Steve Simms's Blog, page 102

How’s your Jesus receptivity?

Receptivity? You can meet with Jesus anytime and anyplace. How about now, right where you are? Tune in to God’s Spirit. Tune out the distractions. Continual receptivity to the risen Jesus will give you the ride of your life and keep you rejoicing throughout the day!

You can hear about Jesus, read about Jesus, and think about Jesus while ignoring His presence. Try not to do that! Oh, that church would show us how to intimately interact with the living Jesus, not just inform us about Him! Every Sunday Christians are taught to listen to sermons, but we’re seldom taught to listen to the living Jesus.

Be God’s tide receiver. Catch and ride the waves of the Spirit. Improve your receptivity to God’s Spirit. No one on earth is fully attuned to God’s Spirit. Continually seek Him with all your heart!

Hearing talks about Jesus can be boring but experiencing His presence (although sometimes scary) is never boring! If you read the Bible without assumptions, it will deeply touch your heart!

The more self-conscious we are, the less we’re aware of the presence of Jesus. To live consumed by His presence is glorious! When I want an outcome focused on satisfying me, I’m not surrendered to God’s will. When I won’t align my opinions, desires, and feelings with God, they spiral and release many inner tornados.

A prayer to the One who owns it all: Lord, help me be all Yours, willingly surrendered to and nonresistant to Your ownership of me and all that I see. Help me ever be directly led by the inner voice of Your Spirit while rejecting the control my desires.

Make room for Jesus.
Come what may
Listen throughout the day
To what He has to say.

Let’s actively adore
The risen Jesus
And be careful
Not to ignore
His presence.

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Closed-hearted Christianity is counterfeit

Let God who opened wide the Red Sea open wide your heart! Dare to make the inner click to load the risen Jesus into your heart giving Him full permission to make His changes within you.

Closed-hearted Christianity is counterfeit. If you don’t keep your heart fully connected to the living Jesus, you’ll drift into nominal Christianity — “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

True Christianity is the call to continually cultivate and grow your connection to the living Jesus. If your heart lacks a hearty hunger for more of the risen Jesus, there’s a spiritual disconnection within you.

Make lots of room for Jesus! Let Jesus take charge. Decrease and let Jesus increase. Let Jesus do what He wants to.

Set self-interest aside so Jesus can be your guide. Be Jesus-led, not self-driven.

Self-focus constantly seeks to distract my attention away from the risen Jesus, hide His presence, and produce spiritual passivity that leads to tormenting anxiety, frustration, and duress. The more I shelf self and take the Bible off the shelf to read and apply it with an open humble heart, the more I shift from being self-led to Spirit-led.

If the risen Jesus doesn’t show up, church is just a religious program. Spectator church meetings that only let people hear the word but allow them no opportunity to do it, ignore this Scripture: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.

If you go to church to be a spectator, you’re going for the wrong reason. Jesus calls His followers together to be Spirit-led participants. To wake up a Sunday morning audience of spectators, open up the mic to Spirit-led participants.

A Jesus revolution replaces heart earplugs with inner earbuds.

A sincere prayer: Holy Spirit, please touch everyone who reads this with an instant and powerful manifestation of Your presence.

The inner earplugs of pride and self-focus keep us from hearing God’s Spirit. The worst hearing loss is the unwillingness to hear God’s voice.

A Jesus revolution starts with people hearing His voice and surrendering in awe to His presence. You can’t have a relationship with the risen Jesus if you won’t listen to Him. You can learn far more about Jesus by experiencing Him than you can ever learn by hearing a preacher talk about Him!

If you’ll take out your inner earplugs and listen to the Spirit, you’ll hear the voice of Jesus calling you come to Him for healing and peace. A Jesus revolution overthrows religion and replaces it with ongoing heart intimacy with the living Jesus.

If you aren’t hearing God’s voice, it’s not because He’s not speaking to you. It’s because you’re not listening. Dare to remove your earplugs today! A Jesus revolution exchanges the earplugs that close down our heart for God’s inner earbuds that tune us in to His voice.

The Bible is like earbuds. When I read it with an open heart, I hear the voice of God’s Spirit speaking in my inner ears. A Jesus revolution removes the earplugs from human hearts so that people begin to hear and obey His voice.

