Steve Simms's Blog, page 139
May 31, 2022
Insanity around me & incongruity within me
It’s easy to blame and be disgruntled with the insanity around me. It’s difficult not to constantly deny my discontent with the incongruity within me.
We need to continually live in the community of Christ (not just “attend” it on Sunday morning). Until the community of Christ in us and Christ in others becomes the community that shapes our thoughts, opinions, emotions, desires, and behaviors, the physical city that we live in will seduce, brainwash, and hold us in bondage to its values.
Information about Jesus that doesn’t produce the fruit of the Spirit is mere head knowledge. It is analysis instead of spiritual transformation.
Unless we allow Jesus to transfer us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God, the strength that comes from His glorious power will seem mythical to us. Even when we profess to believe it, we won’t experience it as reality in daily life.
Unless we behold the living Jesus, Christians are like sports fans seated behind the goal post. We can hear the words coming from the PA (Pastor Address), but we don’t have a very good view of the game.
When people are united in love, they become encouraged in heart. Discouragement finds its home in prideful isolation, stubborn independence, and self-imposed loneliness. Hope doesn’t just happen!
When we sin, we execute (as in “carry out”) the ungodly desires of our human nature. When we repent, we execute (as in “put to death”) our sinful desires.
When Paul says: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience,” he’s talking about our inner self, not just our outer self.” It’s not enough to drape those characteristics over our behaviors, we must also cultivate them in our heart.
Insights without the power to do right are short sighted. We can carry good intentions forward, but intentions rarely carry us forward. Intentions are like buying a fancy treadmill to lose weight. Unless we “pound the pavement,” the pounds won’t go away. Intentions frequently reveal that no matter how much we want to change, we lack the power to permanently change ourselves–that we are sinners who need to be redeemed by a Savior.
Jesus can’t be kept
Stored away
In the dust bin of history,
The tomb of religion,
Or the someday of Heaven.
He’s knocking now
On your heart.
May 30, 2022
Pentecost & Spirit-flow
Pentecost
Isn’t a special
Sunday service.
It’s Spirit-flow,
Rivers that run
In and through
Unblocked human hearts
And continually spill over
As the beautiful attitudes
Of the fruit of the Spirit
And the awe-filled wonder
Of God’s supernatural gifts.
Jesus paid the cost
For the Spirit
To flow through you
Every moment of every day!
“Quench not the Spirit.”
The Spirit’s flow
Can’t be taught
Or bought
(No matter how much
You give to a church).
It is caught,
When sought
Like it was on Pentecost,
As we let our heart
Be humbly brought
Into Christ’s presence.
The Spirit’s flow ought
To never be resisted
Or fought.
Spirit-flow
Isn’t about
Theology you know.
It’s about letting go
And allowing Jesus to hoe
Paths in your heart
Where He can overflow
And continually grow
His presence in your daily life.
You can’t operate like the early Christians if you won’t cooperate with the Spirit’s flow. Instead of once and done (and made an annual holy day) what if the Spirit flow of Pentecost is supposed to be the norm for meetings of the body of Christ? When loyalty to a church becomes more important than loyalty to the risen Jesus, Christianity is way off track.
This picture of the Israelites drinking water from the Rock also represents Pentecost. Jesus is the Rock! On Pentecost He poured His Spirit (His living water) on to and through His disciples who were gathered to seek His presence. The three lights to the right of the Bible represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The call to all Christians
I once did a New Testament word study on the word “called.” The books of 1 Corinthians and Romans are written to people who are “called to be holy people” (NIV–1 Corinthians 1:2 & Romans 1:7.) That means all the members of the body of Christ are called to be holy people. We are all called to serve, follow, and obey the risen Jesus–to be led by the Spirit. (Romans 8:14.) However, when people enter into religious hierarchies then competition, coercion, and control begin to take over.
The book of Revelation calls the body of Christ “a kingdom of priests” and Peter calls Christians “a chosen people, a royal priesthood.” From this and “sola Scripture” Martin Luther saw the doctrine of “the priesthood of the believer,” that all Christians are priests. Biblically Christians are not divided into clergy and laity. All are called to be holy people!
Jesus’ mother describes ministry. She told the servants at the wedding in Cana, “Whatever He (Jesus) says to you, do it.” I seek to stay sensitive to Jesus’ presence and then to say, write, and/or do whatever He prompts me to, whether I want to or not.
Often Jesus tells me to say, write, or do something that lowers me in statue. One of my best friends says that I want people to like me, but I say, write, and do things that make a lot of people uncomfortable, and they distance themselves from me. That’s because that although I want to be liked by people, I’d rather please God than man. For us to minister at the level of Jesus we must deny ourselves and follow Him as we let Him continually lead and direct us from the inside out. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
We can’t follow Jesus
If we won’t let Him lead us.
