Steve Simms's Blog, page 100
April 6, 2023
Tune in to the resurrected Jesus . . .
I woke up this morning with the answer to the question, “How did you emerge on the other side of temptation?” running through my mind and heart before I read that question on a blog post just now. Here’s the answer that I woke up with: “Tune in to the risen Jesus. Tune out self-focused desires.”
Tuning in to Jesus and out from self-desire isn’t an easy thing to do. It’s not a once and done deal. Instead, it’s a lifestyle that we learn by seeking to do it throughout the day, every day, all day long. A medieval European monk (known as Brother Lawrence) called it “Practicing the presence of God.”
When temptations and distractions are interfering with our communication with the living Jesus and our hope has fled leaving our heart feeling like led, we mustn’t give up on the resurrected One who has complete victory over the devil and his demons. We need to earnestly pursue Christ’s presence more than ever by living a consistent 2 Chronicles 7:14 lifestyle.
I had another thought this morning before I got out of bed: “Any day not spent openheartedly interacting with the resurrected Jesus is off track.” Every time we drift off or feel pulled away by temptation, let’s quickly get back on track and humbly interact with the resurrected Jesus!
The Bible clearly shows that Jesus loves people and that He wants us to be free from demons that deceive, manipulate, and torment us. True Christianity isn’t theoretical. It’s about daily experiencing and living with genuine freedom from the control, guilt, and torment of sin.
It’s a great loss to celebrate Jesus as history and yet be unaware of and/or unsubmitted to His actual daily presence and Lordship. Religion prefers to follow a program instead of following the actual presence and power of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. If Jesus is really risen from the dead, then Christians should act like He is by letting Him be the genuine Leader and Lord both in church services and in daily life!
If attending church isn’t empowering you to align your daily lifestyle with the resurrected Jesus, it’s not working for you. Try connecting your heart directly to the living Jesus.
An observation: Church is often . . .
More programmed than empowering,
More ceremonial than life-changing,
More tradition than transformation,
More ritualized than revitalizing,
More show than Spirit-led,
More hype than holiness.
I want more
Of the risen
Jesus!
April 5, 2023
“Reproductive rights” & freedom of speech
“Reproductive health care” and “reproductive rights” are by definition about helping babies be conceived and born alive. Tearing babies apart before birth is anti-reproductive.
Freedom of speech is the right to openly disagree with people. It’s not the right to verbally attack and intimidate people for disagreeing with you.
Noticing Jesus!
Jesus-spottings,
Jesus-encounters,
Jesus-miracles,
Jesus-friendship,
And Christ in you:
All are happening today
Because He is risen indeed!
Too often the risen Jesus is unobserved. His resurrection is proclaimed but His presence isn’t noticed. We need to recognize Jesus not just hear talks about Him.
Go beyond analysis. Let awe, amazement, and adoration of the resurrected Jesus abound in and overflow from your heart. Every breath I breathe is by the graciousness and mercy of God. Not even one is earned or deserved. Every good thing in my life is an unmerited gift. Thank You, Jesus!
In the Bible the emphasis and focus of Christianity is on heart-felt relationship with Jesus and with other Christ-followers, not on being a religious audience. Jesus speaks directly to human hearts. Hear Him now! It’s much more important to hear what the risen Jesus is saying than what the church calendar is saying.
Until you’re willing to admit to Jesus that a behavior that you engage in is morally wrong, you won’t be able to truly repent from it. Tell Him now!
Look!
You won’t find Jesus
In His tomb.
Today His presence
Is everywhere
But rarely noticed
By distracted human hearts
That struggle along
Falsely feeling
Abandoned and alone.
If you want
To defy
The devil’s
Downward pull
Daily experience
And learn to rely
On the risen Jesus.
Then boldly testify
About what He’s doing
In and around you!
Revelation 12:11!
April 4, 2023
There’s never enough confetti to heal an empty heart.
An empty heart doesn’t appreciate Jesus’ empty tomb, but a heart full of His presence continually celebrates His resurrection! Discover the risen Jesus this week, not on a church calendar but with your heart! There’s never enough confetti to heal an empty heart!
