Steve Simms's Blog, page 168
November 7, 2021
The “8-p” beati-links taught by Jesus
The Beatitudes are a series of life-links–steps that progress toward a life governed by the living God. They were beautifully spoken by Jesus in what is known as The Sermon on the Mount. I call them the beati-links. They’re like peas in a pod and all begin with the letter p. How many of the 8-p links have you followed?
Poverty of spirit; This is brokenness and humility. The Bible says that God “resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Coming to the end of our own resources (mental, emotional, and material) and surrendering our will to God opens us up to humbly and desperately receive His help.Participation in sadness: This is called mourning–allowing our heart to be broken by the things that break God’s heart. Mourning includes being deeply sorry for all the ways we have gone wrong and all the pain we have caused.Pliability: Brokenness and mourning make our heart meek and pliable so that God can begin to mold and bend our heart to His will. Passion to live right and to be right with God: As we continually allow God to change us from the inside out, we get more and more hungry and thirsty to change our outward behavior so that it matches God’s will. Presentation of mercy: The closer we get to God, the more we realize how far away we have been from God and His perfection. This causes us to feel much grace, mercy, and compassion and to share it by being kind to and forgiving all people.Pure in heart: The more we give mercy and forgiveness to others, the more forgiveness we receive and the purer our heart becomes. Peacemaking: The purer our heart becomes, the more we have the peace of God inside of us and the more we radiate His peace outwardly to others.Persecution: People who are threatened by the truth and by God’s light won’t like the Beatitude qualities that they see manifested in our words and lifestyle. Our daily living out God’s truth and speaking it with love and kindness will make some people uncomfortable and they will sometimes react negatively toward us, being unkind, hostile, and even cruel. Jesus said that persecution is something to celebrate because it verifies that you are on track with the beati-links and will be greatly rewarded.After finishing talking about the beati-links, Jesus calls those who follow the links “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” He tells them not to lose their saltiness or to hide their light, but rather to let their light shine in front of people. Then people around them can see the good works that come from their changed heart and lifestyle, and glorify God for what He has done.
The Beatitudes aren’t just sweet sayings for a Sunday morning sermon. They’re a call to radical, all-out obedience to God.
November 6, 2021
Can you handle these truth jolts?
It’s better to be shocked by truth than snared by a comfortable untruth. Truth leads to freedom, lies to bondage.
One of the most unused human rights is the right to change your opinion. When someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t prove them wrong. It just proves that they see things differently than you do.
Go small! Do something to encourage one person today.
People are like gravity pulling you into their influence. Choose people who are positive influences. When you’re afraid of the truth, it takes great courage to be honest.
Difficulties, opportunities to gather strength and grow in character, are too often squandered by anger and frustration. Reason obeys logic, but emptions take pride in being illogical.
Weak people lead by heavy-handed authority. Strong people lead by the influence of their character and lifestyle. People who get offended when they’re being held accountable shouldn’t be trusted.
Too many people
Fill their mind
With things
Unkind.
Insecurity lays down the weapons of reason, understanding, and compassion and takes up the weapons of coercion or violence. If it’s inhumane to train animals to be used in combat, perhaps the same applies to people.
It’s time to admit: When freedom enslaved people, if fell far short of true freedom.
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Uses for excuses
Excuses help us avoid doing what needs to be done. They can turn challenges into roadblocks.
Excuses can be used to negate opportunities. They’re able to convince us that a good idea won’t work.
To continually make excuses is a good way to lose a friend. A good effort is better than the best excuse.
Excuses empower immaturity. They can help us self-sabotage. Excuse telling is success repelling.
When you’ve done wrong, making a lot of excuses can trick you into believing that it was right. A made-up excuse might get you out of trouble, but deep down, it will add even more guilt to your troubled conscience.
Excuses are attempts to escape responsibility. They are our reasons for rejecting truth. There are no really good uses for excuses.
Get away! Run out of a room full of excuses. Don’t hang out with them. Time spent making excuses could be better used making improvements.
To make excuses is to make up new reasons for doing the same negative or harmful things over and over again. Excuses are attempts to hide the truth from yourself and others.
Excuses are snares that keep us stuck in the ruts of ruinous routines. Excuses kill motivation. Affirmations empower it. (For a book of fun and powerful, new affirmations, search for: Elephants Inspiring The Room.)
Excuses enable people to claim to be Christians without obeying the living Jesus. They create casual, lukewarm Christians.
Excuses are
Easy to find
But hard
To leave behind.
November 4, 2021
A sincere apology is worth a thousand excuses
No excuse is a sufficient substitute for a sincere apology. There’s no excuse for unkindness. Excuses are motivated by fear of the truth.
Excessive excuses expose a guilty conscience. When you make an excuse for something, you’re admitting that you shouldn’t be saying or doing it in the first place.
Excuses attempt to reject fault, but they actually reject forgiveness, healing, recovery, and reconciliation. To make excuses is to try to cover your faults with make up that only makes your flaws more obvious.
Relationships aren’t healed by excuses. Sincerity is an excuse-free zone. A sincere apology is worth a thousand excuses.
It’s easy to make excuses, but it’s much better to make life-improving changes. Excuses try to plead “Not guilty,” before your conscience, but your conscience knows better.
