We're gonna continue today in our series on that's called Prosper. We've been on this, I think this might be the fourth week. And when Pastor Seth preets from third John, chapter one verse two last week, I said that's the same verse I plan on preaching on this Sunday, so you're gonna get the same verse this week as we had last week, but I believe that God's word is alive, God's word is powerful, that there's more than just one message in one verse. So that you can hear another, the same verse multiple times, and you can, the God can show you new things from it.
So I wanna bring a little bit of a different perspective, not perspective, just add a few things to it. And then I'm also gonna, really, the bulk of the teaching today will be from Psalm chapter one verses one through three. And I think Pastor Seth also had those verses last week, that's gonna be the bulk of the teaching. But the title of the message today is gonna be proportional prosperity, proportional prosperity.
That if you were here a few weeks ago, remember we anchored, the first time I thought of this, we anchored to prosper from the life of Joseph. That Joseph, although he was betrayed by his brothers, although he was lied about, although he was falsely accused, although he was sold twice into slavery, he had absolutely nothing as it pertained to this world's goods, he had nothing, he was stripped of everything, and it said that he was in the house of his master, whose name was Potiphar, he was in his house, it says, but because the Lord was with Joseph, he was a prosperous man. That prosperity first and foremost is defined by one thing and one thing only, it is the presence of God in you, with you, and upon you. And so that's where it all starts, that's where it all starts.
All the other things, all the ways people try to define prosperity, they miss. A lot of times people miss that it is anchored in one thing. It's the presence of God in your life. If you don't have Jesus, if you're here today, and you don't have Jesus in you, you can experience a measure of prosperity.
People in the world, we call prospers, but they're not prospers, the way the Bible defines prosperity. They're missing the key element, which is Jesus Christ. And so last week, Pastor Seth was in third John chapter one, verse two, which is a near and dear verse to me, because the first Bible, study Bible, my dad ever purchased for me, what my first Bible I read in my life, but he gave it to my birthday, May 6th, what year was that, 1996? This was 30 years ago, 30 years ago, and it was what I call a Bible thumper Bible.
This thing was like had the concordance in the back of it and the maps and it weighed a good four pounds. I could knock you out with it if you didn't respond. But so I really was my first Bible I really dug into and studied from, but in the very front of it, he put third John chapter one, verse two, as he gave the Bible to me, he wrote in there. Now the King James, which he wrote it in, is a little bit different than what we're gonna read today, because the King James says, he says, dearly but beloved, I pray above all things that you may prosper and be in health even as die soul prospers.
It's a little bit different, but the new King James says, so the difference is the King James says, above all things I pray and all the other translations say, I pray that in all things you may prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. So there's a, so the title of the message, proportional prosperity, think about proportional, what does proportional mean? So proportional, it means to, to correspond in degree. It means to correspond in intensity.
It means to correspond in size, to have a consistent or constant ratio. So any, are there any bakers in here? Anybody like to bake? Okay, a few people.
If you're making cookies, I love cookies, just sidebar, just in case you ever wanna know, I love cookies, but if you're going, if the cookie recipe calls for two cups of flour and one cup of sugar, right, we'll start a little mass just to get everybody, make sure you're awake. We start with two cups of sugar, I'm sorry, two cups of flour, one cup of sugar, and you're gonna double the recipe. How many cups of flour do I now need? And how many cups of sugar?
Two. If I'm gonna make a half batch, right? We don't have a lot of people in the house, sometimes the wife makes a half batch. Well, if I'm gonna half it, how many cups of flour, now I'm gonna have?
One, and I'm gonna have a half cup of sugar, right? So there's this ratio between flour and sugar. Now my wife is a great baker, but she does not follow recipes. It drives me crazy.
Like just follow the recipe, and it will turn out exactly, you'll get the same result, right? So sometimes she wants to say, oh well, you know, I'll do this, little that. Well, that's not me. It says two cups, it's two cups, and I pack it down and measure it off, and there's no wiggle room on that, because I want the ratio to stay the same.
