Month: March 2023

Psalm 119:15 (NKJV) 15 I will meditate on Your precepts, And contemplate Your ways.

As we work to wrap this series up, we will do our best to tie together everything that has been discussed this week.

We’ve learned about discernment, prayer, wolves in sheep’s clothing, God’s word, the Holy Spirit and other factors when it comes to guarding our hearts.

The last thing we’d like to talk about today is meditation.

We need to be clear that this is not the kind of meditation that most people refer to, such as transcendental meditation, chanting, etc. This is NOT New Age theology.

We are referring to meditating on God and His word.

Psalm 119:148 (NKJV) 148 My eyes are awake through the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word.

Meditating on the things of God is something that helps us to really grow spiritually. It takes us beyond just reading His word and then forgetting most of what we’ve read.

Spending time meditating on God’s word, and the wonders of God, will help make Him and His word a part of who we are. It will help transform us and shape us.

In turn, this gives us a reservoir that dwells deep within us that we can pull from if He needs us to understand something, or even when we’re discussing certain topics with people.

It is more than just memorizing words by repetition.

Meditating on the things of God gives us a much deeper understanding of Him as a whole.

And all of this strengthens us spiritually, allowing us to better guard our hearts and protect them from the ways of the evil one.

It’s a package, so to speak, that makes us strong, gives us mighty weapons to fight the enemy, and keeps us from falling prey to his many tactics because we learn to recognize them and protect ourselves from them.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and that you better understand the importance of guarding your heart against false teachings.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

2 Timothy 2:15 (NKJV) 15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Welcome to part 5 of this series. We hope you’re enjoying it so far.

As we are learning how to guard our hearts, we have talked about wolves in sheep’s clothing, testing the spirits, false teachers, studying God’s word, and more.

Today, let’s touch a bit more on studying God’s word, and then we will move on to a couple other things.

God’s word gives us everything we need.

It teaches us how to understand God, how to recognize various kinds of spirits, how to do warfare against those spirits and how to discern different spirits.

Without discernment, we will not be able to recognize false teachings.

Discernment comes by way of God’s word, the Holy Spirit and our willingness to hear God’s Spirit as He speaks and reveals things to us.

This brings us to our next topic; Prayer.

Prayer is also a big part of guarding our hearts.

It is through prayer that we hear God more clearly. This is why it’s important for us to understand that prayer is not just about us taking our needs to God. It is also about us listening for His voice.

If we are listening for His voice, He will reveal things to us that we might not otherwise see or understand. These things often won’t just be what God’s word has already told us or shown us.

Because God’s Spirit is alive, He will frequently reveal things to us that are current, not just things in the past that God’s word has taught us.

These things will never contradict God’s word but will reinforce it, even showing us how to apply it to current situations or circumstances. And by doing this, we learn what it is that God is showing us to guard our hearts from.

Let’s wrap this up tomorrow.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

2 Peter 2:1 (NJKV) 1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.

Today, let’s focus our efforts on better understanding what it means to “test the spirits”.

Part of learning about testing the spirits begins with understanding why we are told to do so.

This brings us to something that we teach fairly frequently; almost everything we see happening in the natural world is backed by something unseen in the spiritual realm.

False teachings are no exception. They are driven by evil spirits; spirits of deception, lying spirits, spirits of greed, spirits of division, etc.

Knowing this helps us understand why we need discernment. Spiritual powers require equivalent or greater spiritual strength if we are to defeat them. And we can’t defeat them if we are unable to see them for what they are.

Testing these spirits requires that we take what they say and what they teach and compare it to God’s word.

His word is the measuring stick by which we judge everything we see and hear.

This can get a bit tricky at times.

Yesterday I mentioned that false teachers will cherry pick the word of God, as well as using scriptures out of context.

This requires us to be “in the word” regularly, feasting on it and getting understanding.