The resurrected Jesus wants to build people who have experienced heart-changing, God-given insight, into Spirit-led community. When the body of Christ gathers as a Spirit-led community the presence and power of the risen Jesus begins to be revealed.
There are no time or location limits on Spirit-led community. Jesus can connect people heart-to-heart anytime and anyplace they’re willing to humbly and honestly open up to Him and to each other. Part-time Christianity is uncomfortable with Spirit-led community because it has no time constraints — no on and off button.
Spirit-led community openly demonstrates the reality of the resurrected Jesus. That’s because it allows Him to shine in and through people’s hearts, words, and actions.
Biblical Christianity is a full-time job. Part-time Christianity tries to squeeze by on a couple of hours per week or less. It takes very little time to be a part-time Christian, but all the time in the world isn’t enough to find a biblical justification for being one.
Even when you’re twisting
And resisting
What God’s saying,
He’s not desisting
But insisting
On persisting
In assisting
And pursuing you
In love.
Peace comes when you
Start untwisting
Your heart
By daily submitting
To God’s will
And boldly resisting
The devil’s.
April 3, 2023
The Bible says to be “governed by the Spirit.”
When religion seems dead
Look ahead
To behold
The Lamb of God
And be Spirit-led.
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God’s children.” Romans 8:16. Whew! Life doesn’t get any better than that!
Live your life “in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way” of religious rules and rituals. See Romans 7:6. “The mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” Romans 8:6. Do you have a Spirit-governed mind?
To be Spirit-governed is to give up being your own manager by fully surrendering your daily life to God’s management. To be governed by desires, feelings, and compulsions is to be harassed by guilt, torment, and anxiety.
Be Spirit-governed today. Do what God wants not what you want. Turn the daily management of your heart and mind over to the Spirit of God. Live according to God’s Spirit, not according to your own opinions, emotions, and appetites. See Romans 8:4.
Let God’s Spirit manage your mental health. Set your mind “on what the Spirit desires.” See Romans 8:5. Without the active presence and working of the Holy Spirit, Christianity is just religion.
The kingdom of God begins in your life when you open up and let His Spirit literally govern you from within. See Luke 17:20-21. If Christ is living in you, you can participate in the realm of the Spirit by continually experiencing His presence and power. See Romans 8:9-11.
God’s Spirit governs people from within when they’re thirsty enough to allow Him to flow like rivers from deep inside them and to be swept along by His current. See John 7:37-39.
We need to be “taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:13) “so that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12). “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 2:14-15.
Sports teams inspire, touch, fill, and govern many human hearts. Jesus is always inspiring, touching, filling, and governing my heart!
Delayed obedience to God
Leads to spiritual decay
That slowly leads us away
From His Spirit and power.
Come what may
Be quick to hear and obey
What God says throughout the day
And follow Jesus all the way.
(See 1 Thessalonians 5:19.)
Romans chapter eight
Makes me feel great!
It tells me that if I let
God’s Spirit govern me
And give me life and peace
That my fate
Is no condemnation!
“Walk by the Spirit.”
“Live by the Spirit.”
“Keep in step with the Spirit.”
Galatians 5:16 and 25.
“Please the Spirit.”
Galatians 6:8.
April 2, 2023
Does your heart dance with Jesus?
Sermons can’t teach you to dance with the living Jesus. Let Him have your heart and lead you to always follow His steps. An unwilling heart won’t dance with Jesus. It avoids His presence.
Hearing and saying religious words doesn’t bring a human heart close to God. On going surrender to the living Jesus does! Let your heart join in the dance with the invisible Jesus.
Sports teams inspire, touch, fill, and capture many hearts. The risen Jesus is always inspiring, touching, filling, and capturing my heart!
Palm Sunday was about people in Jerusalem rallying to praise Jesus but a week later shouting, “Crucify Him.” It’s easy to praise Jesus but very hard to follow Him to the Cross — easy to go to church on Sunday but hard to listen to Him with an open heart and obey Him during the week.
