Steve Simms's Blog, page 149

Boosted?

When you boast
You need humility
When you feel busted
You need to be boosted.
You don't need
Another Sunday message
From a mere man.
You need to hear
The inner Messenger:
Christ in you,
The hope of glory.I fill my mind and heart
With booster thoughts
That lift me up
And make me smile.You're surrounded by
Elephants inspiring the room,
Bountiful blessings
Waiting to
Give you a boost.Moral boosters
Are better
Than moral busters.
Google:
Elephants Inspiring the Room.[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-30895" />Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Where’s Jesus today?

Two Christ-followers on the road to Emmaus wondered out loud where Jesus was as He walked along beside them and engaged them in conversation. They remind me of many contemporary Christians who wonder where Jesus is when He plainly stated, “I will be in you,” and Paul wrote, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It requires far less commitment for us to theologize and analyze about the indwelling Christ than it does to hear and obey Him. It’s easier to quench His Spirit than it is to surrender to Him and let Him control us from within. That’s why Paul tells us to: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?”

Jesus once spoke to me and said: “The worst state a person can be in is to think he is saved when he isn’t.” If Jesus is living inside you, you will know it. Rivers of living water will flow out of your innermost being. You will mount up with wings as eagles. You will be a new creation and old things will pass away. You will have a testimony about how the living Jesus gave you a new heart. You will experience joy unspeakable and peace that passes understanding. The fruit of the Spirit will be manifested in your daily lifestyle. You will hear Jesus’ voice. You will be led by the Spirit. When you disobey Him, you will be so deeply convicted within that you quickly repent. Is Christ in you?

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Lies are dolls that adults try to use to mask the truth

If a people have the courage, they can always tell the truth! Lying is a cowardly act.

Truth tears down anything that’s built on lies. That’s why total honesty is so feared.

Lies are dolls that adults play make-believe with while childishly pretending that they’re real. When you consider a lie to be “your truth,” that’s full deception.

To be good at lying is to be a major failure at telling the truth. No matter how many people believe it, a lie will always remain a lie.

Here’s how to be miserable: 1) Do things that make you feel guilty, 2) Then deny the guilt that’s stomping around inside you.

Telling lies
Leads to guilt.
Then guilt tries
To hide behind
Even more lies.

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Do a Spirit-led act today!

The early Christians engaged in Spirit-led acts that demonstrated the presence and reality of the risen Jesus to an unbelieving world. Nowadays, especially in the Western world, Spirit-led acts are rare among Christians. It’s time that we listen to Jesus and do what He says! Do a Spirit-led act today!

When I first encountered the risen Jesus Christ and began to read the New Testament (especially the book of Acts) it stretched the fabric of my mind. I began to see much divergence between the spectatorship of the contemporary church and the discipleship of the first century ekklesia (a gathering where Christ-followers come together to engage in Spirit-led acts under the direct Headship of the risen Jesus).

In the book of Acts, God is actively and powerfully using ordinary Christians to help make Jesus’ enemies His footstool as the body of Christ is growing and expanding and transforming hearts and lives on every page. The early Christians were in the game to proclaim and demonstrate the power and presence of the living, resurrected Jesus to everyone they met. They “turned the world upside down.” Today we’re seeing the reverse: the world is turning Christian morals and values upside down.

Google: The Joy Of Early Christianity.

Which Jesus should be followed?

Danger: A false Jesus is very misleading! “For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”

The Bible warns against following or believing in “another Jesus.” It’s easy to follow a Jesus who is less than the Jesus of the Bible who is seated and enthroned at the right hand of the Father and yet who is actually present and actively working whenever two or three gather in His name.

What are some examples of “another Jesus?” Here are a few: an institutional Jesus confined to a church service or denomination, a Jesus stuck in history, a powerless and infantile Jesus, a patriotic Jesus nationalized to a particular country, a prosperity Jesus, a motivational Jesus, a white Jesus, a validating Jesus who we use to justify our behaviors, a condemning Jesus who we use to condemn others, a self-pleasing Jesus, a theologically distorted Jesus used to twist the Bible, etc.

All of those are a poor replacement for the living, resurrected, ascended, enthroned, ruling, present and active Lord Jesus Christ who actually lives in, empowers, and directs His true followers! Accept no substitute for Him and His moment-by-moment presence and Lordship in your life!

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Deconstructing the lies & half-truths within us

When you obey
And defend
Your deceptive desires,
You distort
Who you
Really are.

