(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

Well, my name is Chris.

It is an honor and a blessing to be with you all this morning.

And I stand here today with, gosh, many emotions and feelings and, as they would say, all the feels, if you will, of being here in this place right now for such a time as this at Valorous Church.

It was 14 years ago, almost, 2009, that I began my journey here in South Carolina with what was Barefoot Church on 701 Main Street.

Any Main Street folks from the old theater?

I see you in the background.

So that's where I was trying to find my way.

I'd finished my sophomore year of college and was trying to find my way.

And I'm so honored to have my parents here with me, my dad, and my family, my wife, my mom, my beautiful ladies here that are my girls that keep me on my toes.

Yes.

And the blessing that's beside my dad with his fiance.

Congratulations to him.

But I say all that today, yes, it's a blessing, because I look at where I was in 2009 and where the journey has been being here before you today.

And I can tell you that what God has prepared for me to share with you all today has been something that I don't think I even realized in the moments that I was going through those situations.

It was preparing for me to be here today to share with you today.

I had no idea, but that's how God works.

He goes before us and prepares a way for us.

His ways are higher than our ways.

His thoughts, his intentions are things that we cannot even grasp and prepare our minds for.

And so as I sit here and stand here today, I'm honored as I started with this journey.

I want to say a special hello and much love to Pastors Clay and Kim.

I know you're probably watching from home, praying for speedy recovery.

But I am so thankful for the blessing and the investment that they made in my life when I was just a clueless college kid at the young age of 21, 22, working on summer break, trying to figure out life.

How many of you got it all figured out yet?

All right, nobody.

I'm still trying to figure it out.

God bless.

I am.

And I remember one day walking into the doors of that church.

They had just moved over to the theater.

And I walked in.

I was a part of the service.

And much like you, I came in for hope, looking for direction.

I had stepped away from my faith.

And I grew up in a Southern Baptist home.

And I was the kind of church where if you're not paying attention, mom or dad would slap you in the back of the head.

All right, boy, pay attention.

Or you were in Sunday school wearing your Sunday best.

We're going to do some Sunday school here in a minute.

How many Sunday school people from way back?

You remember it?

OK, all right.

We're going there, so get ready.

I need you guys to talk back to me today.

So don't feel like you can't.

This is a conversation.

But walking into Barefoot Church at that time, looking for hope, looking for just trying to find potential.

I had been spending years of my life in ministry.

And I was at Liberty University and had taken a break off of, there we go, LU, Air Flames.

And just trying to find direction, I stepped away for a while.

And it was in that moment that I connected with the church and Pastor Clay and Kim.

And they gave me a chance.

And long story short, I had the opportunity for several years.

And I'm seeing some very familiar faces out here.

Jim and Joan Evans, I want to honor them and say I love you.

It's good to see you all, because we were on that journey together as well.

But I had no idea what I was doing.

I had no idea what I was doing at all.

But someone took a chance and says, you know what?

For this moment in time, you are the one.

Be the one.

And if you're going to say that you are the one, go and be the one.

Say it together.

You are the one.

Be the one.

Look at the person with intensity and say, you are the one.

Be the one.

And at that time and place, let me tell you, and if Pastor Clay is watching today, it wasn't be the one.

It was be the many.

And he tells this story oftentimes.

Listen, it would go like this.

About 5 o'clock in the morning, Folgers coffee was dripping.

The smell of the sweet morning Sunday rise was coming up in North Myrtle Beach with the humidity of 95% with a heat index of about 115.

Hello.

And he'd come, knock on my door.

It's time to go to church on Sunday.

This is how it went down.

No joke.

You can ask him.

We would set up every Sunday.

We had these containers.

We would set up chairs and umbrellas and food.

And hospitality was always a part of the vision for Pastor Clay, and it still is.

So my family and I, we moved here in July, and I walked on this campus.

And I said, you know what?

It's still alive and well.

The hospitality, the vision is still there.

And so that's what we would do.

We'd start up on Sunday.

That would be it.

So yeah, you were the one.

So you're the setup guy.

But also, I need you to do a little music sometimes because we don't have a worship leader yet.

