Steve Simms's Blog, page 123

From atheism to mysticism (attitudes toward God)

The art
Of walking with God
Requires an honest,
Surrendered,
And open heart.

Approaching God
With a big head
And small heart
Isn’t the way
To start
Seeking Him.

I’ve noticed that many people who resist being influenced by God, eagerly embrace the influence of people’s destructive attitudes and behaviors. Way is that?

Religion tends to formalize God and utilize Him to promote an organizational structure. I prefer to let Him revitalize me from the inside out. When you feel distant from God take that as constructive feedback telling you to come to Him with less pride and more humility.

The intricate complexities of nature make a Creator obvious. Nominal religion tries to placate God. Agnosticism ignores God. Atheism denies God. Mysticism seeks to have experiences with God. Pharisee-ism demands outward adherence to rules about God. Scholasticism tries to understand and explain God. But the Bible says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

I like to enjoy God throughout the day–to continually stay aware of and surrender to His presence ever working inside of me. In a society that chooses to ignore God, I continually yearn to know Him better.

The only fully satisfying solution for the human need for companionship is ongoing heart-to-heart interaction with the living God. When God is avoided and kept at a distance the primary reason’s not unbelief but an unwillingness to be accountable. By presenting God as an impersonal force, pantheism tries to avoid being accountable to the living, personal, and interactive God.

Most human attitudes toward God reject His omnipresence and keep Him at a distance as “someone in the great somewhere.” Any desire that doesn’t lead to God is a distraction from following the living Jesus.

Too often sermons are quickly forgotten religious speeches that produce no fruit. However, Spirit-led Christ-followers radiate His presence and love wherever they go. As long as you’re on the planet, it’s never too late to approach God with a humble, open, and honest heart.

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Society’s desire fetish distorts reality

Desires and feelings
Don’t determine reality
But often
Deceitfully twist it
And make truth
Their casualty.

Our culture seems to be obsessed with teaching us to live according to our desires instead of according to moral and ethical principles, but that doesn’t seem to be producing the vibrant mental health that most people would like to have. Instead of following rationality or science society is training people to follow and identify themselves by their illogical desires.

My desires don’t determine what’s good or bad — what’s right or wrong. Sometimes the things I want are morally wrong. If I make the strength and/or persistence of a desire my justification for obeying it, I admit that I’m its slave.

The first place I need to fight to overcome evil is within my own heart. Reality should always trump my desires!

Here’s an example: It’s irrational that society views a human fetus as either precious or disposable based solely on the desire of the mother. When prenatal human life is illogically seen as disposable no human life is safe.

Here’s another one: People have a right to practice gender denial. They are free to ignore biology and believe their desires and feelings instead, but they don’t have a right to impose their irrational denial on society.

Selfish desire
Isn’t a map
Or an app
That leads
To happiness.
It’s a trap
That needs
To be handled carefully
So that it doesn’t
Enslave you for life.

What we call self-love is often
Self-destruction in disguise,
Denying and distorting reality
To gratify our desires.

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My appreciation of “Pastor Appreciation Month”

True pastor appreciation
Brings us to the realization
That to pastor
Is to facilitate demonstrations
Of the presence, power, and love
Of the risen Jesus,
Not just to give talks about Him.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. It’s a great time for you to appreciate the joy of pastoring by encouraging and helping other people to daily follow and obey the living Jesus. I appreciate the professional pastors who haven’t settled into routine and haven’t given up their passion for the fire of God to fall.

Most professional pastors start out loving Jesus and wanting to lead people to Him, but their zeal is often drowned out by the demands and expectations of the religious system. To stop being the pastor of an institutional church isn’t to quit the ministry. Ministry is proclaiming Christ and serving others in the name of Jesus. All Christ-followers are called to be in the ministry wherever they are.

The Bible calls Jesus both the Great and the Chief Shepherd. As under shepherds, people who pastor need to train and disciple people how to daily hear the voice of the ever-living Jesus and do what He says.

