Matthew 6:33 ESV – “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

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“IN YOU I HAVE EVERYTHING”

The winter air in Liaoning province, China, bit through my coat as our small team navigated the dimly lit streets. It was my final year of university, and I had been given an extraordinary opportunity—to serve alongside the underground church in one of the most spiritually restricted regions of the world. We carried backpacks filled with Bibles and resources, walking in deliberate silence, knowing that any unnecessary attention could endanger the believers we had come to serve.

Local contacts met us at a nondescript street corner with cautious nods and led us through a maze of identical apartment complexes. We climbed narrow staircases, turned through labyrinthine hallways, and finally arrived at an unmarked door. When it opened, we entered a small, sparsely furnished apartment where a handful of Chinese believers and international missionaries had gathered. What happened in that room forever changed my understanding of what it means to seek God’s kingdom first.

The leader of the gathering was a man in his fifties—a former medical doctor with kind eyes and a gentle demeanor. As he shared his testimony, the room fell into profound silence. He described his former life: a successful career, a loving family, financial security, and even regular church attendance. By all external measures, he had “made it.” He was living the dream that so many of us chase—comfort, stability, respectability. But one day, he said, foreign missionaries came to his city and delivered the message that pierced his comfortable existence: there are millions of people who have never once heard the name of Jesus. The urgency of the gospel for unreached people groups gripped his heart like nothing ever had before. He couldn’t shake it. Neither could his wife.

Together, they did something that seems almost foolish by worldly standards. They brought a globe into their prayer room and knelt before God. It wasn’t a question of whether they would go—they had already surrendered to that. The question was where. Unable to decide on their own, they spun the globe, closed their eyes, and let their finger fall. It landed on the border between China and North Korea—two of earth’s most challenging mission fields. They had ears to hear and hearts to obey.

Within months, this doctor and his wife left everything—the prestigious career, the comfortable home, the financial security, the approval of friends and family. They left it all behind to obey God’s call. They exchanged everything for what the world would call nothing.

Tears streamed down the Chinese leader’s weathered face as he led us in prayer that night. His voice trembled, but his words rang with a conviction I had never encountered before or since: “THANKS, GOD, FOR NOTHING—BECAUSE IN YOU, I HAVE EVERYTHING.” After sharing the word, this quiet group of Chinese believers entered the most earnest prayer session I had ever encountered, seeking the face of Jesus to face the week ahead. One by one, each person, including our team members, sat in the middle of the circle as they interceded for an encounter with Jesus and for boldness to be witnesses of Christ.

I left that apartment shaken to my core. It reminded me that we could be filled with many things in life and still have nothing. Yet this man—who had forsaken everything to follow Jesus into danger and obscurity—
possessed something I desperately lacked: undivided attention and radical obedience to the King.

As we step into 2026, our church stands at a significant crossroads. We are in the midst of a leadership transition, on the cusp of the “New Thing” for our church. But I believe God is not calling us just to strategies, programs, or mere activity. He is calling us back to the one thing that has always been the foundation of authentic Christian life: SEEK FIRST THE KING AND HIS KINGDOM.

With his climactic finish concluding the sermon on the mount, Jesus looks to the crowd, anxious about the cares of this life, telling them, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33 ESV)

Often, our world is fixated on many things in life. We set goals for health, career, family, achievement, fame, recognition, power, financial freedom, and a comfortable life. We are a driven culture, motivated by our ambition, setting strategies and plans around our deepest desires and outcomes. Our technology aids us in reaching maximum production and efficiency, where we can expand our operations, multitask, and have no lack of opportunity for growth and advancement. We are occupied with tasks, obsessed with the urgent, constantly putting out fires, building new things, chasing big dreams.

However, back in the recesses of our minds, a still small voice calls to us, “Draw near to Me.” The conviction of the Holy Spirit tugs, nudges, draws, and calls—louder and louder—to the first and foremost thing: Love, FIRST LOVE.

