Hello, my friends. Welcome to Follow Him Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I'm here with one of my best friends in the whole wide world. His name is John, by the way, hi, John.

Hi, Hank. I like that introduction.

Yes. One of my best friends in the whole wide world. Now, John, we are doing follow him favorite. We take one question from this week's lesson, which is the end of second King 17 through 25.

And the question this week is, how do you remain faithful when those around you aren't remaining faithful? And here's why I was looking at the last nine kings of the southern kingdom of Judah. I'm sure you do this all the time, John. You're like, let me look at that.

It was just making that list yesterday. Yeah, I was just like jotting them down and you go from it's 150 years worth of kings. Nine of them. A has all the way down to Zedekaya.

And there's only two of the nine who are close to God. So you could say that the majority is not faithful to God. Yet here are these two.

Hezekiah and Josiah who stand out as nope. I'm faithful to God. John, how do you be a Hezekiah or a Josiah in a world of a hases, menaces, jahoa, keems, Zedekayas, amnons who are not faithful to God? How do you stay faithful when those around you aren't?

I wish we could open this up to listeners because there are a bunch of listeners out there who are doing exactly that.

You're amazing that the fact that you're even listening to this tells us that you are doing what Hezekiah did.

I'm looking like in second kings 18 where it talks about Hezekiah. 20 and five years old was He when He began to reign.

He was a young adult, right? Verse three, He did that, which was right in the sight of the Lord. Verse five, He trusted the Lord God of Israel.

And I see that in there. Do you trust God? The promises He has made are so amazing.

Do you trust Him? Have you looked around you and seen?

Sometimes it's kind of obvious sometimes when you look around the consequences of not following God.

But sometimes though, it looks like they're having a blast. But eventually that that catches up to everybody it has to.

Hank, you've heard me talk about this guy in my ward that is a missionary at the prison.

And he stood up in the back a high priest once and he said, listen, you guys, I have to tell you, when I was partying and drinking, I had a great time.

He said, I was at the great and spacious building laughing at you guys.

Then it turned on me and I lost my marriage and I lost the chance to raise my daughters and I lost my job. And in 25 years, I spent $500,000 on drugs and alcohol.

And I'm like, what? Who is this guy? I've been to the prison with him since that to teach there, which is a wonderful experience.

But anyway, he talked about first it was fun and I lost everything.

And I think of those who are listening that have this question, I just want to say, hang in there and keep trusting God.

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