May 29, 2022
Some accepted war crimes
A few of the commonly accepted crimes of war include:
Hating and/or killing human beings because of their national origin. Causing horrific violence, death, and destruction.Glorifying violence.Using national pride to justify vicious behavior.Turning over personal conscience and free will to a military commander.Deadly dishonesty, deceit, deception, lies, and cheating.Making multitudes of orphans and widows.Destroying the infrastructure that ordinary people need in their daily lives.Collateral damage.Lack of fairness/using unfair advantages.Bombing people who have no chance to defend themselves and can only hide in shelters.Robbing people of their life, limbs, and mental health.Stealing people’s property when deemed “necessary.”Going along with one man’s decision (or a small group’s) that take the lives of multitudes of people.Demanding and forcing people’s loyalty to those ordering the destruction.Commanding people not to think for themselves.Traumatizing entire populations of people.Celebrating the violent death of human beings.Financially profiting off of the chaos and catastrophes.[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-31664" />Photo by Alexander Taranenko on Pexels.comDefy the devil & testify with “e-pistles”
God has used
The Bible epistles
To remove thistles
And gristle
From my heart
And now I whistle
With joy.
The 1st century Christ-followers overcame the devil “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” Jesus is living and working inside of every faithful Christ-follower, every single day. We all have testimonies about what He is doing in us, for us, and thru us. But do we share those devil-overcoming testimonies, or do we keep them quietly hidden under a bushel basket? One powerful way to share them is to write “e-pistles.” What an opportunity we 21st century Christians have to freely spread our daily testimonies around the world thru social media and blog posts.
I encourage every Christ-follower to shout it from the housetops of the internet by writing their own “e-pistles” full of their own testimonies and the word of God. Their “e-pistles” can be a few words, a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or even a few e-books. Jesus has called us to be His missionaries to our culture, not our culture’s mission field. (We are to influence our culture by sharing our testimonies and epiphanies about the living Jesus, not to be influenced by the sins and media of our culture.)
Paul wrote His epistles and look at the incredible way God has used them for 2,000 years! Paul had no idea that his letters would still be read and changing lives 2,000 years later! Write your testimonies. Share your stories of how Christ has worked and is working in and thru you. If you need a model to help get you started, find me on Facebook or Twitter. The living Word burns in my heart and I am so grateful to have an opportunity to share it far and wide thru writing “e-pistles.”
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Time to cut and remove the brush in church!
Here’s a picture of a pile of brush I cut and stacked. Whew! I’m tired.
We need to remove the brush from church and prepare the way for the Lord so that the living Jesus can open His fire hydrant and release His living water in and thru all of His followers and get us driving forward with Him as we break thru tradition and mere outward forms of godliness. Then we can continually partake of the tree of life. Let’s shout it from the housetop!
A church or religious organization isn’t “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus is!
Need something to help you with brush removal? Search for: Beyond Church Ekklesia.
The sad song (quote) about Hillsong
Someone said: “The church is like Noah’s Ark. Had it not been for the floodwaters outside, who could have stood the stench inside!” Boz Tchividjian, Billy Graham’s grandson, made a shocking statement when he was the lawyer for one of the victims during the Hillsong Church moral collapse: “The higher you go in church leadership the less likely you are to encounter Jesus.”
People who promote church as a religious format to be controlled by a pastor are assumed to be correct, while people who advocate the body of Christ gathering to be directly led by the Spirit (the risen Jesus) are too often labeled rebels. Perhaps it’s time to move beyond denial–to search the Scriptures in order to discover the “stench” in church and air it out with the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit.
The Protestant Reformers tried to do that, and they are praised today Let’s appreciate the people with the courage to challenge church today. Let’s “sola Scripture” again and meet together according to 1 Corinthians 14:26 so that we can actively do the New Testament 50+ one anothers when we gather in Jesus’ name.
The condition of church in the modern world causes me to search the Scriptures and use them to “unchurch.” I want to meet with brothers and sisters and be led by the Spirit, and not to be led by programs, organizations, human control, pride, tradition, curriculum, celebrity pastors, etc.
1 John 2:15 states: “Do not love the world (meaning the spirit and systems of the world) or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” When there’s love for worldliness in the church, the church is way off track. A true assembly of believers avoids worldliness!
[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-31640" />Photo by George Webster on Pexels.comMay 27, 2022
A Spirit-led band of brothers (and sisters)
A band of people connected heart-to-heart with one another and with the risen Jesus, while functioning together under His direct and active leadership, is a powerful demonstration of the body of Christ obeying the Head. A band of Christ-following brothers and sisters is never a passive group of spectators. It’s people actively and passionately engaged in and sharing a common mission–to be led by the Spirit as they focus on, follow, and obey the living Jesus.
Unless Christians begin to open up and pour out their heart to one another, they remain a group of isolated individuals instead of becoming a band of interconnected, Spirit-led brothers and sisters. A band of Christ-followers lets the living Jesus play the strings of their heart and bind them together in one accord.
Jesus built a band of sold-out disciples. Church settles for listening to one-man, Sunday morning recitals.
When the use of Scripture is limited to a verse or two to kick off a Sunday sermon, Christianity is in an incapacitated condition. Obeying the Bible together helps Christians bond into a band of heart-connected brothers and sisters.
