Steve Simms's Blog, page 131
July 27, 2022
Ever bedazzled by Jesus?
To behold Jesus,
“Be still and know.”
Peacefully ponder
His presence
With your heart
Opened to wonder
And soon His reality
Will manifest
Within and around you
And you will be
Rapt in awe
And wrapped
In ever-increasing glory.
Behold the Lamb of God,
Not just for a few moments
Here and there,
But begin to live a lifestyle
Of letting Jesus always
And every where
Bedazzle you.
Cussing lacks logic & maturity
Profanity
Isn’t the language
To communicate
Sanity.
Inserting crude references to body parts, intercourse, damnation, feces, eternal torment, etc. into a conversation seems illogical and immature. Cuss words are usually spoken from habit, anger, frustration, or insecurity, rarely from logic.
The desire to cuss is deceitful and corrupting. If we’re not careful it will mess us up our mind and our conscience and negatively influence those around us.
Here’s a rational use of a cuss word: War is wicked. Even a famous wartime general said, “War is Hell.”
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Actuation makes the risen Jesus real (to you)
got actuation? When you actuate Jesus, His water park breaks out inside you:
“Rivers of living water will flow from within,”“A spring of water welling up to eternal life,”“Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert,”“Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”Actuation is the aha that makes a concept come alive to you. Christian actuation moves your understand of Jesus 18 inches–from your head to your heart.
Then ongoing, direct, and personal revelation of the actual presence and reality of the living Jesus begins to overflow from within you and makes you gloriously aware that “Christ in you” is genuine, living, and immediate reality, not just a doctrine. An inner river running over with awe-filled revelation gives you both the hope and the experience of being supernaturally changed from glory to glory into Jesus’ very own image and lifestyle.
“He is risen indeed!” To actuate your faith, passionately surrender to, continually obey, and joyfully bask in Jesus’ real presence and transforming power. “Quench not the Spirit.”
To focus Christianity on “going to church” often interferes with Christian actuation. It distracts many people from having a rich relationship with Jesus in their own heart.
If we won’t let the living Jesus be the literal and actual Head when we meet as Christians, we’re only pretending to be the body of Christ. For Christians to gather as the body of Christ there can be only one Head–the living ever-present, but too often ignored, Jesus!
We don’t need inspiring descriptions of God’s spiritual fire. We need to continually experience it and pass it on to others!
Guilt is your check-your-life-light–your wake-up call to actuation. When guilt happens, the risen Jesus can tune-up your mind, align your life to God and forgive your guilt.
People may proclaim a behavior to be innocent, but in actuality it still may be “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” It’s interesting that people who want to “live like Hell” don’t want to actuate its existence. They don’t want Hell and that side of the Gospel to be real in their consciousness.
Whatever, good or bad, is growing in your life you’re probably actuating it:
You actuate
The thoughts
On which
You meditate,
The feelings
On which
You concentrate
And the desires
Toward which
You gravitate.
Focus on
The living Jesus!
July 25, 2022
Sentimental religious aspiration or dedicated discipleship application?
When you resist
The inner rivers
Of the Holy Spirit,
You can cause them
To be stuck, stymied,
Stalled and stagnant
Inside you.
Instead, prepare the way
For the Lord’s rivers
So they can freely flow
In and through you.
(“Quench not the Spirit.”)
Sermon-hearing often
Leads to aspiration
An inner wish
To live a better life,
But seldom to application,
Doing whatever it takes
To turn away from all sin
And wholeheartedly begin
To follow and obey
The living Jesus
Every day.
(“Repent.”)
Religious aspiration is sweet and sentimental, but it often lacks radical and ongoing life-altering repentance. Discipleship application embraces sacrifice and self-denial and produces dedicated Christ-followers who put and keep the risen Jesus first in their life.
Sentimental religious aspiration can easily be a cover up for doubt. Dedicated discipleship application, however, will demonstrate the reality of the living Jesus and knock the ubt off of doubt. “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.”
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God’s way is the way out
Because we humans are unwilling to fully obey God’s laws, guilt is our common human experience. To refuse to algin your life with God is to reject His love and compassion. To ignore, avoid, or resist the living God is to choose to live your life in rebellion.
The best time to get right with God is right now. The longer you wait, the less likely you’ll do it. If your heart is made and kept right with God, your lifestyle will soon follow. If you’re not right with God, it’s because you don’t want to be, not because you don’t know how.
Passivity strays from God. Getting and staying right with God (growing in grace) requires openness, humility, sensitivity, and obedience towards Him. When you feel like saying, “There’s no way,” that’s a great time to look for God’s way.
To get right with God, begin to align your desires to His will. If you don’t want to stop doing wrong, you’re probably not right with God. The more you align your life with God, the less you will be applauded by the culture around you.
