Steve Simms's Blog, page 140

Inspired by people who are different than me!

Human beings are fascinating. I’m especially fascinated by humans who look, think, or act differently than me. Listening to people’s stories and trying to see life from their perspective teaches me so much. When a stranger opens up to me, I learn that though we’re different in our circumstances, culture, or color, we’re basically the same inside our heart and I feel a deep connection–what the Bible calls love.

As a white college student, I sold “Ebony’s Pictorial History of Black America” door-to-door. Often strangers would begin to share with me their personal pain from racial discrimination. As I listened my heart would break for them, that people who were inwardly like me had been made to suffer because of their outward color.

As a man who has never even once been drunk, or high on drugs, I was the counselor and chaplain in a Salvation Army alcohol and drug rehab center. I listened to more than 1,400 men tell their story of how addiction had devasted their life. Though I had walked a different path, their pain was the same as mine and we often prayed together as our hearts embraced.

As a Bible school teacher for a time in India, working with young adults from a culture I knew nothing about, I was inspired by their passion to follow and obey Jesus in a nation where their fellow citizens saw Christianity as a foreign, intrusive, and unwelcome religion. Shortly after I left, one of my students was murdered for his faith. My heart deeply connected with those beautiful Christ-followers who were willing to be looked-down on for their beliefs yet continued to show kindness and compassion to all.

As an older adult who knows nothing about cars, I’ve been part of a team leading a ministry to a diverse group of young adults fresh out of high school who are learning to be mechanics and are passionate about cars. Beyond the automotive talk and across the generations, I see their heart and we feel a deep heart-connection between us.

Invited by The Salvation Army to start a “non-traditional church” in one of their church buildings in a poor neighborhood in the process of gentrifying, my wife and I started a sermon-free Sunday service where anyone present could share what God put on their heart. An amazingly diverse group of people began to gather and be led by God’s Spirit. As we weekly saw into each other’s heart, our diversity was covered by the beauty of Spirit-led heart-connection and salted with supernatural compassion, peace, and joy.

If you would like to know more about some of these experiences, search for: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind. Thank you.

Jesus, where do You go to church?

I asked Jesus where He goes to church, and this is what came to me:

Anytime people gather in My name I show up, whether they call it church or not. It can be two people praying together in a coffee shop or a mega church of thousands. Since I reside inside My followers, many people take me to church with them. Of course, they also take Me wherever they go, whether they intend to or not.

When I’m in a church service, a few individuals open their heart to Me, talk to Me, and listen to My voice. Most however listen to the preacher (or daydream) and I have trouble getting their full attention.

I don’t attend church to be a spectator, but to be the literal Head. I want to direct and run the meeting Myself, but very rarely am I allowed to do that. There’s seldom any room for Me in the program. When I am allowed to take over a service, people call it revival because hearts are supernaturally changed, and lives are miraculously transformed. I would love to do that every time my followers meet, but they close the door to My active involvement and prefer to have me as a passive spectator in their church. It’s painful being ignored by the people I love.

Still, I keep showing up, waiting for the day when people will begin to notice that I’m actually present and speaking to them. I long for the entire congregation to individually listen to Me, and each person actually begin to say and to do what I tell them to. Then they would begin to see and experience My glory in unimaginable ways.

I’ve been waiting a long, long time, but I’m patient. If you’re reading this, please begin to listen to Me both in church and throughout the day as I talk directly to you. My sheep hear My voice. Listen and obey what I say.

When My followers truly and humbly open their hearts to Me and to each other, they’re amazed that the way that I speak in each person is so much in sync. If My speaking in people was merely subjective, it wouldn’t so precisely fit together with what I’m saying in other people, but it does!

“Love your enemies” is a call to be kind-frontational

When people are blunt
And confront
Without kindness
It’s an affront.
Keep kindness up front.

Some people harden their heart into a heavily fortified fort and live continually in their confront zone. Get out of your confront zone. Learn to kind-front people. Kind-frontation occurs when kindness is allowed to flow from human heart to human heart.

Try not to shy away from kind-frontation. Go ahead and spread kindness wherever you go. Kind-frontation is willing to listen to the other side of the story.

When people are confrontational, respond by being kind-frontational. Life goes better if instead of confronting people you kind-front them–speaking the truth with kindness. When people are on the track to confrontation, kindness is an escape route.

Kind-front life. Keep your heart and mind focused on being kind to all. When you’re involved in a confrontation, remember that kindness is a spiritual weapon with the power to change people’s hearts.

No matter how strongly we confront it and rail against it, reality doesn’t change. Truth is never inconsistent. People who are secure in their beliefs have no need to be hostile when confronted.

It usually works better to kind-front life heart-on than to confront it head-on. When confrontation begins to escalate, shift to kind-frontation. The darkness in a person begins to dissipate when it’s persistently kind-fronted.

Approving of people’s wrongdoing abandons them to its captivity. That isn’t kind-frontation.

“Love your enemies” is a call to be kind-frontational. Love isn’t approval. It knows how to confront wrongdoing with humility and kindness.

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Breathing the air of prayer

My heart continually
Cries out to the living Jesus.
Grasping and gasping, it travails
With a fanatically fixated focus
Because it knows no other
Solution for life’s situations
Or healing for its pain.
My brokenness ignites
My prayers with passion
And keeps me calling
Day and night
On the One who loves me most.

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What is cussing?

