Steve Simms's Blog, page 175

Where do you go to Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting (JTHM)?

Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting (JTHM–“Ekklesia” in Greek) is an assembly of believers, called together to hear and be led by the Spirit. If you’ve never attended Jesus’ Town Hall Meetings, you’ve missed out on amazing demonstrations of His presence and love.

Learn to hear what the Spirit is saying to Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting, the gathered body of Christ. Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is built on the rock of revelation and Hell’s city gates can’t prevent it from invading human hearts.

Jesus builds His Town Hall Meeting on the rock of revelation. It depends on people having ears to hear what the Spirit is saying. Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is a gathering where we lay down our opinions and then listen to and do what the Spirit says instead.

When Christ-followers gather as Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting, to listen to and obey the Spirit, Hell is driven out of people’s heart. Unfortunately, Christians have been trained to listen to what the preacher is saying, but not to what the Spirit is saying.

Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting allows ordinary people to share from their heart as they are prompted by the Spirit. The revelation-based, Jesus-led Town Meeting is built around humble, heart-felt interaction with Him and with one another. It is a love fest between the living Jesus and His followers.

A meeting where Christians are passive and unengaged isn’t the revelation-based Town Hall Meeting (Ekklesia) Jesus describes in Matthew 16. Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting is a gathering where His followers meet to listen to the Spirit and then say and/or do what He says. It gathers to give every member of His body the opportunity to share what the Spirit is saying to them.

The living Jesus is the “Head of the body”–His Town Hall Meeting. The “epistles” in the Bible are letters that were written to Jesus’ Town Council Meetings in various cities.

Follow the living Jesus. Be Spirit-led. Where do you go to Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting? Jesus said that He would build His revelation-based Town Hall Meeting, but over the centuries it morphed into church.

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Black lives didn’t matter when . . .

Many people want to ignore, hide, or deny the fact that Black lives didn’t matter in much of America’s history. However, ignoring and/or justifying racism in the past or present is divisive. Here are a few historical facts.

Black lives didn’t matter when they were sold to the highest bidder and forcibly separated from their families.

Black lives didn’t matter when the Founding Fathers refused to apply the principles of America’s founding documents to Black people.

Black lives didn’t matter when slaves were whipped or tortured in America for not fully cooperating with the people who were stealing their labor and trafficking them.

Black lives didn’t matter when they were frequently insulted, mocked, and looked down on by White people & in American media.

Black lives didn’t matter when more than 4,000 Black people were lynched by White mobs as courts and law enforcement rarely held anyone accountable.

Black lives didn’t matter when Black people were made to live under the continual threat of violence if they didn’t “stay in their place.”

Black lives didn’t matter when the United States Supreme Court legalized Jim Crow laws that treated Black people as if they didn’t matter.

Black lives didn’t matter when Black people weren’t allowed to testify in court.

Black lives didn’t matter when they were treated differently and denied equal rights because of their skin color.

Black lives didn’t matter when Black people weren’t allowed equal access to jobs and equal pay for equal work.

Black lives don’t matter if the police are more willing to kill an unarmed Black person than an unarmed White person.

Black lives don’t matter when their long history of pain and heartbreak is denied and unheard.

Black lives didn’t matter when they were subjected to race massacres in Tulsa (1921), Chicago (1919), Detroit (1943), New York (1863), Washington (1919), Springfield, MO (1908), East Saint Louis (1917), Memphis (1866), Wilmington, VA (1898), Elaine, AR (1919), Atlanta (1906), Vicksburg, MS (1874), Clinton, MS (1875), Eufaula, MS (1874), Camila, GA (1868), Slocum, TX (1910), Colfax, LA (1873), Opelousas, LA (1868), Thibadox, LA (1867), New Orleans (1876), St. Bernard Parish, LA (1868), Rosewood, FL (1923), Ocoee, FL (1920) and various other places.

Want to learn more?

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Freedom & rights aren’t the same thing

Want freedom?
When people are free
They will disagree
And see
Things differently.

