Steve Simms's Blog, page 126
September 7, 2022
Fiery faith, not fairy faith (Be the one!)
We need fiery faith, not fairy faith–flaming faith, not sedating faith–blazes of glory, not boring story. Sensing the splendor of God far surpasses sitting thru sermons filled with sweet theological speculation.
The world needs to see phenomenal Christ-followers who radiate God’s glory, not nominal ones who deviate from His presence. If there’s nothing phenomenal about your faith, it may be nothing but nominal. Instead of looking for spiritual awakening in a church or home group, look for it inside of you.
Widespread spiritual awakening often begins with one person. Be the one!
Pride is the dark shadow that self-focus casts as it blocks the glory of God. Every shadow in your heart shows you some place where you’re blocking the glory of God. When self is set aside, God’s splendor can be seen. To quench the Spirit is to block the glory of God.
Many Christians prefer to gather around a preacher who explains the Gospel over and over rather than someone glowing with God’s fire. I thrive on the ongoing thrill of interacting with the risen Jesus. Be the one in your sphere of influence who radiates the Jesus thrill.
Grace thrills people with Jesus. It doesn’t put them to spiritual sleep. If people can’t see that you’re thrilled about the risen Jesus, there’s a good chance you’re not. One person with an ongoing Jesus thrill is more spiritually contagious than a church full of people in a religious chill. Be the one!
When I read the Bible unfiltered by religion, I’m energized, enlivened, excited, encouraged, electrified, and exhilarated. Too many people want the Bible processed by sermons or devotional books instead of letting God’s Spirit process it.
A focus on analytical Christianity amputates awe and splendor from the heart. Instead, savor God’s splendor and meditate on His magnificence until you glow with His glory. Letting your soul be soaked and saturated with God’s splendor will sever the chains in your heart.
There’s no need to continually be preached to in the shadows. True preaching invites you to come and live in the Light. If you would stop hiding your heart in your favorite shadows, you could behold the glorious radiance of the living God.
Hearing a story is no substitute for living in God’s glory. Before there are hundreds or thousands or millions of people visibly thrilled about Jesus, there needs to be one. Be the one! Too many Christians are looking and waiting for someone to catch on fire for Jesus. Be that someone!
The glory of God
Isn’t theoretical.
It’s experiential.
“O taste and see!”
Out of the shadows
I once was caught
By a sudden thought
Where I was taught
That I falsely thought
I was a Christian:
“If you were born a Hindu,
What would you be today?”
That thought
Cleared the way
For the living Jesus
To show Himself
To me one day.
September 6, 2022
All Christ-followers can prophesy
To prophesy is to speak or write words prompted by God’s Spirit. It’s not the content of the words that makes prophecy but their Source. We need more prophetic speaking and fewer self-proclaimed prophets.
Where do the words you say come from? You can speak or write from 4 sources: 1) Your own words (from your own mind, emotions, desires, or opinions), 2) Other people’s words that you’ve learned to repeat, 3) Words prompted by demons, and 4) Words prompted by God. You need discernment to recognize which are which.
Here’s an example of discerning the source of words: Jesus asked His disciples who they thought He is. Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied to Peter: “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in Heaven.”
A short time later Jesus began to tell His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be killed and Peter replied: “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” Then Jesus said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!”
One moment Peter spoked words prompted by God’s Spirit. The next moment He spoke words prompted by Satan.
We can also speak human words prompted by ourselves or by others. Jesus added: “You do not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns.”
Who can prophesy (speak or write words prompted by God’s Spirit)? Writing to the Christ-followers in Corinth, Paul says: “You can all prophesy.” He says: “If an unbeliever or an inquirer comes while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!'”
I’ve seen that very thing happen several times where a stranger comes into a meeting and is overwhelmed and overcome with emotion by hearing everyday people speaking words prompted by God. Helping to oversee Spirit-led meetings on Sunday mornings for 10 years, every week I was able to see ordinary people speak as the Spirit prompted them. I was deeply moved every week.
Even in the most dangerous situations, Christ-followers can depend on God to speak His words through them. Jesus assures His disciples that God will prompt their words if they don’t rely on their own knowledge and preparation but instead speak as prompted by God’s Spirit. He says: “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”
I watched a video of Billy Graham speaking to a technology conference when he was 80 years old. He picked up some notes and said something like: “I’m getting older, so I need to check my notes. When you see me on TV I’m ad libbing. I don’t use notes.” When he was preaching, he was speaking as God prompted him on the spot. Perhaps that’s why his words so powerfully impacted people.