And also, on Wednesdays, I need you to help hang out with middle school and high school students because we don't have a youth minister yet.

And I look around and see where we are today.

And I have to say this to you all before we dive into God's word because I can remember when I left here in 2009 and I started the next phase of my life to get school, to learn about life, to start my beautiful family, and go through a journey that has not been easy.

It's not been easy.

I don't come up here to tell you I've got it figured out.

I just come up here to hopefully share from a position of integrity and a position of authenticity of what I'm going through and things that I've learned because we're doing life together.

We're in this together.

There's no elevated thing here.

We are in this together.

We are on a journey together.

God has called us to be the one where we are together right now in this place.

And so for 11 years after I left, and a phenomenal journey of working with Pastor Clay and bringing on people with staff and growing our student ministry and loving on those people, our middle school and high school students.

But what I realized after I left in 2009, I spent the past 11 years of my life in federal law enforcement, traveling all over the world, doing law enforcement investigations, internet crimes against children, seeing some of the darkest things in the world.

What I began to realize as I grew into that role, I understood that the calling to ministry to be the one was more than just me sitting in a position of church leadership, which in that moment, that was the season.

That was the detour.

That was the gulf, if you will, that God had me on.

But then he had other plans for me that I could have never even imagined.

I stepped out into that, and I lived that journey.

And so I feel like today I come back to you as kind of as a prodigal son who's returning home.

We came back in July, moved back to this area from the Washington DC area with my family.

But what I want to tell you as a word of encouragement and thanks is this, and what I have learned, and what I said and made a promise to God that if I ever had a chance to stand in front of God's people, of Barefoot Community Church, Valorous Church, who we are now, it's just a name.

We're still the people.

We're still the church, right?

Was that the people that give day after day, week after week, and volunteer their time at this place, I love them, but I had no idea the sacrifice that they were making.

So I want to take just the next 5 or 10 seconds, and I want to honor you.

And I want to say thank you from the person to the street, to the seat, to the person that's over here and loving on kids right now and children's ministry that served you some good breakfast this morning.

Amen for the bacon and pancakes.

Come on, somebody, right?

And the person that greeted you at the door, to the folks that stand on this stage and encourage you with music, Bernard, thank you, sir, for all that you guys do and the love that you show your people, and from worshiping from a place of authenticity, I want to say thank you.

I just want to say thank you to that part of this church that is vital, because I remember when I left, and I started having babies of my own.

I've got three girls, and I'm outnumbered.

Pray for me, right?

I'm outnumbered.

I'm learning every day.

Just don't team up on me too much.

I learned on the part of the youth ministry side, if I can just speak to that for a second, I was a student pastor ministering to middle school and high school students.

And that's the position that God had called me to, to be the one in that place and time.

But what I didn't fully understand and grasp was the sacrifice that was being made day in and day out from those folks that would show up on a Wednesday.

Now, let's walk through that for a minute.

You know, you go to work, you get up, you work your eight-hour job.

Some of us aren't happy with that.

Whatever, you go through the struggles of that.

And then if you've got kids, you've got to pick them up at the bus stop or the school, or they're at school coming home from the bus stop.

You've got to do extracurricular activities.

You've got to prepare dinner.

Are you going to do Chick-fil-A?

Or are you going to do HelloFresh?

Or are you going to do Instacart?

Come on, right?

You have to figure all these decisions out.

And oh, by the way, on a Wednesday night, I've got to show up for about three or four hours and help set up for this youth ministry for kids to come on a Wednesday night and love on them and share and invest in them, right?

I didn't fully appreciate all that until now living that life.

So I stepped out of this journey of being the one where I was at in that position of life and where God had placed me to step into another chapter, finishing up school, serving in law enforcement, serving our communities, and serving around the globe, and realizing the sacrifice that's made.

So I just wanted to say thank you.

I wanted to honor you and tell you much love to every single person.

You've got everything that you're doing in your personal lives, but you still show up here.

Don't faint in the process.

It is a beautiful, beautiful journey, and it's an honor to serve.

And I just want to say thank you.

And I hope that God allows me to continue to provide that type of encouragement from that position.

So I told you we're going to Sunday school.

Everybody say Sunday school.