Pride is self-idolatry. People make excuses to protect their pride. But no matter what you call it (self-justification, moral rationalization, or righteous indignation), an excuse is still an excuse.
Giving an excuse
For being wrong
Is a song
Some people sing
All day long.
Excuses
Never justify
Abuses.
An excuse
Is a trap
That will sap
Your motivation
And wrap
You in deception.
If we make amends
Instead of excuses
It reduces
Relationship problems.
To admit the truth
Reduces excuses
Until they vanish
And you’re
Face to face
With reality
No excuse can reduce guilt. However humble confession and God’s forgiveness can wash it away.
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Some astonishing thoughts
On a dark night
Look up
And be astonished
By the stars.
To be astonished by beauty, waft away in it’s wonder, refreshes the heart. Life only gets old when you’re bored with it. Watching ocean waves washes me in astonishment and so does looking at trees.
Big like an elephant or small like a flea, if you look how life’s put together, it’s astonishing! When the astonishment of being alive dies, life meanders aimlessly.
In a world where genuine, heart-felt, spontaneous happiness has become astonishing, sadness has become the norm. Be happy anyway.
A person who is wondrously astonished at nothing is bored. Revive your astonishment. Search for: Elephants Inspiring The Room book.
The human conscience is the elephant in the heart. Life goes better when we don’t ignore it.
Church
Without astonishment
Is like punishment.
It should inspire
And set us on fire.
Delight in the Light
Words cannot express,Peace beyond
Comprehension,
A heart aflame
With amazing love.[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-29109" />Photo by Garon Piceli on Pexels.com
November 2, 2021
The shadow-land of self expression
Self is a shadow-land of light and darkness. Self-expression without discernment is dangerous. If you don’t let your conscience monitor your self-expression, you’ll be expressing much that is a mixed-up mess.
Humans express way too much hatred, anger, and hostility, and not enough love, joy, and peace. Try not to do that.
Wrongful feelings, desires and thoughts should be fought and defeated within us and not allowed to come to expression. Every ungodly impulse that we express will poison us and those influenced by it. The world needs your expressions of goodness, not your expressions of badness.
Find and express
The good in you.
Overcome and repress
The bad in you.
Freedom of expression
Without the inner freedom
To not express hostility
Is dangerous.
Self weaves it’s way through good and evil, making a muddy mixture. Because all people are a combination of good and evil, our self-expression will be the same mixture. A self compromised with evil can only find inner healing and freedom from guilt through surrender to the living God.
Christians are called to Christ-expression, not to self-expression–to be Spirit-led, not desire-led. To surrender to Christ is to deny self-expression by freely letting the living Jesus express Himself through your words and actions.
To consistently
Do right
We need to
Deny self
And express
God’s inner light.
November 1, 2021
Anger’s no fun / inspiration’s a blast
Our desires are frequently illogical. If we allow them to dominate us, we gradually abandon reason.
Healing will start when you open your heart. The mask to avoid is the inner mask you use to hide your heart from other people.
Worry imagines negative events, but there’s no word for imagining positive events, so I invented one: “worglee.” Try it today!
Freedom doesn’t let
Compulsive desire
Require
Obedience.
The concept of grace
Should never be used
To try to replace
Your conscience.
The risen Jesus
Offers true inner freedom:
The expulsion
Of enslaving compulsion.
Angry’s no fun.
Inspiration’s a blast.
Go to:
Elephants INSpiring The Room.
October 29, 2021
Temptation I-land lessons
As humans we find ourselves marooned on our own I-land. Escaping is the key to happiness.
All men are natural I-land people. It takes discipline, training, and self-denial to focus on others. Self is a topical island where it’s hard to see beyond “me, me, me!”
I-land happiness is a myth. The bigger the “I,” the less the happiness. Temptation I-land is overcome with lowland marshes. I-land living is hard because I-land is a lonely, rocky place, continually pounded by a rough sea.
When the waves
Of temptation
Surround me
With storm surge,
I climb to higher ground.
I-land is a tourist trap that tries to keep me stuck in the trinkets and trivialities of life. I-land life is self-focused, but when I obey my conscience and run from temptation, guilt has no chance to steal my liberty and torture me.
When wrongful desire
Tries to require
That I obey,
It’s best if I boldly say
“No way!”
When I land in temptation, my conscience warns me to quickly get out of there before compulsion captures me. When I stay, stuck on the I-land of self, desires get in my way, but when I focus on being kind to others, I have a wonderful day.
Isolation
Increases
Temptation,
But honest
Confession
Drives it away.
Elephants Inspiring The Room contains 365 original, uplifting statements and dozens of fun elephant illustrations that can help you escape from I-land. Find it here.
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Breakthrough gift-giving ideas
To give someone
An emotional lift
Is a great gift.
Give more
Than a present
To open.
Give something
That will open
People’s heart.
A simple gift
That shows you care
Can help someone bear
Their pain and despair.
A thoughtful gift
Can create a happy memory
That lasts a lifetime.
An inspiring book
Is an ongoing gift
That regifts itself
Every time it’s opened.
Eloquent
Elephants
Make an
Elegant
Gift.
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