on.
How many of you know that the Lord desires for us to prosper? A couple of people. It's all right. If you're not convinced yet, hopefully by the end of today you will be.
But I do want to say something honestly in today's message that's going to be a little challenging, but I hope it impacts your heart. Because a lot of people start out strong with God. Amen? Amen.
We start out on fire. We start really strong. But don't finish strong. Shoo, wee.
Shoo, wee. What I mean by that is we struggle to sustain that same intensity, that same fire that we started off with over time. See, we all in here have experienced blessing. Amen?
But we struggle for some reason to stay aligned. And it's interesting. The place that we sometimes struggle to stay aligned is when things start working. I'll say it to this side.
I got one. Yeah. Come on, church, right? We get on fire.
God's blessing something. He's doing something. We're experiencing something. And we start off strong.
But then for some reason, it starts to fade. Today. Today I want to talk about a couple of things. I want to talk about the things that begin to, I don't want to say break us, but cause us to drift.
But I want to also show us a story today that's going to help us see from a person's life in the Bible. Everything we're talking about starts off strong, then begins to fade. And listen, blessings are great. That's what God does.
But I've realized that blessings don't usually break people. It's the success from them that does. I'm going to say it one more time. Blessings do not usually break people, but often the success of them do.
See, momentum rarely crashes. It's just overnight. It normally starts to slowly leak over time. We've been talking about prosper, how it begins, all of those things.
But today I want to talk about what sustains it once it starts working. What keeps it going? And so God gives us a principle in the Old Testament that we're going to read. And he does it by using a person's life.
See, in Second Kings, it tells us the people of Judah crowned a 16-year-old king after his father died. Do you hear what I just said? A 16-year-old. I'd be like, right, or being crowned king.
No, thank you. He's not proven. He's 16 years old. He doesn't even have a resume.
He has no long track record. He's only been alive for 16 years. I know they think they've been alive longer than us parents and stuff, but 16 years. All he has is some responsibility.
And the book of kings calls him Azariah. And we're going to be reading in chronicles because it tells the same story, but it calls him Uzziah. Same man. Same rain.
Just a little bit different angle. In the book of kings, it'll tell us what happened. Chronicles tells us what happened. What was happening inside of him.
Are you following me so far? I want to pause on his name super quick. Azariah, this is what it means. The Lord has helped.
And Uzziah means my strength is the Lord. So before the, I feel like as I was studying before the story even begins to unfold, I feel like everything is in his name. The source is clear. The Lord has helped.
My strength is the Lord. Help came from God and strength came from God. And we're going to see as long as, say as long as his help and strength stay connected to the Lord. You're going to see a variety of things.
His life worked. His leadership worked. His influence worked. His future worked.
We're going to see all this. And we're going to see something important that prospering isn't just a random church. It's relational. And seeking the Lord, it's not just a ritual.
It's not just something that he did. It was his operating system. Church system, what if, what if seeking him becomes our operating system? Do you hear what I'm saying?
What if every part of us and seeking after him becomes what we do, who we are? Shoo, we. All right, forget your Bible's turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 26. I'm going to be in verse 5 and it's going to be kind of what this is all around.
Are you there? Say I'm ready. You're not ready. You're looking at the screen.
It's all right. Ready verse 5, let's read. He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. Pay attention closely.
As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success. Other translates say he was prosper. God made him prosper. He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God.
As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success. He sought the Lord in his long ass. Listen, church, this is telling us the summary of everything. What does it say there as long as?
It doesn't say sometimes. It doesn't say occasionally. It says as long as. So my first point today is prosper starts with seeking.
He sought the Lord. He's king, right? We just read that they made him king. But it doesn't say because he was king, the Lord made him prosper.
It doesn't say that. It says because he sought the Lord. See, prospering doesn't begin with position. It begins with posture.
Seeking means dependence. Seeking means alignment. Seeking means trust as long as he sought the Lord. I just want to say that prospering here doesn't show us that it comes for what you sit on.
He's the king. He sits on the king's chair. But it comes from who you sit under. As long as he sought the Lord, he became prosperous.
You kind of notice some language from Jesus in people's favorite verse that they like to quote. Seek first. Yeah, every all can finish it. Seek first, the kingdom of God.
All these things will be added. Seek first. See, it's not found in all the things that will be added. It's found in him.
It starts from the place of posture of seeking him, church. That's where everything has to start. And when we seek him, come on. When we seek him, that's when things really change.
He goes and says he sought. Here's what this word means to seek, to inquire, to investigate, to carefully examine, to pursue with intention. So when it says as long as he sought the Lord, it's not saying as long as he prayed occasionally. As long as he checked in spiritually here and there, as long as he had a quiet moment with the Lord here and there.
Saying as long as he sought. It's saying that he lived curious about God. He sought. He intentionally leaned into God's ways.
