Steve Simms's Blog, page 120

The glory of God’s oratory in my heart

God’s thought-voice is audible
And you are capable
Of hearing it,
If you make
Your heart available,
Just like you hear
Other thoughts in your mind.

I’ve never heard anyone preach or speak like the glory of God’s oratory in my own heart. His thought-voice continually leads me from within and fills me with floods of insight and joy.

If you can use thoughts to silently speak in your mind, God can too. Learn to recognize the thoughts that God gives you.

Church-based Christianity needs to be more aware of the presence and thought-voice of God. It needs to use more of a listening-heart approach to God than an intellectual lecture approach.

Biblical Christianity isn’t a sedative. It’s a shake-up to break up complacency, not religious make-up to cover up our rebellion. Casual Christian discipleship is a ship that will always sink. Discipleship won’t float without burning passion and commitment.

Biblical Christianity is challenging, not comfortable. Casual Christianity is lukewarm. Too often church oratory is merely auditory and has little or no impact on a person’s lifestyle. Christians are called to be doers of the Word, not bystanders or Sunday-service-sitters.

Experience the Jesus story
In your daily life.
Don’t just depend
On religious oratory.

Too often church lets a good talker monopolize the mic every week and requires everybody else to pretend to be good listeners. A sermon that stirs nothing up and creates no burning desire to do the word that was heard is just a casual talk. I saw The Jesus Movement of the 1970s gradually became a causality of church-based casual Christianity.

Casual Christianity makes me yawn, but when people are surrendered to the ever-living Jesus, I feel His fire in them. Christians are called to be audible about their affection for Jesus (not silent sitters). “Shout it from the housetops.”

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Making the most of the marvelous mystery of Christ in you . . .

To delight in what you desire is death. To delight in what God desires is life. Grace isn’t the end of salvation. It’s the beginning.

Christ comes into people as a seed. In a heart that is poor in spirit, meek, and mournful He begins to grow a hungering and thirsting desire for righteousness and to produce purity within. He fills that heart with mercy and love as He cultivates blessed inner peace and the restfulness of the fruit of the Spirit.

Then persecution comes along and further tills the heart’s soil, intensifies spiritual growth, and generates supernatural strength and miraculous rejoicing. Experiencing the reality of the Beatitudes depends on active and ongoing surrender to the risen Christ living inside of you.

Beware of the inner and outer weeds. Keep them out of your heart and mind. Being a sincere Christian doesn’t mean being beyond deception. Any Christ-follower can be deceived. “Beware of false prophets.”

Christian bystanders are easily deceived. They sit out of (and excuse themselves from) the most important Bible instructions: “forgive,” “repent,” “humble yourself,” “deny yourself,” “take up your cross,” “consider others better than yourself,” “speaking the truth in love,” “blessed are the merciful,” “turn the other cheek,” “bless those who curse you,” “love your enemies,” “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” etc.

Salvation doesn’t end with being born again. That’s where it begins.

People follow coffee, sports, music, politics, family, patriotism, romance, etc.

I frequently see people
Take delight in coffee,
Celebrate sports,
Appreciate family,
Brag about a politician,
Go gaga over music,
Gush about romance,
Glory in their nation,
Get excited about an award,
Applaud alcohol,
But not very many
Who continually
“Delight in the Lord”
And keep Jesus first!

The clue
To great breakthrough
In your life is:
Whatever you do,
Follow Jesus first.

Follow Jesus,
The “Son of Man,”
Not your own plan.

Jesus has many admirers
But few followers.
May He always
Be my first delight.

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Who and/or what are you following?

It matters who and/or what you follow. Following the hollowness of triviality leads to inner emptiness.

Following yourself is dizzying — like a dog chasing its tail. When following your desires doesn’t make you happy, you’ve let them deceive you. Don’t let your soul be sold to your highest betting desire. Your attitude and your lifestyle clearly proclaim who and/or what you’ve been following.

Too many people are following too many things that are going in circles. Be careful who and/or what you let your thoughts, desires, and emotions follow. Use discernment. If you follow thoughts, feelings, and desires you’ll wind up where they’re going. Notice their destination before you jump on board.

Refuse to follow anyone or anything that leads you away from your conscience. Follow your conscience. Your heart will often lead you to bad decisions.

