Putting God First

Bible Verse of The Day – 8-13-14

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Deuteronomy 6:5 (NKJV) 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

As believers, followers of Christ, God should be at the top of our list of priorities. In everything that we do, God should come first.

It can be hard for some people, even some believers, to grasp this. Sometimes people just float through life and never realize that God is the pinnacle of everything.

But as we grow in our faith, God naturally begins to climb to the top of our lives in just about every aspect. It doesn’t happen instantly, but over time it takes place as we grow closer to Him.

Maybe you’re reading this and you’re wondering if God is really first in your life, before everything else. If that’s the case, He probably isn’t. But it doesn’t mean that you’re without hope!

Press in to God. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you.

James 4:8 (NKJV) 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

You see, it requires effort on our part first. If we put forth the effort, He will give the increase, and our hearts and lives will begin to change, putting Him first more and more often, in more areas of our lives.

And when that happens, we will see remarkable changes in ourselves, as we allow Him to shape us and mold us into who He wants us to be.

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!

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Bible Verse of The Day – 8-11-14

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1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NKJV) 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

We are not our own.

We do not belong to ourselves.

If you are a believer, a follower of Christ, you do not belong to yourself. Let me say this again: We do not own ourselves.

There are a lot of implications that come from this… a lot of things that we have to take into consideration as we walk through our lives.

As we go through our daily lives, as we’re faced with decisions and choices, we should always put God first and know that whatever direction we take should line up with what God wants us to do.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s finances, job choices, relationships, where we live or anything else. We are not our own.

We were bought at a price and it was a very high price indeed. Jesus laid down His life for us, to buy us, to redeem us from our sins. We are now His.

Romans 14:7-8 (NKJV) 7 For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

So as you face the day today, do so knowing that you belong to God and that He deserves our all. He deserves our very best. We belong to Him, body and spirit.

Give Him your best.

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!

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Bible Verse of The Day – 7-22-14

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(Proverbs 3:6 NKJV)  In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

It’s Summer time here where we live and it can be a busy season for everyone.

The weather is great and there’s so much we can do! Fishing, swimming, picnicking and family gatherings, and all the excitement. It sure can wear us out.

Before we know it the day, week and month is over and we’ve spent very little one-on-one time with God.

Just a little reminder; acknowledge Him in all our ways, wherever we are and whatever we are doing, keeping God in it.

Keep Him at the forefront of it 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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 7-1-14

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(Revelation 2:4 NKJV) “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

God comes first. He is our first love, and we can not let anything come before our personal relationship with Him. We have to keep Him first in all that we do.

God comes before the church. God comes before our spouse. He comes before our children. God comes before our job and He comes before our money, etc. He needs to be first, and then everything else will be added.

(Matthew 6:33 NKJV) “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

If we’ve pushed Him aside, maybe we’ve gotten caught up in some things that we felt pressured to do, or we just lost sight of our time and before we knew it He was squeezed out of our day.

One day turns into two, then three and before we know it it’s been a month or more since we left Him behind or put Him after so many other things. But He hasn’t given up on us; He’s waiting patiently.

It’s time we stop today and let Him back into our life.

Come home to your first love today.

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!

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Bible Verse of The Day – 6-17-14

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(Luke 16:13 NKJV)  “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Even though work may take a lot of our time during the days, we can’t let it rule us. We need to remain balanced. We need to take time for God, family, church, and rest!

Life is more than how much money we have, how big our home is, what kind of car we drive and how much we travel.

God made life to be simple, but yet exciting, fun and enjoyable! We can not serve money and serve Him. We have to pick and choose who and what we want to serve.

We can tell what we serve by watching and seeing how much time we give to it, physically or mentally. We are not talking about a normal day’s work, but all the thinking and working that goes into it after hours.

Are we always thinking about how much more we can make? Does it take up all of our time, thinking and planning? Are all of our thoughts constantly on the one thing, money?

Or do we spend time even when we are at work, acknowledging God and how He would have us handle certain situations, making sure that when we do something, people will see Him and know that we are Christians?

If we choose God, and put Him first, He takes care of the rest!

(Matthew 6:33 NKJV)  “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

If we choose mammon, God’s word tells us how hard it is.

(Matthew 19:24 NKJV)  “And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Who do we choose today? If we choose God, we need to give Him our time, money, efforts, thoughts and love!! 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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 4-3-14

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Psalm 50:15 (NKJV) Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.

