Steve Simms's Blog, page 134
July 5, 2022
Should church ditch the classroom model and put prayer back in church?
The classroom model
Of Christianity,
Based on teaching,
Study, and lectures
About religious topics,
Is far removed
From the relational model
Based on hearing,
Interacting with,
And obeying
The risen Jesus
In community
That is led by
And focused on
His continual presence.
Heart-connection requires spontaneity. It can’t be programmed. When church doesn’t allow spontaneity, it quenches heart-connection. When it meets without empowering people to connect heart-to-heart, it’s just a bunch of individuals passively listening to a sermon. Put Spirit-led prayer and testimonies and revelation and spontaneous Scripture quoting in church!
Christians aren’t supposed to be an audience! Perhaps it’s time for Christians to meet in such a way so as to create an environment where the supernatural presence and love of Jesus can be demonstrated among us. Classroom church has led us to the concept of “Christian radio” that plays worship music while letting announcers banter about meaningless trivia and goofy stuff.
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July 4, 2022
Celebrating true freedom on the 4th
Until we’re no longer in bondage to controlling thoughts, desires, and emotions, we’re not fully free. The freedom to be controlled and dominated by desires isn’t freedom at all. When desire replace logic and self-control, freedom disappears.
If we proudly boast about our freedom, we can become a prisoner of arrogance. True freedom isn’t about proclaiming freedom. It’s about living a lifestyle that keeps you free from bondage to thoughts, feeling, and desires.
True freedom isn’t being allowed to do what you want to do. It’s having the courage and strength to do what you ought to do. When someone’s mind is in much bondage, our society say that they are free. It says that they have mental health issues.
When people pursue freedom by ignoring their conscience and renouncing moral boundaries, they stumble into bondage. True freedom is the courage to follow your conscience instead of your desires. The purpose of the human conscience is to guide us to freedom and to warn us when we’re being entrapped by bondage. Freedom of conscience demands that no one should feel compelled to or forced to approve of or to applaud other people’s choices.
Guilt is the alarm
That warns us
When we are
In the process
Of losing
Our inner freedom.
No matter how loudly
People claim a right
To do what’s not right,
Their clamor doesn’t
Make it morally right.
The greatest threat
To my freedom
Is self-focus
Because it entangles me
In the tiny world
Of myself.
The force God uses to change human hearts and behaviors isn’t coercion; it’s love! You can choose bondage to self or freedom in Christ, but you can’t have both. Faith is far more powerful than pride. Pride looks to self and its feeble strength. Faith looks to God and His glorious power.
Jesus said: “The truth will set you free.” The more we twist the truth (or support those who do), the less freedom we have. The greatest freedom day of my life is the day that I was inwardly changed by the risen Jesus.
My favorite fireworks
Are the ones
The living Jesus
Continually ignites
In my heart.
There’s no freedom
Like the inner freedom
That Jesus freely gives
To all who will
Daily surrender
To His will.
When I focus
On the living Jesus
My personal concerns
Are dwarfed by His presence
And they no longer
Imprison me.
The more I make
And demonstrate
A declaration
Of dependence on Jesus
The freer I am.
Embrace true freedom! Get The Joy Of Early Christianity.
No earthly thing that we celebrate can ever compare with the infinite glory of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. Here are two thoughts from the prophet Isaiah: “‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.'” And: “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.”
When any stage of human life is continually proclaimed to be disposable, no human life is truly safe or fully free.
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Christians, stop acting like Jesus is dead!
If there’s anybody in the world who doesn’t need to be institutionalized, it’s the living, resurrected Jesus Christ! A dead Jesus needs religious institutions to keep His memory alive, but a relationship with the living Jesus is ever vibrant.
To say yes to the risen Jesus Christ is to lay down our plans, desires, choices, and concerns and let Him take direct control. To confine the resurrection of Jesus to history is to decapitate Christianity. Anything that hinders members of the body of Christ from maintaining direct and obedient connection with the Head quenches the Spirit.
The living Jesus should never be confined to a program or ritual. He wants to personally interact with you. He directly approaches your heart. Few people want a friendship that sticks to a pre-set program. Genuine friendship with Jesus can’t be programmed.
The resurrection of Jesus shouldn’t be an annual celebration but a daily, moment-by-moment experience. It only happened once. Now the risen Jesus is everywhere knocking on doors to enter human hearts.
If Christians would stop acting like Jesus is dead and gone, we’d see an amazing spiritual awakening! What good does it do to say Jesus is alive if you act like He’s dead? According to the Bible, Jesus’ tomb is empty and He’s living inside of His followers, but too often, the way Christians act makes it look like Jesus’ followers are empty and He’s dead in His tomb.