Unconditional love and strong disapproval often go hand in hand. Some people think that compassion requires that they denounce the Bible, but Jesus demonstrated compassion while strongly affirming the Scriptures.
A world without God’s laws would be a world without justice. Nothing would hold evildoing accountable. All humans have broken God’s laws and have earned His judgment. On the cross, Jesus suffered the judgment for all your wrongdoing.
In the Bible, both Jesus and the Old Testament prophets were very critical of institutional religion. Church too often causes Christians to ignore the reality of Christ in them and instead to look for Christ in a preacher. Church is easy to check off your religious to-do list but following and obeying the risen Jesus is 24/7/365.
Many Christians have substituted going to church for open-hearted Bible reading and. replaced their conscience with a pastor’s sermon. Much that is called church is classroom lecture devoid of intimate, heart-to-heart connection. It’s mere formalism without genuine community. A Spirit-led, open sharing format (as described in 1 Corinthians 14:26) is much more conducive to community. Staying faithful to the Bible in that kind of community releases genuine spiritual awakening!
“The pursuit of happiness” isn’t a Christian concept. Christ-followers are called to “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and to “seek first the kingdom of God.”
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Christ in you is greater glory than was on Moses’ face!
Splendor,
Wonder,
Grandeur,
Magnificence,
Brillance,
Dazzling light:
Where’s the glory
That comes from
“Christ in you”?
Let Christ live in you and keep you aware of His glory every moment of every day! The Bible says that there’s a greater glory than the glory on Moses after God spoke with him on a burning mountain. It’s the glory of Christ in you! Being continually aware of God’s glory empowers regular people to live and act in supernatural ways.
When people who are passionate about Jesus share His love from their heart, you can see God’s glory on their face. It’s beautiful!
Being satisfied with occasional glimpses of God’s glory is like being satisfied with occasional scraps of food. God has so much more to show you! It nice to see a church filled with people, but it’s far greater to see people filled with the glory of God!
There’s no lasting glory in human pride, but a humble, broken, and purified heart can see God’s glory. Life is more glorious when desires are disciplined and diminished than when they’re allowed to drive, dominate, and define us.
Being consciously aware of God’s glory will break your focus on self and fill you with intense hunger and thirst for righteousness. Nature’s glorious sights vaguely reflect the glory of God, yet Christ-followers are called to experience “ever increasing glory.”
When God’s Spirit is invited and allowed to freely work in a human heart more glory is released than can ever be expressed in words. An ongoing awareness of Jesus living and working in you is far more important than church attendance.
Your choices plant seeds of pain or glory in people. It’s selfish to ignore the impact of your choices on other people.
The glory of
Christ in you
Depends on
A close personal
Relationship
With Jesus
And on direct
Leadership
From God’s Spirit.
July 22, 2022
4 ways to deal with sin: Lie, justify, boast, or repent
Here are four ways that we can deal with our sin (wrongful attitudes and behaviors). 1) We can lie about our sin and deny it or ignore it. 2) We can justify it by offering many excuses and/or blaming. 3) We can embrace our sin and take pride in it. 4) We can acknowledge that it is morally wrong and persistently train to overcome it and stop doing it.
When you feel convicted of sin don’t flee. (Even when we deny it, sin’s a problem.) “Stand still and see the salvation of God.” Be “undone” like Isaiah in chapter six.
When self-examination leads to conviction, don’t run from it. (That’s what Adam and Eve did when they hid from God.) Instead, humbly embrace conviction and let it make you meek (pliable) and poor in spirit. Then begin the process of ongoing repentance and spiritual formation, continually seeking God’s mercy and growing in His grace.
As we examine ourselves, it’s important to note that our sinful attitudes and behaviors don’t “just happen.” We choose them. We cause them. We embrace them. We turn them into habits. When we become aware that we’re off track and not aligned with God and His will, we need to earnestly put aside those sinful attitudes and behaviors and practice moment-by-moment surrender to the risen Jesus so that we can be delivered and set free from them.
We aren’t called to eke out a lukewarm Christian lifestyle. Our calling is to perfection–to be ever pure and red-hot for Jesus. That means that we will never in this lifetime completely achieve it. We will always need to “press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” to “seek first the kingdom of God,” and to “pray without ceasing.” Run to the living Jesus, not away from Him!
Bad things mostly don’t just happen. They’re the consequences of wrongful human behavior. Christianity doesn’t happen by church attendance and sermon-hearing. It happens by believers being humbly led by the Spirit. (Romans 8:14.)
Repentance leads us to the disapproval of sin (both our sin and the sin of others). If you can’t kindly disapprove of a human behavior without being called a “hater,” freedom of speech is being threatened.
