Tag: pride

Bible Verse of The Day – 6-13-14

James 4:10 (NKJV) 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Humility.

It’s something most of us never realize that we’re lacking, until our pride causes us to come crashing down.

Only after we’ve fallen do we see where we’ve been prideful.

Only after we’ve fallen do we see how pride has crept into our lives and caused us to stray from the path that God had set before us.

It happens to all of us at one time or another and in varying degrees. We can become prideful over little things or big things. Either way, pride leads to a fall.

Did you know that God resists the proud? That’s pretty heavy duty stuff. He literally opposes prideful people.

1 Peter 5:5 (NKJV) Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

The scripture above mentions young people, but this verse applies to everyone, regardless of age or gender. God really does oppose the proud.

So do we want God to be opposed to us? I know I don’t!

So let’s ask God to show us where we’re prideful. Lets ask Him to help us change and get rid of our pride and arrogance.

Let’s give God permission to root this out of us and create in us a clean heart, one that stays humble and childlike in his sight.

Psalm 51:10 (NKJV)10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 4-16-14

1 John 5:21 (NKJV) Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

What a simple directive and piece of wisdom to live by.

There are so many things that pull on us each day. There are temptations, lusts, pressures from other people, and the list can go on and on.

So many things can become idols. Most times when we think of idols, we think of tangible things. But other types of things can become idols too. So let’s talk about one of the worst ones.

PRIDE.

Yes, pride can be an idol. Pride can destroy us if we’re not careful. It can cause us to do things that we know we shouldn’t do, just to impress people or to keep up appearances among those that know us.

Pride can hurt people very badly. It can hurt us, that’s true for sure, but it can cause great harm to those we come into contact with on a regular basis too. Here’s a true story to demonstrate this. I’ll try to keep it short.

Someone we know was at someone else’s house, giving them a haircut. The haircut was finished and the person getting the haircut was talking with the other person. In the middle of a sentence, she stopped talking and froze in place. She didn’t move, not even a little. She didn’t respond to anything at all, but just sat there completely still and unresponsive.

The person who had cut her hair tried to get her to respond, but it was useless. So she called the woman’s daughter, but got no answer. She then called 911 and told them to send an ambulance immediately.

After calling the ambulance, she called the lady’s husband and told him he needed to get home right away. Shortly thereafter, the woman came out of the seizure she was having and picked up where she left off, like nothing had happened. In fact, she pretended nothing had happened at all.

The ambulance showed up and the lady who had had the seizure told the medics that she was fine and it was a mistake… that they should never have been called. The husband also vouched for her and told them that they should never have been called.

At some point not long after the ambulance left, the woman who had suffered the seizure made a comment about worrying about what the neighbors might think. And the person who had called the ambulance was made to feel like they should never have done so, hurting her feelings pretty badly. She was, after all, only doing what she thought was the right thing to do.

Pride kept these people from treating the other person respectfully. Pride caused them to say things that caused her to feel belittled. This idol, pride, caused them to be more worried about what the neighbors might think than about the person who had tried to help.

So, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 1-10-14

James 4:6-7 (NKJV) 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Pride and humility. They are two exact opposites. And a large segment of the church seems to have gotten caught up on the wrong side of the fence during the past few decades.

We know this because we have seen it, and the fruits of it, in our own lives. God has shown it to us and He has been working diligently, skillfully removing it with the precision of a surgeon.

Pride can creep in ever so subtly. It can come in disguised as a million different things that look so good on the surface. But in the end, pride will destroy us, slowly, a little tiny bit at a time, until we are devastated and left empty-handed.

Pride is being propagated throughout the body of Christ in many ways, by many different teachings. The “Prosperity Gospel” is one of the biggest culprits, but there are others too. And as followers of Christ unknowingly become followers of “other gospels”, pride can creep in and sweep us away.

We implore you today to ask God to show you where you may have become prideful. Let Him show you where pride has crept in. And then let Him do what needs to be done to remove it from your life.

Do it now, because the longer you wait, the harder and more painful it will be to root out and get rid of.

God is the ultimate surgeon. He knows how to remove what isn’t good for us and then heal us afterward.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 12-5-13

Proverbs 16:18 (NKJV) Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride can take on so many forms. It’s not always as obvious as the stereotypes that most of us think of. You know… the arrogant, cocky individual that nobody likes to be around because they think they’re better than everyone else.