One is proportionate to the other. And so when we read this verse, as Pastor says, said last week, he said, this is not an unconditional promise. This is not like a lot of promises in the Bible that just happen, or that just, you don't have to do anything to participate. This is conditional.
This involves something on your port, and I'd like to say this, it's proportional. It says, be loved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health. And I just wanna note, being in health is different than being healed. To be healed means you're sick, and you need a miracle in your body.
We believe in that. To be in health means that you live in a state of healthiness. And so that living in health is way better than needing to be healed. So he's saying that I want you to prosper, not just in one area, not just in relationships, not just in finances, not just in your home life, not just in your work life.
I want you to be prosperous, which means to advance, to increase. I want that to be in all things. Oh, and by the way, I don't wanna leave out this. I want you to live healthy.
I don't want you to be sick, needing healed, sick, healed, sick, healed, sick, healed. I want you to be healed, whole, and live healthy. And he says, I want that to happen. He said, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as, or even as what?
You're so prosperous. Pastor Seth said last week, he said that, that prosperity is the fruit of alignment with Jesus. I agree with that. I wanna take that a little bit further today, and just lay a little bit, another layer to that.
He says, prosperity is the fruit of alignment with Jesus. So he says that, it says that you may prosper and be in health just as, or even as what? Your soul prospers. So there's a proportion here.
We'll go to the next slide and we'll come back to this one. The word cathose in the Greek means this. It means according as, even as in proportion to, or to the same degree. So that to the same degree, your soul prospers, you should see that same prosperity in all things, including your health, to the same degree, to the same intensity, to the same proportion.
And so this doesn't function automatically because there's a condition. There has to be soul prosperity. And he goes, well, let's go back to the verse. And it says, for I rejoice greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you do what?
Walk in truth. Here's another proportion. He says, I rejoice because you have a testimony of this. People came and told me the truth is where?
In you. Do you realize the truth is in you? You have the truth in you. When Pastor Seth said that prosperity is the fruit of aligning with Jesus, what did Jesus say about himself?
In John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Is Jesus in you? Is Jesus the truth? Do you have the truth in you?
Do you always walk in the truth? Should you walk in the truth? We're talking about alignment, that my lifestyle, the word walk means lifestyle, or manner of life, or course of life, that the way I live my life should be in alignment with the truth. So we know that Jesus was and is the truth, but then Jesus was gone, right?
He went to heaven. He says, I'm gonna pray the Father, that He sends you another comforter, which means another one just like me. And He just said that He was what? The truth.
What do you think He's gonna tell about Holy Spirit? The truth. He says, I'm gonna pray the Father, He sends you another comforter, that He may dwell with you forever. And then the next verse He says, the Spirit of truth, He tells you is the truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him or knows Him, but you know Him, because He's with you, and He will be in you.
Jesus is the truth, He's in you. Jesus says later in that end, John 14, He says, in that day, you'll know that I am in the Father, and the Father's in me, and I'm in you. Like, I'm trying to convince you the truth is where? It's in me.
If you're saved, the truth is in you. And here, where John's writing to Gaius in this disciple, he says that the brethren came, and they gave testimony that just as the truth is in you, Jesus is in you, the Holy Spirit is living in you. The truth of God is in you. The same way it's in you that you just as you walk in the truth.
See, the potential is to align with the truth to that same degree, because if it wasn't available, if it wasn't possible, it wouldn't even be in the Bible. So that He puts it in, so it's just as. So that, unfortunately, what happens a lot of times, anybody, if you read the new living translation, I like it, I have one, but here's what happens a lot of times, we'll go back to this, I pray that you prosper in all things, and be in health even as what, your soul. So the new living and some other translations put the word spirit in there.
That's wrong, that's 100% wrong. Unfortunately, that causes confusion in the body of Christ, because your spirit and your soul are two different things. They are not the same thing, but unfortunately, sometimes translations interchange them, and it just leads you down a path of bad theology. So just quickly that first and foremost, we're made in the image of God, right?
