Steve Simms's Blog, page 184

Pentecost = supernatural power to live out the Beatitudes

Pentecost gives us supernatural power to live out the Beatitudes. Read Matthew 5 (the Beatitudes) and Acts 2 (Pentecost) together.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . ” Pentecost demonstrates the Beatitudes. Jesus’ disciples, who were broken and “poor in spirit,” experienced the power of God’s kingdom!

“Blessed are those who mourn . . .” In a moment at Pentecost, Jesus’ disciples went from mourning to inner comfort.

“Blessed are the meek . . .” At Pentecost, Jesus’ disciples, meek and moldable, were ignited to take the earth by the power and presence of Christ in them.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . .” Jesus’ disciples had an inner longing to live a better (more righteous) life, and Jesus filled them with supernatural power to do so.

“Blessed are the merciful . . .” After abandoning and even denying Jesus, His disciples’ shame disappeared in God’s glorious mercy at Pentecost.

“Blessed are the pure in heart . . .” After days of seeking God in prayer, the disciple’s hearts became pure and they saw God’s amazing power at Pentecost and beyond.

“Blessed are the peacemakers . . .” Jesus disciples put away blame and came together in one accord. Those peacemakers let the Spirit lead them as children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted . . .” At Pentecost Jesus disciples were insulted and accused of being drunk, yet they didn’t let persecution hinder their joy.

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Can Pentecost happen to you today?

Pentecost then and NOW!
Waiting, praying,
Longing to be filled
With the presence of God,
And suddenly came
The sound of mighty wind,
A sight that looked like fire,
And inner geysers
Of joy unspeakable
Running over,
Uncapped and spewing
Unknow words
Giving praise to God!
This is that outpouring
Of God's Spirit
Predicted by a guy named Joel.
Now listen to God's spiritual sounds.
Now behold His purifying fire.
Now let Him uncap His geysers
And release rivers
Of living water
As by faith you now speak
Unknown words
That the Spirit
Joyfully releases
From within you
Now. Photo by Valdemaras D. on Pexels.com

Pentecost–spiritual fire & unknown languages

Moses saw the burning bush. People today need to see hearts burning for Jesus. Will your heart be one of them?

Fire fall,
Heart call
For all
To follow
Jesus
And pray
His words!

Pentecost ignited the followers of Jesus, but gradually, spiritual fire was replaced with formalism and religious organization. The descending fire of Pentecost released inner fire and the ongoing spiritual gift of miraculous prayer in unknown languages. Let the flames of Pentecost burn up your desires so that you can freely follow and obey God’s desires instead of your own.

Pentecost (Streaming Day)
Brought a new way
To pray everyday–
Speaking in tongues.

When I don’t know what to pray, I let Jesus stream supernatural words from within me. The gift of prayer in unknown words, released on Pentecost 2,000 years ago, still operates in millions of Christians worldwide.

When you pray
Unknown words,
Given by the Spirit,
Prayer enters
A fresh dimension.

On Pentecost, Jesus initiated His supernatural streaming service, releasing the Holy Spirit from within thru unknown languages. Verbally streaming supernatural words released by the living Jesus, will override our human tendency to quench the Holy Spirit.

Jesus can help you pray
In words you don’t know
And make them freely flow
From within.

When unknown words supernaturally flow from your heart, your mind can’t interfere with them. It’s a pure stream from God. Praying in tongues, the amazing demonstration of the Scripture, “Christ in you,” is a powerful gift that God offers you.

When you let
God's supernatural words
Pour from within,
It's a miracle in your mouth
And healing in your heart.

It’s fine to memorize prayers, but it’s better to let the living Jesus energize you to pray as His words stream from within you. Pentecost demonstrates the great joy and boldness that happens when people begin to stream the living Jesus.

Prayer as an inner flow
Is more powerful
Than repeating
Religious words
You know.

Prayer in unknown words, wasn’t just a one day phenomenon. It’s a gift we can use to empower us everyday!

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Infrastructure challenge

Examine your own inner infrastructure. Are your thoughts, desires, and emotions strengthening you or weakening you? Healthy, inner infrastructure is the backbone of personal growth.

The biggest infrastructure challenge is to build and maintain healthy infrastructure in our thinking, desires, and emotions. To try to live life without building effective, mental and emotional infrastructure internally, is to stay bogged down.

When life is tough, it exposes how well you’ve built and maintained your inner infrastructure. Every thought you think, every action you take, and every emotion you embrace, either strengthens or weakens your inner infrastructure. When we allow our mental and emotional infrastructure to crumble, we fall apart.

If you don’t invest your time and effort in building godly infrastructure within you, it’s going to cost you in the future. Without godly, inner infrastructure, human hearts are an untamed wilderness.