When Christianity changed from a spiritual movement into religious organizations, it went from ekklesia to church. If Jesus’ tomb is truly empty, church services should be full of His glorious presence and power. Christians desperately need to go beyond hearing sermons about Jesus and begin to hear directly from Him.
If you will read the Bible with a sense of being there in the events that occur, it will fill you with awe and wonder! Faith hopes for and expects the best. Fear worries about and dreads the worst.
Lectures on
The wind of the Spirit
Are nothing like
Sailing & soaring
With the wind!
If you’re
Unwilling to walk
With Jesus
It does little good
To hear a talk
About Him.
Spiritual exploration
Without biblical verification
Often leads to deception.
July 2, 2022
32nd Anniversary
July 1, 2022
The Everywhere Jesus . . .
Following Christ
Isn’t for special places.
It’s time for
Everywhere worship,
Everywhere prayer,
Everywhere discipleship,
Everywhere surrender
To the leadership
Of the living, present Jesus!
Wherever you go
The everywhere Jesus
Is already there
Even when you’re
Unaware.
You don’t need to go to church to have a conversation with the everywhere Jesus. As long as we’re unwilling to be aware of the everywhere Jesus, we won’t find Him anywhere. Jesus doesn’t sit in church buildings all week long and do nothing in the day to day lives of ordinary people. It’s silly to try to confine Him to church.
The risen Jesus is everywhere, yet many people keep Him far away from their awareness. Stop, look, and listen. Wherever you are you can be aware of the presence of the risen Jesus. Every time I sense, observe, and surrender to the everywhere Jesus, my spirit gets stronger.
Spirit-led Christ-followers stay aware of and obedient to the presence and leadership of the risen Jesus everywhere they go. It’s hard to feel alone when you’re acutely aware that Jesus is everywhere.
Even when you think you leave the everywhere Jesus in church, you don’t. You can’t go anywhere that the everywhere Jesus isn’t. You can encounter the everywhere Jesus anywhere you’re willing to humble yourself and open up your heart.
A pilgrimage to encounter the living Jesus isn’t about geography. It’s a journey of the heart.
Spiritual practices are not techniques for twisting God’s arm and getting Him to do what we want Him to do. They are practical ways for us to humble ourselves before Him and seek to be more aware of and dependent on His presence and power. I remember Jesus saying to His disciples (and I hear Him saying to me), “Come unto Me.” So, I seek to continually draw nearer to Him (and frequently, as His Spirit leads me to, I use spiritual practices to help me in that process). We don’t have to jump through spiritual hoops to connect with the everywhere Jesus. Just the opposite. The everywhere Jesus, active and living in us, gives us the motivation to joyfully engage in spiritual practices.
What was your life like before you became a Christian? No one is born one. That’s why Jesus said we must be born again.
Wherever I go
The beauty
Of the everywhere Jesus
Sparkles in my heart
And gives me
Courage and hope,
Even in the midst
Of pain and struggle.
Even when humans
Reject His peace,
The Prince of Peace
Is still working
Everywhere.
Together let’s move in sync with God’s Spirit
A major problem with the institutional church is that one leader is often given the authority to override the Holy Spirit. When worship was turned into a never-ending series of weekly lectures by a single expert, Christianity lost much of its power.
Perhaps, instead Christians could gather and “prepare the way of the Lord” so that the living Jesus can take direct control of the meeting. When the body of Christ gathers to be led by the Spirt, older Christ-followers can oversee and referee the meeting to help keep people focused on hearing and obeying the risen Jesus and letting Him directly control the meeting.
If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone and another person walks up and hijacks it, that’s how Jesus must feel about church. He’s rarely allowed to take control of the conversation.
Christians are called to move in sync with the Holy Spirit, not to do what we want to do. When Christians gather everyone should feel safe and encouraged to say and do whatever the Spirit tells them to. Jesus is calling Christians to step out of the boat of human programming and manmade blueprints and to follow Him instead. (If we can’t {or won’t} trust the inner leading of the living Jesus, how can we trust human leadership?)
The body of Christ isn’t called together to follow a program, but to follow and obey the direct leadership of the risen Jesus. When gathered with other Christ-followers, have everyone be still and seek to be more and more aware of the Spirit’s promptings.
When the body of Christ is gathered and being led by the Spirit, pay attention to and follow the flow of Jesus’ leading and don’t try to change the direction of the meeting to fit your comfort level. Christians are supposed to be led by God’s Spirit, not by our desires.
When Christians
Dare to gather
To focus on Jesus
With no one knowing
And no one controlling
What’s about to happen
They go beyond
Words, forms, and programs
And experience
Powerful demonstrations
Of the presence of Christ.
When Christians gather
And meet in sync
Sadness and discouragement
Sink
And awe and joy soar.
