Steve Simms's Blog, page 159

Inner yearning, churning, & burning says you’re not a bot!

Too many people are like bots. They perform tasks and spread unverified ideas automatically, without thinking or discernment.

People are created to be more than a bot being carried around in a human body and controlled by predetermined programming. We’ve been endowed with the freedom and responsibility of choice.

What you allow to go on inside of you (in your mind and heart) impacts you more than what’s going on around you. We need to inwardly regulate and control our desires, thoughts, and feelings — to nurture and embrace good ones and to reject and oppose wrongful ones.

What’s yearning, churning, and burning inside you? Desire for God or rebellion against Him? When there’s little kindness and warmth radiating from people, you can be pretty certain that their heart isn’t on fire for Jesus.

When something important is on fire, people yell to let people know. When your heart’s on fire for Jesus, you gotta tell!

If Jesus is in you,
You’ll be
Burning,
Churning,
And yearning
For more of God.

Grace freely gives us the inner power to avoid being a bot by regulating our desires and doing what God requires.

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Slavery — the bottom line

To claim that American slavery was in any way justified, disrespects and devalues the people who were enslaved by it.

“If God wills that it (the Civil War) continues until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'” –Abraham Lincoln

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Looking for Jesus?

Jesus’ body assembles and becomes visible when people gather in His presence to all listen to His inner voice and do what He prompts them to do.

To ignore your conscience is to ignore the living Jesus. He’s ignored so often!

Christians have been given inner weapons that can make every thought obey Jesus. Use them.

Alignment with God is better than approval and applause from people. When you feel broken and confused, Jesus can repair you. Ask Him to.

God happenings occur frequently but their source is easily overlooked.

Truth! Anytime you’re glad that church is over, it means that you didn’t really want to be there in the first place.

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“My truth” is often a myth or a mess

When you continually think, say, and pursue mood-lifting words, you feel little need for self-medication. Continually align your thoughts, words, and actions with peace and joy. Then your emotions will eventually follow.

Our thoughts, words, and actions produce outcomes. By choosing them, we create positive or negative consequences.

The more we’re unaligned with our conscience, the harder it is to be happy. When we align with our conscience, guilt fades away. “My truth” is often a myth or a mess, but the truth sets me free.

Choose to live in light but have compassion for those who choose darkness. Show them an alternative but don’t live like they do.

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Icicle miracle? Finger of God?

God amazed me this morning. I was writing about the omnipresence of the risen Jesus. When I finished, I went to the kitchen sink to get some water and I saw this outside the window–a 2 1/2-inch icicle sticking straight out from the side of the deck railing!

I’ve never seen an icicle hanging horizontally before. There are no footprints or animal tracks. How is this possible? I believe it’s a sign from Jesus.

The second picture is a close up of the “impossible” icicle. It looks like the finger of God.

The omnipresent Jesus (He’s everywhere!)

Jesus isn’t limited to religious ceremonies, pious people or holy places. We can have access to the risen Jesus anytime and anyplace.

The risen Jesus is not just here or there. He’s everywhere! The omnipresent Jesus is always around, even when we ignore Him. Human unawareness has no impact on the omnipresence of the living Jesus.

The omnipresent Jesus isn’t restricted to any place or time. You can’t keep Him locked up in church buildings or in the first century.

Anytime or anywhere, the living Jesus can be sensed by a human heart. If we’re unaware of His presence, He’s not hiding. We are.

When Christianity overlooks the omnipresence of the risen Jesus, it replaces Him with organized religion. Organized religion tends to opt out on the omnipresent Jesus and to substitute planned and orchestrated church services.

The religious doctrine of omnipresence should never be substituted for our continually experiencing the omnipresent Jesus. Since the living Jesus is omnipresent, we can interact with Him directly without going through religious places or ceremonies.

I love meeting people who belong to those unified in God’s Spirit. Because of the omnipresence of Jesus, we experience immediate heart-connection. The Bible tells Christians “to keep the unity of the Spirit.” If we stay united with the Spirit (the omnipresence of Jesus), we’ll be united with each other.

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I saw a fried egg and realized that my skin color is closer to the yolk than to the white.

Let’s crack the shell that evaluating people by skin color has used to imprison our culture in centuries of racial injustice and misunderstanding.

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Inner healing thru mental discipline

The contemporary idea that freedom is being mentally undisciplined and letting your thoughts, emotions, and desires run loose is a lie. To abandon mental discipline is to accept inner anarchy.

The thoughts that you welcome and allow to remain in your mind mold your emotions and desires into their image. We have the ability to discipline our thinking and to develop a healthy, happy mindset, but not without much focus and effort.

Mental discipline is only developed by hard work. It’s not a skill that we’re born with.

Mental discipline is a vital part of genuine self-care. It involves paying attention to your thoughts and rejecting the harmful ones.

Persistent mental discipline can help restore and repair your brain. The power of a disciplined brain can avoid much inner pain. Still, changing our thinking habits requires much mental discipline.

One reason we don’t want to understand people who see things differently than we do is that it requires much mental discipline. Perhaps that’s the same reason we lack self-understanding.

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Mental discipline can overcome much internal dysfunction

As humans, many of our problems are caused by an undisciplined mind. An undisciplined mind isn’t a place of freedom. It’s awash with unruly thoughts. To neglect to discipline your mind is to surrender it to chaos.

Happiness depends on mental discipline and mental discipline is like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets. Mental discipline involves learning to bring your thoughts, feelings, and desires under your control.

I believe my mind was designed to create inner peace and happiness. If it’s not, it’s because I’m letting it be undisciplined. Self-love, without mental discipline, is fake.

Mental disciple doesn’t just happen. It requires your active, ongoing focus and effort. We can try to numb our inner pain, or we can let it motivate us to focus on and work on mental discipline.

Developing mental discipline can overcome much of our internal dysfunction. It gives us the ability to resist and reject harmful thoughts. Mental discipline is essential to mental health. It gives us the ability to make our mind behave in healthy ways.

Harmful thought patterns need to be taken seriously. They tend to become habitual and to cause much pain and dysfunction.

Life-deforming ideas seldom lead to happiness. For instance, malice makes much misery but caring creates friendly, cheerful connections. An unhealthy, unstable society results from unhealthy, unstable individuals.

Too many people confuse how they think and behave, with who they are. We choose our thoughts and behaviors. They aren’t who we are.

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If you’re not unworthy of grace, you can’t receive it.

Receiving God’s grace requires that we be undeserving, unworthy, and unentitled. I need it every moment.

Every day a Christian goes without a fresh encounter with the living Jesus is a spiritual setback.