God is a tripartite God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Just like God is a superior Trinity, man is an inferior Trinity, we're made in the same likeness as God. So that first and foremost, we're a spirit. The real you is not the you that I'm looking at right now.
Thank God. Look at your neighbor and say, thank God that's not the real you. There's a better you than the one sitting next to you. See that first and foremost, you are a spirit.
You possess a soul, you possess a soul. Your spirit man has a soul. That soul is made up of three things, your mind, your will and your emotion. Your spirit that possesses a soul then lives in this thing that we call what?
A body or we might say it's my earth suit, right? I need a body to exist on earth. But one day it's gonna be something different. And so what he's saying here, that the moment you get saved, the moment you accept Jesus, the spirit part of you is forever perfected.
It's the place the Holy Spirit comes to live, right? He can't live in a sin, in a sinful house. He can't live in something that needs to get better. He can only live in a place that's holy.
So the part of you that changes, that gets born again under the new birth is your spirit man is what gets born again. Your spirit man is as perfect as it ever will be in all of eternity. It never gets better. The Bible tells us this, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, he says, talking about that when two come together, two shall become what?
One, he actually uses the same analogy in relation to us and the Holy Spirit. He says in verse 17, in verse Corinthian 6, he says, whoever is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. So I don't wanna teach on that today, but your born again spirit is so infused with the Holy Spirit. He not only lives in you, but your spirit and his spirit literally are infused at a molecular, if that's even a term in the spirit realm, at a level where they're one and the same.
So that the truth that's in the spirit of truth resides in you and it's as perfect as it ever will be. So if I prospered according to my spirit, I'd make Elon Musk look like a homeless man, right? But that's not what it's talking about, it's called, it says prospering according to your soul. My soul is still in process.
My spirit man is perfect. My soul is in process. It's not there yet. My made up of my mind, my mind still needs renewed.
My emotions, my feelings, obviously not always right. Amen. Amen. You know, it was terrible.
I prepared this message this week and last night, my wife and I played this game called Hand and Foot. You play with like multiple decks of cards and she was beating the poop out of me. It was awful. Like I could not, I couldn't play a hand.
I just, nothing was going my way and I got a bad attitude. Like it was awful. Like, and she's like, what's wrong with you? It's cards.
Like I wanna win. And I was like, I don't even mind losing, but I wanna lose clothes. Like this is awful. And we quit after three, we didn't even finish the game.
I got so angry about it. And God's like, you know, it takes situations have to occur for the Lord to expose things in your life that need to be, need to be changed. Like he, he can even use a game of cards to say, Fred, you're not there yet. You got a long way to go, baby.
You are not there. See, it's much easier when you win, how hard is it to win and do it, you know, be happy, but can you lose happy? I can, I'm still trying to get it. But also your decisions, your mind, the way you think, your feelings, your emotions, the way you react, your emotional reactions and the way your decisions, your will that you decide.
Let me just give you a quick synopsis of what that looks like scripturally before we get into the teaching. And then we're gonna have to really put our seat belts on and we'll crank out, we'll get four points today. So obviously I have to do one every eight minutes. So we'll get those done.
All right, so think about this, that prosperity of soul, your prosperity of soul is the degree to which your thoughts, your emotions, and your decisions align with the truth. Prosperity of soul is a degree to which your thoughts, your emotions and your decisions align with the truth. Okay, real quickly, an aligned mind. Isaiah 26, 3 says this, he says, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is what, stayed on you, who trusts in you.
I love this word stayed. It literally means, it's not like a word stay that means to inhabit, it means to lean. Right now I've got all my weight on this chair. Right, what's gonna happen if that chair starts to slide like this?
Right, like I'm only a stable because I completely leaning on this chair. And that verse says that you will keep in perfect peace whose mind is just like this, stayed, leans on, finds stability in you. See, the degree that my mind is staying on him. It says you will keep him in what?
Perfect peace. It's actually a double in the Hebrew, it means it's shalom shalom. It's shalom shalom. It means that completeness, wholeness, soundness, it means prosperity.