When your conscience says “wrong way” it’s telling you the truth. Refusing to follow your conscience is often an unconscious decision. Stay awake! It’s dangerous to follow people who don’t know where they’re going.

Following happiness is like chasing the wind. Following the living Jesus is like an eagle soaring with the wind. Christ-followers follow Jesus. They don’t lead (or ignore) Him. You can’t follow Jesus while following a culture that contradicts Him.

The more I follow Jesus the more He leads me in ways that exceed my dreams. Jesus isn’t “the way-maker.” He is the way! Following and subscribing to Jesus requires much more than a single click. If you’re trying to go faster than Jesus, you’re not following Him.

When a church is scripted like a play it’s hard to avoid playing church. A church is too often a building where Jesus is mentioned a little bit but mostly replaced with a program. Christianity was never meant to be routinized into a highly programmed and tightly controlled hour on Sunday mornings. Follow and obey the risen Jesus.

If you follow along
With wrong
You may feel
Like you belong
But it won’t be long
Till it ruins your song.

Following the trend
Will bend
And send
You into compromise
With sin.

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When the Cultivator cultivates human heart-soil

Trust God
To cultivate
Your heart.
Let Him pull
The weeds out
Before they start
To overrun you!

When weeds
Are allowed
To run wild
In your heart
Peace and joy
Depart.

For life-giving cultivation
Read the Bible with
Heart-warming contemplation,
Not theological speculation.

Some people let God cultivate beauty within them. Some people don’t. God is the Cultivator of happiness. It’s not self-produced. Self-focus often stops and stomps happiness in its tracks.

If you want the fruit of the Spirit to flourish in your life you have to let the living God cultivate your weary heart. God cultivates the fruit of the Spirit in a human heart by refining, redesigning, and realigning it. The Bible’s list of the fruit of the Spirit is a beautiful description of mental health. (Galatians 5:22-23.)

Continually surrendering to Christ in you allows God to cultivate glorious hope in your heart! A hard heart resists God’s cultivation. God is cultivating every heart that surrenders to Him. Is He cultivating yours?

God is the Cultivator of the soil in the human soul. Without Him it grows weeds. The Bible is one of God’s cultivators. He uses it to plow through my heart, to sow and to grow His seeds within me, and to keep the weeds out. I love to quote Scriptures and let them flow out of me one after another.

Encouragement empowers extraordinary endurance. Let God cultivate encouragement in your heart! Jesus is the door. When you open yourself up to Him you let God begin to cultivate the garden of your heart.

Christian sand sculptures seem to have replaced discipleship. When we hear God’s word without doing it, we’re building our life on sand. Even God has trouble cultivating on sand.

Gather with believers and create an environment where God’s Spirit can freely move to cultivate the heart-soil of those present. If you want inner peace, let God cultivate it.

When we don’t allow the living God to cultivate the garden of our heart, weeds take over. Deceptive desires are weeds that disrupt discernment and delete discretion. Weeds of unhappiness are a sign that we’ve neglected to let the living God cultivate our heart.

No one can understand Jesus without letting God cultivate a growing relationship with Him. Intellect alone can’t do it.

Instead of letting
Your mental state
Distance you from God,
Let Him cultivate
And reinstate
Your access to His presence.

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It is about you! (Jesus makes it personal)

Jesus begins The Sermon on the Mount with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and “Blessed are those who mourn . . .” He goes on to say, “Blessed are those who are persecuted . . .”

Then suddenly Jesus says: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.” By shifting from the third person to the second person Jesus makes it personal.

The Sermon on the Mount is about you! It’s not theoretical or theological. It’s not describing life in Heaven or in a perfect Christian community. It’s about you and how you need to live your life right now! It’s only three chapters long and I count at least 168 direct references to you and how you live your life today. Here are a few of them:

“You are the salt of the earth.”“You are the light of the world.”“Let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.“If you forgive people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”“If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”“I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.“

The picture with this post shows about half of The Sermon on the Mount with the references to you heavily underlined. Read it. It’s about you!

Don’t quit till you get to the bread (Walk to Emmaus)

Let Jesus
Always
Amaze Us
Like Emmaus!