He investigated. It's funny I was half asleep laying on the couch while documentary was playing last night. And the only parts that I woke up on was the investigation part. Because the person was being investigated.
And then he went back four or five times. And I always interrupt the stuff that she's watching. Why did it take five times for him to do that? He's like, just watch.
But I'm sitting here thinking I'm reading and literally this word sought means to investigate. To investigate. Obviously not to find out the Lord is something wrong but to investigate to learn who he is. I just like to ask, when you seek out the Lord, do you investigate to find out his nature of who he is?
When you seek him, a lot of times he's just like I've been praying to God. I've been waiting to hear from him. But do you intentionally seek to find his ways? To find out who he is, the nature of who he is, the Father.
To really get to know who he is. Could you imagine church if we begin to investigate the Father? This probably sounds so bad if someone just jumps on right now or not investigate God. But do you hear what I'm saying?
Does anybody hear my heart today? It says that when he sought out and as long as he did that, he was prosperous. Does anybody want to be prosperous today? He pursued alignment with the Lord.
It's not just talking to God, church. It's wanting to like orient your life around him. We're talking about prospering and wanting to prosper, move forward successfully with the Father. In order to do that, we're going to have to push in, align ourselves, and seek after him to want to see his face, to see him.
Like what we're seeing is that this just wasn't a moment. I encounter a lot of people that have moments with the Lord. But this wasn't a mindset. This wasn't seeking moments with God.
This was a mindset to seek after him in everything. Point two, seeking sustained success as long as he sought the Lord. It's funny. It doesn't just say that the Lord prospered him.
It tells us how long it lasted too. As long as he sought the Lord. Prospered has a connection church. We're talking about wanting to prosper.
We have to realize that it has a connection. It has a connection, not because God's controlling. Not because he's transactional. You do.
It's not because we serve a God that's relational. It's all about relationship. It's all about relationship. I believe we're going to see that he stayed close to the Father as why he continued to prosper.
The moment that he doesn't, we're going to see there's a drift that begins to happen. Again, his position, it didn't sustain him. His proximity of how close he stayed close to the Father did. Are you all here when I'm saying?
Come on. Do you want to prosper this year, church? We're talking about prospering. We got to talk about how to get there.
But when we get there, we've been really pushing how to get there. The principles of prosperity, proportional prosperity, all of these things prospering. But guess what? If we're believe in that we're going to prosper, then when we get to the prospering, we got to learn how to stay there.
Amen? This is about learning how to stay in the place of prospering in the Lord. So this one's going to blow your mind. So if seeking started it and made it successful, what do you think sustains it?
The same thing that started it, right? Mic drop. Y'all can go home. Amen.
Enjoy watching the Seahawks when the Super Bowl. Come on. Like, come on. If seeking started it and seeking's going to sustain it, the same posture that got him there is the same posture that had to keep him there.
I feel like some people just need to hear this morning that listen, we're seeking the Lord. Seeking and continuing to seek is going to be the only way that you stay where you're at. If you've drifted, you've stopped seeking. This isn't here to beat you up.
This is here to help relaun you. This is about direction back. This isn't about pushing you away or making you feel bad or shaming you or guilt you. This is saying, hey, you started seeking, you received, you got blessed, you were on fire.
This was exciting. Now you just feel like, and it's because you stopped seeking. If you want to stay with him, you got to seek him. We talked about the success a little bit.
It's dangerous for a couple of reasons. If it outgrows your seeking, shoo, if the success outgrows your seeking, it will eventually outpace your alignment. I hope you hear me this morning. That's the danger of what I think we see happen a lot.
It's why we get rolling. We get successful with the Lord. For some reason, the thing that got us there, sustained us there, it begins to fall off. And then things just go downhill and we can't figure out why.
And that's why I believe that the Scripture doesn't say, God prospered him forever. That's why it said, as long as he sought the Lord, because seeking is the fuel. Stop seeking. If you stop seeking, you will start coasting.
Think about that. You're reading it and it says, as long as he sought the Lord, as long as. Shoo, we. I would love to read it and say, he sought the Lord and the Lord prospered him forever.
Done. But it doesn't say that, Church. There's something about drawing close to the Father and seeking after him and everything that we do. Say it with me, as long as.
As long as. As long as. Y'all didn't sound excited about that. As long as.
Can I ask a couple questions real quick? This isn't to beat anybody up. But ask yourself, am I still seeking God the way I did when I needed him? You know, there's a pursuit in all of us that when we need God, we seek him.
But then when we get what we needed, I hope y'all hear my heart when we get what we needed is when things start to drift. We stop seeking him as much because we got it. But we don't return back the gratitude of what we sought after him in the first place to receive. And then once we receive, we don't steward it.
