Steve Simms's Blog, page 164

Wellbeing, well-thinking, & well-doing

If we’re being driven by our thoughts, desires, and emotions, we’ve given up our self-control. If we resist negative mood swings, it’s harder for our emotions to push us around.

Life is full of both reasons for sadness and reasons for joy. Which reasons do you search for?

Our mindset sets the tone for our life. The more we set our mind on hope, the better our life will look to us. Both emotional and mental wellbeing require well-doing and well-thinking.

We have the ability to embrace or to resist individual thoughts, but too often we’re indifferent to that life-changing power. Try not to be unaware of what you’re talking and thinking yourself into.

Even when life outwardly seems to be going right, what’s wrong inside of us continues to need an inner cure. We can be embittered by life, or we can be empowered by it, but not both at the same moment.

It’s hard for other people to fix us from the outside because the ability to control our thoughts and behaviors resides inside us. If we’re not the choreographer of the thoughts that dance thru our brain, we’ve turned our mind over to chaos.

Walking in the light and courageously letting others see the inner burdens that we’re carrying, can somehow makes us feel lighter. Light is healing.

When negative, destructive, and/or tormenting feelings are fed and allowed to grow large, they cause much misery. Death by human hands saddens me. Suicide, violence, and abortion, all shout that we humans fail to treasure the gift of life.

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Unofficial thoughts that reach beyond the superficial

This is unofficial,
But between artificial
And superficial,
Life today is fickle.

As humans, if we won’t be completely honest, we won’t be completely rational. Either way we engage in some degree of deception by twisting and/or hiding the truth.

Why consider Jesus? Because He speaks inside those who ask and listen with their heart. Jesus isn’t an ancient myth, but the contemporary answer to the meaning of life.

Your assumptions about the supernatural could be wrong. Talk to Jesus and see if He answers. When your heart feels empty, the hollow echoing sound, might be Jesus knocking to fill it up.

The unseen Jesus,
Right here, right now,
Sees and listens,
Hears and answers.

It costs nothing
But a few moments
To ask Jesus a question
And see if He answers.

I can’t prove my consciousness but I follow it throughout the day. The same with Jesus.

To order your life according to the kingdom of God is to avoid disorder. Instead of serving and obeying your thoughts, feelings, and desires, make them serve you and submit to your control.

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Guacamole & a roly-poly

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God’s lifesaving incision

God wants to make a lifesaving incision in your heart, not to fill your head with precision. When your heart hears God speak over you, it’s a moment you never get over.

Preachers try to describe Jesus, to dissect Him, when what people really need is to experience a demonstration of Jesus’ presence that penetrates the hardness of their heart. If you’re not enthralled by Jesus, there’s a good chance you’ve only heard about Him, but not yet encountered Him.

Too many Christians try to live without continually experiencing and stirring up the inner overflow of God’s Spirit. By trying to analyze, categorize, and systematize God, we miss out on His mystery. A closed heart doesn’t experience the flow of God’s living water.

There’s little stability in a shaky world, but much in a Christ-filled heart. Thoughts, feelings, and desires are shaky things. If you don’t use discernment and discipline, they can easily shake you down.

Even allowing a small opening in your heart will let God’s light to begin to come in. I don’t want to go to church where people are bored. I want to see Jesus passionately adored. If we don’t deeply realize our extreme lack of worthiness, grace is just a rather unamazing, religious idea.

According to the Bible, Christians aren’t called to go to God’s house, but to be God’s house. The only building the Bible ever called the house of the Lord was the Jewish Temple (not a church building). If the idea of endlessly worshipping Jesus sounds uncomfortable, you probably wouldn’t like Heaven.

The happiest place
I’ve ever found
Is wherever I am
When I’m aware
Jesus is around.

When is the time
To bow
Your heart
Before Jesus
And let Him wow
You from within?
Now.

A sermon
That tidies up
Your intellect
Does little good
If you neglect
Jesus.

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Rekindle the joy of being alive.

Many people give up on spontaneous, inner joy. They try to replace it with programmed, outer entertainment or a chemical high.

What you’re doing behind your eyes (on the inside) impacts your life more than what you see going on around you. Without emotional and mental housekeeping, the joy seeps out of life. The more we train our mind and emotions to function optimally, the greater will be our sense of wellbeing and joy.

As humans, we can’t avoid problems and pain, but joyous people demonstrate that we can learn to be happy anyway. Openness, honesty, and humility connect people heart-to-heart, bringing light for healing, recovery, and joy.

It’s hard to be happy if you let tormenting thoughts and toxic people pull your strings. Emotions, thoughts, and desires are real, but they’re often inaccurate and off track. Tough minded positive thinking is much more powerful than wishful drinking.

To be dumbed down is to avoid rational thinking. To be numbed down is to avoid caring and compassion. When we begin to undo years of harmful, habitual thinking and behaving, we start down the wise and kind path to a better life.

Thinking is like walking in the woods. The more you mentally follow the same path, the more permanent the trail becomes.

Perhaps as humans, our biggest problem is the darkness that we carry inside of us. When light disagrees with our darkness, we too often side with darkness.

