Author: Pastor Curt

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!