Steve Simms's Blog, page 166

Many Christians fear atheists, but ego-theists may be a greater danger

Atheism denies God. Ego-theism sees God as a way to feel good and boost self-esteem. Ego-theism acknowledges God’s existence, but keeps self in the driver’s seat.

Much religion is ego-theism. It’s designed to protect human pride, not to overcome it through repentance, brokenness, and humility. Jesus told His followers to go and make disciples, not to find a church that feeds their ego.

The Pharisees were ego-theists, not atheists. Their pride (not unbelief in God) led them to have Jesus crucified. Self-focus is the problem. Being captivated by the living Jesus is the answer!

Ego-theism sees God as a way to find yourself, not as the great I AM who causes us to lose our self-focus in His glory. Ego-theism says love yourself and love God. Jesus said to love God and love your neighbor.

Ego-theists want comfortable Christianity that will protect them from self-denial, sacrifice, and discipleship. They ask: “What can faith in God do for me?” Ego-theism sees the Cross as jewelry or as something to hang on the wall, but not as a daily lifestyle of sacrificial obedience to Jesus.

Ego-theism sees God like fire insurance–as a type of self-protection. It wants feel-good sermons, not sermons that boldly challenge sin and complacency. Ego-theism likes religious titles, religious ceremony, and religious control. It inspires people to name “ministries” after themselves.

Ego-theism sees self as good and rejects God’s grace. (Good people have no need for forgiveness, mercy, or grace.) Ego-theism confuses God’s love with His approval and implies that God approves even when we intentionally break His commandments.

The Bible says “God resists the proud” and warns of “the pride of life,” but ego-theists resist humility and offer God a life of pride Ego-theism cherry picks the Bible for blessings but ignores its warnings and calls to repentance, humility, and holiness. It bends the Bible to fit our opinions, desires, feelings, and pride.

Ego-theism equates loving yourself with loving God. It believes that God exists to serve humanity, rather than that humanity exists to humbly serve God.

Until we learn about Jesus by experiencing Him daily, we won’t be very excited about Him. We need Christ-theism! The biblical concept of the Incarnation is based on Christ-theism–the demonstration that Jesus is God–Emmanuel, “God with us.”

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A poem about intellect

The heart knows things that the intellect can’t detect. Intellect is never completely free from pride and perspective. Its conclusions are always to some degree influenced by ego.

When intellect fails
People often discover
That hope prevails!

When life
Looks like a wreck
To your intellect,
Recollect and
Reconnect
To hope.

The intellect
And the heart
Should work together,
Not apart.

The acquisition of knowledge without the acquisition of hope leads to cold, hard facts. If life is only material processes begun by time and chance, that means human thought is nothing but a random evolutionary product.

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Tame your inner jungle

If you never take the time to tame your inner jungle, life will remain a mess. If you will sit quietly on the still bank of peace and fish within for insight, the catch of the day will help heal your heart.

The path to God is not to proudly analyze, but to humbly see with His spiritual eyes. Jesus is better realized than sermonized–experienced as living reality instead of presented as a religious concept.

Many Christians are reluctant converts. They claim to be converted, but they’re reluctant to fully follow and obey the risen Jesus and to let Him tame their inner jungle.

To sermonize, but fail to open spiritual eyes, falls far short of biblical Christianity. Church has sermonized Christianity to death. Its over analysis has produced spiritual paralysis. Church focuses on religious words for the mind, instead of training people how to daily hear, obey, and mind the living Jesus.

If you want a sermon, why settle for a wimpy one? Find one that convicts you of sin and fills your soul with passion to obey the risen Jesus! I like theology, but I’d much rather have the living Jesus tame my inner jungle as a present day reality.

It’s much more common for Christians to analyze the Bible than to ponder it until it sets the heart aflame. Jesus calls people to dance with Him and be Spirit-led, but all church seems to want to do is sing a few songs and lecture about music theory.

We’ve made church about religious methodology and passive mental absorption, neglecting spontaneous, heart-felt spirituality. Churches analyze Jesus. Ekklesia experiences Him and surrenders to His will.

To sermonize
Without opening spiritual eyes
Is to disguise
The reality of Jesus.

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Intellectual selection is beyond natural

When intellect declares that nothing exists but matter, it proclaims that its thoughts are nothing but atoms working in the skull. To know how life works, but not know why it works, may satisfy the intellect, but it leaves the heart empty.

The intellect
Likes to collect
Information
And to boast
That it knows
The most.

Intellect
Tends to neglect
Spiritual insight
If it can’t be shown
On a slab
In a lab.

It’s easy to be smart
And completely miss
The art
Of Wisdom.

The intellect may claim to prove that moral standards are meaningless, but consequences prove otherwise. If we apply the scientific method to morality, we’ll see that many behaviors produce consequences that disprove our self-justifications.

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The sky is “Prime”–it delivers us light & drops off water at our doorstep

If the sky only had one rainbow and people had to travel to see it, it would be one of the world’s most popular tourist attraction. The sky is prime! It delivers us light and drops off water at our doorstep.

Observing the sky
With an open heart
Is a substance-free way
To get high.

Astronomers and meteorologists
Study and analyze the sky.
I just gaze up and wonder why.

Even when the sky is dark
And you see no hope,
The sun, moon, and stars
Keep shining.

When you feel
Like you’re falling,
The sky is calling.
Look up
And be encouraged.