I understand what Billy was saying. As a pastor I always felt like God wanted me to preach as the Spirit prompted me, not from notes. I continually read the Bible so there is always a lot in me ready to come out as God prompts me.
Too much in a church service comes from the study and plans of the mind instead of being prompted on the spot by the Spirit. We need to open up to the prompting of God’s Spirit! “You can all prophesy.” Today’s Christianity needs more people speaking prophetically (by God’s Spirit) and fewer speaking politically.
The heart can hear
More than the ear
And see light
That’s beyond sight.
Your heart’s the site
Of deep insights
That can lift you
To spiritual heights.
Look.
I’m here
Writing what
I hear
And sense
Within
Releasing it
To the wind
Of the Spirit.
September 5, 2022
A German missionary’s book about “people Christianity”
Powerful words about the body of Christ from a German missionary:
“People-church (ekklesia) is the will of God and a vital necessity.” That’s a thought from a German missionary, Christian Keysser, who served in New Guinea from 1899 to 1921. Donald McGavran of Fuller Theological Seminary wrote this about him: “Keysser’s wide ranging, courageous mind continually took the German churches to task for not being genuine Christian congregations, leaving too much in the hands of the professional paid clergy and not acting as truly Christian communities.”
Keysser said this about traditional Christianity: “They lecture, but they do not reform. In mission everything depends on life and transforming power. Because we only look after theology and doctrine and not God’s reality and power at work, we have the present lamentable weakness of the church. Deadness is prevalent despite all good doctrine.”
Keysser believed that “Christ the Living One” wants to lead His body. He grieved over “the inefficiency and lack of power of our Christianity.” In the introduction to his book, A People Reborn (1929), he writes: “I would have liked to have left out all adverse observations on churches, but when one sincerely loves one’s church and earnestly about its condition and future, then one may, indeed one must, draw attention to certain things even at the risk of causing offense.”
Congregational church is what Keysser called his view of Christianity (which matches the New Testament concept of ekklesia.) He wrote, “The prototypes were the meetings in the apostolic congregations where everyone could speak.” When that is ignored, church doesn’t “lead to the activation of the congregation.” To overcome this, Keysser says: “It is a missionary’s (pastor’s) duty to hold back and not to do himself what his Christians should carry out. Otherwise, he harms the congregation, holds back the individual, hinders the development of the various gifts that God gives.”
Here’s more from Keysser: “To lead a congregation in the right direction will never succeed without Him who said: ‘Without Me you can do nothing,’ and who has given His Spirit with His absolutely necessary assistance. Leading a congregation demands continuous watching and giving heed to divine direction . . . This is by far more difficult than the one-sided exclusive preaching. In His congregation and church, Jesus wants to be the Lord with whom one complies. He is indeed the Savior of sinners, but besides this He is also the Lord as He was most often called in the early church.”
Here are some more quotes from Christian Keysser:
“Paul requests of the Christians in Collosse that they are able to be ‘teaching and admonishing one another.’ In his letters to the congregations, he always holds the total congregation responsible.”
“You propagate a knowledge of God, but you do not bring God Himself as the helper and redeemer of people.”
“It is particularly difficult to awaken a dead congregation. The Word is often no longer effective because the people have become dull.”
“Put God into life! Never substitute the teaching about God for God Himself. The teaching about God stays in the head, but God makes Himself effective in life.”
“One cannot educate dead congregations any more than a dead child. First there must be life. This is most important in all circumstances.”
“There should not always be the same routine. You must offer variation. Avoid lethal boredom!”
“The format of the service shouldn’t always be the same. Otherwise, people will become tired and fall asleep.”
“Ask people questions during the sermon and have them answer. Train them for real co-operation also in the preaching! Christian preaching was originally homilia, that is conversation, dialogue. Preaching must deal with a necessary truth until it has been apprehended, until the will has been influenced and until an action results. If this does not happen, all preaching will just be pious babbling that will not be taken seriously.”
Omission of the preaching can often have a greater effect on a dead congregation than the loudest sermon. When the missionary (pastor) is silent, all the other earnest Christians present must speak so much louder.”
“Life does not manifest itself in organizing and arranging gatherings, but in the congregation’s earnest action according to God’s will.”
“The congregational meeting (ekklesia) is absolutely indispensable for the nurture of the congregation. ‘Tell it to the church,’ according to Jesus. To its own detriment church abandoned congregational meetings (ekklesia).”