To claim that Christians don’t need to follow the writings of the first Christians (compiled as the New Testament) is arrogance. The New Testament writers proclaim that the Old Testament is Scripture and quote Jesus as calling it the “Scriptures.”
The people I have the deepest, Christ-focused heart-connection with are my band. My wife and I pray together every day and minister to people as a team numerous times every week. We pray with another couple every Sunday morning and on Sunday night (together with another brother) co-lead a band of students at a tech school. We have several other couples and individuals who we pray with in person and sometimes on phone or Zoom.
I regularly Zoom with a band of brothers and meet with and or talk-pray on the phone with other brothers one on one. We are bound together in love and mutual accountability (not in formality). The brothers and sisters I’m bound to are also bound to other believers (many of whom I don’t know) thus creating an ever-expanding web of Christ-followers. Even social media has expanded my band to people with a shared vision whom I’ve never physically met but encourage me and read my writings. Reading the Daily Text (and the comments) for the past few months is binding my heart to several new people who are influencing me to keep pursuing Jesus.
May 26, 2022
Lightning people get the light-blocking bugs out
Christians are called to be lightning people:
Tiny bugs flying
And flashing light
In the night
Bring delight
To my sight.
They don’t hide their light!
Christ’s light, shinning in your heart, doesn’t need a covering. Uncover it for all to see. Be a lightning person who removes the light-blocking bugs from your heart. See Matthew 5:14-16.
When a Christ-filled person, who overflows with His hope, voluntarily steps into and embraces a hopeless situation in an incarnational way, it is no longer hopeless. Sometimes the best thing you can do in a situation that you can’t fix is to open your heart to people’s suffering and “weep with those who weep.”
People who are passionately in love with the living Jesus are automatically drawn together and to those who are suffering. They don’t require religious rules but are led to heart-to-heart connection by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus isn’t dead and gone, confined to history or Heaven. He’s present and active 24/7/365 and He wants to be your now Lord! Too often Christians would rather find a church that makes them happy than to live to please the Lord. Churches divide Christians into denominations, but Jesus wants to unite us!
To identify with and step into someone’s painful situation has been called “incarnational ministry.” I know a couple who many years ago moved into a violent, inner-city neighborhood with their children so that they could shine the light of Christ there. They crossed racial, cultural, and economic lines to fully embrace the people there and to open their home and their lives to them. I’ve been in awe of how they have given so much to demonstrate the love of Jesus and continue to do so as they still live and are entwined in that neighborhood.
Jesus writes on human hearts. Let Him be the “author and finisher of your faith.” We can hide from church people and preachers, but no one can hide from Jesus. He sees it all! When the risen Jesus is allowed to rule in someone’s heart, religious rules aren’t necessary!
The writings of the first Christians show how to encounter and walk with Jesus like they did. The Bible’s a handbook for light not a textbook for analysis.
If you’re spirituality dead, a Sunday religious life-support system won’t do you any good. We need the risen Jesus, not religion. Organized Christianity too often resists the direct leadership of Jesus and instead relies on institutionalism, tradition, and human authority.
If you don’t maintain an interactive relationship with the living Jesus, your religious rules can be ruthless. The Bible says move beyond church as usual! Hebrews 6:1: “Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity . . .” Get moving!
Spiritual life,
The risen Jesus
Living in you,
Doesn’t require
That you be continually hooked up
To a religious life-support system.
May 25, 2022
Spirit-led to focus on, follow, & glorify Jesus
We can’t be Spirit-led
If we’re unwilling
To move ahead.
Christians who don’t learn to be led by the Spirit are missing out on what it means to be a child of God. (See Romans 8:14.)
If Christians won’t learn to be led by the Spirit when they gather with friends in church, it’s much harder to learn it in a hostile world. Being led by the Spirit can’t be taught by sermons or lectures. It can only be learned by doing it–by actually listening to and obeying the Spirit.
If Christians knew how to be led by the Spirit as well as we know how to be led by our own desires, we’d experience continual miracles People who are led by the Spirit radiate the fruit of the Spirit and experience the gifts of the Spirit throughout the day.
When Christians are listening to and following Jesus, the “Good Shepherd,” they don’t need to be fenced in by religious rules. The best use of human free will is to continually choose to be led by God’s Spirit, not by our own opinions, feelings, and desires. We can’t be Spirit-led if we ignore or resist the Spirit’s inner promptings.
Who should be acclaimed by Christians? The Holy Spirit wants to keep the living Jesus front and center–”Christ alone, Cornerstone!” God said that He will share His glory with no man. How can a true ministry to proclaim Jesus carry a preacher’s name? Self-heralding is not Gospel preaching! Every Christ-follower is called to be a “fellow servant in the Lord”–to proclaim the Gospel in a dark world and to demonstrate the reality of the Gospel by serving one another in holiness and loving their enemies.
Humans like to count things, but we often neglect to count what counts the most. Jesus is the life. Let Him freely live inside you. Jesus is the truth. Let Him lead you to total honesty. Jesus is the way. Follow Him to peace and joy.
Fame
Shouldn’t go
To people who proclaim
The Gospel under their own name
But only to the One who is proclaimed.
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