And then we don't keep seeking him and praising him and have a heart of thanksgiving that he actually gave us what we asked for. And then over time, it starts to turn into you think you can carry what God gave. And you can if you keep seeking him, but if you don't, that's where it gets challenging. Have you replaced prayer with experience?
Have you substituted dependence with confidence? Shoot, we. Because a lot of times I've found that drifting, it normally doesn't come from all the time come from rebellion. Sometimes it comes from comfort.
Sometimes we get too comfortable. This is where it happens sometimes. I'm going to show you what prosper actually looked like. So if you're looking at verse seven, I think I put these up here for you.
Go to the next slide. There we go. This is second chronicle 26 verse seven. God helped him say God helped him.
This is the Philistons and against the Arabs who lived in Gerbao, Laval and against the many of knights. Let me make it personal for you. Me unites. This is what happened when you put you in scripture.
The me unites. This is what happens when you trust yourself. The me unites. But I want you to look at that.
It says God helped him. God helped him. God helped him. Say God helped him.
Jump into verse eight. Go to verse eight. Go to the next verse. I'm going to keep rolling through this.
I'm going to look at the part and it says what? It says that his fame spread. His fame spread. His fame spread.
He had become very powerful. Jump into verse 15. I'm not going to read all these. I just want you to see them.
In Jerusalem, I'll read this with you. He made devices invented for use on the towers and on the corner of defenses so that soldiers could shoot arrows and hurt large stones from the walls. His fame spread far and wide for he was greatly helped. Say he was greatly helped.
He was greatly helped until he became powerful. As you're reading through this story that I'm just touching through and you can go and read it for yourself all of it. I just want to point out some things. He was greatly helped till he became strong.
Help came first and then strength followed. Church said if you read this, he built cities. He strengthened the land. He prepared the future.
He did all these great things. He did all of them. That's fruit. That's him prospering.
Lord was with him and as he was with him, he became prosperous. Like we see throughout scripture here that his fame spread far and wide. He was greatly helped until he became powerful. Now we get to the part where the story changes.
He was prosperous. As long as he sought the Lord, he was prosperous and all these great things. The Lord was with him. The Lord helped him.
The Lord did all of these things. Then we're about to see. When strength grows faster than seeking. When strength grows faster than seeking.
God begins to set in. You know what pride doesn't do? It doesn't do that at all. It shows up.
It shows up. And pride is a thing that will interrupt you prospering. Verse 16 reads like this. But after you became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.
He was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. The new king James said this. But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up. I want you to follow me for a minute, church.
He didn't fall when he was weak. He didn't fall when he was desperate. He fell when he was strong. He fell when he was strong.
So success didn't ruin him. He trusted. He trusted himself. He got to a place where he got so strong he began to trust himself and what he thought he could do.
If you read the rest of the story, they'll tell you they went in and told him, hey, you're not supposed to be doing that. They pulled him out of there. You're not the Lord prospered him in all these ways. But when he stepped out of pocket and he was don't tell you wasn't supposed to, that's when it happened.
He was doing something that he wasn't supposed to do. And I'm going to tie this all in here in a minute, but I just want you to hear that. It says when he was strong, when he was powerful, when he was at the top, somehow he stopped seeking somehow he allowed his strength, his confidence, all of those things to get in place of where his strength actually came from. He's going to be church the moment that strength stops pointing back to God, starts pulling away from him.
The moment we take it into our own hands is the moment things start to shift and change. Pride does something interesting. Sometimes it convinces us that what came from God, we can carry it by ourselves. But it's actually the thing that sustains it is the seeking the same way that we got it is the same way that we keep it.
It's the same way we sustain it. As long as he sought the Lord, the Lord made him prosper. As long as he sought the Lord. What I want to point out is that the fall that we're watching doesn't cancel the principle that we're talking about, it proves it.
Because the same seeking that sustained him was the first thing that faded. The same seeking that sustained him was the first thing that faded. When we stop seeking the Lord, when we stop pursuing him, like I said, we start off on fire. We start off exciting.
Things are going well. And for some reason the thing that got us there that we started doing, it drifts off into the side and then we start to just go down. So there's a principle we can take away here, church, that as long as we seek after him, as long as we investigate him, as long as we want to find out who he is, and we want to keep pressing in. It says that we will be prosperous.
And I think that that same thing rings true today. If we want to be prosperous, if we want to grow and move forward successfully with the Lord, because as a 16 year old king was moving forward and he sought the Lord, as long as he did that, he was successful at 16 years old, rolling as a king and 16 years old. As long as he sought the Lord, he became successful. I just want to point out, because I don't want you to think that I'm taking this infusing something here.
This is not a warning that God's waiting to strike people down. I just want to say that. This is an old covenant story, but I really believe that it reveals a timeless truth. Because if it was about God striking people, Jesus probably would have finished the job, but he didn't.