We have the right to try to persuade others. We don’t have the right to verbally attack, manipulate, or coerce them. Insulting people is not, and never has been, a human right. It’s simply unkindness.

Respecting human rights begins with respecting the right of people to disagree with you. To verbally attack and/or try to intimidate someone for simply disagreeing with you is to assault their right to free speech. My freedom of speech doesn’t give me the right to scorn, insult, or belittle other people.

Freedom and rights are not the same thing. As humans we have the freedom to do wrong, but that doesn’t make doing wrong a right. Just because you are free to do something doesn’t mean you have a right to do it. If you claim something as a right, but doing it bothers your conscience, it’s probably a sin, not a right.

If you claim something as a human right, you have no right to deny that right to other people. The American Declaration of Independence proclaims that rights are God-given & inalienable, not that they are earned or deserved.

If you’re on social media, watch TV, or follow politics, then you know that the right to not be offended doesn’t exist. We all have the right to disagree with other people’s opinions and/or beliefs, but we don’t have to be mean about it.

Too often people surrender the most basic human right: The right to think original thoughts.

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If you’re afraid of opening your heart, be courageous!

A closed heart never grows into a big heart. A closed heart suffers alone but an open heart flourishes with joyful and inspiring insights.

Life is a mixture of pain and joy. When you close your heart to pain, you also close it to joy. Trying to protect yourself from having a caring heart is like trying to protect yourself from the oxygen in the air.

When you sit down and have an open, one-to-one conversation with anyone on the planet, you discover that they’re a lot like you. Human differences are paltry. Human similarities are profound.

If you’re afraid of opening up your heart, be courageous. Open your heart like an unfolding flower and you’ll experience the warmth of being human. Closed hearts are stagnant and need to open up to fresh air.

Love that last requires a heart that refuses to be shut down by pain. A closed heart stays overcrowded with worries, pain, and anxiety, because it has no outlets. When we hear a person’s words but don’t hear their heart, we mistakenly believe that we’ve listened to them.

An open heart allows love to freely flow. A closed heart shuts it down. When we open our heart, we forget about self and begin to flow with growing compassion for others. An open heart loses its self-focus in the joy of encouraging others.

When you open your heart to understanding, you’ll begin to know more than you can ever figure out with your mind. A broken heart is like a broken coconut shell. It gives you free access to the milk of life.

You weren’t created to be a secret agent. Bond! Open your heart and bond with other people. Pride is the greatest obstacle to an open heart. You control the door to your heart. No one can open it without your permission.

Have an adventure today. Find someone you think is different than you and listen to them with an open heart. A closed heart tries to hide itself from hurt, but an open heart gives hurt no place to hide.

People who are courageous enough to open their heart find that other people will follow their lead. A tender, open heart is the greatest treasure there is. It’s the pearl of great price. A hard heart and a hard conscience make for a hard life.

Open your heart and people will follow. Compassion is contagious. A closed heart is a blind heart. If you train your heart to stay open to people, compassion will continually flow from within you. Trying to protect your heart by keeping it closed is like trying to protect your phone by keeping it shut down.

Closing your heart minimizes your capacity to care and imprisons you behind the cold, hard bars of hurt, anger, and resentment. A closed heart is easily deceived by desires and feelings. It is continually alienated from true self-awareness. The more you let your heart care, the more of life’s joy you will share.

Live trees dance with the wind. Dead trees resist it ’til it breaks them. Take a chance and let your heart flow with joyful dancing. To truly experience inner harmony, you need to train your heart to sing on key. A closed heart is deficient in joy receptors.

When you close your heart in response to pain, you don’t heal it; you lock it in. When you let pain shut down your heart, temporary pain becomes permanent bitterness.

People connect when they’re honest about their brokenness. They collide when they protect their pride. If you listen without analysis or defensiveness, you’ll soon begin to hear someone’s heart. The shortest distance between two conflicting viewpoints is an open heart willing to see both sides. Closed hearts collide. Open hearts connect.