God wants to be at the center of everything in our lives. In fact, He wants us to make Him the center of everything in our lives.

God knows that we will all encounter trouble at various times in our lives. During those times He wants us to call upon Him. He wants to deliver us! Why? So we will glorify Him!

You see, if we make God the center of our lives, we will be less likely to land in quite so much trouble as we do, but we are human. We make mistakes. We make poor choices sometimes. And other times, stuff just happens that we had no choice about.

But God says to call upon Him in our day of trouble and He will deliver us! That’s a promise.

We may not know how or when He will deliver us. And many times, the deliverance comes in ways that we would never have imagined, but He does deliver us!

So we need to stop sweating the “how and when”, and let Him do what needs to be done in us and in our situations, and watch in awe as He works it all out for our good.

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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 11-22-13

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Deuteronomy 6:5 (NKJV) You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

This is something that we touch on every now and then. We want to make sure that every single one of us keeps this fresh in our heart and mind.

If we could just get this one right, so many other things would come so much more easily for us all.

If we loved God with all our heart, we would be inclined to want to please Him more. We would want to spend more time communing with Him in prayer and worship.

If we loved God with all our heart, we would make better choices and sin wouldn’t be as big of a problem in our lives. We would make better judgments when it comes to choosing right or wrong.

Some of us have gone astray and left God far behind.

But do you want to know the good news in all of this?

It’s never too late to start!

Let’s ask God to search our hearts and show us where we can improve and where we need to do things differently. If we give Him permission, He will be faithful to show us what we need to know.

Love Him with all your heart.

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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 10-19-13

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Psalm 16:8 (NKJV) I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.

Have we set God before us? Is he at our right hand?

Do you know that if we put God first, we cannot be moved?

If we have God as our first priority, there is nothing that can shake us and nothing that can move us from where we are supposed to be.

God rules and reigns over all things and if we abide in Him, there is no trial, no temptation and no storm that can move us or pull us down.

Put God first in your life, today, right now! He will give you shelter from the storms and solutions to your problems.

He is God and He is good.

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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 8-31-13

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(John 8:29 NKJV)  “And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.”

Jesus is our example; He did the very things that pleased His Father.

If we take what He tells us to do and we listen to the words He spoke, and we watch the way He was in all situations, and we put those things into action in our own lives, we too will please our Father.

God loves us… there is no doubt about that. He gave His Son for us. He wants a good life for us. He wants us to know how much He loves us. He wants us to know that He is there for us and loves to help us in all of our situations.

If we are struggling today with knowing how to please God, we just need to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

You know that saying, “what would Jesus do”? It’s something we may want to ask ourselves when making decisions or addressing certain situations, whether at work, at home, in school… even in the church.

It’s like taking a test with the answer sheet right beside us. Jesus is the answer to pleasing our Father. Look unto 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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 8-5-13

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(Proverbs 3:9-10 NKJV)  Honor the LORD with your possessions, And with the firstfruits of all your increase; {10} So your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine.

Giving God our first fruits is one way of showing Him honor. It also will cause us to prosper!

Many think that they have to be prospering first before they start giving the first fruits to God. This is the wrong way of thinking and it will keep us always working so hard and never getting ahead, because this in not what prospers us.

There is no trust or faith in thinking we have to wait until we become prosperous and get things in order before we can give God the first fruits.

Today, surrender our ways on how to prosper and let God’s Word teach us and show us His way! He is a faithful God and He means what He says. He will show you, as you take a step of faith, how important it is to honor Him first!

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!

Bible Verse of The Day – 5-31-13

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(Romans 14:7-8 NKJV)  For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. {8} For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

We are not our own. We do not own our lives, nor are we the masters of them!

If you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and have become a child of God, your life is not your own. Your life now belongs to Him.

There is a lot more to this than many people realize. This means that we are now accountable to Him in everything that we do; every choice we make, every plan we devise, everything.

Once we understand this, it should greatly impact our lives and change the way we do things. Before we make a decision about something, especially something major in our lives, we need to seek God and get His feedback on it.

Sometimes this is as simple as opening up the Word and seeing what it says about our situation or circumstance.

Other times it might be something pretty simple and we just “have a knowing” about what we need to, without getting too deep or too involved in seeking an answer.

Other times, we might need to take longer and we may even need to fast and pray to get God’s answer for us.

No matter what the situation, God is faithful and we need to be sure to listen for His input.

So as you go through your day today, be sure to remember who’s you are!

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!