Profanity is often:

a weak attempt to appear strong. an insincere use of words that ignores their literal meaning.insult language that can easily create a hostile environment.an intimidated attempt to appear intimidating. a lack of self-control.an irrational and subjective use of the power of speech.a way to alienate people who want to keep their mind positive.adolescent talk masquerading as adult language.a limited vocabulary.a coverup for fear.the way to cuss and provoke a fuss.a way to use words without thinking.a means of making a phrase sound like a tantrum.the compulsive attempt to appear in control.a way to get rid of people who want meaningful conversation.the manifestation of a desire to bully.a bad habit that a lot of people would like to overcome.a sign of insecurity.a lack of originality.[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-31555" />Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Slavery/human trafficking (past or present) is evil

To be antislavery is to stand against the immorality of slavery. Slavery is now legally wrong almost everywhere. I believe that it has always been an evil thing.

It violates what Jesus said is the 2nd greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Nobody wants to be a slave and to have their free will continually denied by force and brutality. People who hold (or held) a person in bondage and claim them as their property, aren’t showing them love. There is nothing loving about human trafficking!

Whether it is present day or in the past, there’s one thing I know about human trafficking. It is cruel and immoral! Search for: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind. Thank you.

The joy of inner objectivity

Self is subjective. There’s no objectivity without self-denial. Subjectivity tries to defend what we want. Objectivity tries to discover what is really true, even if we don’t want it to be so.

People’s thoughts, feelings, and desires can be objectively tested against reality. They don’t have to be subjectively accepted. To identify people by their self-proclaimed feelings and desires is subjective. Their feelings and desires don’t define who they are!

Without honesty there can be no objectivity. When the human conscience says, “Be honest,” it’s being objective! If you’re unwilling to openly go against your feelings, desires, and opinions, you can’t be objective!

If you consistently see things as you want them to be, you’ll wander in deception. You’ll seldom stumble into truth.

Cherry picking facts that confirm your feelings and desires is a weak attempt to make subjectivity seem objective. Subjectivity interprets life as you want it to be. Objectivity tries to interpret life as it is. Pride interprets things subjectively. It requires genuine humility to things as they really are.

My own inner voice is subjective. It twists things to please me. The inner voice of Jesus is objective. It tells me the way things really are, even when I don’t want to know.

People who follow the risen Jesus aren’t living by their own rules. They deny their own rules and self-focused desires in order to obey Him.

The purpose of
The Gospel story
Isn’t to supply material
For boring sermons.
It’s to empower people
To live in God’s glory!

Life becomes amazing when you open your heart to Spirit-led visioning. Christianity becomes “a spectator sport” when no commitment or responsibilities are expected, and no Spirit-led objectives set.

If you’re a Christ-follower your heart should be full of live wires flowing with the risen Jesus, not dead power lines that carry no current. If it’s not your primary objective to hear, follow, and obey the living Jesus, it won’t “just happen.”

Faith without implementation is empty, religious speculation. Christianity was never intended to be aimless sitting in church. Jesus said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

Christians aren’t called to defeat people. They’re called to defeat their own temptations and ungodly desires.

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The power of mutual submission

Here’s some good news: The kingdom of God is one invisible nation, indivisible, with deliverance and healing for all who will humbly receive it.

When we’re radically submitted to the risen Jesus as citizens of God’s kingdom, living in humble, ongoing obedience to His will, we begin to walk in mutual submission to and heart-felt service to one another. We begin to “Consider others better than yourself,” and “Submit to one another.” That consideration and submission “is fitting in the Lord.” It means being full of love for others and without harshness.

Christians today have trouble embracing mutual submission because church for many centuries has tended to follow an authoritarian model. Although we say that Christ is the Head, functionally He’s actually a figurehead, while a pastor literally runs the service and operates as if he is the head. Jesus gave an alternative model. He said: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”

A great person serves others without pulling rank, exploiting positional power, or boasting in titles or credentials. For example, a great husband serves his wife, and a great wife serves her husband. When members of the body of Christ gather as His Spirit-led town hall meeting, God’s kingdom comes and brings submission to God and to one another.

In the light of the Cross of Christ, there are no human rights. None of us are entitled to anything. We’ve earned nothing. We’re doing better than we deserve. Everything we have is through grace and mercy. Now we need to show grace and mercy to all people, because God so love the world that . . .

The pride in me causes me to resist humbling myself. To be truly humble I must resist and die to my pride. “Consider others better than yourself” today.

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Discipleship goes beyond religious rules, methodology & theology

The only way a human can continually manifest the character of Jesus (the fruit of the Spirit) is by denying and dying to the desires and demands of sin and of self (the flesh) and instead, being continually led by the Spirit (the living Jesus). That goes beyond theology and methodology. It’s an ongoing choice to embrace love, sacrifice, surrender, obedience, and relationship, and to follow “Christ in you” no matter what the cost.

It’s not enough to be inspired and informed by Scripture. We must be inwardly transformed by it–overcome and undone. “Let the word of God dwell in you richly.” “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.”

The living Jesus isn’t subjective. “Christ in you” isn’t your whims or opinions. He’s real and He speaks objectively within human hearts! Listen. Humans also have an inner objectivity that often resists personal feelings, desires, or opinions. It’s called conscience.

Religious methodology and theology cannot mend this heart of mine, but the living Jesus does! When we self-identify as human, we’re all in the same boat.

The New Testament is full of “one another” commands. I’m so glad God has given me committed, radical Christ-followers to walk in the Spirit with! I need other humans to help me walk with Jesus. Jesus is building communities of the heart–people who are connected heart-to-heart with Him and with all who love and obey Him.

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All skin-colors are created equal!

People who propagate
The idea that skin-color
Is a justification for hate
Desecrate
Human rights.Search for:Off the RACE Track--From Color-Blind to Color-Kind.[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-31519" />Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com