An open heart so overflows with light that there’s no place for darkness to hide. A closed heart has accepted being fake and doesn’t want anybody to shake it up or wake it up.

The more you analyze people, the less you are able to connect with them heart-to-heart. When love is kept shut up in the heart, it fossilizes. Freely show and express it!

When a broken heart collapses inwardly, it withers in pain. When it opens up, it heals and connects with other human hearts. A closed heart stays ensnared in its own feelings and desires.

When you open your heart to people, you discover that they are truly amazing. A closed heart projects fantasies onto people. An open heart wants to hear what people think and feel. It learns to see thru other people’s eyes and hear thru their ears.

A closed heart has learned to encounter people superficially and to ignore their needs and concerns. Your heart doesn’t need to be protected from transparency and trust. Those are the things that heal it! When walls are welcomed by the mind, they soon surround the heart.

Rigid thinking and a closed heart will create much misunderstanding and conflict in your life. The more you close and hide your heart the more you’ll open up to lying and dishonesty.

Unity doesn’t come from agreement or logic. It happens when people open their heart to care about one another.

A closed heart blocks out God’s whisperings. It falsely believes that He’s not speaking. A closed heart in unaware of miracles.

A closed heart is blind
And can easily find
Excuses to be unkind.

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It’s time for strong, bold talk about unkindness

Unkindness is weakness. It takes no strength to be cruel. To be unkind to people is to invite them to be unkind to you.

Unkind words publicly display a lack of the courage to care. Unkindness is egotistical and selfish. It’s often used as an attempt to hide personal weakness. If you want people to earn and/or deserve your kindness, then you’re not really being very kind.

If you can’t express your views without being unkind, your views are more emotional than rational. Unkindness reveals a lack of confidence in what you’re saying.

Unkindness snowballs. Try not to add to people’s pain. Dare to be unkindness-free. If you train yourself to ignore and forget unkind words, you’ll be much happier!

The English language has such a huge vocabulary that nothing needs to be expressed in unkind words. Profanity consists of unkind words.

My heroes excel at kindness and gracefully speaking the truth. I want to do that, too. The best cure for conflict is unkind words left unsaid. When you respond in kind to unkind words, you put the idea in people’s mind that those words might be true about you.

The Bible says, “Be kind to one another.” (Ephesians 4:32.) Unkindness is a sin! When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” He meant, “Be kind to unkind people.” (The ability to be kind to unkind people is true maturity.)

Beam compassion. Radiate kindness. Shine goodwill.

If you let life
Make you unkind,
Your peace of mind
Will unwind.

Every unkind statement
That we make
Is a debasement
To our emotional
Environment.

Unkindness is
A trap.
When someone
Spews it out,
Don’t carry it around
And spread it about.

Every time you retaliate
You deviate
From kindness.

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Spiritual drought should not be what church is about

A living water drought
Will drown your heart
In doubt
Unless Jesus’ rivers
Are allowed to flow out.

When the songs are sung
And the sermon’s done,
How much do you
Flow with God’s Son?

Anything less than daily hearing and obeying the living Jesus falls short of biblical Christianity. A religion people control is not the faith presented in the Bible.

To pray for God’s will to be done and then to do what you want to do is to contradict your prayer. The kingdom of God begins to happen anyplace where people are surrendering to King Jesus’ direct control.

Christian leaders should prepare the way and create an environment where the living Jesus is free to take control. We have the freedom to disrupt God’s control–to reject His will by follow our feelings and desires instead.

It’s much easier to give a talk about Jesus than it is to surrender a church service to His control. If you (or some other person) is controlling a meeting, the living Jesus isn’t.

Grace doesn’t replace God’s commandments. It restores our relationship with Him so He can do His will by living in and overflowing thru us.

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Religion can be a spiritual vaccine

Religion can be a vaccine that tricks us into believing we already have all of Jesus we need and should resist His working in us. Try not to let religion vaccinate you and give you immunity to hearing the voice of God for yourself.