Truth tries
To shine
Freely
In the skies
of human hearts
But lies
Disguise
Its light.

Truth aligns
With reality.
Lies don’t.

As humans, our distorted thoughts, feelings, and desires are our greatest source of deception. Desire distorts belief. We too often believe what we want to be true and deny the truth that we don’t want to admit.

Truth looks at things from the point of view of eternity, not from the narrow perspective of time. Eventually time will end. What then?

In the meantime, our desires, feelings, and opinions can manipulate your mind and make you believe lies. Don’t let them. It’s human nature to want our desires and opinions to be true, but in reality, they often aren’t. It’s much easier to align your life to your feelings, desires, and opinions that it is to align it with truth.

When we value and/or trust our opinions, feelings, and desires more than truth that contradicts them, we’re deceived. Believing a half-truth is like trying to cook a dish with half a recipe. People who arrogantly accuse other people of lying are frequently trying to hide their own lies and deception.

Selective truth is often more deceptive than an outright lie. In difficult or embarrassing situations, it’s usually easier to be a liar than a truth-teller. I’m fortunate to know many trustworthy truth-tellers who walk in the light and sincerely try to avoid spreading deception.

You have the power to: Determine your desires, to exchange your emotions for truth, and to opt out of your misguided opinions. Regardless of our public image, deep down inside (and in spite of our attempts at denial) we all know what we’re really like.

If you make people feel like you’re trying to manipulate them, they’ll be unwilling to hear what you’re trying to say. Lies like to be loud. Truth often whispers.

Warfare weaponizes lies and uses deception to help destroy human lives. It’s best avoided.

Religion is often used as a cloak to cover the guilt of wrongdoing when it should be a light to expose and overcome it. Reading the Bible daily makes me face and admit truths about myself that I’d prefer to deny.

Jesus said that He is the truth, and He is confounding. He continually challenges and confounds my desires, feelings, and opinions–turning them upside down. Although it’s quite painful to watch many of my hopes and dreams be deconstructed and dismantled by the living Jesus, I try to let Him have His way, even when everything in me seems to want to go another way. Daily surrender is far from easy but thank God for His grace that freely offers us the power to lay down our wants, emotions, and thoughts in order to follow Jesus instead.

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Spiritual growth or dry religion?

If we won’t let the living Jesus install and run His software operating system in our heart, we’re only playing with Christianity. Religious bits and rites can’t overcome the malware in the human heart. Only full surrender to Jesus and His programming can do that.

If we’re not careful, rite-handed religion can squeeze the spiritual life out of our heart. “Quench not the Spirit.” Unless you allow the risen Jesus to write His will on your heart, a religious rite will do you little good.

Professional priests and ministers are riters. They conduct religious rites and services for passive people. It’s better to sit through the wrong rite with the right heart, than the right rite with the wrong heart.

Religion conducts weekly sit-ins for human rites. Sitting through a religious rite is meaningless if we won’t listen to our conscience and let Jesus empower us to live right. No religious rite can make us right with God. A humble prayer from a sincere and hungry heart is infinitely more powerful than any heartless, religious ritual.

Too many Christians abandon spiritual growth and begin to coast down the track of dry religion. If you’re not as excited about and as obedient to Jesus as you once were, you’ve lost your first love for Him.

If Jesus isn’t the Lord (the innermost Ruler) of your thoughts, desires, and emotions, He’s not your Lord at all. God invites you to surrender your distorted desires and dysfunctional emotions to Jesus and to let Him replace them with His presence. If you don’t lay down your efforts to replace your self-driven behaviors with religious-driven behaviors, you’ll be ever stuck on the treadmill of guilt-motivated human effort.

Full repentance doesn’t just push a particular sin aside. It openly and sorrowfully acknowledges a sin (confession) and humbly surrenders it to God in order to “prepare the way of the Lord”–to allow the risen Jesus to replace that sin with His presence and power (with the reality of the present-moment kingdom and government of God).

If we won’t show warmth and kindness to people we disagree with, our Christianity’s very weak. If Christians want to resist a mandate. we should resist this one: Any church routine that mandates that we quench God’s Spirit.

Anybody can look around in a church service and count the number of attendees. Only God can count the number of disciples.

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Happiness isn’t routine. It’s spontaneous.

Routine clicks along
Throughout the day,
Avoiding fresh ideas
Along the way.

