Steve Simms's Blog, page 188
April 23, 2021
The power of apology / the freedom of confession!
People like to brag and say, “I have no apologies to make to anyone,” (as if they had never done anything wrong to anybody). Pride refuses to apologize for wrongs it has done. Love is quick to. (The apology that pride tells you not to make, is often the most important one to make.)
A true apology humbly offers regret for wrongdoing, without making excuses, and then does what it can to make amends. A sincere apology requires courage; excuses don’t.
If you allow yourself to feel no sincere regret for what you’ve done, saying “I’m sorry,” is empty words.
Even when you’ve been offered no apologies, you can still choose to forgive and dump your heavy load of hurt. When you’re looking for an apology and don’t get it, forgive anyway. Don’t let the person who hurt you keep you full of resentment. Carrying unforgiveness often causes you more pain than what a person did when they hurt you.
Innocence is unattainable. The only way to be free from guilt is through apology and unearned forgiveness. To fail to confess is to acquiesce to guilt. You don’t need an attorney, a priest, or a church service to make a confession. You can come clean with God anytime and anywhere.
If we would sincerely apologize for where we’ve harmed people and give up wanting them to apologize to us, we’d be much happier. To make no apologies when you’ve done wrong to someone, is to choose to ignore the pain you’ve caused them.
Confession is like taking a shower (or flushing a toilet). It washes away the grime of guilt. Confession is courageous; honesty is heroic! Confession will set you free from the heavy load of lies and deception.
If you’re feeling guilty,
A sincere apology
Can set you free.
Without apology,
Guilt lingers
And pride prevails.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com
April 22, 2021
Spiritual weapons can curb gun violence
Firearm training? When loving-your-enemy-training is as popular as firearm training, we’ll be on the road to curbing gun violence. Society recognizes the need to train for physical health, but too often ignores the need to train for mental health.
Physical weapons force compliance. Spiritual weapons release so much love and light that they create voluntary compliance. Violence can physically subdue a person, but spiritual weapons can transform human hearts.
It’s dangerous for people to be armed with physical weapons, but unarmed with the fruit of the Spirit. The smart weapons are the spiritual ones.
Arm yourself with compassion and kindness. Learn to use them as weapons against evil.
When you put on God’s armor and live in awareness of His presence, you don’t feel a need to protect yourself. If compassion was consistently glorified as heroic and violence seen as weakness, the world would be better off. Nonviolence requires the ultimate courage.
The supernatural, spiritual gifts, listed in the Bible, are powerful spiritual weapons, that you can learn to use. Some people are so concerned about the “right to bear arms” that they ignore their right to learn to use spiritual weapons.
Being physically armed can help you “stand your ground,” but being spiritually armed will make you a better person. Spiritual weapons boldly confront evil with love, not with hate.
Only spiritual weapons can protect you from anxiety and discouragement. Guns are useless in fighting emotional duress. If you haven’t fought inner battles to become secure in your own mind and heart, nothing outside you can give you peace.
To use spiritual weapons is not to be unarmed. It’s to be armed with the real presence of the living Jesus.
If you’re defeated in your heart and mind, outward victory means little. First defeat your inner enemies and secure peace within.
Listening to your thoughts and feelings can miss you up. Commanding them to align with Jesus will set you free! First win within and then without a doubt you’ll win without. Be an inner winner!
“Christ in you” isn’t a coping strategy. It’s the living Jesus filling you with glorious hope! Violence is a sign and symptom of fear, but the Bible says that “Love casts out fear.” “Fight the good fight of faith,” not the bad fight of anger, violence, and hate.
The safest place a person can be is in the center of God’s will, armed with the fruit of the Spirit. How we need spiritual weapons! “Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude.” 1 Peter 4:1
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com
April 21, 2021
Marvel is more than superheroes
Too many people have lost their marvels. Now they see their amazing life as drab and boring.
There’s so much to marvel at in life: nature, wisdom, technology, science, compassion, spirituality, the universe. It’s fun to find and appreciate the marvelous.
Don’t let your mind make the marvelous seem mundane. Wake up to its amazement.
Every human being is a marvel and carries a reflection of God’s image. Sometimes you have to look hard to find it, but it’s there.
Christians too often confuse Jesus with a program or a church service, instead of experiencing Him as the marvel that He is. Christians won’t experience the marvel of connecting heart-to-heart unless we listen to each other, yet church is set up so that we only listen to one man.
To marvel in the presence of God is much more powerful than trying to understand Him. When I read the Bible with an open heart, it makes me marvel and I don’t want to stop.
Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com
Chauvin’s conviction breaks a pattern
Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd breaks a pattern. History is full of abusers of black people (many who are considered heroes) who were never held accountable for their actions.
The politics of race has prejudiced untold juries against convicting abusers of black people. More than 4,200 lynchings of black people (between 1880 and 1970) have been verified. Politics caused almost no one to be convicted for those horrible crimes.
The details of the cruel legacy toward black Americans have been mostly left out of our history books. (Although demons of racial injustice have stirred up much hate and cruelty, they have been mostly unnoticed by everyone except their victims.) Since history’s perpetrators of racial injustice are dead, it’s too late to bring those abusers of black people to justice, but it’s never too late to openly and humbly expose the truth of the brutal things that they did.
Now the question is: After this breakthrough of justice for George Floyd, will we continue to break the pattern of color-blindness toward racial injustice against blacks both in the present and in history by opening our eyes to truth?
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com
April 20, 2021
Color-blind shouldn’t mean “looking the other way”
Being silent about racial disparity isn’t being “color-blind.” It’s looking the other way. It’s time to open the blinds and see racial views more clearly.