All right?

We actually had a series one time, Pastor GM, called Monday School.

Remember that?

Where we would reflect on the things that God was teaching us on Sunday.

We'd come back on Monday and talk about Monday school.

That's where it all happens, right?

We come to church on Sunday.

We get inspired.

We learn.

We grow.

And then on Monday, we have to go apply it.

And Monday's rough.

Monday school hits you right in the face, right?

It's like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

That's Monday school, right?

Yeah, so I want to play a little Jeopardy with us on Sunday school.

I'm going to give out some phrases.

We're going to say Jeopardy, but I got to thinking about it.

I should have said Wheel of Fortune, because we're in the land of Vanna White.

We're in South Carolina.

Don't get offended.

Nothing personal, but we're going to do Jeopardy, OK?

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.

OK, so we're going to do a Bible character.

Here we go.

And whoever wins this gets, we're doing lollipops still at the end of the service?

OK, sounds good.

All right, or a Pizza Hut gift card.

Somebody got that, right?

You remember growing up, like you won something at school, or you were in like vacation Bible school, and you got the verse right, or you were the Bible challenge winner, you got a Pizza Hut gift card.

I don't know.

Maybe it's Chick-fil-A, whatever it is.

I can't promise that, because they'll never ask me to come back.

So anyway, here we go.

Question is, this was, so you're going to have to answer it now in the form of Jeopardy.

So you're going to answer it in what?

A form of a?

All right, here we go.

Ready?

OK, see, I should have had you do the sound effects and everything back here with me, right?

Doo-doo-doo.

OK, all right, so here we go.

Focus.

So who was the one who built the ark?

See, I would have hit the eh-eh if you hadn't put the who is, right?

All right.

He stretched out his staff.

Who is Moses?

This year has been an incredible journey.

I just got back on yesterday evening, got back from eight countries this year across the world, serving and investing in different law enforcement and our embassy staff across the country.

And the one trip that resonates with me, and one that I didn't realize was preparing me for this message that I was going to be here today, was this summer, standing on top of Mount Nebo, where God revealed what?

The promised land.

And going to the baptismal site of Jesus, and being just north of this little port town that I'm going to talk about today.

I had no idea that this is where we were going to be today, on this day in December, that feels like the middle of spring, right?

I had no idea that's where we were going to be today.

But that's right, Mount Nebo or Moses.

All right, let's go.

Fought the battle of Jericho.

The walls came tumbling down.

Who was Joshua?

You are getting a little bit quieter right now.

Let's bring out that chat GPT.

All right, so all right.

Big old giant in front of them, and hit that giant with a rock.

Who is David?

All right, excellent.

Now the next one, I have to read this one, because I didn't really know this until I started studying it and getting into it.

He was the one who rebuilt Elath and restored it to Judah after Amaziah rested with his ancestors.

I hear one person saying it.

You really pulled out the chat GPT, right?

Here we go.

OK, I like it.

I like it.

Turn with me, if you will, this morning.

We're going to get to the answer of that as we continue our Jeopardy game.

2 Kings chapter 14, 2 Kings 14.

And I told you what I believe and what I want to really leave you with this morning, or not leave you with, we're just getting started, is I want you to understand that God is preparing you for what he has prepared for you.

Let me say once again, God is preparing you right now in this season for what he has prepared for you.

What we don't know is what is prepared for us.

But what we do know is it's a God who's got our life, our name on his mind.

He's a God that says what?

All things work together for the good that are called, right, according to his purpose.

So God is preparing you for what he has prepared for you.

And I will tell you, I'm speaking from a place of authenticity where I am with my life right now and with my family and thankful to have them here today.

If you haven't said hello or loved on your family this week, hug them, told them you love them.

It's the holiday season.

Pick up that phone after the service today and do it.

Love them and let them know that they matter.

Tell them, hey, you're the one.

You're the one.

So let's get to 2 Kings.

And I believe that as I was preparing for this and I went to do some travels, and we're going to have a geography lesson a little bit later.

I want to bring up a map and show you a place that I believe God has asked us to look at because of its significance.

But also in even conversations that I was having back in, gosh, was it September, I believe, we were in Utah.

