Steve Simms's Blog, page 115

6 spokes on the wheel of repentance

How’s your repentance going? Thank God that He is always wanting to cleanse us and empower us to live a holy life.

Instead of rolling with repentance, Christians (and most people) try hard to avoid it. One reason is that repentance is falsely seen as a once and done thing. Many people think that if they ever repented once then that sets them up for life.

Another reason Christians have trouble repenting is that they have been taught that grace makes repentance unnecessary. They falsely believe that grace works like a medieval Catholic indulgence–that it justifies and excuses their sins in advance with no repentance needed.

Still another reason is pride. It’s very humbling to repent. No one enjoys saying “I’m wrong,” “I’m sorry,” or “Please forgive me.” It never easy to choose to go against our pride and to openly admit that we have sinned and/or are engaged in ongoing sin.

Nevertheless, Jesus first message was repentance. So what are the keys to a lifestyle of repentance?

Surrender: As long as we are holding on to our own will and desires, we’ll be hindered from fully obeying Jesus when He leads us to do something that we don’t want to do. To disobey Jesus is a sin, so we will stay stuck in the sinful cycle of putting our will ahead of God’s will. Conviction: Until we are aware of our sins, we can’t repent from them. We need to stay attentive to the Holy Spirit working in and through our conscience and let him convict us of (show us) our sinful attitudes, words, behaviors, and failures to obey. Confession: Until we admit our sins to God, we’ll stay stuck in them. The Bible also says to confess your sins to one another. Once we are convicted of a sin it’s important to bring it into the light. As long you’re unwilling to admit a sin to God you haven’t repented of it.Contrition: For repentance to be real and effective, it must be from the heart. We must let ourselves be sincerely sorry for our sin and be grieved because of what we’ve said, done, thought, or neglected to do. We must truly want to be forgiven and to change.Change: True repentance involves taking decisive action to change a sinful thought, behavior, attitude, or unwillingness to obey. God’s forgiveness is free, but to stop a sin is a choice and a battle. It puts us in a humble position to receive God’s mercy and deliverance. “God resist the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Be humble and courageous enough to continually work on putting off your sins. Accountability: Change without accountability is usually temporary. It’s so easy to quit a sin only to return to it in weeks, days, hours, or even minutes. In order to keep on quitting we need to be absolutely honest with someone who can hold us accountable. The first Someone is God. Every time we’re tempted to fall back into a sin, we need to tell God and when we do fall you need to cry out for His forgiveness and help. It also greatly helps to have a person you trust who you can walk in the light with. When you’re tempted tell that person. When you fall confess to that person. That kind of accountability will help you access the power of supernatural repentance.[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-34064" />Photo by Kian Philippe Martos on Pexels.com

Beyond human control to Spirit control

Jesus gave up positional authority and became a servant, yet He has more followers than anyone in history. He is at the top of the authority pyramid in the body of Christ. All the rest of us are servants on the bottom rung.

The body of Christ is supposed to be controlled by the risen Jesus not by human leadership structures. When staged, insincere, unheart-felt methods are used in church the power of God stays away. Christians are called to the openness of the Holy Spirit, not to the privacy of religion.

The key to unity among Christ-followers is letting the Spirit be in control. When the body of Christ is entangled with loyalty to various churches it becomes divided and contentious. When Christians from diverse backgrounds gather as Jesus’ Spirit-led town hall meeting unity emerges.

In the body of Christ every believer has a personal and unique relationship with the risen Jesus and needs to be empowered in that relationship, not controlled by human leadership. In the body of Christ, believers should submit to the Headship of Christ and to one another, not to one person positioned above the others in a religious chain of command.

When a church hinders people in their willingness to hear directly from and obey Jesus then something major is wrong. When maintaining church order is more important than obedience to Jesus things are way off track. When institutional authority replaces the leadership of God’s Spirit church begins to function like a business.

Program following Christians listen to Evan Roberts who helped ignite the Great Welsh Revival of 1904. “Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? . . . Why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.”

The more we yield to and cooperate with the control of the Holy Spirit the more fully we experience all the fruit of the Spirit growing in our heart and in our lifestyle and gently changing us from glory to glory. A Spirit-controlled self is God’s free gift to all who will continually surrender their will to Him and allow His gentleness to dispel their rebellion.

Surely there should be more to church than being forever lectured! Let all Christ-followers boldly arise and speak up about Jesus!

Sermons on prayer don’t teach people to pray. Heart-felt demonstrations of prayer do. Sermons on love don’t teach people to love. Heart-felt demonstrations of love do.

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Comfort zone or Christ-focused zone?