“At these meetings (ekklesia), the gifts and capabilities become evident. Here the minds are taught and trained. Through the constant training the Christians obtain a remarkably sound and sure judgment. Furthermore, it becomes evident who has authority and whose word has weight. The congregational meeting is the best soil in which spiritual gifts can grow.”
“A congregation that does nothing as a congregation and that does not react strongly to sins and wrongs in its mist, is dead.“
“The Bible attaches great importance to the confessing of sins. Confessing is necessary for the breaking of the chain with which Satan has bound the people. Experience shows that people are not set free from evil if they do not speak out openly and unreservedly. Confession is not a sign of weakness but of strength and resolution.”
“As the congregation grows, there certainly will be able, experienced Christians available who must be acknowledged by the congregation.”
“Only when Christian congregations are alive and one in God, can and will the world believe the message.”
“What not even the most earnest proclamation by individual messengers of God can accomplish is brought to pass by the mere presence of living congregations (ekklesias).”
“Demonstrate Christianity as a life power which influences and transforms entire peoples.”
Grace & labor
Amazing grace
Inspires and empowers
Good works.
It doesn’t replace
Or chase
Them away.
Grace is free, but not unconditional. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” God doesn’t give you the light of His grace to hide it behind sermons and church, but so you can demonstrate it to the world. Grace and work work better together, not independently.
Don’t get comfortable and stay stuck in a grace message. “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Jesus said that people need to see you do good works, not just hear you talk about grace. “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
No matter how hard we work or what we accomplish, we’ve no right to boast. Grace declares that we’re doing better than we deserve.
Many of today’s Christians tend to think every day is “grace day” and to forget about Labor Day. True grace doesn’t do away with the biblical Christian work ethic.
True grace makes people want to work to obey God. “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” If you’re not being prompted by the Spirit to do good works that’s a warning sign that grace may not be working inside of you.
It takes more than grace to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” It also takes Spirit-led hard work! Too many Christians use grace like a magic word that makes them okay with God so they can continue to do things their way.
Grace is not an excuse to avoid doing good works and living a godly lifestyle. A forgotten Bible verse says: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” It doesn’t say that grace replaces work. When God by His grace prompts you to be a doer of His Word, it’s important that you don’t quench His Spirit but do what He says.
The Bible says: “We are God’s handiwork (that’s grace), created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” What good works did God graciously create you to do today?
Although it’s a gift of grace, it takes on going spiritual work and self-denial to cultivate and grow the fruit of the Spirit in your life. God’s grace lets you see your sin, but repentance (stopping your sin) requires work.
The Bible says to “to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” It doesn’t say to “sit out your salvation.” It says to “to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you.” Has God by His grace put a flame in you? If so, you need to not be passive, but work to keep God’s flame burning red hot so that your heart doesn’t become lukewarm or cold.
Why I work to read the Bible daily: The meekness and poverty of spirit of the prophets and apostles and other writers of Scripture opened their heart to the living Word and their mind to Christ’s renewing. As children of God, they were led by the Spirit and wrote as prompted by Him. When I read Scripture with an open humble, hungry heart (like a love letter instead of a textbook) my spirit delights and dances within me as the Holy Spirit testifies to its truthfulness and the fully alive Jesus works in me.
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Alcohol can’t offer an overhaul
If you need
An overhaul
It won’t come
From alcohol
But it can come
From Jesus.
No brew
Can ever do
What Jesus
Will do
If you
Let Him
Ever brew
In your heart.
The reason people aren’t more excited about Jesus is that they mix lots of self-focus into their life and thus dilute His brew. Jesus can’t take control of your life until you stop insisting on doing what you want. Drinking might help you forget your guilt, but Jesus can completely erase it.
The solution to your inner emptiness isn’t alcohol, it’s Jesus. It’s not the old wine, but God’s New Wine. Alcohol overpowers people. Jesus empowers them.
Alcohol is not the answer, the risen Jesus is. You can’t really drown your sorrows, but you can replace them with the joy of the Lord.
If you won’t keep Jesus first, anything else you put first will let you down. What many people look for in drinking (comfort, companionship, stress relief, fun, inebriation) I find in the risen Jesus.
Some people think they need a drink. I know that I need the alive Jesus! Drinkers don’t want their glass to be empty. I don’t want my heart to be empty.
Instead of shots in a glass, Jesus gives me life-giving shots in my heart.
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It’s hard not to feel hopeless if you’re relying on anything but God
To ignore the presence of the alive and always active Jesus is to miss the essence of Christianity. The alive Jesus is everywhere. Since He’s not bound by place or time, He can live in and through you anytime and anyplace.