June 30, 2022
Desire doesn’t require obedience
Let your heart flow
With uplifting,
Positive currents,
Not with the undertow
Of down drifting
Desire.
A pensive heart,
Untroubled by angst,
Discovers much
To be grateful for.
Letting desires determine your thoughts and behaviors probably isn’t the wisest way to make decisions. If you’ve never been taught that wrongful desires can be fought, you’ll be their prisoner. Desires are often misleading.
If humans were supposed to make choices based solely on our desires, we would have no need for logic, reason, conscience, or compassion. To define yourself by desires denies who you really are. No matter what you yearn for, you’re still a human being capable of self-control!
The exaltation of desire is leading our culture to sacrifice truth, reason, and conscience. It takes courage to be awakened enough to search for truth when the truth doesn’t contain what you desire.
If Christians would dare to deeply experience more Bible events in our heart so that those events rise up in our spirit, it would cause us to go “about walking and leaping and praising God.” Letting the Bible come alive within us can free us from the prison of desire.
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A bold belief about church
Here’s a bold belief: I believe that every Christian gathering needs to have an open mic (or an open platform). (How else can we obey I Corinthians 14:26 and 30?)
Awakened Christ-followers need an outlet. When they are continually kept silent in meetings of the body of Christ, they’re unable to gain confidence and experience by being allowed to speak up in front of Christian brothers and sisters, then their voices are often hushed in the world as well and their inner spiritual fire grows cold. When Christians are silenced in church, how can they “spur one another on” (Hebrews 10:24-25)?
In my experience, dry lectures don’t awaken people much, but heart-felt, passionate testimonies do! I used to participate in Lay Witness Missions where 20 or more “laymen” would visit a church for a weekend and individually share their salvation testimonies in meetings on Friday night, Saturday morning and night, and Sunday morning. Then an altar call would be given, and the response would be massive, dozens of people asking Christ for forgiveness and salvation. (I even saw pastors experience the risen Jesus for the first time.)
My wife and I (and 3 other people) for 3 years have led a Sunday night share group on campus at a technical college in Nashville. Most of the students are just out of high school. We allow anyone present to speak and we share testimonies and Scriptures with them. (I also do Christ-exalting illusions for them.) We close with open prayer. It’s always wonderful to hear a student who has never prayed out loud before, pray! Today, we have been given 30 minutes during the school orientation to speak to several hundred new students and invite them to the meeting. Please pray that God use us to awaken them and draw them to Him.
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Praying in the Spirit (no need to fear it)
Pray from your heart
Without making
The words strain
Through your brain.
We learn to speak
In the power of the Spirit
Not by filling our mind
With religious information,
But by training our heart
To continually surrender to Jesus
And overflow with words
That come from the presence
Of Christ living within us.
I think the challenge of this kind of prayer is that we exercise discernment so that we are led to it by the Spirit, not by our own desire to exercise spiritual power. For example, seven brothers in the book of Acts tried to pray a linier prayer and addressed some demons in a man, telling them to come out, but instead the demons in the man used him to overpower the brothers and beat them up. (Acts 19:13-16.) To avoid a similar outcome, we need to cultivate and maintain humility, surrender, and direct obedience to the real presence of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. We can train ourselves to speak when Jesus says speak and be silent when He says wait.
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When you bob about in the sea of your wrongful feelings and desires, you’re risking getting swept away by their dangerous undertow. Think before you bob!
Here are some pre-bob thoughts:
Let your heart
Be molded by
Truth and kindness,
Not hardened
By our angry culture.
Many feelings and desires that bob about in us are deceptive. (For example: Anger is arrogance, pride that feels slighted because it didn’t get its way.) If we don’t recognize and disengage from deceptive feelings and desires that bob within us, they’ll trick us and trap us.
Christianity’s about receiving God’s forgiveness for and deliverance from our wrongdoing. It’s not about trying to justify our right to bob in our sins. Jesus died to forgive our sins and set us free from them, not to give them His approval.
Great gratitude for the miracle of all human life would solve many of society’s problems. Laws alone won’t stop murder or abortion. We need a change of heart. Lord, give our society a deep appreciation for all human life.
Bob about with this thought for a bit: No limits on guns and abortion on demand make taking human life too easy.
The elephant in the room is that a prenatal human life is seen as a worthless blob bobbing in the womb. When the most innocent form of human life is considered to be disposable, all lives don’t matter. When the prenatal death penalty is applied, innocent lives are ended.
So, in the confusion and anger is there any common ground in the abortion debate? 1) Respect that criminalizing abortion isn’t a viable, long-term answer. 2) Respect that the fetus is a developing human life. 3) Work together diligently to find compromises that respect both the human worth of prenatal life and the concerns of pregnant women.
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