The sky has a way
To take words away
And replace
What you say
With the silence
Of awe.

To eye
The sky
And ponder
The wonder
Of the wild,
Blue yonder,
Lets peace
Settle in.

The sky can make you smile,
Watching a cloud’s profile,
And make you think awhile.

The more I look up
To the blue
The less the blues
Bother me.

Light rays, colors, sun, and moon,
Stars, clouds, flying birds, and falling leaves
Gloriously stream across the sky.

The night sky
Abounds with giant suns
So distant that they sparkle
Like tiny specks of glitter.

When you close your heart's shades
You miss the sky's many shades
Of of red, gray, gold, and black,
And many hues of blue.Your dreams are like clouds.
When they settle to the ground
They become fog,
But when they soar in the sky,
They they lift you high.

Earth’s gravity
Keeps the atmosphere here.
Be grateful.
If it should disappear,
We all would too.

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Unhinging Stonehenge from ancient humanity (bang-solution theory & the first Brexit)

For millennia people have stood in awe of Stonehenge and wondered about its origin. Today most people assume that it was made by ancient humans, but is that true? Here’s an alternative idea that I call The Theory of Bang-Solution.

Hundreds of billions of years ago a huge meteor entered earth’s atmosphere. Intense heat began to strengthen parts of it and to weaken other parts of it. It slammed into the ground on Salisbury Plain near what is now Wiltshire, England.

The impact of the crash created many cracks and crevices between the hardened parts of the meteor and the weaker parts. (The impact was so powerful that it separated Britain from Europe creating the first Brexit and possibly wiped out the dinosaurs.)

As hundreds of billions of years went by, erosion did its work. Earthquakes, floods, wind, and rain lifted the meteor to the surface and then eroded its weaker parts, erasing all signs of the crater and leaving us modern day Stonehenge.

As the theory of evolution proclaims: Time and chance and billions of years can do amazing things. Let’s add Stonehenge to the list of evolutionary marvels. (If evolution couldn’t create Stonehenge, how could it create the all the complexities found on earth?)

“Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves-or desires.” –Jacquetta Hawkes

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No excuses for these simple poems about making excuses

Much happiness
Is buried
Under excuses.

We use excuses to avoid light
When we don’t
Want seen
What our darkness hides.

Our alibis
Are frequently
Lies.

When your excuses
Are gone
The truth
Comes along.

An excuse
Is a fancy way
To say:
“I give up.”

If you make the time
To do what you said
You won’t need
To make excuses.

When you
Feel like
You need
An excuse,
You actually
Need to
Repent.

Making excuses
In no way looses
You from responsibility.

Excuses are spoken.
Results are demonstrated.

Finding solutions
For your problems
Is better than
Making excuses for them.

Perhaps the best excuse is:
“I’ve been too focused
On improvement
To make excuses.”

Need an excuse
For happiness?
Experience a color copy of
Elephants INspiring The Room.

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Equality? If people aren’t treated equally in the womb, it shouldn’t surprise us that they aren’t treaded equally after birth.

Equality? If people aren'tTreated equallyIn the womb,It shouldn'tSurprise usThat they aren'tTreaded equallyAfter birth.

Some say rules are a bore, but breaking rules bores a hole in your conscience

Freedom from rules results in bondage to desires. When society trains people to play by their own rules and to follow their own desires without question, anarchy is at hand.

A desire dominated heart sees the conscience as a threat. The more you brake your conscience, the more you’ll break God’s rules. The more you bend God’s rules, the more you shove yourself down a slippery slope.

God’s rules are the road out of hell. His grace gives us supernatural power to make the uphill climb. Obeying God’s rules is a struggle not a bore, but breaking God’s rules bores a hole in your conscience and fills it with guilt.

To guarantee guilt, break God’s rules. To eliminate guilt, seek God’s forgiveness and strive to daily obey His commandments.

God’s commandments are the ground rules that can keep us from being led astray by our own desires. Grace doesn’t erase God’s rules. It gives us forgiveness when we break them and supernatural power to obey them.

Because of His love, God gave us rules to try to save us from choosing self-destruction. If you obey God’s rules, you’ll prevent much pain and avoid much guilt.

God’s rules were made to be kept, but rebellion chooses to disobey them. When we choose to follow fools and set aside God’s rules, life doesn’t go well.

You don’t learn to overcome guilt by breaking God’s rules, but by learning to “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” (Matthew 5:6.) Christianity presented from a stage doesn’t have the same effect as when we personally engage with and follow the living Jesus. Let Him empower you to follow God’s rules.

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Some antidotes for insults

Insults produce such negative results that you’d think humans would be smart enough not the use them.

An insult reveals the insecurity of the person who gives it.

Insults are an attempt to put an end to someone’s freedom of speech by smacking them with unkind words.

An insult is an attempt to hurt a person without using physical violence.

Insults are designed to harm people, to intimidate and silence them with pain, not to convince them with logic.

People’s hearts are changed by kindness, not by insults.

People who have little confidence in what they believe often feel the need to resort to insults.

Apologizing requires courage. That’s why there are far more insults than apologies.

Any person who has lived a few years has plenty to apologize for, but pride trains us to deny that fact.

Lord, give me eyes
That can see
With humility
And recognize
When I need
To apologize.

Real lies
Disguise
Truth
So people
Don’t realize
When they see it
With their own eyes.

Heart-felt apology
And making amends
Is better than
Going to church
And saying amens.

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