Steve Simms's Blog, page 180
June 24, 2021
Can we stop hurting & devaluing human life?
Anyone who devalues any human life has failed to recognize the most valuable thing in the world. If your life matters, then so does all human life in all of its stages.
The greatest failure is the failure to appreciate and respect the value human life. Every failure to value human life is a form of insanity.
The most valuable thing on earth is human life, from its beginning in conception to the last heartbeat. To devalue any stage of human life is to devalue all human life.
Murder is cowardice. For a person to make himself the executioner of a human life is the ultimate arrogance.
Hurt people, hurt other people. Forgive so you don’t remain in pain and spread it around. Memories you allow to stream thru your consciousness can bring great joy or painful torment. Select them wisely.
Inspired people, inspire other people. Open your heart to hope. When you complain about circumstances, you plant pain producing seeds in your heart. Instead ask: “What’s good about my life?”
To forgive is to give yourself the gift of healing from the pain that people have caused you. To hurt someone back is to back yourself into the claws of vengeance.
Hurt can produce hate.
Wounds can produce wisdom.
You get to choose.
People who want
To cause pain
Have let their conscience
Go down the drain.
Pain makers
Are cruel takers,
Running over people
To get what they want.
If you’ve ever pretended
To be mended,
You know that
Faking it
Isn’t really
Making it
Love doesn’t chuck
Morality
To applaud,
As people go amuck
And begin to self-destruct
Photo by Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels.com
June 23, 2021
Give me eyes that deracialize
People can’t be divided
Into superior
Or inferior.
We all struggle
In our interior.
Let’s give the clearance.
There’s no need
To evaluate people
By natural appearance.
See eyes.
Brown, hazel or blue,
Doesn’t matter.
Also skin
Doesn’t show
What’s within.
God give me eyes
That deracialize,
That see
Everybody
As equal to me.
A colorful face
Or a face
That’s pale,
Learn to see them both
With kindness and grace.
To replace
The human race
With the idea of races
Displaces community
With disunity.
There’s been so much sin
In judging skin.
It’s time we begin
To find love within.
Light skin is
Mere biology,
But a heart full of light
Is true delight!
I deduce:
The racialization of humanity
Created an excuse
To set loose
Much abuse.
America needs the lost art
Of listening with compassion
To other people’s heart.
Instead of reading America’s history of injustice with a skin-color focus, read it with a fairness focus. Then it will look different to you.
Racial differences are a myth. Under the skin we humans are made of the same stuff. Any behavioral differences between people of different skin tones, are cultural, not physiological.
The people who you think are of a different race than you, actually belong to the same human race that you do. Too often we’ve shaded our eyes from the fact that the various skin shades of humanity are as meaningless as the color of our pet.
Racism is like using profanity. It’s often habitual and without an intent to do harm.
Search for: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind. Thank you.
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com
June 22, 2021
Ppprrraaayyyeeerrr is bigger than we think it is
When you speak a prayer,
Or think a prayer,
Something in your heart
Begins to care.
Prayer’s more than
A part you play,
Words to say
In a holy way
Or on a special day.
When prayer
Freely flows,
It grows
Stronger.
When prayer becomes
A mere formality,
True spirituality
Becomes a casualty.
To pray
Or not to pray,
That’s never been
The question
For me.
I don’t write prayers, but I do find that praying rights me. Praying increases my faith because it empowers me to hear God’s voice and makes His words burn in my heart. (Romans 10:17.) The whole world is my pray-ground.
Biblical prayer is more about maintaining a relationship with God than it is about getting answers from Him. To pray is not a way to force your will on God, but to surrender your will to His.
Prayer is more than words occasionally spoken to God. It’s a lifestyle. Where there’s awareness of God, prayer happens.
Prayer and worry don’t get along. When one comes in, the other goes out the door. No matter what or how you pray, God knows whether you mean it or not.
Prayer that falls short of personally encountering God, is just words. True prayer is relating to God. The time for prayer is now–every moment of the day. “Pray without ceasing.” Prayer (like breathing) isn’t just for special times.
I like to pray with my eyes open — to converse with God about what I see thru out the day. A programmed, prearranged talk with a good friend would seem strange. That’s the way reading programmed prayers seems to me.
The power of prayer is in God’s ability to answer, not in how you ask. Trust in Him, not in your own religious efforts. To pray is not a way to force your will on God, but to surrender your will to His.
You can be praying without saying. Sometimes that’s the most powerful prayer–listening, hearing, and obeying God’s voice. Interactive prayer lets God do some of the talking.
Christians need to be visible examples of Christ-centered living. A living relationship with Jesus takes place within you, not in outward ceremonies or meetings.
People who deny that they have done wrong, deny their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace. They don’t realize that they need to pray.
God is only away
If you’re astray.
You can stay
With Him.
“Abide in Me.”
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A quick & deracialized look at slavery
Let’s deracialize slavery and judge it by the content of it’s cruelty, not by the color of anyone’s skin. See history without racial eyes. Slavery was evil, regardless of the color of the slaveholders.
Historical factsAren't "racist" or "divisive."
They're just reality.
It's important
To be in touch with reality.You can handle the truth.
To deny
The humanity
Of any person
Or developing human life
Is cruel, no matter the color.
For America to heal, we need to get out of the box of race and examine the slavery and injustice in our history with the light of truth. I try to do that in this book.