Someone who pastors (helps others to follow Jesus) is a pastor whether paid for it or not. The 50+ New Testament one another commands show that all Christ-followers are called and ordained (set apart) to minister to one another.

Team Jesus needs coaches, not just lecturers — people who will train and disciple others to daily follow and obey the risen Jesus. Too often those called to be coaches in the body of Christ have surrendered their calling and become instead weekly lecturers and local church CEOs.

Some Christ-followers are hiring Christian coaches to train and disciple them. That’s the function of pastoring. Let’s freely pastor one another. Anytime you help someone to follow and obey Jesus more closely you are engaging in the ministry of pastoring.

Jesus came to start a fire — to fill His followers with passionate love for Him. To pastor is to stir up that fire in people, not to make them passively dependent on religious meetings. Pastoring is to make faithful and passionate disciples of Christ, not to perform for passive church spectators.

Jesus always has more for us. That’s why we are called to follow Him and be led by the Spirit. Like Peter and John said: “We must obey God rather than men.” Step out and start pastoring today!

It’s Pastor Appreciation Month. I appreciate everyone who pastors (who helps people daily follow and obey the ever-living Jesus)!

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Religion is predictable. The Holy Spirit is unpredictable.

As a Pharisee, Nicodemus preferred predictable, programmed, and rigid religion, but Jesus told him that God’s Spirit is unpredictable like the wind. (See John chapter three.) Religiously satisfying the flesh (our human desires and our need to look good before God and people) isn’t enough.

We need to come alive to and to fully enter into a new kind of life, the unpredictable and free flowing life of the Spirit. Paul said: “Those who are led by the Spirit by the Spirit are the children of God.”

Courageously experiencing the unpredictable joy of being led by God’s Spirit throughout the day will awaken you to ongoing, childlike exuberance and faith! It’s not enough to just rock the boat a bit. (That can deceitfully rock you to sleep.) Instead, lay down your pride, daily step out onto the water, and walk in the Spirit.

A predictable church service misrepresents the creative way God wants to lead us by His Spirit. When church attempts to program God, it quenches the Holy Spirit. He can’t be programmed! The rigid predictability of church neglects to prepare us for the unpredictability of life.

If your attitude and actions are taking your life in a direction you don’t want to go, change them! (Sin is deceitful. It can make you think you’re free while it holds you captive.)

Jesus didn’t demand that the Roman government make sin illegal. Instead, He told people to “repent” — to “go and sin no more.”

Did Jesus say, “Blessed are those who love themselves”?

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” not, “Blessed are those who love themselves.” It takes humility, self-restraint, and self-denial to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Pride puts self ahead of neighbor.

Self-love doesn’t show us what love is; Christ’s love does. It inspires and empowers us to lay down our life for our neighbor.

Our deep human need to be loved is only fulfilled when we open our heart to encounter God’s love which is greater than all our sin. We’ve been told that we need more self-love, but perhaps what we really need is to experience more of God’s love.

Because self-love is self-focused its easily deceptive. Because God’s love is Christ-focused, it leads us to truth and freedom. The second greatest commandment is often twisted to focus on self-love. Its intention, however, is to focus us on loving our neighbor.

Jesus loves me. I don’t need to focus on loving myself. His love is enough! Instead of trying to love yourself more, learn to experience and celebrate the amazing love that Jesus has for you.

The second greatest commandment is about neighbor-love, not self-love. It’s a command to love your neighbor more, not to love yourself more. Self-love is assumed. The focus on the 1st commandment is all out love for God; the 2nd is loving neighbors as much as you already do yourself.

If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t defend yourself or be offended if someone insults you. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t get upset when you don’t get your way. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t be so concerned about trying to make yourself happy. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t spend money on things that make you feel better. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t jump out of the way when you saw danger headed toward you.

Ongoing self-sedation often leads to degradation but self-surrender to the ever-living Jesus leads to jubilation. Unless we know the depths of our sin, we won’t know the inexpressible glory of our salvation.