It's an all encompassing word shalom, and it's like shalom squared. It's like shalom shalom. It can't get any more perfect than that. But that's where God keeps you when what?
Your mind is stayed. Now I could do this, and this is how most of us live our lives with the Lord. Right? I'm not leaning.
I'm not staying, because at the moment I wanna pick my hand up, I'm gonna do my own thing. But it's staying on the Lord. So in a line mind, in a line, emotions. How do you react to situations?
How do you react when your wife spanks your pants? It cards. Yeah. Is it the fruit of the spirit or is it the fruit of Fred?
Like it's probably more time so not to, but it should be different. What should be when I encounter something? So here's something people say a lot, I hate this. They say what, feelings.
That's why. Why would something God create lie? You realize God gave you feelings for a reason? The only feelings that lie are the ones that aren't aligned with the truth.
When your feelings align with the truth, they give you good indicators. So don't say feelings lie. If you keep saying feelings lie, guess what you'll never trust. You'll never trust your feelings.
But I submit to you this, if your feelings are aligned with the word of God and the spirit of God, then you should be able to trust them. There should be intuition that you're like, well, I just gotta check in my gut. Well, it's Holy Spirit. Like learn to discern those.
Don't just throw them out the window. Work on them. Says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. Here's one I struggle with.
Self-control. Self-control. Like I'm from zero to 100 like this. It's taken me 30 years of what we're talking about today just to make an improvement in my life.
But I've improved. I've still got a ways to go. But you can too. You can too.
And then we have an aligned will. Think of it like this. Jesus. If anybody could have his own way, wouldn't you think it would be Jesus?
What did he say when he's in the garden to get sent? And he says, nevertheless, not my will, but yours. He submitted to the will of the Father. He said, I only come to do the will of him who sent me.
And so he went out. That was how he lived his life. Like you may not encounter something that's awful. You're like, God, I'm willing to do whatever you call me to do.
So your obedience will level off at the, it's proportional to it. Let's say this. Your obedience is proportion to your submission. You'll only be obedient to the point that you're willing to submit.
I mean, somebody might force you into it, but that's not what God's looking for. He's looking for you to have a choice between two or more options and that you choose him over everything else. All right. Here we go.
Four things today. We're going to talk today from Psalm chapter one, verses one through three. Let me just give you the points. So this is about a person who is prosperous in soul.
A person who's prosperous in soul. Remember when we just looked at that verse back and third John and said that you may prosper in how many things? All things. So this is what we're talking about.
Everything in your life depends. It's critical. It depends on what's going on. Like what's going on in your soul, the way you think, the way that you react your emotions, your emotional reactions, the way you make decisions, your prosperity in life hinges on that.
It's important. It's important. Number one is this, I want to give them to you now. This person, this man or woman, they protect their walk.
Number one, they protect their walk. Number two, they take pleasure in the word. They protect their walk. They take pleasure in the word.
They are planted by the water. We're going to talk about this in a minute. And then finally, they prosper in the whatever. Say that.
I want to prosper in whatever. Prosper in all things. Like whatever. You can prosper in whatever.
So Psalm chapter one, verses one, three, three. Let's read this together. We're all read it for you. Psalms chapter one, let me get there.
Okay. Number verse one says blessed. This word, it means happy. Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the ungodly nor stands in the mouth of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the river of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither. And whatever. Everybody say that, whatever.
Whatever he does, shall what? Prosper. Whatever. Look, whatever he does, prosper.
Notice where that comes in that is at the beginning or the end. It comes at the end because there's other things that lead up to prospering externally. There's internal things that have to take place in order for you to experience it externally. See sometimes it's not so much what you're bringing in, but what you're not allowing to come in.
See, it starts out with what this man doesn't do. It talks about what he doesn't do before it talks about what he does do. See sometimes we give legal access to thoughts and ideas that actually ruin our ability to prosper the way God wants us to. We wrap our brains and minds around an ideology that's so far from what God's word says that it's no wonder, it's no wonder you're even living.