To believe in Jesus is to daily rely on Him. Self-reliance isn’t Christianity. Christ-reliance is.
Shift your reliance from yourself to the alive Jesus. To say that Jesus is alive while ignoring Him like He’s dead is a contradiction. When you’re truly relying on the alive Jesus, you won’t be easily accepted by those who aren’t. Human pride rejects reliance on God.
Grace (the invitation to rely on the alive Jesus) is not entitlement. It’s completely undeserved. Rely on the alive Jesus! Reliance on Jesus must happen moment by moment. It’s never a once and done. I’ve found self-reliance to be very disappointing, but reliance on the alive Jesus to be amazingly comforting and fulfilling.
It’s hard not to feel hopeless if you’re relying on anything else but God. The wisest thing that you can do is to always stay intensely aware of your need for God.
Until we begin to trust in and rely on Jesus in daily life, we’ll never know the reality of His presence and power. God revealed Himself to the writers of the Bible. When I read it, their revelation comes alive in me and gives me faith to daily rely on Jesus.
If you’re unwilling to rely on Jesus, He’s not your Ruler. He’s not your Lord and Master. If want one person to fix and change your life, begin to daily rely on the alive Jesus. Rely on Him to lead and direct you, not on your desires, feelings and opinions.
In your daily life, do you primarily rely on and trust in your own self-effort or Jesus? Unfortunately, church seems to rely more on human effort and programming than on the alive Jesus. The typical church format doesn’t train the people of God to actively rely on Jesus. Instead, it makes them a passive audience.
When Christians gather in His name, Jesus wants to be the Lord (the Ruler) of the meeting and not to be treated like a passive bystander. It’s interesting that when Christians get up and go to church, they’ve been trained to sit down and stay with a program. Relying on religion isn’t the same as relying on the alive Jesus.
Christians would grow stronger spiritually if a pastor would hold himself back in a church service and make room for their Spirit-led input. A pastor who does in a church service what people in a congregation could be trained to do themselves (like have Spirit-led input) hinders their spiritual development and reliance on Jesus.
When you rely
On yourself
You ignore
And deny
Jesus’ presence
And power.
September 2, 2022
Half-hearted Christianity won’t make you whole
Your heart is a life-valve. Always keep it open so that the life of Jesus can continually flow through you. If you won’t put your whole heart into following and obeying the risen Jesus, you’re only going through the motions of Christianity. Religious excuses are a declaration that you’re not following Jesus wholeheartedly.
Wholehearted Christianity isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a lifestyle of passionately pursuing the living Jesus every single day. Wholehearted Christian living is to keep the valve of your heart wide-open to the risen Jesus. Wholeheartedness requires your whole heart.
Anything less than wholehearted response to the living Jesus is lukewarmness. To wholeheartedly surrender to the living Jesus fully open the valve in your heart that tries to regulate or limit His activity within you. Then keep it wide open every day so that He can freely overflow in and through you as the living God, releasing lively, eternal, life-giving water.
People don’t shy away from wholehearted Christ-followers. They rarely see that kind of passion about Jesus freely expressed. If you don’t build a wholehearted relationship with the living Jesus, you’ll be continually distracted from Him. Half-hearted Christianity won’t make you whole.
Every day I experience Jesus streaming in Spirit and in truth through my heart, welling up and flowing out as rivers of alive water giving life to my soul. You can learn to live your life as an ongoing, wholehearted response to the risen Jesus!
Many people avoid wholeheartedly following Jesus because it involves surrender, vulnerability, and tenderness. However, I love it when people wholeheartedly talk about Jesus and back up what they say with a holy, compassionate, and joyous lifestyle.
Humility needs to be embraced, not resisted. It helps us set aside ego so that Jesus can take over the steering wheel of our life. If you feel dead inside, hearing Jesus’ voice will make you come alive. Ever listen to Him.
If you’re longing for more meaning and purpose in life, you can find it by fully opening your heart to Jesus. Discover the amazing power of surrender! When you’re wholehearted about Jesus, your life is fully engaged with Him.
Giving Jesus
A part
Of your heart
Is only a start.
Put everything
In His cart.
Half-hearted Christianity
Won’t make you whole.
It might not even
Save your soul.
September 1, 2022
The indescribable joy of heart ongoing interaction with Jesus
Continually experiencing Jesus is unspeakably amazing. I wish I could find words that could somehow describe it. If there’s anything or anybody worth getting thrilled about and wholeheartedly celebrating it’s the living, resurrected Jesus.
Jesus! If you fell no thrill when you hear His name, you’re overlooking His radiant glory. Ongoing heart-to-heart interaction with Jesus is wonderfully indescribable.