Color-blind? When police are on the lookout for a dangerous black male, every black man is a suspect. In a color-blind nation, a white man and a black man stopped by police will be treated the same if they ask why.
Sizing people up by the color of their skin” is quick and easy; by “the content of their character,” takes time and patience. The idea that skin color denotes different kinds of people is a giant like that continually tears America apart. We need to move beyond human color-categories.
White man,
Black man,
Either can
Be a threat
But I like
Most the ones
I’ve met.
The color of skin
Someone’s wrapped in
Can’t begin
To define
Who they are
Within.
Hopeful people aren’t violent. Spread hope.
Photo by Jayberrytech on Pexels.com
Robot in church?
Going to church doesn’t require anything from people that robots couldn’t do.
It’s important that Christ-followers not become church robots.
It takes living people full of the risen Jesus to go beyond church as usual.
Photo by LJ on Pexels.com
April 19, 2021
Approaching the mystery of Jesus like Mary did
Approaching Jesus through analysis leads to theology. Approaching Him through pondering leads to adoration.
Mary treasured and pondered in her heart, the amazing words and prophesies about Him. As His mother, her heart loved and adored Him. Be like Mary! Christianity without pondering, mystery, awe, worship, miracles, surrender, obedience, and discipleship, is incomplete.
Church too often rationalizes and overexplains theology and leaves little mystery for people to ponder. It gets people to try to understand Jesus, but the early Christians allowed their heart to be overcome by Him. People need to be encouraged to ponder the glorious presence of the living Jesus.
Reading the Bible as a love letter instead of as a textbook, takes people beyond mental analysis and inspires them. That kind of approach to Jesus stirs the depths of their heart.
Photo by Cleyder Duque on Pexels.com
April 18, 2021
Who’s there (walking to Emmaus)?
Insights:
Western Christianity seems to be based on informed unawareness, knowing about Jesus but not being aware of His presence.
When something is awakening your heart to the conscious awareness of Jesus, stay with it. Don’t let it fade away.
In a moment of awareness, Jesus suddenly shifts from information to transformation and ongoing saturation with inspiration.
Normal Christianity is to continually overflow with the consciousness awareness of the presence of Jesus. Anything else is subpar.
Informed unawareness of Jesus tends to be boring and legalistic. Overflowing awareness of Him is “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
Continual, conscious awareness of the One who laid down His life on the Cross will empower you to walk in joy and victory to the mountain top of God’s glory!
Photo by Jens Johnsson on Pexels.com
April 17, 2021
Experience continual Jesus-connection, like grapes on a vine
“Abide in the vine.” Be continually aware of the living Jesus. Stay consciously connected to Him.
A part-time awareness of Jesus (on again, off again) falls far short of His command to “Abide in Me.” It’s easy to sit in church and not have a clue that Jesus is alive, powerful, and active in the world today.
“I am with you always.” Christians should never be unaware of being connected to the living, resurrected Jesus.
Jesus said: “I am the light of the world.” To be unaware of light, even for a moment, you have to close your eyes.
“Behold the Lamb of God.” This isn’t intended to be a momentary experience, but a lifestyle of continually focusing on Jesus.
“Looking unto Jesus,” is not about a quick glance, but a captivating gaze that lasts a lifetime. Contemporary, Western Christianity focuses far too much on self-awareness and far too little on Jesus-awareness.
Jesus doesn’t ask you to spend some of your time with Him (a daily “quiet time”). He calls for all of your time.
Jesus doesn’t just give us words and clues about how to follow Him. He offers us His continual presence. He comes to lead us Himself
To follow a guide, you have to stay conscious of his presence. You can’t follow Jesus if you’re unaware of that He’s with you. Until Christians become continually aware of the presence of the living Jesus, we’ll never be very good at abiding in Him.
The Bible shows that God isn’t hiding from us but we’re hiding from Him. Jesus invites us out of hiding, to hang with Him on His vine 24/7/365.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Guilt isn’t bondage. It’s a call to freedom!
Guilt isn’t bondage. Just the opposite. It shows you what’s holding you in bondage and is a guide to freedom.
Guilt is a product of your own behavior. It’s not caused by other people’s opinions of your behavior. It’s better to avoid guilt by not doing things that cause it, than to jump in the middle of it and hope it will go away.
If you’re not in any way responsible for something, if you had nothing to do with it, any guilt you feel about it is false. False guilt is best avoided.
When guilt is covered up, it doesn’t heal. To refuse to admit when you’re wrong and to refuse to make things right is to carry guilt unnecessarily. For every lie told, someone is guilty of falsifying the truth.
Guilt is a reminder to do better, a call to make things right. It’s not supposed to be an ongoing feeling of condemnation. To ignore feelings of guilt is like choosing to stay in bed thru a fire alarm. Guilt is best avoided, but if you have stepped into it, humbly asking for and receiving forgiveness is the way out.
When you do something that causes you to feel guilty, you make a problem worse. Trying to rationalize away guilt thru self-justification and shifting the blame to others is cowardly.
Guilt is a burglar alarm, alerting you that bad behavior is stealing your inner peace. Bad behavior and guilt are Siamese twins. Guilt will fade away if you stop doing what’s causing it.
The remedy for guilt isn’t denial. It’s forgiveness that comes thru apologizing, making any amends you can, and behaving better.
Like the lines on the high way, your conscience tries to keep you safe on life’s journey.
Avoid guilt. Always choose kindness instead of cruelty.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com