And I was meeting with a good mentor of mine.

I had no idea that I was going to be here today.

In fact, my wife, Kare, she does a baking business and she was delivering cakes.

Pastor Clay probably doesn't want me telling you this, but we showed up one day just to deliver cakes and cheesecakes.

And I don't know, after the first five minutes, some sort of disappearing, he tried to blame Pastor Richard and try to give something to him.

I don't know, but he liked him.

And we were just here to deliver cakes.

And that actually turned into a conversation and just dreaming about what was this going to be about for Christmas.

And I had no idea I was going to be here.

He's like, so what are you doing on December 3?

And so as we started talking about this series, Be The One, I was reflecting on things that had happened over the past 90 to 120 days in my life, places that I've been, people that I met.

And I kid you not, in September, we were in Provo, Utah meeting with one of my mentors, Justin Prince.

And he was on the very beginning of releasing one of his books called Be The One.

And this is what I've just been reading on my own and personal growth.

And then I went and visited.

We were on the West Bank about two weeks prior to everything that popped off with the latest in conflict.

And just looking at all this, and Second Kings, out of all places that we would go, this is where we're going to arrive.

You're like, really?

Like, what is Second Kings, right?

It's kind of like the Second First Baptist Church or the Second Third Bank of whatever, right?

It's just another place that sometimes we can get lost in, because it's another book.

It's not like the Gospels.

It's not Acts.

It's not Revelation.

It's not Genesis.

It's stuck in there in the middle somewhere.

But I believe God has a word for us from there today.

Be the one, OK?

You are the one, so go be the one.

So Second Kings, verse 21 through 22.

And it could get monotonous.

You had all these bad kings in this northern territory.

There wasn't a good one.

And then in Judah, the southern kingdom, because it was pretty divided, right?

Kind of like what we are experiencing in a lot of the world today.

But there was 20 kings in all, right?

There was a lot of chefs in the kitchen.

So it was going through.

And this king would reign for a while.

And they would have a tenure for a while.

And then there would be a bad king.

And some things would go well.

They would do some things right.

And maybe they would say, well, maybe the next guy will get it right.

I'll let you kind of save your opinions on that.

But I mean, it's modern day, right?

We put a lot of hope in elected officials and politicians.

And we're so very thankful for them.

But it's a reflection of not much has changed in the course of leadership in terms of a country or a state or a community.

So at this point, they kept letting the nations kind of worship their own idols.

And then they would say, OK, well, stop worshiping it.

We'll go worship God.

Stop worshiping the idols for a while.

And then we'll come and worship God.

Discompartmented lifestyle.

And often I wonder the same thing in our own lives.

Well, stop worshiping things in your life that take place of who God is and who God wants to be in your life.

Maybe it's just you.

I don't know.

Maybe it's just me.

But I think together, we look at this.

And it's a very reflective story.

So 2 Kings 14, 21.

Then all the people of Judah took Azariah, who was, how old was he?

16 years old.

And you thought driving at 16 was going to be crazy, right?

At 16, she reminds me every day that she's 10 going on 15, right?

OK, here we go.

I've had three nagers, but I haven't had a teenager just yet.

So anyways, who was 16 years old and made him king in place of his father, Amaziah.

He was the one who rebuilt Elath.

I want you to remember that location.

And restored it to Judah after Amaziah rested with his ancestors.

So let's play that again.

He was the one, say it.

He was the one who rebuilt Elath.

OK, and restored it to Judah after Amaziah.

So go back to our Jeopardy game.

Verse 21, who is?

Who is?

Azariah, the kid who became 16 years old and was thrust into a place of leadership, into a place of overseeing an entire city, an entire port town.

How many of you all have teenagers?

How many of you all have teenagers in your life?

Some of you are scared to raise your hand.

Stop it, mom.

Don't embarrass me.

Gosh, OK. Yeah, well, he was the one to do it.

They didn't ask him.

They didn't let him run for office.

He didn't get to decide if he had a career in politics.

The Bible says right here in verse 21 that all the people of Judah took Azariah, who was 16 years old, 16, and made him king in place of his father, Amaziah.