But that's not, so the first thing that has to happen is, as I want to, is number one is this, this guy or this gal protects their walk. They protect it. We're going to look at Proverbs chapter four verse 23 and following in a few minutes. But it says above all things, guard your heart for out of it flows the issues.
Everything in life comes from where? Your heart. So Solomon says, guard it. Protect it.
Like it's serious. You got like, when God put Adam in the garden, he says he put him in the garden to the garden to tend it and to keep it, to protect it. He didn't protect it. And look what happened.
So he says, this is important. Protect your heart. So the first thing is this, blessed is the man verse one who, I first want to point out, notice the digression here. What's he doing first?
Activity wise. He's walking. Then what's he doing? And then what's he doing?
Sitting. It's actually more than sitting. It's dwelling. But we'll get that in a minute.
So he's walking and then he's standing and then he sits in it. What's he figuring out what he sits in? But he sits in something. It says that blessed is the man who walks not in the what?
Council of the ungodly. This is advice. It's advice. Where are you drawing counsel from?
Who's speaking into your life? When I went out recently, I was looking for a counselor for a couple that I know. I don't want them getting counsel from a non-Christian. I went to my friend over here and I said, who can we get these people counseling with that would give them godly counsel?
That's the first anchor criteria to prosper. That the Lord is what? With you? If somebody is ungodly, what does un mean?
Not. Not what? Godly. If somebody is not godly, why would you go to somebody for advice who doesn't have a chance at prospering at anything?
Why not start with godly counsel? Godly advice. Godly wisdom says that he walks not in the counsel, in the advice of. He's not living his life listening to bad advice from ungodly people.
You know what happens after a while? After you begin to entertain bad counsel, you begin to adopt it as your own. He says first he doesn't do this, he doesn't walk in it, but then nextly he doesn't do what? Stand.
In the what? Path of sinners. He doesn't stand there. Actually the word in Hebrew, stand means to take a stand in attitude.
Imagine that. It literally means to cosign for somebody else's sin. We just put it in modern vernacular. It means that I've entertained ungodly counsel.
Now I'm taking a stand with that person in opposition to what God's word says. I'm standing here. And the next thing he doesn't do is he doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. The seat actually means a habitation, a house.
So the first thing he gets is bad advice. Then he has bad associations. And now he has a bad address because he takes a seat and he literally lives from a place of the scornful to scorn. It comes from the word that means to interpret.
Think of this. When Joseph's brothers came to Egypt, they didn't know he was. He's the second most powerful person in the entire world. And it says that they didn't know Joseph could understand them because he spoke to them with an interpreter.
The word interpreter is the same word as seat. That he sits in the seat of the scornful. I'm sorry, scornful. It's the same word, scornful.
It also means arrogantly mock to arrogantly ridicule. It means to interpret. It also means to be an ambassador. You literally go from listening to it to now advocating for it to now actually being a voice for something that's anti-God.
And that becomes the place that you live from. All because you started by listening to it. But that's not what this person does. This person doesn't entertain the words.
This person doesn't stand for anything that's anti-God's word. And this person certainly never gets to the place of advocating for anything, being actually a voice for the enemy against all things that God's word stands for. If you're doing any of those things or you've started down that path, you're on the path to never prospering. See, it starts by what you're legally giving the right into your life.
And sometimes it starts with no. I'm not entertaining that. I'm not listening to that. I'm not adopting that ideology.
I'm not adopting that philosophy. I'm not even going to think about it. How about people want me to read certain books before that are 180 degrees in opposite what I believe? I won't do it.
It's like, well, you need to expand your mind. No, I don't. I really don't. Because I have the truth.
Why would I want to entertain anything other than the truth and give the enemy a chance of getting a foothold here? Well, it sounds logical. It sounds reasonable. God certainly wouldn't want me not to be happy.
God wouldn't. It's just a bunch of reasoning that doesn't line up with His word. And it takes you down a path of not prospering. But the blessed man, the prosperous woman, doesn't do that.
They protect their garden. They protect their walk. They're cautious about who's in that circle, who's speaking into their life. It says in Proverbs 4, chapter 23, it says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.
