Steve Simms's Blog, page 154

A little thinking about being thoughtful

Being thoughtful doesn’t mean being full of thoughts. It means being considerate of the needs and feelings of other people.

Try some consideration for other people and a little thoughtfulness about their point of view. It will help you see them in a more favorable light.

Courtesy helps people see your point of view. Rudeness blinds them to it.

People who are consistently considerate of other people find peace from their own pain and problems. When you show people respect, they usually reciprocate.

Try not to hurt people, even if they hurt you. If we don’t stop hurt, it will just keep spreading.

It takes courage to be courteous to all. There’s nothing lightweight about being polite!

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Disconnect from bondage–connect to freedom

When hearts connect, love appears. Open yours to God and to people.

I think I’m finally learning the art of peaceful bewilderment. There’s much I don’t understand, but that’s okay. When we let bewilderment blind us to hope, it leads us to bitterness.

To welcome evil thoughts is to drink poison that will mess you up. If you let yourself become distracted and directed by desires, you’ll be dominated by cravings.

Christianity isn’t theology to be figured out, but a lifestyle to be walked out. Sin is self-imposed limitation. Freedom is God-given revelation–hidden insight, brought to light. The living Jesus helps me be at peace even when I’m bewildered and befuddled.

How you see the Bible if your heart is: against God, negative; apathetic to God, boring; hungry for God, exciting. The Bible has been an amazing body shop for my mind. Reading it daily with an open heart has healed much of my mental wreckage.

The true seed of faith must first flow from your heart, not from your finances.

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The inside-insight-light

I believe that all humans are inwardly flawed and need supernatural help to consistently think and do what’s right. Left to our own thoughts, feelings, and desires we will cause pain and harm to ourselves and to other people. The good news is that according to John 1:9, Jesus gives light to everyone and according to John 1:12, to as many who receive Him, He gives them power to become children of God.

God’s light in people is called conscience. If we begin to listen to our conscience, it will give us light to see where we’re off track. It will show us our need for supernatural help and demonstrate to us that we can only consistently do what’s right by being inwardly transformed. Who can change us from the inside out? “If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creature; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.”

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A picture that dropped into my mind 40 years ago comes roaring forth today

About 40 years ago an image came to my mind: It was an emaciated man in a jail cell. His hands were grasping the bars and his forehead was pressed against them. He had a desperate look in his eyes. Then I noticed that the cell door was standing open, but he was facing the bars and couldn’t see the open door.

Two nights ago, I watched a beautiful, animated version of John Bunyan’s “Pilgram’s Progress” (written while he was in prison for his faith in Jesus for 12 years, from 1660-1672). The “interpreter” showed Christian Pilgram a vision of a desperate man in a jail cell who was looking through the bars but couldn’t see that the cell door was open. The very vision that I saw about 40 years ago. At the end of his journey, Christian Pilgram suddenly realized that the man he saw in the jail cell was himself.

This morning, on Valentine’s Day 2022, I just read a blog post and saw this: “Jesus comes right into the cell of our inmost self, the place where we are hopelessly locked up and so utterly deceived, we have made ourselves at home there–surviving in slavery, mistaking shackles for bracelets, mirrors for windows, and our small stories for the (God’s) Big Story. And He whispers to some and shouts to others, ‘Follow me! The door is open!'” Wow!!! What is God up to?

I was asking: “How is it possible that as an avid reader of the writings of Christ-followers who have lived during the past 2,000 years that I’ve never read or heard anything like my 40-year-old vision before, until now?” Then these words came to me. “This is a Valentine’s Day card from Me to you. It’s for such a time as this.”

“The door is open. Rejoice like Paul and Silas. Leave the cell of self and self-imposed despair and take many other prisoners with you. They will follow as you follow Me in glorious liberty! There’s no need for you to look back. Simply bask in My Presence and soak up all the awe you can! Whosoever will, let him come.”

Isaiah 6 was just brought to my mind:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

I told my wife all this about a half hour ago. She just rushed into the room and exclaimed: I was getting dressed and halfway listening to David Jeremiah on the radio. I just heard him say: “John Bunyan picked up the Bible and said: ‘This book will either keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.'” Another wow!!!

I just now searched WordPress for their free images under “jail cell.” This is the very first image that came up. Look at it!

Stop looking at the bars that are around you. Instead look to the Light and you will see God’s open door. Then leave your cell behind and begin to experience the beautiful freedom of daily following and obeying the risen Jesus!

After posting this, my wife and I went to lunch for Valentine’s Day, and I had another very unusual experience. While we were eating, a man I’ve never seen before came up to me and asked, “Are you a professor?” I said no and we got into a conversation. Somehow, within a couple of minutes we discovered that we were both born on the same day in the same year.

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Some super, bowl statements

Life’s a salad bowl.
Let us
Fill it
With the things
That make us whole.

Before you begin to scroll
Through your problems,
Count the blessings
In your bowl!

Make it your goal
To use self-control
And keep the bowl
In your heart
Full of hope.

When you feel
Like your bowl
Is empty,
Let Jesus console
Your soul
And fill you up.

What’s the most meaningful touchdown ever? Jesus’ knees touched down as He knelt with a bowl to wash His disciples’ feet.