Can I tell you this morning that God is not calling you to become the one, grow into the one, develop into the one.

He's calling you to be the one because you are the one where you are right now in this place.

It's not just in you.

It is you.

You are the one in your families, in your relationships, in your businesses, whatever it is, your circle of influence, God is calling you now to be the one.

And you know, Amaziah did some dumb stuff, just like we all do, right?

He did some good stuff as well.

And there's a lot of people that would say in our life, in our lives there is an example that can be brought forth where you are either a warning or you're an example.

But I think in our life, depending on the season that we're in, we can be a warning and an example.

Come on, we can be a warning and an example as we look to speak wisdom into people's lives.

There's been decisions I've made in my life and my parents.

They've been warnings.

You better believe it, right?

And they've also been examples of how I need to look and how I need to lead and how I need to move forward in my life and honor them.

But there's also places in our life where we need to be a warning as well.

And that's what we have here.

You know, it depends on what part of life it is.

We've seen people we try to follow until we found out that their example was being set.

It was leading them down a path of destruction.

And in the moments, they don't see it because they have the blinders on.

But I'm grateful for the grace of God when I look at verses like this.

In the case of Amaziah, this father that you read about in this passage, did he do some good stuff?

Yeah, he did some good stuff.

The Bible actually said that he went on and killed 10,000 Edomites and ran them off a cliff.

That's a pretty big deal.

You know, he did that to take back some of the land that God had given him.

But then he turned around and did some dumb stuff.

He went on and attacked the king of Israel, who was stronger than him.

The king of Israel tried to warn him and say, hey, yo, man, I'm not the one, right?

How many of you ever had that said by your parents?

OK, yep.

Y'all don't get to give any comment on that.

OK. So I'm not the one, but you're the one, right?

We understand?

So when we look at this exact example, the people take the king, as we read the passage, Amaziah, and they're like, listen, we're going to replace you because of decisions that you have made, and we're going to replace that position with your son.

What was the name again?

Absolutely.

So they begin to reign together.

So let's go back to that phrase again, because this is where I want to focus this morning on our short time together.

He was the one who rebuilt Elath and restored it to Judah after Amaziah, his father, rested with his ancestors.

And it made me realize that when it's all said and done, the summary of our life, lean into this for just a minute, the summary of our life is usually condensed to a few things in the end.

The summary of our life, after it's all said and done, is usually condensed down to a hyper focus on a very small portion.

What are you prioritizing in your life right now?

How did you love the people that were the least of these?

How did you love your family?

How did you prioritize your relationships?

How did you make the use of time?

That's what we're going to be known for.

It's not about the possessions that you had, or how much money was in your bank account, or what type of shoes that you wore, how many hashtags you had on your Facebook or Instagram.

And I just remembered, as I look through this, that he was the one.

And that's what I want to talk about this morning.

And I can remember with my own kids making decisions as they're growing up and trying to face different obstacles as they grow up, whether it's sports or whether it's relationships with their friends.

And I can remember oftentimes, like with both of you, with Audrey and Lily getting into swimming and often having a lot of self-doubt because it was new and it was kind of scary.

You didn't know what was kind of ahead of you, right?

And sometimes they wanted to quit.

I'm like, no, you're the one.

This is your time, your place, right?

And they wanted to quit and give up because it was hard.

I remember just cheering them on and encouraging them as they went forth and went forth.

And I remember them telling me even before that I never would have finished the race had you not been there, telling me that I was the one speaking that into my life, or finding connections to people in your life and then getting disappointed because their opinion of you is something that let you down, but you gave up on the promise of God and you gave up on the payoff because you got stuck in the process because of someone's whose opinion of you doesn't change the identity that God has for your life.

Okay, be the one, you are the one.

And so you imagine, as I talked to my kids, that in every one of these points, that if we were to stop along the way and say, well, my father was defeated, my father didn't do a good job, I'm only 16 years old, and you start carrying around these negatives, all this weight that says you're not qualified.

God doesn't say that you have to be 100% qualified.

He says, show up and be faithful to where I have called you now, because you are the one.

You're not here by accident.

You're not here by mistake.

And I will tell you in my experience that this is an identity process.