Verse 24 says, keep your mouth free of perversity. Keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your waves. Do not turn to the right nor to the left. What is that, a political verse? I'm not sure.
Do not turn to the right or to the left. Keep your foot from evil. He says, watch where you're going. Watch what you're listening to.
Watch. Be attention because there's an enemy of your soul that's trying, like he's not going to show up in a red suit. More than likely not going to show up in a red suit, the pitchfork and a tail. He's going to be dressed nice.
He's going to talk smooth. He's going to be, she's going to be good looking, whatever it is. It's going to come dressed up. Even Satan transforms himself into what?
An angel of light. You've got to be aware. So you've got to protect your walk. Number two is this.
It takes pleasure in the word. It takes pleasure in the word. It says that he delights, verse two, he delights himself what? In the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates.
To delight means to take pleasure in. To delight means to take pleasure in. I don't know anybody that doesn't delight in Jesus. I know a lot of people who don't delight in his word.
Unfortunately the two are one and the same. Like well I love Jesus, I just don't like what he has to say. Well you don't love Jesus because he is the word. That's who he is.
And so to love him is to love his word. To delight in him is to delight in what he says. To take pleasure in it. Says that in his law he meditates.
I love the word meditate because a lot of times when we hear the word meditate we think, mmm, mmm, that's not meditation. That's not biblical meditation. We're not emptying our minds. We're filling our minds with his word.
We're filling our minds, our emotions, our thought processes, our decision making tree so to speak with him and his word. To meditate means to muse. It means to imagine. It means to mutter.
It means to speak. And I love this in Isaiah. It uses the term growl. It says as a lion and a young lion growls over its prey.
Same word meditate. That when you get like a dog on a pork chop, right? And you take the word and it's not just memorizing the word. It's speaking the word that he meditates in a day and night when Joshua and God gives instructions to Joshua, he says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.
And in this book you shall meditate again day and night, Joshua 1-8. So that meditation is more than just memorization. That could be part of it. But it's speaking the word.
It's meditating and visualizing the word. Seeing the word become you. Like you spend so much time in it. It speaks to you.
It comes alive. That you imagine exactly what the word's saying and you see it with eyes of faith. That's meditation that you growl over it and you mutter on it and you dream about it. Like, when I couldn't sleep this morning, I'm laying in bed at 3 o'clock.
Why to wake? What am I thinking about? I can tell you what I wasn't doing. If you were, I wasn't doing this.
This does not renew your mind. What was I doing? I was meditating on scripture. I was meditating when I was, I take what it was, Isaiah 26-3.
He will keep him in perfect peace. And I think about what perfect peace thing sounds like and what it looks like and that God's keeping me and that I'm keeping my mind stayed on him. And what does it look like to stay on him? Like all those things.
That's meditation. It says that he meditates. He takes delight in it and he meditates there day and night. Let's read this Psalm 119.
I mean, now if you know anything about Psalm 119, Psalm 119 is amazing. It's 176 verses. I don't know if I've ever sat and read it all. I probably have it some point in time.
But what's interesting about Psalm 119 is this. It's every eight verses start with the same letter. There's 22 sections or stanzas of eight verses each. Each one representing a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
And all eight verses and that stands all start with that same letter. So an amazing poetic feet that David when he penned this. It's all about the word of God. So in English, it doesn't come out that way and I can't read Hebrew and you can't understand it.
So I just got to take my word for it. But anyway, Psalm 119, and let me just read these few verses to you. Verses 9. This is the second stanza in Psalm 119.
It says, how can a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to your word? Again, look at that. According to, in proportion to, with a whole heart, I have sought you. Let me not wonder from your commandments.
Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Do you realize the more word that you have in you and things come up where you have to make a decision between right and wrong? Guess what comes up? The word.
The word comes up. The word comes up. I'll be in situations and I can remember Bible verses. My mother taught me as a kid.
Unfortunately, they were in the King James. So I had to relearn them all. But but but nonetheless, what time I am afraid I will trust in thee. Like it doesn't matter.