The further away people are from reality, the angrier they get when it is pointed out. Social media is an internet platform often used to express anger and hostility when people disagree. Too much consumption of its contents can lead to discouragement.

When life shakes you to rock bottom, stand on the Rock and look up for His supernatural help. The living Jesus is the Rock.

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Violence & abortion

It takes more courage to respond to a threat with kindness and compassion than with anger or violence. Kindness hinders violence. It’s hard to be violent to people who are showing you heart-felt compassion.

Acts of violence are attempts to dominate and control someone. To threaten people is to demonstrate insecurity. When human life isn’t respected, valued, and treasured, violence cripples a culture.

Laws don’t stop post-natal violence. They won’t stop pre-natal violence either. Violence can only be overcome by sacrificial love.

Showing pictures of what abortion does to a human fetus isn’t conservative or liberal. It’s factual.

The difference between infanticide and abortion is merely the definition of the kill zone. Partial birth abortion straddles the zone.

If pulling a living, human fetus apart isn’t an act of violence, nothing is. Abortion is an act of violence against the most innocent form of human life. Most people believe that child abuse is morally wrong, yet many of the same people believe that prenatal abuse is a good thing.

The Soviet Union fell apart without civil war. If America insists on falling apart, let’s follow their example and be nonviolent.

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Don’t know much about CRT, but I do know . . .

I’ve never read CRT and never taken a class on it. I only know about it through social media, so I’m sure my knowledge of it isn’t very accurate. However, for many decades, I’ve searched American history to learn about race, how the concept developed, and how it was used to justify atrocities. I’ve also crossed racial lines as a White man and reached out to many Black people in friendship and humility to listen and hear what they have to say.

Telling the truth about the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow is neither liberal or conservative. It’s factual. The part of Critical Race Theory that tells the truth about history and its impact on the present deserves to be heard, not hidden.

I believe in telling the truth with kindness and compassion to all. Here’s my attempt to do that: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind To Color-Kind.

Immediately after posting this, I went to Twitter. Then I saw a prenatal drawing of a black person and I’m astonished that I’ve never seen one before. Don’t fetuses come in all colors?

To feel good, tinker with your thinker

Unhealthy thoughts are common, storming me from without and roaring from within. The more I refute and reject them, the better I feel. Make healthy choices about both what you put in your body and what you put in your mind.

Perfection is beyond our reach, but tiny tidbits of daily improvement can make life wonderful. The thought patters you have embraced and established in your mind influence how you feel. As humans, we have the ability to regulate our thoughts.

Embrace thoughts, images, words, and feelings that give inner peace. Resist those that cause angst.

Silence your negative thoughts. As children, we’re taught how to hold a pen so we can write, but not how to hold positive thoughts so we can feel good. It’s not too late to learn it.

Some people say it’s too hard to mentally resist tormenting thoughts. I say it’s too painful not to resist them.

If you don’t continually tend, nurture, weed, and fertilize a garden, it becomes sickly. The same with the human mind.

Feelings are mental produce. Their quality depends on how well you tend and nurture the garden of your mind. Raise healthy produce.

Continually treat your mind with uplifting thoughts and you’ll find it gradually gets healthier. Avoid profanity. It’s compulsive and becomes habitual, clogging your thinking with meaningless meanness.

Relationships matter. A humble, heart-to-heart relationship helps both people heal their thinking.

Being focused on
A purpose,
A cause,
A noble goal,
Is good for your mind.

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“Let him hear what the Spirit is saying . . .”

A sermon that doesn’t help you hear God for yourself makes you dependent on a man.

If Christians meet
To focus on and seek
The risen Jesus,
God’s Spirit
Will speak
Within them.

Search: Beyond Church Ekklesia.

Prince Charles calls out “the appalling atrocity of slavery” (the human zoo of history)

On November 30, 2021, I was at the Nashville Zoo which is housed on the Grassmere Plantation. As I walked the grounds, I noticed the quarters where enslaved human beings were housed and treated like animals in chattel slavery.

I saw the door was open, so I entered one of the two tiny, dark rooms. It contained several plaques with information about the people who had been trafficked there. Here’s one of them. It points out that in 1860, 32 innocent people were being forcibly held at Grassmere in lifelong labor and bondage (14 adults and 18 children).

Behind the slave quarters, there is a slave cemetery. The plaque in front of it reveals that the cemetery had originally been on another part of the plantation, but that these unidentified, human remains were dug up and moved out of the way to make room for animals to be held in the zoo.

Later that day, I turned on the news and heard Prince Charles speaking at the ceremony where the nation of Barbados officially removed the Queen as its head of state and became a republic. He boldly referred to: “the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history.”

British High commissioner to Barbados, Scott Furssedonn-Wood, said this about Prince Charles’ statement: “This is not just him coming out with a phrase; this is something that he believes very passionately in himself–that you’ve got to acknowledge injustice where you see it . . . He’s playing his part in that. It’s absolutely right that we express deep sorrow for that appalling atrocity of slavery and the unbelievable suffering that was caused.”

Perhaps the world will stay stuck in racial turmoil until we begin to honestly and openly reveal the details of the cruelty, brutality, and horrors of slavery. It’s time to shine the light on the horrible realities of the lifelong enslavement and torture of millions of Africans and their descendants.