It is an identity process that you are only going to be as good as you see yourself or who God has called you to be.

And you are closer, listen, you are closer to the dreams and to the promises of what God has for you in your life, but we're missing the promise of the potential because we act in a way as if it's never going to happen.

We act and live in a way that it's never gonna happen, but you're closer than you thought.

He was closer than what he ever could have imagined at 16.

At 16 years old, you're worrying about what size baseball cleats you're gonna wear on the field.

You're worried about where you're gonna go on summer vacation.

You're worried about if that girl's gonna like you, if you're a guy or that girl, whoever.

You're worried about relationships.

He had to worry about a father who had failed and God says, you are the one who will lead where you are now to restore, not just to rebuild, but to restore.

It's an identity process.

It was him.

And in your life, in my life, think about that person.

It was that person.

It was him that helped rebuild the brokenness in my life.

It was her who helped restore my faith.

It was him or her or they, those people that came in my darkest times of my life and spoke and gave of themselves because they know that they were the one in that part of my life or your life.

And maybe God is calling you now to be the one where you are in this season, in this place, in this time.

How we doing, church?

Some of you are like, what does this have to do with me?

I'm just trying to get my kids to school on time, just one time this week, right?

Without two left shoes going out the door, right?

No love.

So that's where we are.

But this matters.

If he can't tell you that you are no one, talking about the enemy now, because how many of you sometimes we fall to that?

If he can't tell you that you're no one, because you're like, I know who I am, then he's gonna say, well, you have no one.

You're by yourself.

And I want you to look around right now and I want you to speak against that right now because this is a community of believers that are loving and chasing after the same things, pursuing the love of God in their life, that you're not alone.

You're not alone.

You're not alone.

So this guy in the Bible, they listen to their accomplishments, even though all three of them technically had failed.

Look at what I did and then they all failed.

But it gives you a glimpse here, right?

He didn't get it all right.

And the enemy would say, well, you're no one because you didn't get one thing right.

And some of you this morning may say, well, and I struggle with this as I wrote this down, I am the one.

I mean, there's books out there about being the one.

And I remember hearing this message, I'm like, that sounds so like overinflated.

You know, I've got to decrease so God can increase.

Amen to that.

But I also know that does not increase God for you to shrink back from what he's called you to do in your life to reach your full potential for where he's called you to.

He was the one and it's important that we know that because if you just read about this, if you just knew what God was doing, what God had planned and prepared for you.

And so we look at this Azariah story, and we found out that the king of Azariah is that he never had heard before that later on in Isaiah, there's another reflection on this.

Let's check this out in Isaiah 6, 1.

So this is gonna be the same guy called Uzziah, who Isaiah mentions.

And not just mentions, but this is a big deal.

In the famous throne room scene in Isaiah 6, he was the prophet who prophesied to Azariah whose name was also Uzziah.

Uzziah was his throne name, Azariah was his personal name.

There's only one consonant different here.

So if Vanna White was to come out today, we'd be doing okay with our letters, right?

So in the year, look at this, chapter 6, verse 1 of Isaiah, in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated on a throne, and the train of his road filled the temple in the year that Uzziah died.

And I want you to understand something this morning as we look at this, that connection may be lost on us, but if you knew what God was doing through you right now, what God was going to do in and through your life, the enemy could never discourage you again.

I want you to look at someone beside you with all sincerity and say, if you only knew what God had planned for you.

So he was a king at what age again?

I don't want to forget that, he was 16 years old.

Have you ever been thrust into something and you just said, I don't know what to do, right?

Have you ever felt like you weren't ready for it yet?

You ever feel like you weren't prepared?

Parents?

One day you wake up and you're like, I'm a grownup, I'm trying to figure this out, right?

This guy was 16 and he has to become a king.

Not only did he become a king, but I want to show you here on the map, look at where he became a king of God, because you hear the word king and you think this grandiose large kingdom.

This was Elath.

And I told you this morning when we started that I had no idea that places and areas that I would be in conversations that I would have would prepare me for this message even today.

So earlier this summer, our team was just north of there.

And I look at this and I'm like, Elath, not a place that I would know about unless I saw it on a map and someone brought my attention to it like we're doing this morning.