Life’s an obstacle course. If you don’t listen to the guidance of your conscience, you’ll continually collide with many of them.
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Don’t just dream: Be a Bible-verse catcher
Jesus told His disciples
That the Holy Spirit
“Will remind you
Of everything
I have said to you.”
Let God’s Spirit speak
Scriptures in your spirit.
Catch them when they come
And let them
Repeat in your heart,
Spreading like fire
Within you.
To be reminded of the words of Jesus you have to have read or heard them first. So read the Bible every day with tenderness and let God write it on the tablet of your heart. Then ask God to remind you of what you have read. When Scriptures come to your mind, ponder them. Let them repeat over and over in your consciousness. Cherish and treasure them. Savor them like a refreshing spring of water in a toasty desert.
Gather with other Christ-followers and go beyond an analytical, knowledge-based Bible study. Instead, pray together and ask the Holy Spirit to remind everyone present of Bible verses. Then allow anyone in the gathering to freely quote Scriptures as they come to mind. Inspired Bible quoting is an amazing (even life-changing) experience–to sit quietly with a group of believers sharing Scriptures one after the other. Why not try it the next time you gather with a group of Christ-followers? You’ll be glad you did! The worst thing to block is God’s light from your heart.
Until the real Jesus begins doing real things in your heart and life, He’ll probably be only a religious figure to you. Spirit-ed Bible verse catching and quoting with a group of believers can make Jesus suddenly real to you!
Access to the risen Jesus isn’t limited by geography or by time. Sharing Scriptures together with an open, humble heart, as prompted by the Holy Spirit can help us to interact with Him anywhere and anytime.
Here’s a Scripture that I believe the Holy Spirit wants to remind us of. Instead of saying, “Go to church,” Jesus said, “Come unto Me.”
Church too often offers people information about Jesus without offering them direct and personal access to Him. Quoting Bible verses as moved by the Spirit actually demonstrates the presence and leadership of the risen Jesus.
If you had a famous friend, you probably would rather spend time with him than to hear a lecture about him every week. That’s how I feel about the risen Jesus. When church doesn’t allow people to spontaneously participate and interact, there’s no room for them to be led by the Spirit.
Going to church to hear a sermon is like going to hear a lecture about a friend. Perhaps it would be better to hang out together with the living Jesus. He wants to call us to repentance so our destiny can become our reality. Let the Bible manifest as fresh daily manna within you.
Words that start
In the heart,
Not just said
With the head,
Are powerful.
July 20, 2022
The Man who is the plan (the way)
Any plan other than the living Jesus, the Guide who wants to live inside us, can easily be a distraction from being led by the Spirit. Before Jesus came into the world, God gave Moses plans for the tabernacle which also served as the plans for the physical temple. God also gave Moses plans for human behavior, known as the Law. Those plans were even written on human hearts as the conscience.
We humans have never been very good at following God’s plans. The Creator became a man to open the door so that you can know Him and follow Him.” “Christ in you,” means that instead of following God’s plans, we can follow and obey and be empowered and led by the inner Jesus. That is a glory that Paul calls “the surpassing glory” that is greater than the glory that was on Moses’ face when He received the law.
Glory was on Moses’ face. Glory resides inside of present-day Christ-followers who are “being changed from glory to glory.” The Bible calls us to self-examination (2 Corinthians 13:5). Check yourself for God’s glory. Is His glory shinning in your heart and continually changing you into His image? Is the risen Jesus living and operating inside of you as “the way” (the plan)? Or are you merely making and following your own plans?
Church too often treats the wounds of sin as if they’re not serious–as if a few religious words can make things all better. However, our human predicament is far worse than that. Without the presence and power of the inner Jesus (the Man who is the plan), we’ll all stay stuck in sin’s subtle traps.
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Church needs to be more than a religious tourist trap
Church should cultivate and empower life-long spiritual pilgrimage, not just be a Sunday morning religious tourist trap. When Christinas no longer gather just to hear a sermon but gather instead to allow each person present to have the opportunity to be a living sermon sent from Jesus, passivity will leave the building as Christ’s pilgrims rise up to demonstrate His presence by saying and doing whatever He tells them to.
For decades God has had me on a pilgrimage to go beyond Sunday morning programs and to gather with other believers in order to wait for God’s Spirit-prompted purposes for the gathering. When we begin to hear and respond to the Spirit speaking within us, the true Christian pilgrimage begins. (Search: Beyond Church Ekklesia.)
Like the child Samuel, say to God: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Then focus on aligning your thoughts, desires, and emotions with how He wants to communicate to your heart so that He makes His words burn within you and stirs up His gifts and His fruit in your daily life.
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