Being humbled is no fun. The more we focus on self-love the harder it is to obey the Bible command to humble yourself.

The closer I get to the Light of Christ the more I’m aware of my sin and the more I realize how amazing is His grace and love for me. Preachers should proclaim the risen Jesus to people who don’t know about Him and encourage those who do know Jesus to listen to Him more than to them.

When you believe in Jesus you rely on Him every moment

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” ―C.S. Lewis. When you believe in Jesus you rely on Him every moment

Believing is trusting–
Relying on someone
So much that
We comply
With what they say.

If we aren’t
Living in reliance
On the risen Jesus,
We’re living in defiance
Of Him.

To believe
In something
Is to rely
On it.
To rely
On Jesus
To comply
With His will.

My self-reliance
Puts me in defiance
Of God’s mercy
And grace.

When I deeply consider
My insufficient ability,
My unreliability,
And my emotional instability,
I realize
That it’s not wise
To rely on
Myself alone.

Belief in self
Eventually collapses.
Believe in Jesus
Who never lapses.

Believing in Jesus isn’t as easy as we’ve been led to understand. It involves relying on Him instead of on self-effort. When you believe in a chair you trust it; you rely on it; you surrender to it. When you believe in Jeus, you do the same with Him. Faith isn’t just a declaration of belief. It’s an ongoing demonstration of belief.

The more we trust in self-effort, the less we have faith in and reliance on the ever-living Jesus. The more we believe in (rely on) self, the less we believe in (rely on) Jesus. “He must increase; I must decrease.” Rely on Jesus first — more than on self, church, preachers, government, media, or anything or anyone else!

Pride often causes us to believe in (trust in) self-effort more than we believe in (trust in) the risen Jesus. When we truly believe in Jesus, we trust Him and rely on Him throughout the day. Until we do that we haven’t fully believed. To say we believe in Jesus if we don’t trust and rely on Him is a lie. We may acknowledge His existence, but we don’t fully believe.

To fully rely on God’s grace, we must deeply realize that we are lost and hopeless without His mercy and forgiveness. Following the risen Jesus and following self are mutually exclusive. We can’t do both at the exact same moment.

To rely on myself more than I rely on the ever-living Jesus is a sin. Instead of trying to love yourself more, start loving your neighbor (and your enemy) as much as you already love yourself.

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Self-righteousness is sneaky

One of the reasons we Christian humans don’t live without sin is that when we start to believe that we have stopped sinning we accidently slip into the sin of pride and become modern religious Pharisees. That’s so easy to do and to not even realize that we are doing it. Yes, we have power over sin, but the devil deceives us into believing we are without sin long before we really are. Then we are eager to “cast the first stone” at those we see as still sinners. Paul who as a Pharisee thought he was holy, persecuted and tried to kill the Christians because he thought they were sinning against the Law. History shows that self-righteousness is perhaps a very dangerous sin. Because of that sin, the Pharisees had Jesus executed by Rome. After leaving the Pharisees to follow and obey the living Jesus, Paul saw the truth and wrote in Scripture: “I am the chief of sinners,” “O wretched man that I am,” and “I know that within me, that is within my flesh dwells no good thing.” I’ve never seen those biblical truths on a bumper sticker.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” (1 John 1:8) It’s easy to overlook our unintentional sins (and our sins that we do in unawareness) and to think we’re sinless when we’re not. Here’s an example: Quenching the Spirit is a sin. Unless we do every single thing that the Spirit tells us to without resisting Him in any way, we sin by quenching the Spirit. If we miss the mark (even once–even a tiny bit) we sin. Anywhere or anytime I’m not perfectly aligned with God’s will, I am sinning. It’s easy to overlook our unintentional sins (and our sins that we do in unawareness) and to think we’re sinless when we’re not. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Is it good for people to sample your example?

A bad example
Extinguishes
Good words.

When words
And actions
Contradict,
Believe the actions,
Not the words.