To listen to your conscience is to begin to open up to the inner voice of God’s Spirit. If you’re unwilling to see and turn away from your sins, you will strive to ignore and drown out the voice of God’s Spirit inside you. Dare to remove the inner earplugs that keep your heart cold by keeping you from hearing what the Spirit is saying.

The truth is that we too often fear to hear God’s Spirit because we don’t want Him to draw near to us. It takes much less courage to passively listen to a man lecture about God than it does to actually hear and obey what God’s Spirit is saying in your heart.

Now hear Jesus. If you want to be free and whole, the sound of God’s inner voice is the sweetest sound there is.

Unless we humbly open our heart and remove the earplugs from our inner ears, we’ll be unaware of the sound of God’s Spirit. If you don’t go to church to hear God speak in your heart and obey His voice, you might as well stay home. When the voice of a man crowds out the voice of the living Jesus, the Holy Spirit is quenched.

A true Jesus revolution breaks people’s dependency on a pastor and connects them directly to the risen Jesus. Preaching should empower and release people to hear God’s voice, not make them lifetime prisoners to the voice of a pastor. Instead of quoting preachers and sharing secondhand thoughts, tell what God’s Spirit is saying to you.

When preaching distracts people’s attention away from the actual presence of the risen Jesus, it has gone way off track. Now is the time to beyond human teachers. Train your inner ears to listen to what God’s Spirit is telling you moment by moment. Let your heart freely flow with and bask in the current of Christ’s rivers of living water.

Open your heart to hear what Christ in you is saying and do what His Spirit tells you to. Let Him daily teach you, lead you, and remind you.

All humans worship: What directs your heart is what you worship. A heart directed by the mind worships intellect; a heart controlled by emotions worships feelings; a heart driven by desires worships pleasure; but a heart led by the Spirit worships God. To worship anything other than God is to be caught up in the devil’s deception called idolatry.

To focus on intellectAnd mostly neglectThe personal and directLeading of God's SpiritHas the effectOf producingLukewarm Christians.Now hear Jesus![image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-35479" />Photo by Soulful Pizza on Pexels.com

Who is a child of God?

Avoid spiritual identity theft. The Bible says: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Romans 8:14.) Go God’s route. Be Spirit-led!

To be led by the Spirit as a child of God is to walk away from self-sufficiency and to rely on and obey God’s inner promptings instead of leaning on human understanding and ego. It’s easy to self-identify as a child of God, but it takes much grace and humility to be led by God’s Spirit.

If you’re led by the Spirit your identity is as a child of God. If you’re led by your own understanding and desires, your identity is conflicted. When you ignore the leading of the Spirit, your identity as a child of God experiences identity theft and you feel alone and alienated.

When we are led by God’s Spirit we begin to behave like Jesus as He works inside us to train and empower us to live a lifestyle that daily demonstrates the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. Being led by the Spirit requires that we hear and do what the Spirit is saying by humbly abandoning our desires and our self-reliance.

Anything that hinders you from being Spirit-led damages your relationship with Jesus. Christians need spiritual trainers and coaches, not religious lecturers and manipulators. Are you being trained and released to hear and obey God’s Spirit?

When a human being takes control of a Christian gathering, the liberty of the Spirit is quickly shut down and participants are turned into spectators. When churches shut down people who are being led by the Spirit, they silence the children of God. Churches are too often programmed lecture rooms instead of Spirit-led training camps.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” Churches too often operate by human control instead of by setting people free to be led by God’s Spirit.

You don’t learn to do God’s word by sermon-hearing. You learn to do it by doing it. “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.” If you haven’t learned to do what you’ve learned, you haven’t really learned it.

I long to see church become a gathering of Spirit-led participants instead of an audience of platform-controlled spectators. When a church service requires people to be spectators it does them a disservice by training them to be hearers of the word but not doers. It’s time for church services to empower and release people to be Spirit-led participants, not passive spectators.

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The “Withouts” (needing the Beatitudes and the fruit of the Spirit)

Life will go better if you avoid being without the Beatitudes and the fruit of the Spirit! Open your life up to them today!