If it was always that easy to spot in ourselves, we’d be much more likely to stop it in its tracks and do something about it.

But pride can be so subtle that we might not see it until we actually fall and start looking into why we fell.

Only then will we be open to God showing us where we were prideful. Only then will we listen to the Holy Spirit when He shows us our mistakes and our faults.

But here’s the good news. We don’t have to wait until we take a tumble to check ourselves and ask God to show us who we really are. We can ask Him today, right now, where and how we are prideful, arrogant, cocky or haughty.

And sometimes He will show us when we’re not even asking Him to. The key is that we have to listen to Him. Let me share a little story about how God spoke to me about pride a few years ago. I’ll try to keep it short!

We had been visiting with some friends and they invited us out to lunch. We accepted the invitation and enjoyed lunch and fellowship with them and several other people at a large table.

When everyone was almost done eating, I got up from the table, found the waitress and told her that we (Pastor Ellie and I) wanted to pay for everyone’s meal. I went ahead and paid the tab and walked back to the table.

A short time later, the waitress came by the table and the person who invited us to go with them asked her for the check. She then told him that it was all paid for and then pointed to me. Of course they were surprised and thankful that we had done this, but they had expected to pay for us.

A short time later, we all left and went our own way. As we drove home I very clearly heard a word pop up in my spirit. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I knew that it was God speaking to me and that He was trying to teach me something.

When we got home, I looked the word up and what I suspected was confirmed. The word referred to a specific type of pride or arrogance. God was showing me that we were being prideful by paying for everyone’s lunch. He also showed me that what we did was hurtful to the person who had invited us out.

To this day, I don’t remember what that one word was that God spoke to me. I know it was God, beyond any doubt.

So, you see, pride can take on many different forms, even disguised as generosity. So always listen when God speaks to you, because you never know when He will speak or how He will speak.

But He does speak to us!

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 6-27-13

Proverbs 16:18 (NKJV) Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride. We all wrestle with it at one time or another in our lives, in many different ways.

For some of us it might be worrying about our appearance. This might mean our physical appearance with regard to how our hair looks or how our clothes look, or even how our body looks.

For others it might be regarding how they appear to others in society… do they appear to be well off financially, or do they have certain things to give them social status, such a s a nice car, nice house, etc.

These are usually the most obvious things that are more outwardly visible. But the very worst kind of pride is the kind that hides itself deep inside of a person, where nobody can really see it. It sneaks up on a person and takes hold of them from the inside, out.

After a while, that pride swells into haughtiness and arrogance. When this happens, a fall of some kind is sure to happen. As a child of God, pride cannot be left to live in us or rule over us. God won’t leave it unchecked in us for too long before He starts to tear it down,

God wants us to be humble. Humility is a godly trait. His word is full of examples of humble people being used and haughty people being taken out of their positions or caused to become humble through their circumstances.

James 4:6 (NKJV) But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

We want to encourage you to check your heart today. Let God shine his light into the very deepest recesses of your heart and show you what’s there. Is pride of any kind lurking there, waiting to eat you up and cause you to fall?

Let God root it out and set your feet on solid ground so that you will stand and not fall.

We love you all.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 6-1-13

(John 13:14 NKJV)  “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

Jesus is showing us here how to remain great in the kingdom of God, by serving one another.

Jesus, God’s Son, the Messiah, the Christ, sat the disciples down and washed their feet. He could have just talked to them about it like in many of His teachings, but this one, He wanted to physically show them.

By doing this, it helped them to understand that no matter who we are, what position/title we hold, or whether we have the  I, II or III after our name, it doesn’t matter. We are to serve. He says if I, your LORD and Teacher can do this, we all should do it too.

Remember this example that Jesus has set for us, knowing there is no haughtiness, no pride, and definitely no arrogance in HIM.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-315-0902

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 4-4-13

(1 Peter 5:6-7 NKJV)  Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, {7} casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

Humility is a very important part of being a child of God. It’s not always an easy thing, but it’s critically important.

There are many benefits to being humble and there are many different aspects of being humble. What we’d like to share today deals with casting our cares upon Him. This isn’t taught very often from this particular point of view, but it needs to be!

So what does casting our cares upon Him have to do with humility? Everything!

If we cast our cares upon Him, we do so because we have humbled ourselves enough to admit that we don’t have the answers. We have reached the end of our plans, our ideas, our schemes and even our intellect.