Because Jesus represents the Father clearly. When Jesus encountered leopards, he didn't strike them, he touched them, he healed them, he did those things. He poured them. It's not about punishment.
Today I want to talk about posture church. Because the reality is, is that God never changed, Yuziah did. It wasn't God, it was Yuziah that changed. It was Yuziah that became prosperous and he sought after the Lord, he did all these things, and then when he stopped, he thought he could carry the strength that came from the Lord, his name, his very name, his help and his strength came from the Lord.
And as long as he sought him, as long as he kept seeking after him, everything that he did as a king was prosperous. The moment he tried to step in there and burn some incense, it's the moment that he got struck with leprosy because he wasn't supposed to be doing that because he wasn't seeking the Lord. Pride stepped in and took over and it got in because he stopped seeking the Lord because the Lord was his strength. The Lord was his help.
The Lord was all of those things. And I believe it's because when he got successful, like I said, when we get successful, when the Lord brings blessing, when all this stuff happens in our life, that's where things get most challenging, but it's because we begin to drift. And I don't think that most people abandon God. I think people just stop seeking him.
They stop seeking the way they did when they first needed him. And when that happens, that's when we start to drift. That's when prayer becomes optional. Can I just be transparent?
I needed the Lord so bad in my life at one point. And y'all have heard this story a thousand times, but my wife wrote all of these scriptures along my wall downstairs and my whole bathroom. I can't even look in my mirror of the bathroom without seeing God's word. And it's still all there.
But you know, there was a part in my life where I needed the Lord so bad. And I sought after him, church. I'm not just talking about Lord, please help me. I'm in the worst space I've ever been.
No, I sought after him. I investigated him. He gave me some scriptures that I cling on to till this day because they helped me because I found him when I was intentionally seeking him. And I sought him in the worst.
I'm telling you, the worst place in my life. And I got this peace and this fire that came in in a moment. And there was a while back and I'm like, Lord, I don't feel that no more. Like I was on fire.
Right? I was going. I felt strong. Listen, I was strong.
The Lord carried me throughout my recovery of addiction because I was on fire for him. And I was seeking after him. And it's like, man, I felt like it started to just get like, oh, I said, just not seeking me. Something needed me the same way that you did at that point where I met you at.
And I'm telling you, church, I don't know. Listen, I don't know if you're here today. But listen, after over time you start walking with the Lord and things are going good. So you know, that seeking, that sought after that prayer.
I said a prayer every day at the bed of my bed and I'd say a prayer. After a while, that's our family. I don't need to do that. I start getting in bed and praying.
I got lazy, y'all. I was going to be honest. Any lazy prayers in here. Anybody that started doing something and seeking after the Lord was on fire and things are rolling, but then you get to this place where you get comfortable.
And then prayer just starts to, I'm good. God's good. I'm good. I don't need it right now.
It's okay. So I'm just going to pray when I want to pray. I'm just going to do what I want to do. I used to do it this way.
And then we start convincing ourselves, right? I got this. And then we start walking this out. I got this.
God's still there. We start doing all of that, but slowly things start fading. And we're just like, why is that happening? To the point we even, well, the Lord tests those.
Right? I'll stop there. And we stop seeking. Dependence no longer is needing to rely on Him and become dependent on Him.
Drifting doesn't come in announcing itself, church. It just excuses itself. And then before we know we're drifting. See, there's no amount of strength.
If His strength came from the Lord, that's where you need to go get it. His strength came from seeking the Lord. His prospering came from seeking the Lord. It's what sustained it.
As long as He sought the Lord, He became prosperous. Church, this is not a message to say you need to do more. That's not my heart today to tell you that. My heart today is you need to seek again if you stop seeking.
And if you're seeking and you're successful right now, I encourage you to keep seeking. Because that's what's going to sustain you. That's what started everything. And listen, it's not that prospering, it shouldn't bring pressure, church.
It's not about pressure. It's not about telling you, you should feel pressure to do all of these things. All that we read today, that prospering required presence. It required a posture of presence of seeking the Lord.
What got him to worry is that it was going to sustain Him. All you have to do is seek. That's what sustains us. You don't hear, you need to do better.
You just need to seek again. I really hope today, my heart today is not that you feel called out. My heart's that you feel called forward. I don't want to call anybody out.
I want to call everyone back to the place and to stay at the place of seeking the Father. That's where our help comes from. The things that we say, the things that we do. Lord reveal today to us the things that got us on fire for you.
And help us get back to them so we can continue to prosper and be successful and move forward with you because our help and our strength comes from you. Like come on church, what if we started to do that? What if we got back to seeking Him first? He sought to Lord.
He investigated the Lord. He inquired. He did all of those things. And He was super successful as a 16-year-old king.
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I think it's interesting that they used a 16-year-old. If you could do this with the Lord's help, could you imagine what we could do in our