What is more important than coming back to first love? That nudge of the Holy Spirit is the warning John the Revelator speaks to the Church today, “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for My name and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:2-5 NIV). There is an urgent cry for the church to both individually and collectively come back to first love. First Assembly of God must always keep Jesus and seek Him as the primacy of what we do. If not, the dangers have grave consequences. The words of Jesus best capture our aim as a church in this transition season: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.”

This is not a suggestion. It is not a nice spiritual idea to consider when convenient. It is the very heartbeat of what it means to follow Christ. GOD IS NOT GENTLY ASKING YOU TO MAKE A LITTLE ROOM FOR PRAYER IN YOUR BUSY LIFE. HE IS DECLARING THAT YOU CANNOT TRULY LIVE WITHOUT SEEKING HIM. Without prayer, without positioning your heart before the King, you will drift into anxiety, distraction, and spiritual emptiness—no matter how many church services you attend or how much Bible knowledge you accumulate.

The theme “SEEK FIRST: The King and His Kingdom” is not just a catchy slogan for our church this year. It is a call to return to the ancient path that King David walked—a man after God’s own heart, not because he was perfect, but because his deepest longing was for the presence of God.

The staff, the church, and every ministry will be reminded with the words of Christ of the primacy and urgency of seeking first King Jesus and His kingdom in all things that we do. We are entering a season of miracles, signs, wonders, salvation, and deliverance, the awakening of souls, and we must be PRESENCE-filled, PRESENCE-led, and PRESENCE-empowered, dripping with evidence of seeking and knowing Jesus Christ, our King.

King David, a man after God’s own heart, understood that he could only lead if he remained PRESENCE-led. He states, “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.” This seeking is a call to intimacy with the Father. David wrote, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1 ESV). He sought God in the morning, in the night, in victory, and in failure. His life was oriented around one central passion: knowing and obeying the King. This kind of life calls for waiting and living in the “unhurried” rhythm of His grace. This calls you to embody the fruit of the Spirit as your greatest witness. We believe that effectiveness in ministry is not trying or striving to do everything, but that effectiveness in ministry is prioritizing prayer and inquiring of the Lord.

Jesus taught us the secret to fruitful and effective ministry in John 15:1-4 ESV:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already, you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

There is a closeness in these words. There is secrecy in these words. There is intimacy with these words. There is deep love in these words. All of life and ministry hinge on our connection with and love of God and our life of prayer. Augustine of Hippo stated, “True, whole prayer is nothing but love.” If the awakening is coming and is, in fact, upon us, we must be grounded in hearing clearly, as fathers, mothers, leaders, and the church, what the Spirit of the Lord is saying to the Church. The words of Christ call us to SEEK FIRST the KING and His KINGDOM and “all things” that will last. Things that are eternal, life-giving and impactful “will be added unto you,” the seeker, the pursuer, the God chaser. His presence brings a life of power. The kingdom of darkness cannot prevail when the light of Christ shines forth. That is the heart I pray we would cultivate this year.

This booklet accompanies our church-wide Week of Prayer and Fasting because we believe that transformation begins not with better planning but with desperate prayer. We need God to reorient our hearts, strip away the distractions, and fix our eyes again on Jesus—the King of the Kingdom we are called to seek.

As we ask, keep asking, seek, keep seeking, and knock, we will find that He is standing at the door ready to reveal Himself, His heart, plan, and purpose. I invite you to enter this season with open hands and a willing heart. Let go of the illusion that you can sustain your spiritual life through your own effort, knowledge, or activity. Seek first the King. Seek first His Kingdom. Seek first His righteousness.

Watch as God adds everything you truly need to your life—not necessarily everything you want, but everything that aligns with His good, pleasing, and perfect will. May this be the year we learn to pray like that doctor in China: “THANK YOU, GOD, FOR NOTHING—BECAUSE IN YOU, I HAVE EVERYTHING.”

Senior Pastor Joshua Ko
First Assembly of God, Hawaii