Build highways
In your heart
For the Lord.
Make them straight
So that He can
Freely move about,
Delivering the fruit
Of His Spirit,
Wherever it's needed
Within you.Clear trails,
Build infrastructure
In the wilderness
Of your heart,
So that Jesus
Can walk and talk with you.

Too much human organization quenches the Spirit. The kingdom of God must be built within our heart, not externally from us.

Christians, without inner infrastructure, depend on outward organizations, meetings, events, rules, traditions, and rituals. If you daily read the Bible with a open, humble heart, God will build His infrastructure within you.

Christ-in-you Christianity is much more powerful than you-in-church Christianity. Make room for the living Jesus and His inner infrastructure.

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To pray is to open your heart to God’s refreshing air.

The Bible
Begins with the fall
Of humanity;
Jesus with the call
To repent.

Grace freely offers us the opportunity to repent and to walk in freedom from bondage to desires. We can accept or reject that offer.

All around the world people find comfort in talking to God. Will that help you? Try it and see. To the mind, prayer is often just a formality, but to the heart, it’s life-changing reality.

The longing for inner healing is answered by prayer. That healing begins as we connect with and surrender to the living God. A preacher’s prayer is a poor substitute for your own. Praying changes you.

Too often in prayer, we expect God to listen to us, but we aren’t willing to listen to Him. When you pray, if God’s signal to your heart is weak, begin to remove the interference and distractions.

Self-entanglement shrink wraps the human heart with plastic pride. Humble prayer frees the heart to breathe the breath of God.

Humble prayer brings freedom and healing to the heart. Prideful prayer puts more trust in self than in God.

Make prayer perpetual by persistently keeping your awareness focused on the presence of Jesus. Jesus is called the Head of the church. The last time you were in church, did they allow the living Jesus to lead anything? If the living Jesus isn’t allowed to personally lead anything in church, how is He the Head?

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Some non-religious thoughts about prayer

Interrogation is about getting answers. Prayer is about answering God’s invitation to communicate with Him.

If you’re not sure God exists, talk to Him about it. Prayer enables us to participate in an amazing relationship with the living God. It lets Christians learn about Jesus at the experiential level, not just at the mental level.

Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray. If you ask Him, He’ll teach you, too. Prayer isn’t always intentional. Sometimes a “Help me, Jesus!” will sneak up on you.

Prayer is the opportunity to come clean– to come out of hiding–to be completely honest with someone who cares–God! It’s not a once-and-done (instant answer) request–like clicking a link. Jesus taught that prayer requires persistence.

You can look like you’re praying hard, but if your heart isn’t in it, you’re hardly praying. Pray to experience God’s presence, not to try to talk Him out of something.

Humbly pondering nature leads to wondering, to amazement, to awe, to awareness of the Creator, to prayer.

Connecting with God takes more than attending a meeting or saying a prayer. It requires an open, humble heart. True prayer isn’t a do-it-yourself-project. It’s about connecting with God thru self-surrender.

Heart-felt prayer requires courage because it awakens and enlightens your conscience.

Praying together is powerful! One of life’s most amazing experiences is to hear someone pour out their heart to God in prayer.

Prayer:
Let your heart stare
Until you tear
Thru the fog
And become aware
Of God.

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If desires are controlling your life, then you’re not controlling it.

If feelings, desires, and opinions are running your life and defining your identity, then you aren’t the one in control of your life. Freedom is power over feelings, desires, and opinions, not surrender to them.

Compulsive feelings and desires can lead in two directions: 1) to arrogance if we justify them, or 2) to humility if we persistently resist them.

As humans we experience false feelings, tormenting thoughts and defective desires. Learning to recognize and overcome them is powerful.

To only believe what pleases you is to walk in deception. Truth is often unpleasant.

Learning without application
Is dilapidation.
It may look smart
But life’s still falling apart.

To avoid guilt:
Keep your sight
On what is right
And don’t go along
With what is wrong.

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Your prayer-do is more important than your hairdo

The prayer cycle:
Without prayer life’s a mess.
When life’s a mess
People eventually pray.

Your prayer-do is much more important than your hairdo. How you communicate with God and what you do with your life matters, but your hairstyle will make little difference in your quality of life. (Many happy people have bad hair.) A beautician can fix your life, but sincere prayer lets God fix your life.

Some people say that it doesn’t make sense to pray. For me, life doesn’t make much sense without prayer.

True prayer doesn’t wear an inner mask when approaching God. It doesn’t heart distance from Him.