The more I concentrate on Jesus the more I sense His presence and feel His power. The more I focus on and surrender to God’s Spirit the fuller my faith grows and the greater my desire and ability to obey Him.

Inattention to Jesus quenches the Spirit. Concentrate your mind and heart on Jesus. If you let your heart be so attracted to Jesus that you can’t be distracted, you’ll be impacted by His presence every moment.

The Christ-focused zone is much more life enriching than the comfiest comfort zone. Still, it’s easy to ignore Christ’s call to come out of a comfort zone. I find that religious programs, sermons, and liturgy make it difficult to keep my attention on the living, present Jesus.

God is constantly communicating but we miss most of His messages because of our inattention. Being inattentive to the risen Jesus causes Christians to feel a need for religious programs. Try to avoid self-promoting, absent minded, heart-distracted, Christ-ignoring Christianity.

Inattention to
Christ in you
Leaves you struggling
About what to do.
Jesus is the answer.

Let us adore
The living Jesus
And no longer
Ignore
His presence.

When my heart’s ears
Hear the silent sound
Of the Spirit
My eyes moisten
With tears.

Focus me Jesus
So I can see
Beyond my will
And surrender to
Christ in me.

Frequently doing these things keeps my attention on Jesus:

Talking to Him,Reading the Bible with an open heart.Listening to His still, small voice within me.Doing what He tells me to do.Hanging out with people who are thrilled about Him.Recognizing what He is doing in and around me.Operating in the gifts of the Spirit.Praying for other people.Letting my pain keep me desperate for Him.Praying in tongues.Enthusiastically quoting Scriptures from memory.Avoiding quenching the Spirit.Praying “The Jesus Prayer.”Asking Him to show me where I’m off track.Confessing and repenting.Pouring out my heart to Him in worship and adoration.Telling people about Him.Encouraging and helping people.Writing about Him.Praying over people.Listening to heart-stirring worship music.Reading heart-touching books about Him.Gathering with believers to listen to and obey Him together.[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-34044" />Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Religious privacy goes against biblical Christianity

Little Jack Horner
Went to church
And sat in the corner
He stayed on his bum
Till he felt numb
And said,
“What a good boy am I.”

Church is too often a form of gathered individualism. People assemble in one place but there’s little openness with each other. The right to privacy (isolation) is a lonely rite.

Religious privacy cares more about what people think than about truth. Jesus told His followers to “shout it from the housetops.” Surely we can learn to speak out and testify in worship gatherings.

Christianity is non-private. Let your heart be tender and open before the Lord and before people.

The Bible doesn’t teach religious privacy. Instead, it says: “Confess your sins to each other.” See James 5:16. Christians need to gather as an intimate community–as close family members, not as a passive audience.

Privacy is disconnection from others. It’s a cover-up word for seclusion and loneliness. When your heart is full of closed doors, there’s no room to let other people in. Dark hearts hide and therefore they remain in their darkness.

Religious privacy isn’t freedom. It’s being alone in your bondage. You need your privacy to stop blocking your heart so that you can open up to heart-felt intimacy and caring community. To experience the beautiful kingdom of Jesus-based intimacy we have to go beyond the roadblock of religious privacy.

The attitude of religious privacy has been the piracy that has stolen Jesus-based spiritual community from the body of Christ. If you think your faith is a private matter, you may have missed the heart of the matter–“carry each other’s burdens.”

Teach a Christian to enjoy sermon-hearing and he’ll become a church attendee. Teach him to hear Jesus and testify about Him and he’ll become a disciple. I love to let the living Jesus invade my privacy and fill me with His presence!

When Christians replace heart-to-heart-intimacy with religious privacy we quench the Holy Spirit. Without genuine Jesus-based spiritual community, a church service is “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

You can’t experience Jesus-based intimacy with others if you’re holding on to religious privacy. All sermon and no testimonies makes church a killjoy. Let everyday people joyously declare how God has answered their prayers.

Jesus is the Light. Religious privacy blocks out the light. Humble openness lets it shine. “Walk in the light.” Here’s what the Bible says about privacy: “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known.”

Privacy tends to keep people apart. They chat together but withholding much that is significant they don’t really know each other.

When Christians congregate
But hesitate
To open up their hearts
To one another,
They’ve gathered physically
But their hearts
Are far apart.

Let your heart
Out of the religious shed
And be led
By God’s Spirit.

Instead of learning
To inwardly glide
And be carried along
By God’s Spirit,
We’ve learned to hide
Our heart from God
And from each other.

Christianity is about
Cooperation
With Jesus
Not about a narration
About Jesus.