Church tries to change people from the outside, but the living Jesus and the Bible change people from the inside out. Church is seen as the delivery system of Christianity, but when I read the Bible it looks like the living Jesus delivers it. We need to be infected by Jesus. Perhaps church needs the attitude of John the Baptist: “He (Jesus) must increase but I must decrease.”

The more Christianity
Is systematized
And analyzed,
The more it is
Anesthetized.It needs to beRevitalized.

When the living Jesus
Is allowed to be
In control,
The kingdom of God
Shows up.

To pray
Is not just
What you say.
It’s how you hear
And obey
Jesus
Every day.

Multitudes of Christians have been trained to be more dependent on the organization called church than on the living Jesus. Christianity’s been systematized into the passive, weekly attendance of a highly organized “service,” but it’s much more than that. Christians are supposed to be led (shaped, directed, guided) by the Spirit, not by a religious system. Romans 8:14.

When Christianity is limited to commemorating what Jesus did in the past, it’s incomplete. He wants to demonstrate His presence now! Direct connection with Jesus is much more powerful than informative talks about Him.

You can’t (and don’t want to) “go to church” 24/7/365, but you can continually interact with the living Jesus. Try it! If Christians would focus on and listen to the living Jesus, as much as we do preachers, it would revolutionize our life. Jesus wants to speak directly to your heart and also thru the Bible. The Bible isn’t a complex system known as systematic theology. It is powerful words that set humble human hearts on fire!

If you’re having trouble getting your conscience to forgive your sins, the living Jesus can help. The living Jesus wants to train you to make your nervous system your friend instead of your enemy. The goal of church should be to inspire people to actively and passionately pursue their own relationship with the living Jesus.

To repent is to continually get closer to the living Jesus. It’s a lifestyle, not a once and done thing. Too many Christians live like they are indifferent to Jesus instead of being passionate about Him.

Breathe better. Wholesome laughter is great exercise for your respiratory system. “The joy of the Lord is our strength.”

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Devaluing people is contrary to America’s founding principles

If you find it hard to compassionately listen to certain people, that might be because you tend to devalue them. Perhaps, thinking that what people are feeling because of their color, is not worth hearing, is racism. When society devalues people based on color, those people are reminded of it every time they look at their profile picture.

To devalue a color of people makes no sense. It’s like devaluing a cat because of it’s color.

Here’s an observation: Americans are good at emoting about race, but bad at thinking logically about it.

Devaluing any people denies the founding declarations of America, but even the Founding Fathers devalued groups of people. Devalue no one! It’s time to be true to America’s founding principles. All people are indeed created equal. We need to finally overcome the human tendency that wants a group of people to feel superior to.

The idea that color makes one person better than another is a terrible lie. Color is not and never has been a measure of human value. The color standard for determining people’s worth is cruel.

A thought track runs thru history, proclaiming that color sorts people by value. Until it’s openly admitted and boldly renounced as a lie, it will continue to influence our thinking and behavior today. The train of thought that says that color determines human worth is difficult to derail. Because centuries of momentum keep it rolling on, this train of thought isn’t easy to overcome.

From the early days of Colonial America, the color-based thought track was laid that believes that human value is determined by color. That idea to use color as a measure of human value unleashed floods of misinformation and conspiracy against Black people and people of color. Exempting Black people in the USA from citizenship and Constitutional protection was a terrible conspiracy against freedom.

The conspiracy to dehumanize and enslave Black people wasn’t a minor incident. It was a huge part of history that is glossed over.

Centuries of misinformation and conspiracy against Black people was made illegal after the Civil Rights Movement, but it lingers. Cruel things like “redlining” still stick around.

It’s not necessary to devalue a single person in order to feel good about yourself. To devalue anyone because of color is anti-Christian. Learn practical ways to appreciate people of all colors.

Is it contrary to America’s founding principles if people are devalued?

If you find it hard to compassionately listen to certain people, that might be because you tend to devalue them. Perhaps, thinking that what people are feeling because of their color, is not worth hearing, is racism. When society devalues people based on color, those people are reminded of it every time they look at their profile picture.

To devalue a color of people makes no sense. It’s like devaluing a cat because of it’s color.

