This is an Encore episode of the Follower of One podcast from our archives. We are on a short break.

Hey, welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. I'm Mike Henry Sr. Today, I want to talk about 2 Chronicles 15:1-2. We don't often do a lot from the Old Testament, but this is a challenging passage that I happened to read the other day and I wanted to pass it along. The verse reads like this, "Now the spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, Listen to me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you're with him. And if you seek him, he will let you find him. But if you forsake him, he will forsake you." Now I read that from the New American Standard. That word "forsake," that's like "abandon." If we abandon God, he will abandon us. This is a challenging word from the Lord.

This prophet has been challenged to go talk to the king and to remind him that if you we are with God, if we seek him, if we pursue God, then he will let us find him. But if we abandon him, he will abandon us. Let's remember who we seek. Let's remember where we want to point our heart and our desires and our ambitions.

For me, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the things of work, to try and get the next promotion to try and pursue the next shiny object or the next thing we want to buy. It's so hard to follow after God. But if we can follow after God and remind ourselves to seek him, then we have this promise and many more that God will be with us when we are with him.

And if we seek him, he will let us find him. Our relationship with God is so far outside of our control, it's hard to fathom. And yet God has given us this ability that if we truly turn toward him, he will let us find him. But if we're joking with ourselves or if we're lying to ourselves or if we just choose not to have anything to do with God, he'll let us go that way too.

The key to our life is learning to live it pointed towards God. In the Follower of One community, we try to encourage each other to be intentional in the way that we live our daily life. Today. I want to challenge you. Let's ask ourselves, are we seeking God? Or are we seeking something else?

And what has to change? We can change with a prayer. We can punch in and tell God, "Here I am." And then we can also pray and ask him to bless the people around us. We can get on this eternal clock by punching-in with God and letting him use our life to matter forever. That's our job. We can follow Jesus and stick with him like we're following the bumper of a friend in a town where we're lost, where we don't know where we are. Let's stay close to Jesus and not let the shiny objects of career and material possessions take us off track. When we focus on God, he will challenge us to pay attention to the people around us, and the people that we work with. Let's follow hard after him today and let him direct our actions and use us for his glory.

You never know, your life may change so much that someone will come up to you today and go, why are you different? Or why did you just do this for me? Why did you go outside of your way to help me when you didn't have to? And that gives you an opportunity to share how Jesus transformed your life. That's part of the excitement that we get by following Jesus every day.

If you want to take part more in this type of a spiritual life and this life with Jesus, where our life matters as we interact with others, it matters for eternity. If you'd like to take part in that life, join us at https://followerofone.org. You can check out our online community there. You can see our videos and different things that we offer.

And by joining the online community, you can also take part in our next Marketplace Mission Trip, which is a two-week exercise to help us learn how to practice following Jesus carefully at work. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for wanting to integrate your faith into your daily life.

Ask God to help you, and he will make it happen. I promise. Thanks very much.

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