But I want you to look at it, first of all, first impression is the size of Elath compared to all the other areas.

But I also want you to look at the position of it.

I told you we have a geography lesson this morning.

It's in a northern Gulf, it's a port town.

Everyone say port, okay?

So this is Elath, it isn't big, it wasn't its size that made it significant.

It was where it was situated.

It's not the size that made it significant, it was where it was situated.

Elath was at the northern tip of the Gulf.

We'll leave this up for a moment.

Elath was in the territory of the Edomites.

We've already heard about them.

And that had been a territory of Israel, but they'd broken away.

So Uzziah's father had brought Edom back to a point and he did something more important.

He restored, not just rebuilt, but he did what?

He rebuilt and he restored this port city.

He restored the port city.

Sometimes we have no idea what's really important because we judge significance by size.

We judge our value by someone's opinion.

We judge our value and our destiny because of what everyone else looking at a map of our life says it should be, and we miss out on the potential and the promise and the payoff that God has for us.

God wants you to know that it is not about the size here.

The size of the port town does not take away the significance of what God wants to do in your life.

He got the port city working again.

The ships could come and go.

It was vibrant.

Life was happening again.

Imagine the hustle and bustle, the commerce and the economy that was happening here, all because a 16-year-old was called to rebuild and restore this port town.

I want to encourage you this morning.

Assume that God is using you.

I want you to assume it.

Assume that God is using you where you are right now, even in the most mysterious places.

And I can recall myself when I started in youth ministry here in North Myrtle Beach, and even before that when I was in school and traveling at 15 years old, and you guys would show up and speaking at a church, and people would come up to me afterwards and say, you know, you spoke to my life.

And the first service this morning, there were actually some students that were in the youth ministry here in high school when I was here back in 09.

You talk about full circle.

And I've come back here visiting and vacationing with my family before, and I'll run into someone that was a student in our ministry at that time and say, you know what?

I was in a dark place as a teenager ready to give up, but I found hope by walking through the doors of your church, and I am the one right now.

I am the one.

I'm a father.

I'm a business owner.

I'm making an impact in my world.

You are the one, and God wants to use you for someone.

This is the one.

In this room today, watching online, this message is for you from a guy that was here from 13, 14 years ago, and has been everywhere else around the world, back to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to deliver a message to you about some kings in the Old Testament to speak to you today that you are the one, to be the one.

And oftentimes, we'll let things like resentment get in the way, just as we saw here in this family relationship, this family that we're reading about.

Uzziah, in many ways, was a disappointment because he didn't bring that nation back.

But who was someone in your life that you didn't maybe think about?

There's people who you think are gonna be with you forever, but God's calling you just to be a port town.

Let me unpack that again.

God is calling you to be a port town, and we find our identity because people are gonna come and go in your life, and we find our success in our identity if they leave.

We deem ourselves unsuccessful.

Maybe in that season, God was using you as a port town to fill the ships back up, to get them flowing back out into the streams of life, to go out into the world to make a difference.

God was using you as a conduit, as a gulf, to make that difference, to be the one.

They move through, you move on, they move on, just because they didn't stay planted doesn't take away your significance and the blessing that you had in their life.

It doesn't make it less important, and that's what's gonna help you.

Because when the enemy says, everyone's left the port, you have nobody.

No, I am somebody, and God has used me in this season of my life to be a blessing to other people.

Stop focusing on the disappointment and start focusing on the deposit of where God is using you right now as a port.

You are the one.

We all have these relationships.

They may not last long, that's okay.

I feel betrayed, I feel hurt right now.

We were reflecting on the service this morning and looking around the room as everyone was worshiping, and some of you are worshiping from a place of hurt, or this is the holidays and you're missing loved ones, or you've had disappointments in your life, wherever it is.

But I want to encourage you this morning, don't faint in the process, the payoff.

It's still there, and it's bright, and it's beautiful.

You are the one.

And lastly, as we look at 2 Kings and we wrap this up and we look at, he was the one who battled through, he was the one who restored.

He was the one who battled through the addiction, the defeat, the hurt.