Without being poor in spirit we’ll be easily deceived and ruled by the kingdom of pride.Without mourning we’re seldom motivated to turn to the risen Jesus for comfort and healing but godly sorrow brings inner renewal.Without being meek (moldable) we won’t be willing to allow God to bend us to His will.Without hunger and thirst for righteousness, we’ll become mired in mischief and self-destruction.Without being merciful bitterness will consume and control us.Without a pure heart our impurities will slowly poison us.Without making peace with God and other people, will be mired in internal and external conflict.Without rejoicing and being glad about what God has promised us, persecution will overwhelm us.Without love loneliness and selfishness prevail.Without joy we descend into discouragement and depression.Without peace anxiety troubles us.Without patience waiting torments us.Without kindness our heart fills with apathy.Without goodness badness rules within us.Without faithfulness we follow our whims.Without gentleness we rush into rudeness.Without self-control life does a nosedive.

Some desires need to be resisted. Others need to be cultivated. Wisdom knows the difference.

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Let Jesus have the church platform!

When Jesus isn’t allowed to have the platform someone else takes control of the meeting. Until Christians begin to let Jesus have the platform and become His daily audience, we’ll stay stuck, passively watching a pastor perform on Sunday. It’s much more important that you know what the living Jesus is saying to you than what a pastor is telling you.

When religion tries to regulate and rule you run to the risen Jesus! The one-man lecture church system stays stuck in the same ole same ole of sit silently and listen and there’s no place for God’s Spirit to take control.

When a church service requires people to be spectators it does them a disservice by training them to be hearers of the word but not doers. Its time for church services to empower and release people to be Spirit-led participants, not passive spectators. I long to see church become a gathering of Spirit-led participants instead of an audience of spectators controlled from the front.

No matter how things look and feel, the risen Jesus is real and reaching out to embrace and carry you. Let Him!

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Ecclesiology (church government) can’t heal your hurting heart.

The only cure for your hurting heart is the risen Jesus. If you’re looking anywhere else (even to church), you’re looking in the wrong places.

Meetings in the body of Christ are supposed to be about empowering, releasing, and sending Christians to daily follow God’s Spirit. They should never be about corralling and controlling them. Whether in robe and hat or T-shirt and jeans, there’s no place for heavy-handed church authority.

Human hierarchies can command, coerce, and compel obedience, but they can’t cancel the corruption that is in people’s hearts and replace it with God’s glory. Even the best ecclesiology (church government) can’t lead a church to splendor and set the captives free. Only “Christ in you” can do that.

Jesus calls His disciples to surrender to the kingdom of God and to be transformed by His ongoing inner presence. He wants His followers to be ever led from within by His Spirit, not by the demands and domination of a religious authority structure.

Jesus has been programmed, canned, boxed, and scripted. Perhaps it’s time that we let Him be Lord. It’s easy to preach that Jesus is Lord, and yet not even allow Him to be the hands-on Lord of a church service. Instead of telling people about preachers we like, perhaps it would be better if we told them about Jesus and what He’s actively doing and saying.

When Christianity shifted from being about the presence of Christ to being about sermons and ceremonies about Christ, it lost its power. True Christianity is about making the risen Jesus the focus of each day. It isn’t about trying to get Jesus to show up in power. It’s about getting out of His way so He can.

Have faith in Christ living and working in you. Get out of His way. Trust the Holy Spirit and continually obey His inner promptings.

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My testimony about testimonies

I woke up this morning with the word “testimony” on my mind. It made me realize how fortunate I was as a new Christian to be surrounded by people who shared their testimonies of how Jesus was working in their lives. Their real-life stories helped me to learn to recognize, hear, and obey the voice of God in my heart and made me hunger for more and more of the Bible. I got out of bed and immediately wrote this testimony about testimonies:

I love to hear salvation testimonies, the living word about the present-day work of the risen Jesus, shared from the heart of people who were born again, healed, and set free by Him! Testimonies overcome the darkness in human hearts by shinning the light on how the risen Jesus is speaking, acting, and working today.

Christians need to gather to hear the living word of heart-felt testimonies, not just one man’s analytical talk about the written word. As a new Christian I was part of a weekly testimony gathering. The first time I went there, I heard people testify about how Jesus saved them. As they spoke Jesus suddenly became real to me and I’ve been passionately in love with Him ever since. Every week I heard open-hearted testimonies that not only told me what Jesus was doing in people’s lives, but also showed me. I could see Jesus in their radiant faces as they told about what Jesus did and was still doing in their lives.