Let’s read the Bible
To let the living Jesus
Continually amaze us.
The Emmaus walkers
With their knowledge
Were blind to the amazing presence
Of the living, resurrected Jesus.
The Emmaus Road is everywhere,
But Christians are too often unaware
That the risen Jesus
Is communicating with us.
His presence is so close
That He speaks within us.
We know about His Cross
And empty tomb
But they’re just stories
That we’ve heard
And read about in the Word.
Until we recognize
The risen Jesus
Along “Roman Road”
And in the rest of the Bible,
As did the walkers
On the Emmaus Road,
In the broken bread
Of the heartaches of life,
Our faith though knowledgeable
Will be dead.

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Mercy on my mind, y’all!

Mercy, who needs it? Self-proclaimed good people who believe in their merit are unaware of their need for mercy. I know that I desperately need it. Lord, have mercy!

Mental health? Giving and receiving mercy is vital to our inner peace. I’ve got mercy on my mind today! When you can’t save yourself, you need a Savior to save your sanity.

Rights? Everything that we’ve been given by God is better than we deserve. No amount of human effort ever gives us rights to even the simplest gift from God. Rely on God’s mercy and grace, not on your perceived merit — your self-justified claim to a right to chase your own desires. Calling something a right won’t make it right!

“Blessed are the merciful . . .” Really? Yes! Showing mercy to people who have wronged you is a powerful blessing for you. It flushes the bitterness out of your heart and makes room for God’s mercy to heal and restore you. Can somebody say, “Amen!”?

Forgiven? When you have mercy on people, you open up to the free-flowing faucet of forgiveness and then you’re able to inwardly and continually bathe in and soak up amazing life-giving grace. You can’t find any place like the place where you receive and begin to walk in the sin-stopping power of God’s grace! And that can be right here, right now. Mercy!

Merit? Those who receive mercy haven’t earned a right to wear a merit badge. Mercy can never be deserved. Unless we feel guilty, are being judged or condemned by someone, or are being convicted of our sin by the living God, we seldom sense a need for mercy. But nobody gets inner freedom without it!

God’s kingdom? The kingdom of God isn’t a meritocracy. It’s the gracious combination of just judgment and great mercy — truthful accountability and loving forgiveness. We’ve gotta have King Jesus!

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So-so Christianity?

Jesus doesn’t sow so-so Christianity

If we want to really grow
In Christ the Lord
It’s not enough to study
Until we know
A lot of Bible information.
We need to allow Jesus,
The living Word
To plant and sow,
Fertilize and hoe,
And cause His seeds
To take deep root in our heart
Until they flourish and grow,
And release within us
A never-ending flow
Of the fruit of God’s Spirit.
Then our life won’t ever be
So-so.

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The truth lies between grace and repentance

Lies deflect
The light of truth.
Have the courage
To honestly reflect
Reality.

Repentance is to
“Walk in the light”
And no longer disguise
Or hide your lies.

Liar, liar
Twists the truth
To hide the evil fire
Of corrupt desire.

Don’t leave your soul
Laying around
In the sin
Of lying.

The lies you tell
Have a stronger hold
On your life
Than the lies you’re told.

Even a small lie lies outside the realm of truth. Lies are misleading attempts to distort or cover up the truth. Distorting the truth is dishonesty — the sin of deception.

Lies are out of touch with the real world. Liars promote their Lalaland fantasies and deny reality.

Lying isn’t a trivial thing. It’s an attempt to blatantly and intentionally deceive and mislead people. Lies run from truth and hide like Adam and Eve in the garden.

The more lies that you allow to lie around in your heart and in your mind, the further you are from God. To repent is to walk in the light — to honestly testify against yourself.

Until we’re honest and let go of the darkness of deception we’ll never be aligned with God. “In Him there is no darkness at all.” The living Jesus is the door to grace! Lord, have mercy on me.

Dishonesty’s a major sin because unless you honestly admit your need for God’s grace (repent) you falsely believe you deserve it. Grace is unmerited favor. It’s God’s free gift to those who don’t deserve it. Believing that you deserve grace causes you to reject it.

Repentance (admitting the evil of your sin) doesn’t earn God’s grace. It makes you realize that you desperately need it.

Self-love says, “I’m amazing and worthy to be honored.” The reality within me says, “What amazing grace that God can love me!”

Self-love isn’t the way to joy or hope. Love for Jesus is. When we try to prove our worthiness, we go amiss and mislead ourselves into believing that we are something that we aren’t.

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