Before you follow
People’s example
Check out
How their behavior
Is turning out
For them.

Be careful
What you watch
Hear or read
Because it may lead
You somewhere
You don’t want to go.

You’re a role model,
Whether you
Want to be or not.
Whatever rolls
Out of your life
Is an example
For other people
To sample
Or to avoid.

People tend
To imitate others.
Make your actions
Worth imitating.

The way you live
Your daily life
Tells everybody
What you really believe.

When you do things
You don’t want
Others to do,
You encourage people
To do those things
By setting a bad example
For them to follow.

When selflessness
Is replaced
By self-love
Happiness
Is harder to find.

When you’re
Extra kind
You can unwind
People’s anger.

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Christ-like people inspire me!

Be an example
Of Christ
Living in you
So that the world
Can sample
His presence.

It’s time
To love Jesus more
Than ever before.

Instead of trying
To love myself,
I seek to be
Less like me
And more
Like Jesus.

If a person
Will be still
And ponder
In the presence
Of Jesus
He will shine
Within.

People believe
What they see.
Let them view
Jesus Christ
Living through
And in you.

Show people
How to believe
In Jesus.
Demonstrate
His reality
By letting people
See Him come thru
When you trust in
And rely on Him
Yourself.

Christianity
Isn’t mental cognition.
It’s inner ignition
Where Jesus
Burns in your heart.

A Christ-follower
Continuously interacts with
And surrenders to
The ever-present Jesus.

God’s charging station
Isn’t a preacher
Or church service.
It’s Christ in you.
Plug in to Jesus within.

When there’s no room
In the Sunday program
For Jesus to work,
A church is just
Spinning its religious wheels.

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Tribute to His majesty, my Monarch!

Like a monarch butterfly
The kingdom of God
Looks for a place to land
In your heart.

The monarch who matters most is the ever-living, ever-present King Jesus. King Jesus can set you free from the tyranny of your own desires. The monarchy every society needs is not a political king, but the functional kingship of the ever-living, ever-present Jesus.

God wanted to rule as King of ancient Israel, but they preferred a political king. (Human nature hasn’t changed.) When Israel asked for a king so they can “be like all the other nations,” God said, “They have rejected Me as their king.” When the kingdom of God, the city of God, the government of God, are ignored, people look instead to human authority.

If Jesus Christ isn’t enthroned in your heart, you’re outside of the kingdom of God. Crown Him as your King! The Crown in your heart belongs to the ever-living Jesus, yet you have the power to withhold it from Him. Reorient your thinking and behavior to God’s monarchy. Jesus put it this way: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

The invisible King, the ever-living Jesus, is easily dethroned from a human heart. Disloyalty to Him is widespread. O that people would pour out their hearts in love and affection for King Jesus as they did for Queen Elizabeth! He ever lives!

King Jesus is too often treated like King Charles. Although He reigns, we refuse to let Him rule. When churches make a pastor the head of the congregation, they turn Jesus into a mere figurehead instead of the functional Head and living King! If churches were effective at making godly disciples of King Jesus, so many church goers wouldn’t be embracing ungodliness.

I’m a royalist. The ever-living, ever-present Jesus is my King, and He has adopted me as a member of His royal family.

The idea of an earthly monarch is a distraction from the kingdom of God. When the people wanted to make Jesus their political king, He refused. Their “Hosannas” couldn’t distract Him from His mission.

The only one with a divine right to be a king is Jesus! When we neglect to give our loyalty and obedience to the monarchy of Jesus, we reject the kingdom of God.

There’s only room for loyalty to one king in a person’s life. I surrender to the presence, power, and authority of King Jesus.

Make Jesus your King, not self! As much as you love yourself by focusing on and taking care of your own needs and desires, love your neighbor in the same way. Jesus didn’t advocate self-love. How could He? He preached self-denial, taking up your cross, and following Him. Jesus wants us to love others as much as we focus on our own desires and needs. He calls us to shift our focus from self to others.

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