Team Jesus is called to take Christ’s foot-washing bowl and to go show His love to everyone. A Christian’s life should be a bowl full of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

Jesus wants His disciples to be “fishers of men,” not goldfish in a religious bowl. His bowl wasn’t superficial. He filled it with water to serve people and wash their feet.

Religious affiliation
Without Jesus’ saturation
Filling the heart
Is mere recitation.

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Be more than a Christian audience member

Audiences gather for passive observation–as assemblies of spectators. Jesus calls disciples, not audience members.

In the Bible, Christians are portrayed as a family, as an army, as the body of Christ, but never as a passive audience. A group gathered to worship Jesus isn’t an audience. It’s an ekklesia–people “called out” to all pour out adoration and obedience to Him.

I love the non-spectator, unprogrammed, Spirit-led Christianity of the Bible. Outward reformation, without inner transformation, seldom lasts. Jesus changes people from the inside out.

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Desires & feelings vs. conscience . . .

Many people are
Asleep to what’s real,
So they miss
The daily thrill
Of being alive.

Popular culture declares that our emotions and desires are real and definitive of who we are. The truth is: Human feelings are frequently false, and our desires are often deceptive.

We need to base our life on something more accurate than our feelings and desires. Fortunately, we have a built-in navigation system that can stabilize and direct us. It’s called our conscience. Don’t follow your heart if your heart is unwilling to follow your conscience.

If you refuse to go where your conscience leads you, guilty feelings will let you know that you’re off track. To try to medicate guilt away is like silencing a fire alarm.

Your conscience does double duty. It warns you against doing wrong. Then it self-proclaims an ongoing, guilty verdict when you do.

Our conscience is our true connection to reality. When we override our feelings and desires and follow our conscience instead, it will guide us to peace and joy.

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I-examinations help us see more clearly

If the lenses
In our heart
Aren’t regularly
Cleaned by us,
We see the world
With bias.

The lens
Of our heart
Is often so dirty
That we don’t know
It needs to be cleansed.

Some lenses make life look better. Look at life thru those lenses. If you’ll start to see your life through fresh, hope-filled lenses, you’ll begin to feel like you have a whole new life.

If you only look at life thru the cold-eyed lens of data, you’ll miss much that your heart has to teach you. It’s easy to become legalistically blind to the fact that people can love and be kind to each other, even when they disagree.

As humans, we sometimes wear blindfolds, but we sincerely believe they’re lenses that help us see better. Such deception isn’t rare.

Here’s a curious observation: I wrote a book about race and some of my white friends have strongly criticized it without even reading it. Racial healing must have the lens of truth as its foundation. The longer we ignore or deny the cruelty in our past, the more we delay healing.

Contemporary culture has trained us to look at life thru a lens that blurs our sin and makes us think that we’re good people. Let the risen Jesus be your ophthalmologist and give you daily I-examinations. To adjust our inner lenses so we can see beyond our biases is called repentance.

My heart was blurry, and people looked scary (especially those who were a different color than me). Then Jesus put His lenses on my heart and let me see that all people need love and compassion.

Jesus gives me powerful lenses for seeing the world–love, joy, peace, hope, faith, honesty, patience, kindness, and on and on! If we’re not careful, going to church can become so habitual that it acts like Son-glasses and dims the reality of the Son of God.

God’s looking for people who will speak truth with love and compassion, not with anger or pride. Beliefs about Jesus that don’t make you want to love, follow, and obey Him daily, fall short of true faith.

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Did churches stop the Jesus Movement of the 1970s?

I saw churches
Gradually stop
The Jesus Movement.
Millions of young people
Who were spontaneously thrilled
By the living Jesus,
Were wooed into formal church
And are now old people
Who seem satisfied with religion
And appear to be
More focused on politics
Than on the living Jesus.

4 practical suggestions to experience ekklesia

Every time you see the word church in the Bible, it’s a coverup/mistranslation of the Greek word ekklesia, which literally means called out ones. It was the proper name for the interactive, city council in ancient Greek city states, where anyone present could speak in the meeting. Jesus said that He would build His ekklesia. He’s still building it today. Here are some practical ways we can experience Jesus’ ekklesia in the present.

In a group of Christ-followers, ask God to speak; Everyone listen; Then tell or do what He says. (See 1 Corinthians 14:26.)Gather in a small group of believers; Ask the Holy Spirit to bring Scriptures to everyone’s mind. Everyone share them as they come to mind.When you meet, minister to each other by everyone gathering around each person one at a time and then praying over them and giving them words of encouragement.For an ekklesia (Jesus-led) Bible insight time: Read a few verses from the Bible together; Ask God to show each person what He wants them to get from those verses; Let each person present share any insights they get about the verses; Then read more verses and repeat the process for as long as you like. (The Bible is an amazing spiritual hearing aid. Reading it amplifies God’s voice. When you feel crushed and hope is hushed, rush to read and talk about its life-giving words.)

Experience Jesus’ ekkesia for yourself! Why not invite some Christian friends to your home and try one of these four ekklesia releasing ideas? I’ve tried them all and they really work. People (sometimes slowly at first) begin to share their heart with each other. The Holy Spirit fills the room. It’s amazing. It just requires some patience and faith.

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