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com
June 21, 2021
Taste & see the reality of the living Jesus
Let God be the chef of your life. His menu is your key to happiness. Freely embrace what He’s cooking up for you. O taste and see that the Lord is good.
There are invisible places–spaces inside your heart where you can meet with God. Christianity can’t be explained by logic, but once it reaches the inner recesses of the heart, it releases ongoing floods of joy.
Jesus lights my heart
With supernatural fire
That ever burns
Within me.
Christianity is supposed to be all about Jesus–His presence, His active leadership, His glory! True Christianity is what you let the living Jesus do in your heart and in your daily life. It’s not sitting in church.
When Christians gather to seek the living Jesus, without hierarchy, the result isn’t anarchy, but the kingdom of God. If the living Jesus isn’t our active and direct leader, we’ve abandoned the kingdom of God. Faith without follow through is empty through and through.
Verses for heart healing
Words that touch your heart,
Can heal pain
That your brain
Doesn’t understand.
Your heart
Can be cultivated
To grow with fruitfulness
Or allowed to overflow
With weeds.
Don’t just spectate
While your heart
Pumps and palpitates.
Think and participate.
I like conversations
Where people share
Matters of the heart
With compassion and care.
Don’t just go thru what you’ve been thru before. Go beyond it. Before you follow your feelings and desires, look ahead to the consequences.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
June 20, 2021
A father ponders Father’s Day & healing
It’s hard to be an active father, trying to love, lead, and protect someone at the same time. If you had someone who tried, be glad.
Active, loving fathers are tightrope walkers, trying to balance between too much and too little discipline. Fathers are people, too, insecure and needing forgiveness and affirmation, just like everyone else.
The father and child relationship matters greatly. Many forces try to disrupt it. Father and child relationships can be healed. Listening, forgiveness, repentance, honesty, humility, and mercy are powerful.
Perfect human fathers don’t exist, although many men deeply wish they were one. Most fathers are broken hearted when they see their child hurting (even if they don’t say anything about it). Most fathers treasure memories of positive interaction with their child, no matter what the relationship might be like now.
A father’s advice and instruction is usually based on love. If he didn’t love you, he wouldn’t care what you did.
Fathers sometimes cause their kids emotional pain. Sometimes it goes the other way. Frequently it goes both ways.
I’ve counseled many broken men and have discovered that even fathers who have abandoned their kids, can’t get them out of their heart. A father’s view of parenting has been influenced by how he experienced his father’s parenting.
No matter what a father teaches (good or bad) children often rebel and ignore it. Blaming your father doesn’t do away with your responsibility for how your life is turning out.
It’s not easy being a father. Still, one of life’s greatest thrills is being called Daddy (or some other endearing term for father).
Many fathers are resented for failing. It’s hard to honor someone you blame for pain. Instead, try forgiving and say, “Happy Father’s Day”
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June 18, 2021
Pics & ponderings for Juneteenth 2021
The greatest freedom to come to America wasn’t freedom from King George’s tax on tea, but freedom from government-supported human trafficking. Happy Juneteenth.
Juneteenth speaks loudlyTo all who are willingTo see and listen toThe whole story,With compassion.
For anybodyWho truly believesIn freedom,The end ofLegal human traffickingIn the USAWas a great day! #Juneteenth2021
The next pic is something to ponder on Juneteenth 2021, from Thomas Jefferson’s plantation.
Juneteenth celebrates the end of public slave markets in America.
June 17, 2021
2 types of Christianity: Minimalanity & Maxianity
Minimalanity is a very common type of Christianity. It is “an approach to Christianity that tries to discover the least Christian someone can be an still go to Heaven.”
Maxianity is a rare form of Christianity. It is “an approach to Christianity that continually seeks to go all out in following and obeying the living Jesus.”
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Who can I trust with my heart?
Your heart can be
Bitter or bright.
If you want it to shine,
Bring it to the light.
Discover what causes your heart to soar. Avoid what causes it to snore.
Who can I trust with my heart? Everyone! I don’t need to hide it from anyone because it’s protected from within by my awareness of God’s love.
A free heart, when allowed to come into the light, will dance and rejoice. A jailed heart, kept under lock and key, is usually sad.
It’s lonely to have an unconnected heart. Superficial relationships just don’t cut it.
There is much in life that is invisible to the eye and inaccessible to the analytical mind. It’s only available to an open, humble heart.
Heart revealing is risky but it’s the path to heart healing. Heart sealing only hides your pain from others, but not from yourself. To hide your heart in the cellar of your psyche is a fearful response, not a courageous one.
Keeping your heart closed and shut down to protect it, is like keeping your car constantly locked in the garage, to protect it. To hide your heart in the cellar of your psyche is a fearful response, not a courageous one.
Much that has become embedded in our thoughts is deceptive and debilitating, but without discernment we submit to it. The ego says, “I am here to save the day. “The heart , “Here I am to say I care.”
When the heart
Is allowed to harden,
It can no longer flow
With arteries of love.
When your mind
Or your heart
Shuts the other one down,
Life’s becomes unsound.
Our mind helps us be fair.
Our heart helps us be kind.
To get along
We need both.
Our society
Wants us to see
Our desires as truth
But our conscience
As fiction.
The pure in Spirit
Become aware of
God’s voice
And clearly hear it.
God’s inner sights
And spiritual sounds
Keep life’s drama
From tossing me
Around.
When preachers try to proclaim theology that hasn’t deeply impacted their life, it doesn’t impact their sermon hearers either.
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