He was the one, she was the one who forgave that person who was the mom that needed to be there for her kids when no one else was.

She was the one, he was the one.

And I look at the rewording of this in 2 Chronicles 26, it's a rephrase of what we've just talked about.

And for some of you, this is gonna be a strong word.

It's not because of me, it's because of the importance of your life to what God wants to do through you this morning.

As a catalyst as we leave here today, this message is for someone, I don't know who it is, but let's look at 2 Chronicles 26, verse one, then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 16 years old and made him king in place of his father Amaziah.

We read that, but this is a different account.

He was the one who rebuilt Elath and restored it to Judah after Amaziah rested with his ancestors.

We already read that, but this is a different account.

Watch this, Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king.

He reigned in Jerusalem 52 years.

His mother's name, now y'all gotta help me here.

Don't judge the Jeopardy guy, okay?

His mother's name was Jechaliah.

She was from Jerusalem.

He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord just as his father Amaziah had done.

Listen, he sought God during the days of Zechariah who instructed him in the fear of God.

Listen to this verse.

It's gonna feel haunting.

As long as he sought God, God gave him success.

As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.

And these next several verses really break it up big time.

But after Uzziah, verse 16, became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.

He was unfaithful to God and entered into the temple of the Lord to burn incense.

Now listen, Azariah, this priest, this is a different Azariah as if it weren't already confusing enough, right?

And this is what was happening.

You had this walking away from God.

And then we look at verse 19.

God is bringing you to this point today and I want you to hear this.

Uzziah, who had a censer in his hand, ready to burn incense, became angry.

And while he was raging at the priest and their presence, before the altar in the Lord's temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead.

And when Azariah, the chief priest, and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he had leprosy on his forehead.

So they hurried him out.

He himself was eager to leave because the Lord had afflicted him.

All he did, all the stuff that he had built, and the people said, sorry, let's forget him.

He had leprosy.

He died like that because he forgot that God was the one.

He left a whole life behind.

As I said earlier, our life is judged and looked at a short frame, a short glimpse.

But he died alone because he forgot that God was the one.

We can live alone when we forget that God is the one.

In our darkest places, when you leave here, wherever you go, when you're by yourself, when you're ready to give up hope, when you're in your darkest places of your life, when you're hurting and you feel like the world is against you, don't forget the promise that God says you are the one.

Grasp onto that.

And we start running, but God's calling you back.

Run back to me.

What I wanna tell you this morning as we look at this, that that leprosy, praise God, is not your legacy.

That leprosy does not have to be your legacy.

Everybody has something like it.

Not a skin disease, but something on your forehead, a label that follows you around.

A condition, something that's consuming you.

But I will declare today that this leprosy will not be my legacy.

I will not let this leprosy curse the thousands of generations, my family and my children and my children's children.

God has called me to be the one.

I am the one and I will not let this leprosy be my legacy.

And the last verse I have for you this morning is Matthew chapter one, verse nine.

Talks about him dying of leprosy, right?

The message here that God has for us in a very loud voice is come back to me.

And then we'll look at one other gospel, Luke 17, and this is the last verse this morning.

I told you a little bit of a story, sorry, I got excited.

The Bible says that one of the 10, when he saw was healed, came back, praising God with a whisper, thank you God, thank you so much.

What does the Bible say in a loud voice?

Because he realized this leprosy was not my legacy.

This is a beautiful story where the 10 lepers came up to Jesus, they knew he was the one who could heal them, you know?

And he knew, he got up and said, that leprosy is not my legacy.

So I believe today that things are gonna flow through you, God's gonna change lives, that we leave here today, we declare that I am the one, so I need to be the one.

Put yourself at the feet of Jesus, let us pray.

There's someone in here this morning, maybe you need to know that you are the one, God has called you to be the one.

For you to be born here today, 12 generations, thousands of your ancestors, your flesh and blood came together for you to be here from all over the world to create you for such a time as this.

God's favor is upon you for a thousand generations.

So God, I pray that in this moment, in this hour, that we would surrender our lives to you, that we would own the fact that you were the one who gave everything, and you are calling us to now be the one.

We surrender our lives to you, and we love you and we thank you and all that God's people said, amen.