The Bible demonstrates that there are two opposing sets of invisible beings working behind the scenes to influence people and capture their heart — angels and demons. One set humbly seeks to help us open wide our heart directly to God’s Spirit; the other proudly strives to deceive us and coerce us to keep our heart shut down to the Holy Spirit. If we don’t learn to discern the difference between these two sets of unseen influences and fully surrender out heart to God, we’ll wallow in various degrees of confusion and bondage.
Here are two times I believe angels rescued me and helped my heart overflow with gratitude to God: Once something invisible abruptly stopped me immediately before I ran in front of a speeding car that I hadn’t seen. Another time I accidently slammed a car door on my infant daughter in her baby carrier. I looked around and the sharp corner at the bottom of the door was touching her temple. I pulled the door back and there was a tiny red dot on her temple, but she was completely unhurt. In these two incidents I believe an angel saved my life and an angel saved me from a lifetime of horrible pain by rescuing my daughter from my carelessness. My heart is ever full of gratefulness to Jesus!
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Demonstrating the reality of Jesus is powerful!
The Bible teaches that the Christian faith needs to be presented “with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (See 1 Corinthians 2:4-5.) Instead of using human wisdom to explain Christ, Paul demonstrated Christ’s glory by letting Spirit-taught words flow from within him.
Preaching that literally demonstrates Jesus is much more powerful than merely analytical and scripted preaching. Preaching the Gospel by definition is not enough! It needs to be preached by actual demonstration.
If you’re a Christ-follower, you’re supposed to be an actual demonstration of the presence of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If Jesus is living in your heart, let Him demonstrate His presence in and through you throughout the day.
Words that only explain Jesus but fail to demonstrate His reality fall far short of communicating the truth of His presence. Jesus is demonstrated when human hearts are being so deeply moved by His presence that it’s obvious to those who are present.
People get bored hearing scripted lectures about Jesus, but when they see His reality demonstrated they are healed, delivered, and empowered. If your lifestyle doesn’t demonstrate the presence and character of Jesus, He might not be living inside of you.
The presence of the living Jesus is demonstrated by the presence of both the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. Everyday Jesus fills my heart and life with powerful demonstrations of His reality and power.
We can go beyond Bible study to Bible encounter by setting aside analysis and letting the words come alive in our heart. Bible words ignite a fire within me that doesn’t go out when I close the cover but continues to blaze as long as I keep my heart wide open to Scripture’s fuel and the Spirit’s presence.
It’s not enough to explain Jesus with words. We need to demonstrate Jesus by letting people see what he has done and is doing in our heart!
Scripted words derived from study often block the flow of Spirit-prompted words in the moment that demonstrate Christ’s presence and reality. It’s hard to have strong faith if you’ve only heard lectures about Jesus but have never seen His presence demonstrated.
Demonstrate Jesus with your life. Show people that He’s real and present!
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What pastors can learn from dance instructors.
Dance instructors and disciple-makers find lecture to be ineffective. Instead, they demonstrate, involve people, and coach them. I believe that church would be much more effective at making Spirit-led disciples if pastors would teach like dance instructors instead of like college professors.
To teach like a dance instructor a pastor could show the congregation the basic steps, let them practice together, coach them as they do, then oversee them as they go into Spirit-led action. Lecture alone can’t teach dancing or Christian discipleship. People need to be shown and trained, not just endlessly told.
If church would become like a dance studio, Christians could practice and learn to move to the Holy Spirit’s music. Instead of song and sermon, church could be song, awe-filled heart-dance, and Spirit-led sharing.
Perhaps churches could begin to make Spirit-led disciples instead of making audiences. Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit “will teach you all things.” If we’re not being trained to be taught by the Spirit something’s off base in church.
Christianity isn’t about everlasting weekly sermon-hearing. It’s about everlasting life! When it replaced discipleship with lecture it began to rely on human wisdom instead of on the presence of the risen Jesus. It’s time to train people to follow and obey the risen Jesus the way dance instructors train people to dance.
Jesus isn’t myth, theory, or religion. He’s reality, but a closed heart seldom experiences Him. Church needs to train Christians to open our heart and be taught by the Spirit.
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