My favorite people to hang around are people who are visibly thrilled with Jesus. Sometimes they’re hard to find. If someone claims to be a Christian, of all the things they talk or are passionate about, Jesus should always be number one.
No experience can compare with life’s ultimate experience — interacting heart-to-heart with the living Jesus. Jesus works inside you. Notice His promptings. Then say and do what He tells you. If you’re unwilling to say and do what Jesus prompts you to, you don’t really trust Him.
The risen Jesus is an everyday Guide, Companion, Comforter, Teacher, Savior, and Master. He’s not just a Sunday morning sermon topic.
Too often going to church is seen as the high-water point of being a Christian. To me it’s the low-water point. Jesus is so much more powerful and glorious than church. Maybe we should point people to Him instead of to a Sunday morning meeting.
Church attendance is a minimal view of Christianity. Daily experiencing Christ and His glory is a much more accurate view.
I’ve never attended a human-led church service that comes close to the incredible experience of personally interacting with Jesus. To confine Jesus to Heaven or to a church building is to miss the amazing point that “Christ in you is the hope of glory.”
Jesus is so much more present and powerful in daily life than church presents Him to be. Church isn’t definitive of Christianity. Human lives radically transformed and inwardly empowered to daily follow and obey the risen Jesus are.
[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-32872" />Photo by Kevin Malik on Pexels.comBeing in a Spirit-led Salvation Army “band”
For a decade my wife and I were in a Salvation Army band. We were both working for them when they approached us and asked us if we would like to start a Sunday morning meeting in an empty church building that they owned. They said that the traditional church format had never worked in that building and asked if we would do something nontraditional.
We accepted their offer and began to meet band-style (as in a band of brothers and sisters meeting interactively together with open hearted honesty, love, humility, and compassion). It was a 10-year experience. We typically had between 20 and 35 adults. After praise and worship, people would freely share as they felt prompted by the Lord. We soon discovered that ordinary people are eloquent when they speak from their heart as led by the Spirit.
Every Sunday was different, but incredible. Each week we heard, saw, and experienced amazing things. Love abounded in our multi-racial band. Lives were changed in front of our eyes. We were supported and encouraged by local, regional, and national Salvation Army leadership until a new local leader arrived in Nashville and told us we couldn’t meet like that anymore because it wasn’t The Salvation Army way.
That was five years ago. Since then, my wife and I have experienced much banding. We meet almost every day with people in both regularly scheduled and spontaneous gatherings (in person, by Zoom, or on the phone). We now have open-hearted sharing and spiritual connections with more people than we have ever had before. We are continually amazed at how God continues to knit our hearts together with people we’ve known for a while and with people we’ve only recently met. We love band-style gatherings of the body of Christ (whether in twos or threes or in big band meetings where 20 or 30 or more people share as prompted by the risen Jesus).
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Why Moses saw the invisible
Troublesome circumstances are painfully obvious in daily life. It’s easy to look at the disturbances that we see around us and within us and to find plenty of reasons to feel despair and discouragement. We need a boost — something to put a joyful bounce in our step and lift us up. But where can we find such a boost?
When Moses’ life of abundance and privilege in Egypt fell apart and he had to lose everything and run for his life to the scarcity of the Midian desert, he didn’t lose hope. How did he not despair? “He persevered because he saw Him who is invisible.” In the heartbreak of his devastation and loss, Moses looked beyond his visible circumstances and beheld the One who makes all things work together for good for those who love God.
Seeing the invisible working of God is invigorating and empowering! I call it “the Jesus thrill!” The pain and brokenness that we experience as human beings can be the attention getter that wakes us up to the invisible and causes us to look “unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” As we behold the Lamb of God, the invisible Jesus thrill fills us and overflows from within us and shines visibly on our face. Then as J.D. Walt said: “The harder life is the better Jesus gets.”
Ever since I first experienced the Jesus thrill, I’ve tried to keep anything from distracting me from it. If you’re unaware of the presence of Jesus, you won’t be able to stat thrilled about Him. Open your spiritual eyes!
Christianity needs to be demonstrated and radiated more than it needs to be legislated, evaluated, and speculated about. It can be very disappointing to keep trying the pastor-lead, sermon-based church over and over again, expecting different results. If happiness isn’t happening in your heart, you won’t find it anywhere else.
Spiritual fire,
A burning desire
To get closer to God
Is a sign of spiritual life.
When Christians maintain
A Jesus thrill
They avoid spreading
A religious chill.
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