Hearing sermon
After sermon
Will not make you
Firm in
The faith.
Determine
To hear and obey
The living Jesus
Every day!

If hearing someone recite
A sermon
Doesn’t ignite
Lifechanging insight
The preacher took the bite
Out of the Gospel.
When the early Christians preached
They would often incite
A riot.

If you believe
Be led
By the Spirit.

Often what we call
A coincidence
Is an incidence
Of God working.

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Religious self-protection is a rejection of true freedom in Christ.

E. Stanley Jones said: “Jesus was crucified because He wouldn’t conform to a system.” (Jones was an American Methodist missionary to India in the mid-twentieth century.) True freedom in Christ is much more than a system, form, or formula. A conjectural idea about Jesus is nothing like a heart-to-heart relationship with Him.

Systems of self-protection
Harden our heart
And entangle us
In self-bondage.
Self-surrender
To the living God
Makes our heart tender
And sets us free
To joyfully hear
And obey Jesus.

A heart of stone
Is a heavy load
To try to carry
Along life’s road.
Hiding behind
Our heart’s hardness
It’s easy to
Block out God’s light
And live in inner darkness.
We need to continually
Surrender our heart
And let the risen Jesus
Shine brightly inside
So we can reflect His glory
Like a broken geode
That sparkles
In God’s tender sunlight.

Hard hearts
Look to systems,
Forms and formulas.
Tender hearts turn
To “Christ in you,
The hope of glory.”

You can’t prove your consciousness but you know it exists because you continually surrender to and experience it. I can’t prove God but I know He exists because I continually surrender to and experience Him.

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You can live by the Spirit everywhere

To “live by the Spirit”
And “not quench the Spirit”
Is to fully yield yourself
To be carried by the current
As the Spirit flows
Like inner rivers
Alive with the power
And presence of God
And blows
Like a mighty rushing wind
From deep within
Your surrendered heart.

The more you maintain control
The less you’ll be able to roll
With the flow of God’s Spirit.

Jesus is everywhere.
If you’re unaware
Of His presence
You’re missing
The essence
Of Christianity.

You can’t see Jesus
With your eye
But when you rely
On His help
With an open heart
Hope flows from
Within you.

You can’t resist God’s Spirit and be led by the Spirit at the same time. Surrender.

Let go and experience the glorious ride of the Spirit’s inner flow. Step out of the short-lived pleasure of sin and into the ongoing thrill of the Spirit’s flow!

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Self-surrender to God / never surrender to evil

The only freedom
From life’s dark caves
Is self-surrender
To God’s rescue.

If you ignore and/or silence the parts of you that are crying out for healing, you’ll stay stuck in a charade of denial. The One who set up the world’s eco system to flow together so beautifully will take care of you if you stop resisting Him.

A closed heart refuses to surrender to God. An open heart encounters God’s love, mercy, and glory and eagerly surrenders. A seed that is too hard to surrender to the soil will never grow.

Jesus offers you so much more than you’ve ever experienced from going to church and hearing a sermon. Surrender and receive it! Try not to be an unbendable puppet that refuses to surrender to the movements of the Great Puppeteer.

Self-surrender to the control of the Spirit opens the door to being led by the Spirit. My thoughts, feelings, and desires often create inner resistance to God. When that happens, I surrender to God and ask Him to overcome the rebellion within me.

It’s easy to resist and try to control God’s work inside of me; it’s difficult to surrender to it. True greatness only comes in one way — surrender to God. Other claims to greatness are mere reputation, not reality. Surrender to good. Never surrender to evil!

Surrender to God is not once and done. It must be done continually. Look around. Surrender to sin and evil is causing so much inward and outward pain. Yet millions have discovered that genuine surrender to the risen Jesus will begin to drain the pain.

Self-control is the last item listed in the fruit of the Spirit. Because it is a product of the Spirit that means that it isn’t self-produced. All the self does is surrender. The control is produced by the presence of God’s Spirit. It is self-surrender to the control of the Spirit. In Romans 8:14, The Amplified Bible puts it this way: “For all who are allowing themselves to be led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Many of the things in your life that you don’t like are allowed by God to prod you into the place where God can fully lead and guide you — self-surrender to the Spirit’s control.

God has given me so much more than I deserve. How can I not surrender my unmet desires to Him?

God’s tug
In your soul
Is the only thing
That can make you whole.
That’s why life’s greatest goal
Is to roll
With God’s lifeline.

Many people begin
To argue within
With sin,
But then
They give in
And in the end
Create a mess.
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Self-effort
Can never earn
God’s undeserved favor
That’s called grace,
But self-surrender
Is essential to it.