Now… what does His word say about humility? It says that He gives grace to the humble and He opposes the proud.

(James 4:6 NKJV)  But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

So if we’re proud, we’re already fighting a losing battle because we’re fighting against God.

If you feel like you’re backed into a corner right now and you have no answers, maybe that’s not such a bad place to be, despite how it might feel. Because now that we have exhausted our own ideas, maybe we will let God step in and do what He wants to do with us.

Cast your cares upon Him today.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-377-5400

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 1-16-13

(Matthew 23:12 NKJV)  “And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

We live in a day and age when people tend to think more of themselves than we should. We are taught from a very young age to take pride in ourselves and our accomplishments.

Society as a whole has fallen into teaching children that they need to put themselves above others and have much esteem in their works.

Self esteem has become the big byword of the past couple of decades. This is exactly the opposite of what God teaches us.

God wants us to put Him first and ourselves after that. In fact, God prefers that we put others even before ourselves in many cases.

It’s very easy to be persuaded to follow the teachings of these modern times because we are inundated with it, day after day. But we don’t need to fall into the trap of the enemy and become prideful. For pride is the beginning of destruction and the enemy of God.

(Romans 12:3 NKJV)  For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

Don’t let pride and thinking more highly of ourselves creep into our lives and become a part of us. Put God first and love Him above all else and He will help you prioritize everything else.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-377-5400

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 1-4-13

(Luke 7:28 NKJV)  “For I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”

This verse tells us how God feels toward us. God is not partial to how much we have done, how much we know, how much we give, how many titles we have in front of or after our name, what bible school we attended, what denomination we are involved with or how much money we have in the bank.

This scripture tells us how great John was as a prophet. Jesus knew John and the things he had done, but it did not make John any greater than another.

It’s a great blessing to be walking in the call of God and giving Him our all, but we need to be careful not to let it go to our heads. Be careful not to let pride sneak in, causing us to think we are the elite group or PERSON.

This is what religion will do to us if we are not careful, causing us to do more harm to the Bride of Christ than good. Relationship with Christ, not religion, will keep us humble.

Continue to shine and let God lead you each day, remaining humble and on fire for HIM!!

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-377-5400

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: , ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 12-31-12

(Proverbs 16:18 NKJV)  Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride… we’re all guilty of it in one way or another at different times in our lives.

Sometimes pride is very obvious. Other times it can be subtle and hard to spot, whether in others or in ourselves.

Subtle pride in ourselves is the most dangerous kind because it can hide itself very well, leading us to think we’re not proud or haughty at all.

God has dealt with me to a very large degree about pride during the last several months. He has shown me areas of my life where pride had crept in and caused me to become haughty, mostly in subtle ways. But it was having a big effect on my life.

Let’s just say God gave me an attitude adjustment. I needed it!

I have no problem admitting this because I know that we all battle with this problem, even when we think we don’t. Maybe me admitting it to others will help others to see it in themselves.

Ask God today about pride in yourself. Ask Him to show you where you’re proud or haughty. He won’t hesitate to do so if you really mean it when you ask Him!

Let God remove your pride before it hurts you or those around you.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-377-5400

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

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please enter your email address in the box near the upper right corner of this page!

Tagged with: ,

Bible Verse of The Day – 8-21-12

(Mat 21:44 NKJV)  “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”

Jesus spoke these words in a parable. He was addressing the arrogance of the Jewish leaders of that day, and their refusal to accept Him for who He was.

There is also a symbolic element to this verse that speaks to every one of us today. It doesn’t deal so much with accepting Him or not, but more with our attitude.

We have a choice as to whether we willingly let God teach us, or we resist Him and then He is forced to teach us. This can apply to many different aspects of our lives, including pride.

Pride is a terrible sin that we are all guilty of at one time or another.

(Prov 16:18 NKJV)  Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

We can be prideful of so many things; our status in society, our home, our children, our talents and abilities, our physical stature, our car, our job, our title, etc.

Every single one of these things can put a wedge between us and God, and what He wants to do in our lives. Pride can destroy our marriage. It can destroy our relationship with our families. It can cause us to become unapproachable, even by God.

We need to “throw ourselves on the stone” and become broken before God so the stone doesn’t have to fall upon us.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808

401-377-5400

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

Tagged with: , ,