Their living word, life-story testimonials made me so hungry for the written word that I would continually devour the Bible. I still read it every day with an open hungry heart. Although our testimony gatherings had no sermon, my three years there caused me to grow in my relationship with Jesus and in knowledge of the Bible far more than decades years of sermon-hearing ever did. See Revelation 12:11.

When people are being led by the Spirit to show and tell what God has done and is doing in their lives the presence and power of Jesus is demonstrated for all to see. Regularly gather with some Christ-followers and open the meeting for anyone present to testify as they feel prompted by God’s Spirit. The most powerful sermons I’ve ever heard have been sincere, heart-felt testimonies!

There’s no reason why every church service shouldn’t feature at least one salvation testimony from a member. If they run out of members with testimonies, each week they could invite someone from another church to come and testify.

If Jesus has saved you, don’t silently sit on that experience. Tell it far and wide-even in church services! If you are shy about speaking your testimony, write it down. Then post it on social media and/or make copies of it and pass it out to people you see throughout the day.

When Christians meet and testify as they let the risen Christ take full control of His body, amazing things happen! Christian, you have a calling and a ministry. Get busy doing it daily! I don’t think that Jesus calls His followers to assemble together to sit & passively listen to one man’s ministry, but to actively obey the 50+ New Testament “one another” commandments.

The Bible warns us about a false Jesus. Many people and a few denominations that claim to be Christian redefine Jesus. We should always verify testimonies with the Bible and make sure that they are talking about the Jesus who is the Creator of the Universe in human flesh and not a redefined Jesus.

Years after my experiences in the first testimony gatherings I was helping lead a church. Every week we invited a different guest to come on Sunday and give their salvation testimony. We had about 90 different guests come and do that, and it was glorious. Some Mormon missionaries found out about it, and they kept trying to get us to invite them to testify. However, if you examine their beliefs about their Jesus, He isn’t the Creator of the Universe in human flesh, so we politely turned them down.

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More “If My people . . .”

In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God gives the keys to spiritual awakening, revival, and healing. However, those keys require more than that we quote them or hear sermons about them. They require that we actually do them with an open, humble heart.

If Christians will fully welcome revival and surrender control to the risen Jesus, we will see church transformed into a Spirit-led demonstration of the priesthood of the believer. Then we will see amazing Christian unity that transcends our divisions of doctrine and race!

I was just interviewed by Marcus Bakker about Church and Race on his podcast: Straight Talk No Chaser. Hear it here!

Letting pain produce great gain

If you’re looking for something or someone to make you happy, you’re actually looking for the One who created you to be happy. Let your pain lead you to continually surrender the control of your life to the risen Jesus. The more I let pain cause me to look for and submit to the presence of Jesus, the happier I am!

Pain often helps propel people into continual supernatural joy with Jesus, so that they don’t feel a need to look for happiness elsewhere. It can cause us to seek to be consistently aware of His presence and obedient to His voice.

To be led by the living Jesus requires faith and action. You have to believe that God is speaking to you and obey what He tells you to do even in your pain. Being led by God’s Spirit is adventurous, exciting, and fulfilling. Try it and see.

Being Spirit-led is normal Christianity. Anything else is sub normal. See Romans 8:14.

It’s important for Christians to resist and be set free from the deception, torment, and influence of demons so that we can freely be led by God’s Spirit. Pain can wake us up to sneaky demons that can influence us without us even being aware of their presence, such as pride, rebellion, and racism.

The feeling of loss can toss down pride and guide us to surrender to the daily work of the Cross in our life when we let pain slowly produce great gain by training us little-by-little to embrace meekness, mercy, brokenness, purity, and hunger for righteousness. Then we begin to taste and see that God is working all things together for our good and we learn to literally rejoice in trials, temptations, persecution, and delay as we wait with Christ “the hope of glory” overflowing our heart with His present reality and power.

When Christians depend
On being spoon-fed
Religious nuggets
To ease their pain,
It’s hard to learn
To be Spirit-led.

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