His word is our sword. It is the weapon we use to discern false teachings and disarm its purveyors as we take what they say and break it down, bit by bit, exposing the lies hidden in plain sight.

We hope this is starting to come together and make sense as we bring more pieces together.

Tomorrow we will look at more elements of this to bring even more understanding.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

1 John 4:1 (NKJV) 1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Welcome to part 3 of the Guarding Our Hearts series. Let’s dive right in.

The phrase, “test the spirits”, is a critical part of the foundation for guarding our hearts.

If we never learn to test the spirits, we will frequently fail to recognize false teachings and their purveyors, making it easy for us to fall prey to what they’re peddling.

Matthew 7:15-16, which we included in yesterday’s devotional, tells us that false prophets (and teachers) come as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Jesus made it plain that false teachers and false prophets will not always be easy to spot. They will blend in and appear to be genuine if we don’t know how to discern.

Again, this brings us back to understanding the importance of knowing how to test the spirits.

I have highlighted those three words because their level of importance deems that they be highlighted, so we will understand the emphasis that is placed upon them.

Did I mention yet that testing the spirits is critically important?

The camouflage of the wolves among the sheep creates the need for our levels of discernment and awareness to be at acute levels. Their ability to fool others is very polished.

Part of this is because they believe their own lies. They honestly think that what they teach is true, so they teach it with conviction.

They will also cherry-pick the word of God and twist scriptures to prove the validity of what they teach. And this would seem to lend credibility to their falsehood.

Once again, we come back around to testing the spirits.

Tomorrow we will dig into understanding what it means to test the spirits, as well as learning how to do just that.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

Colossians 2:8 (NKJV) 8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday!

Throughout the word of God (but primarily in the New Testament), we are warned about false prophets, false teachers and false teachings.

There’s a very good reason for this. And what is that reason?

False teachings and false prophecies will undermine our entire walk with God if we don’t recognize them and discard them.

False teachings will pervert our understanding of the truth if that teaching is integrated into our understanding of God and His ways.

Jesus Himself warned us many times about this.

Matthew 7:15-16 (NKJV) 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits…

There are many false teachings that float around. Some are here and gone very quickly. Others stick around for a few years; others endure for centuries.

No one is responsible for protecting us from these false teachings except us.

Yes, people should try to warn us if they see something odd or problematic happening. But the sad thing is that most people won’t listen when they are warned.

The responsibility for this lies squarely on our own shoulders, which is why it’s critical that we allow the Holy Spirit to teach us how to guard our hearts.

The biggest part of this is letting God teach us how to discern.

So, with that established, how do we go about actually carrying out the task of guarding our hearts?

Let’s take a look at that tomorrow, when we get into some of the finer details.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV) 23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

Over the next few days, we will be learning the importance of guarding our hearts.

In Proverbs 4:23, above, the New King James translation uses the word, “keep”. What this really means is to preserve or guard your heart. So, it really says, “Guard your heart with all diligence”.

As followers of Christ, guarding our heart is one of the most important things we can do.

The word, “heart”, is used somewhat figuratively throughout the word of God, representing the place where our choices and decisions are made, and where people or things can influence us for good or bad.

In reality, these things most often happen in our mind. We choose to do right or wrong second by second each day. It happens instantaneously in most situations, although some things are pondered on before actions take place.

Whether it is instantly or over time, our minds and our conscience play the most prominent role in what we choose to do.

This is why it’s important for our minds to be renewed (Romans 12:2) and our conscience to be led by the Holy Spirit.

Now, most people reading this might be thinking that this is all about choices we make regarding whether we fall prey to temptation, leading to acts of sin, etc.

In these devotionals, though, we will be dealing more with choices we make that affect our walk with God and the core beliefs/teachings that we hold as part of that walk.

So, for the next few days, we will be looking deeper into that and learning how to spot those false teachings so we can avoid them and adhere to the truth of God’s word, sending the devil and his lies packing.

We hope you’ll join us.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!