Here’s an observation: Americans are good at emoting about race, but bad at thinking logically about it.

Devaluing any people denies the founding declarations of America, but even the Founding Fathers devalued groups of people. Devalue no one! It’s time to be true to America’s founding principles. All people are indeed created equal. We need to finally overcome the human tendency that wants a group of people to feel superior to.

The idea that color makes one person better than another is a terrible lie. Color is not and never has been a measure of human value. The color standard for determining people’s worth is cruel.

A thought track runs thru history, proclaiming that color sorts people by value. Until it’s openly admitted and boldly renounced as a lie, it will continue to influence our thinking and behavior today. The train of thought that says that color determines human worth is difficult to derail. Because centuries of momentum keep it rolling on, this train of thought isn’t easy to overcome.

From the early days of Colonial America, the color-based thought track was laid that believes that human value is determined by color. That idea to use color as a measure of human value unleashed floods of misinformation and conspiracy against Black people and people of color. Exempting Black people in the USA from citizenship and Constitutional protection was a terrible conspiracy against freedom.

The conspiracy to dehumanize and enslave Black people wasn’t a minor incident. It was a huge part of history that is glossed over.

Centuries of misinformation and conspiracy against Black people was made illegal after the Civil Rights Movement, but it lingers. Cruel things like “redlining” still stick around.

It’s not necessary to devalue a single person in order to feel good about yourself. To devalue anyone because of color is anti-Christian. Learn practical ways to appreciate people of all colors.

Fresh perspectives on the five-fold ministry gifts (APEST)

The concept of the five-fold ministry is based on a Scripture in Ephesians chapter four, that says that Jesus gave to His assembly, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds (pastors), and teachers. Traditionally those concepts have been seen as special gifts (or callings) that individual Christians have. Sometimes people even choose one to use as a personal title before their name.

I woke up this morning with a fresh perspective about the five-fold ministry flowing through my spirit. Too often Christians are fed with religious information, but starved of spiritual insight. However, true Christian ministry releases revelation (God-given insight); it doesn’t just dispense information. So how do each of the five-fold gifting release and develop God-given insight?

A) Apostles: The word literally means “sent one.” Apostles are Kingdom doers, errand runners sent to do what King Jesus says.

P) Prophets are Kingdom-insight seers and truth proclaimers. They receive and share fresh revelation from Jesus.

E) Evangelists are Kingdom recruiters who show people the Way, the living resurrected Jesus.

S) Shepherds (pastors) are Kingdom nurturers who help connect people heart to heart with Jesus and nurture that connection through listening and compassion. They help release revelation, healing, and forgiveness into people’s hearts.

T) Teachers are Kingdom disciplers. They do more than dispense information. They give people practical, hands-on training in how to hear, follow, and obey Jesus on a daily basis. They prepare people to be sent out as Kingdom doers.

Ephesians says that the purpose of these gifts is to equip all Christ-followers to do works of service (ministry) so that the body of Christ can be built up and brought to unity and maturity. I believe that churches have limited the Holy Spirit by teaching people that these gifts are only for a very few special individuals and by ignoring them (except for pastor). I believe that they are Jesus-led functions, not titles or privileged offices.

Since Jesus taught that His followers shouldn’t “Lord it over people,” I don’t believe these five gifts are a positional hierarchy, but equal gifts in a progressive circle. Personally, I find these giftings working in my daily life at different times and in different situations. Daily I seem to be led from gift to gift — from being a Kingdom doer, to being a Kingdom-insight seer/proclaimer, to being a Kingdom recruiter, to being a Kingdom nurturer, to being a Kingdom discipler.

As the early Christians drifted away from Spirit-led gatherings based on the Greek word “ekklesia,” they began to organize men-led churches and to see the five-fold gifts as individual men in administrative positions. However, the Bible says Christians are to be “led by the Spirit.” (Romans 8:14.) Let’s open up and be individually led by the Spirit to pursue all five gifts in each of our lives and to help other people pursue them as well.

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