Notes for
An End-Time Perspective-3
Guarding Your Heart
Matthew 24:3-4 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.
Israel-Hamas war continues to roil American colleges, sparking walkouts.
Genesis 3:9-11 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And God said, “Who told you that you were naked?
>Clip: What the UN teaches kids.
Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
Proverbs 4:20-22 My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart;
God is telling us that the best way to guard our hearts or minds is to listen and pay attention to what God says.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don’t lean on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Isaiah 55:6-9 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
When we enter God’s kingdom, there are two things that we must leave behind: our thoughts and our ways.
The dangerous thing is we don’t even know that our thoughts and ways are wrong, they feel right.
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a person, But its end is the way of death.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Our ears and eyes are the gates to our heart and mind.
Job 31:1 “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust upon a girl.
-Kids ages 6 and under spend as much time in front of a TV or computer screen as they do outside.
-The television is on an average of 7 hours 40 minutes a day in U.S. homes.
-The average American child sees about 200,000 acts of violence on TV by age 18.
-On average, kids ages 6 to 11 watch 19 hours, 49 minutes of TV each week.
-The average American youth spends 1,023 hours each year watching TV and 900 hours in school.
-On average, girls ages 12 to 17 watch 19 hours, 49 minutes of TV each week. Boys watch 20 hours, 14 minutes.
-The average household has 2.4 TV sets. 98% of all U.S. households own at least one set. 79% have more than one TV set.
-56% of children ages 8 to 16 have a TV in their bedroom; 36% of kids ages 6 and under do.
-40% of Americans always or often watch television while eating dinner.
-American children spend an average of 4 hours 41 minutes a day in front of a video screen of some kind.
-Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 3.5 minutes
-Percentage of 4-6 year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54
-Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
-Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million
-A University of Washington study linking television to aggressive behavior in children revealed that younger children who watch television are more likely to become bullies, mainly due to the increasingly violent nature of animated videos and cartoons.
-A study of more than 700 families found that 14-year-old boys who watched relatively more television were more likely to assault someone or commit a serious act of aggression by the time they were 22 years old.
-Another study showed that preschoolers who watch television violence and play violent video games are more likely to show high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior than those not exposed to violent television and video games.
Researchers found that every hour of television watching as a toddler increased chances by 10 percent of developing Attention Deficit Disorder Hyperactivity symptoms as a child.
There are at least three concrete consequences to all the screen time that we subject ourselves to: anger issues, obesity, and ADD/ADHD.
You need to know that no matter how good you are, eventually what goes in you changes you and then starts coming out of you.
Matthew 12:33-35 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.
Going to church one hour a week isn’t enough to produce an overflow in your life.
Hebrews 10:25 We should not stop gathering together with other believers, as some of you are doing. Instead, we must continue to encourage each other even more as we see the day of the Lord coming.
Joshua 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Do you want to be successful in everything you do? Fill you heart with God’s word.
“Education is the most powerful ally of humanism, and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching.”
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.