Rethink outside the rut! It is insensitive to innovation. Routine rigorously rejects creativity. Too much routine rigidly structures life and shuts down spontaneity. The atrophy of spontaneity then completes the cycle leading back to humdrum routine.

Routine makes life seem ordinary. It blinds us to the many extraordinary things that surround us. Happiness isn’t routine. It’s spontaneous.

Routine is the route that runs through the rut of mindless repetition. It can easily become a daily parade of dullness. Routine and monotony blend into boredom. The worst routine is mind-routine–letting your brain never gain the desire to think beyond its programming. Atrophy and complacency follow closely behind routine.

Routine can be a chain that holds people back from the art and adventure of creativity. To reawaken your creativity, begin to frequently reroute your routine. With no goals to passionately pursue, life quickly settles into the rust of routine. Anything that rocks and rattles your routine gives you an opportunity to be more creative.

Because they feel like their routine will threatened, many people refuse to listen to or consider a new point of view. Every day you neglect to learn something new strengthens your captivity to routine. When routine rules out spontaneity, real joy becomes a rarity.

Routine reduces life to mere repetition. It requires no thought, no hope, no decision making, no creativity–nothing but running in a daily rut. Daily routine easily becomes a mindless process that’s repeated until death. Make your life more than that!

There's so much to be seen
Beyond the machine
Of your daily routine.
Step out of the ravine
And see the unseen.[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="Happiness isn't routine. It's spontaneous." class="wp-image-30825" />Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

Freedom from the routine of fear

Fear happens when we allow evil to terrorize our mind and heart. Personal, powerful, ongoing awareness of the presence, love, and protection of the living Jesus knocks fear out of the park. It gives us peace, hope, and faith that we are “more than conquerors,” enabling and empowering us to confidently look “not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are unseen.”

Religion relies on routine, but there’s nothing routine about an ongoing relationship with the risen Jesus. Christianity should be much more than a Sunday morning routine. Christians are called to be led by the Spirit, not to rely on routine.

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Mental mandates are a bigger threat than mask mandates

Freedom from the pain
Of our mental mandates
Often requires us
To rewire our brain.

Life is a flow
Of moments.
You can’t stop
Their flow,
Even if you refuse
To let go.

I’ve seen
Love negate
The mandate
Of hate
And change the state
Of a human heart.

When you
Step aside from self
You’re free
To see your life
Differently.

Mental mandates are thoughts that try to tell and compel you to feel and do wrongful things. Inner mandates (compulsions, bad habits, and addictions) are actively trying to destroy your freedom. Resist and overcome them! If we Americans had put as much energy into overcoming tormenting mental mandates as we have fighting masks, we’d be saints.

Inner mandates muddle the mind and compel it to blindly follow feelings and desires. They try to steal your free will and make you a slave to their compulsion. People who neglect to decode daily life and discern what really matters, quickly surrender to the mandates of the mind and emotions.

As human beings, some lies infest all of our minds and continually try to mandate that we believe and follow their falsehood. When people allow their desires to make them feel like a powerless pawn, they soon surrender any attempts at self-control.

Overcoming compulsive mental mandates is a great achievement and a most worthy goal. Mental mandates and inner compulsions can only be overcome by mental and spiritual weapons. Physical effort can’t prevail against them.

People who angrily resist external mandates, often weakly submit to internal ones. When they say they can’t overcome a thought, a habit, or an attitude, they’re surrendering to a controlling, internal mandate.

Unmask the mental mandates that are trying to make you do wrong. Openly confess any sin that you’re feeling compelled to do.

Break your date with compulsive mental mandates. Refuse to go out with them. Have the insight to do right. The use of artificial stimulates frequently leads to subservience to mental and emotional mandates that take control of your life.

The more self-centered we are the less we’re aware of other people’s pain and struggles. Then compassion illudes us.

Most people know how to let the mind wander. Few know how to let it wonder free from mental mandates.

Self-disclosureAnd full exposureTo someone you trustCan heal your inner painAnd ease the strainOn your brain.The truthWill set you free!When people startTo listen to and speakThe language of the heart,They become awareOf the many commonalitiesThat we all share.Then they begin to liberateThemselves fromThe mandate of hate.The inner channelsWhere rivers of living waterWill flow from within usCan be cleared or cloggedBy our thoughts, feelings and behaviors.To prepare our heartFor the way of the Lord,We must clear our inner channelsAnd let His SpiritFreely flow from within us.