Give in,
Give up
But not to sin,
To God.

When my eyes
See the Lord
And I realize
That Christ is in me
I’m filled with hope.

Refuse to let
Your heart
Feel troubled
With worry
Or regret.
Instead
Keep it
Always set
On Jesus
And His love.

Gratitude
Is an attitude
Of gratefulness
But thanksgiving
Is the act of actively
Expressing gratitude.
Directly to someone.
Let your heart be
So full of gratitude
That it overflows
Into thanksgiving.
Thank you for
Reading this.
Thank You, God,
For helping me
Write it.

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Lessons from phone-led people (to help be Spirit-led)

Phone-led people are:

Phone-close: They never get very far away from their phone but keep it near them day and night.Phone-focused: Phone-led people are continually attentive to their phone and try to be always aware of its presence. They’re very careful to make sure they don’t misplace it. Phone-responsive: When their phone buzzes, vibrates, or sounds out phone-led people immediately respond to its prompting. They receive its messages and then jump into responsive action.Phone-proclaiming: Phone-led people not shy about their phone but instead are eager to share the texts, pictures, videos, and voices that come through their phone and to follow its instructions.

Spirit-led people are:

Spirit-close: They keep their heart tender, open, and close to the Holy Spirit.Spirit-focused: Spirit-led people are continually attentive to God’s Spirit and try to be always aware of His presence. They’re very careful not to distance themselves from Him.Spirit-responsive: When the Holy Spirit prompts them with an inner nudging they immediately respond to His prompting. They receive the Spirit’s messages and then jump into responsive action to do what they are instructed.Spirit-proclaiming: Spirit-led people are not shy about God’s Spirit but instead are eager to share what God has revealed to them and to do what He has told them.

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” Romans 8:14.

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A Christian worship gathering was first called . . .?

The first Christians didn’t call their gatherings “synagogue” like the Rabbi-led Jewish meeting, but “ekklesia” like the democratic Greek town hall meeting. Gradually the early Christian gatherings turned away from the democratic ekklesia model and embraced the hierarchical synagogue model.

Hierarchical religion wanted Jesus executed. It still prefers a ceremonial and distant Jesus instead of the living and present Jesus.

Jesus’ ekklesia can be demonstrated anywhere two or more Christ-followers gather in His name. When the New Teatament ekklesia gathers it enables every Christ-follower present to hear, obey, and speak about the risen Jesus. It’s beautiful to watch a group of people all obeying the inner promptings of God’s Spirit.

Jesus said His sheep hear His voice; He leads them; and they follow Him. When Christians gather to hear Jesus’ voice and follow His leading, His ekklesia happens. We don’t need to reform church. We need to let God make church ekklesia again.

Faith in Christ is more powerful when it’s presented spontaneously from the heart than from professionally crafted talks. Yet, it’s rare to hear preachers speak freely and spontaneously from their heart. Thus, they falsely train Christians that to speak about Christ requires lots of study and good notes. However, the early Christians said: “We cannot help but speak about the things that we have seen and heard.”

Spirit-led meetings require patience. They’re not songs, sermon, and shutdown. They follow the Spirit’s pacing and timing.

Patience? Praying for patience means committing to accepting and waiting out the processes and timing of God. When patience is hurried it disappears.

My flesh falsely declares that I deserve to have my desires fulfilled quickly. It feels like suffering to wait. Delayed desires are the weeds that choke out the fruit of patience. Laying down my desires to be crucified with Christ and saying with true surrender “Lord, have Your way — Your timing, Your purpose, Your choices,” prepares the way for the Lord to have His will both in and through me. The key to a harvest of patience is surrender. The key to surrender is to embrace the attitude of: “Not my will but Yours be done.”

“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” That verse from James is much easier read than done.

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.” Check yourself often to be sure that the fruit of the Spirit is growing and flowing in and through you.

In the Bible God says:
“Open your mouth
And I will fill it.”
Yet too often
Christians in church
Are trained to
“Close your mouth
And seal it.”

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Experience an actual demonstration of ekklesia (Zoom or in person)

An invitation to experience an ekklesia (1 Corinthians 14:26) meeting with me:

You and one or more people who are hungry for more of Jesus are invited to meet with me and one or more spiritually hungry people on Zoom or in person. We will then focus on the presence of the living Jesus. As we feel prompted by Him, we will say and/or do whatever He tells us to. Jesus will take control of the gathering and the meeting will amaze you.

If you’re interested, you can contact me by leaving a comment on this post and/or at stsimms@live.com and we will set up a time.

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