Like and they come out of there because they're in there. God, Jesus said this. He says, the Holy Spirit will bring all things to remembrance whatsoever I've said. So I encourage you to spend time in God's word because at the right time he brings it up.
He says, I've hidden my word in your heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips, I've declared all the judgments of your mouth.
I've rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches. Now, this isn't a poor man writing this. This was the wealthiest person in the world that day that he held and esteemed the word of God higher than anything that he could ever have in the world. He said, I will meditate on your precepts, contemplate your ways.
I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. David esteemed God's word more than anything. You can go home and read this whole song 119.
It's all about the word of God. All about and think about it. He probably only had the first five books of the Bible. Imagine being excited about Leviticus.
Oh, numbers. He got so-and-so and maybe got so-and-so and maybe got so. Like, come on. But he found life in that.
Like how much more today? We've got 66 books, like 11, I think, 11989 chapters. I don't remember how many verses, but we have so much more to delight in than even he did. Next thing is this.
He protects his walk. He takes pleasure in the word, but he's planted by the water. So it says, he shall be like. He shall be like what a tree planted by the rivers of water.
I like that. I like that. We're not talking about a little tree planted out in the desert somewhere. We're not talking about a shrub.
We're talking about a tree that's planted. Like planted by water. And what happens when it's by water? There's roots always getting nourished.
There's never a time. We're going to look at Jeremiah because it's one of my favorite passages. I'll tell you why. There's never a time that water's not available.
It says he'll be like a tree planted by the water. Please go back there. That brings forth fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither. See what starts to happen now?
We rejected what's wrong. We received what's right. And now the effects start to demonstrate in the natural realm. All sudden, those things that we're taking place internally, not going to listen to that, not going to hear that, not going to stand for that, not going to endorse that.
Oh, and by the way, I'm going to delight myself in the word. I'm going to spend night and day there. I'm going to meditate on what God's word says. I love it.
I love it. I love it. Now all of a sudden, I begin to get planted. I begin to get nourished.
I begin to get fed. My leaves don't wither. I continue to bear fruit. I was reading this.
I looked up this morning about the effects of drought on a tree. Actually, Google AI said, how long can a tree last without water? It said a mature tree could last three to four weeks without water. A young or baby tree could last two to three days without water.
At the point, it doesn't get enough water. Let's just say it's a mature tree, three to four weeks, a baby tree, two to three days. It experiences something called drought stress. Drought stress.
It weakens the tree and makes it susceptible to pests and diseases. Think about that in the spiritual realm. If you're a mature believer, if you're a young believer, you can go and coast for a little while. I could probably coast maybe a little bit more than some, maybe less than others.
But eventually, I'm going to run out of water. And when I run out of water, my life becomes susceptible to pests and diseases. It says true and the natural is true in the spiritual. We need the water of the word.
We need nourishment from the word. It says in Jeremiah 17, the reason I really like this passage. I went to my old amplified Bible this morning. I've got multiple, multiple Bibles, but my amplified Bible was my go-to Bible in the early 2000s.
And I pulled this out. Whitney, what's the date on there? Just November 3, 2008. November 3, 2008.
Talking going on 17 plus years ago. 17 plus years ago, there was a financial crisis in the banking industry. Hit our business. Our business dropped 40 percent overnight.
Put us in a tailspin. Long story short, I was 90 days from going bankrupt. 90 days from being out of cash. And then I didn't know what.
But all I knew to do was to find a verse and hold on to it. I printed that out in 2008. I carried that with me every day. I took it in my car.
I preached that verse, those of these verses to myself every day on the way to work. I meditated on them. I spoke them. I muttered them.
I visualized them. I spoke it until I saw what was in these verses come to life and when it did, all of a sudden faith rose up. I met with the bank one time. They said, well, you're going bankrupt.
So I know. Tell me something I didn't know. And they're like, what are you going to do? And so I said, here's our game plan.
They're like, yeah, but you're not stopping your giving. I said, I know, because I'm not going to do that. But then it's not going to work. I said, it'll work because God's word says it's going to work.