When people say they can’t hear God, what they usually mean is that God isn’t telling them what they want to hear. The testimonies of God can be seen in nature, but His voice is heard deep inside your heart. When God begins to talk to you, listen. Don’t interrupt Him.

Prayer requires humility. True prayer is the acknowledgement that we need God.

Heart-felt prayer isn’t like talking to yourself or to an imaginary friend. There’s a real connection when you talk to God. Try a sincere, honest conversation with God and notice what happens in your heart.

To ignore your conscience is to walk away and not hear what God has to say. Let Him talk to you. If you don’t want to communicate with God, He won’t make you pray.

True prayer involves getting and keeping your mind, heart, and life right with God. You don’t need to go anywhere (or attend a church service) to communicate with God in prayer.

The ultimate purpose of prayer isn’t for us to command God, but for us to allow God to lead us into His will. Prayer that doesn’t connect your heart with God is incomplete.

When we make communication with God all about making requests, we miss out on hearing His voice and celebrating His presence. It’s hard to pray if you’re trying to avoid God’s presence.

When your soul is hungry for God, honest, open-hearted prayer is more fulfilling than study. If you’re offline with God, heart-felt prayer will reboot your spiritual wifi. It’s a probable deception to think you have a relationship with God if you rarely (or never) interact or communicate with Him.

When I pray the words don’t come from my mind or my will, but they freely flow from somewhere deep within me. Dare to pray. Begin to say one for somebody. Then notice what happens in your heart.

If your enemies are as wrong as you think they are, they really need your prayers. If you don’t believe in miracles, but ask God for one anyway, you’ll be tempted to try to explain it away.

Hearing a sermon or having a discussion about Jesus, can’t compare with listening to and obeying Him. Hearing a sermon can be an obstacle to obeying God. It gives you the impression that you’re already doing it by merely attending church.

Prayer is called spiritual warfare, because it’s hard to make our human nature surrender to God. It takes spiritual warfare to defeat ungodly, thoughts, feelings, and desires. We can’t follow Jesus and our own thoughts, feelings, and desires at the same time.

People who have been forgiven by God know how to forgive others. They’ve learned to let go of bitterness and and brush away all hate.

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Unmasking prayer and church . . .

Prayer can get stuck
In rattling off words
Without feeling.
Instead, express your heart.

The USA has dropped the mask mandate. Now we need churches to drop their mask mandate and let people openly share from their heart. It’s time for Christians to be real before God and one another. When you learn to honestly express to God, the tenderness in your heart, you’ll be free to express it to people as well — with an unmaksed heart.

Americans will call, write, or petition their representative in Congress, but I find God to be much more reliable. When you think God isn’t hearing, He is. But you might not be.

Many Christians have been trained to hear sermons without commenting and to talk to God without listening to His inner voice. However, those who listen to and obey the living God are Spirit-led and live by love. The Bible calls them “the children of God.” Romans 8:14.

People who pray together (from their heart) experience an inner connection with God, together. To pray with your mouth open and your heart closed, falls far short of true prayer. Open the eyes and ears of your heart.

The 2 halves of prayer are: 1) expressing yourself to God; and 2) is listening within as God expresses Himself to you. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean that communicating with God is less powerful than talking to a paid therapist or counselor. The Bible says that we should ask God for wisdom. Pray that He will teach you. Then listen to His inner voice in your conscience.

Knees bent in prayer don’t necessarily mean a heart bent toward God. True prayer is spiritual warfare. It’s intense, focused, compassionate, urgent, heart-felt, and life-changing. Say one for someone.

Formal prayer is constrained and regimented. Free-flowing prayer is spontaneous, heart-felt, and life-changing!

See how well God organized nature. Yet many Christians believe He can’t organize a church service without a pastor to lead it.

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God — first responder or last resort?

If you want God
To be your first responder,
Don’t make prayer
Your last resort.

When you say your prayers, open your heart and share your cares with God. As humans we have selective inner hearing. We can open or close the ears of our heart to God. Pray with the ears of your heart open and hear what God has to say.

God’s voice is often called conscience. Life goes better when you tune your heart to hear Him.

Heart-prayer is to hunger and thirst for a growing relationship with God. That’s how we can “pray without ceasing.” Make your prayers an expression of heart-felt gratitude, not just a religious platitude.

Christianity isn’t a once and done — an “I got saved,” checkbox. It’s lifelong surrender to and pursuit of the living Jesus.

Consistently pray for God to bless your enemies. They may never know it, but it will cause bitterness to drain from your heart.

Prayer walking is powerful. When I pray while walking around with my eyes open, I discover that “He walks with me and He talks with me.”

People who say they don’t believe in prayer will sometimes turn to it as a last resort. Without sincerity, prayer won’t bring serenity.

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