And I can't get to you, but that's all I can tell you. And they just kind of rolled their eyes and walked out. And I guess they figured they'd come back in three months and lock me up. But God's word works.
It says, cursed is the man. That trust in man and who makes flesh his arm, which means that when you rely on your own strength, you're operating under a curse. You're trying to do it in your own strength. It says, who hard departs from the Lord, he shall be like a shrub in the desert, a shrub in the desert.
He shall not see when good comes. See, here's the thing. This person's so dry, they can't even see good. They can't even see if it hit him upside to head.
They get a full house. They don't even see it. They get four kings. They don't see it.
It's good, but it's they don't see it. It says that shall inhabit part. He says, I want you to notice all the dryness here. Parts places in a salt land uninhabited, but then it goes on the next verse of this.
But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and in whose hope the Lord is, for he shall be like a what? Tree planted by the rivers and that spreads out its roots by the water and shall not see when what? The heat comes. See, the one guy can't see good when it comes, but the one that trusts in the Lord can't see when the heat comes.
See, you're so connected in the spirit realm to God that he's so nourishing you, you're oblivious to heat and shall not be anxious or shall not worry in what? The year of drought. But his leaf shall be green and he will not cease from yielding fruit. I think it's amazing that a lot of times we think, well, I'm a believer, I won't have heat seasons or I won't have drought seasons.
See, this even talks about the year of drought. But even in the year of drought, you can go through it without worry and anxiety. Even in the day of heat, you can live at such a level where you don't even experience or see it because you're trusting in the Lord and you have roots that are planted deep and being nourished deep that you can stand to test the time. The last thing is this and this is a quickie.
Number four, he's prospers in the whatever. Like all those things to get to this, all those things to get to this, that you're thinking right. You're feeling right. You're making right decisions.
Your soul is prospering, which tells me that my soul can prosper to such a degree that everything I do prospers, everything I do succeeds, everything I do advances. If it's not, then I have to ask a question. I have to be willing to look in the mirror. I have to be willing to ask the Holy Spirit, what am I missing here?
What lie have I bought into? What ideology have I submitted my mind to that doesn't line up with your work and then he'll reveal it and then you have a decision. You can hold on to it or you can let go. See, that's all repentances.
Repentance metanoia means to change a thought. It's not the abstaining or turning from sin that people turn into. That's the fruit of repentance. Repentance is changing your mind.
It's exchanging your thoughts for God's thoughts. It's saying, okay, my thoughts here, what God says, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. Imagine that and my ways are higher than your ways. As the rain comes down from heaven and the snow and water the earth and cause it to bud, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.
It will accomplish whatsoever I please and it will prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Why wouldn't you want to exchange the way you think for that? Why wouldn't you? It's better.
We're talking about making room. Make room for that. Give God some head space. Quit letting the devil have head space.
Quit letting the world have head space. Make room for the Holy Spirit who is truth. Make room for the word of God which is truth to change your mind, change your life and you'll see prosperity begin to it'll it'll happen. Things will get better because it says it prosper in whatever.
A close to this verse about Hezekiah, second Chronicles chapter 31. It says, say this, every work. Remember I told you before you had to put your hand to something? You can't just stand in this.
You've got to give God something to work with. Every work that He undertook in the service of the house of God, look at this. In accordance. What are we talking about?
Proportion. Just as to the same degree as everything He undertook in the house of God in accordance with the law and the commandments seeking God He did with all His heart and prospered. Say amen. Amen means let it be so.
Say amen to that. I'm going to say amen to that because I want that to be so. I've got so far to go. I don't know about you guys but I've got work.
God needs to work on me. I need my soul. I need the way I think to get better. I need the way I feel.
Like I want to believe my feelings. Not my card playing feelings. My other feelings. The good ones.
They're because there's good ones. There's good ones. I want my decisions to line up with God's Word. I want the witness of the Holy Spirit to say that's right.
What you're doing is right. You're spot on. That's what He's there for. He's there to guide us.
It says the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. No, God, you're not all truth. Let's close on that. Let's pray.