Steve Simms's Blog, page 206

A lowly title for a blog post about pride

It’s humbling to write about pride. When I do, I see it in me.

Giving up pride is liberating! There’s no image to maintain. Pride and peace of mind don’t mix.

Pride confirms what you believe to be true. Humility searches for what’s really true. Self-pity is wounded pride nursing its pain.

Love builds bridges. Pride puts pricey toll booths and armed guards on them. Because pride denies its own pain, it lacks compassion for the pain of others. If we would learn to live on less pride and more humility, our lives would be better.

A proud person is full of excuses. Otherwise their pride would collapse.

Students in the school of pride believe they have nothing to learn. Feeling like you’re somebody doesn’t make you better than anybody.

Pride puts self first. Love puts others first. Pride fills us with self-concern and distracts us from the many joys of daily life. Wounded pride’s a chance to break free, but many people nurse it back to recovery.

In the end, pride counts for nothing. Reality and truth are what matter. Pride claims to be strong, but it internally collapses under simple disapproval. Pride is used to hide inner turmoil. It is an ego shout that continually tries to snuff out internal self-doubt.

Pride wants the credit, but humility is after results that help other people. Everyone has evil in them. Some learn to resist it and overcome it better than others. When inner freedom is illusive, many settle for the proudful illusion of freedom.

Pride doesn’t make people happy. It makes us guarded, defensive, and hard-hearted. Truth isn’t designed to bolster pride, therefore, pride avoids and denies truth.

Pride has a tiny comfort zone — being in the center of people’s positive attention. It thinks that people who disagree with it are either evil or not very smart. Pride highlights self, over and over again.

Think outside your pride. (It’s amazing what lies beyond it.) The bubble of pride is a deceitful guide. Like any bubble, it eventually pops. Truth is found outside the bubble of pride. (If you play your cards in the bubble of pride, your overconfidence will backfire.)

We can take pride and pull it down so that it doesn’t imprison us in self-focus. Pride and denial are good friends. Pride is confusing. It often boast about wrongful deeds. Pride is continually needy of more things to gloat and boast about.

Pride prefers words that proliferate it; not words that tell the truth about it. It’s only satisfied when it feels and acts like it’s better than and outranks others. Pride pretends to be self-sufficient, but it hides much woundedness.

Pride has trouble understanding and accepting anything that doesn’t build it up. It is deceptive. Many people are proud of things that they had nothing to do with. It’s irrational for people to feel proud (or guilty) of things things they had nothing to do with.

It takes a skewed view of self to produce pride. An honest view of self is humbling. Too much self-regard will make your heart hard. We have trouble hearing and understanding anything that wounds our pride. If you’re unwilling to try to understand what people are saying, pride’s in the way.

Pride blames other people for its own shortcomings. It justifies wrongdoing; it begins to say that wrong is right and that right is wrong. Pride self-censors words like, “I’m sorry,” “I’m wrong,” “Forgive me,” “My mistake.” It enjoys seeing people (it dislikes) humiliated.

Pride insists that it has nothing to apologize for. It says, “Don’t forgive people, but gloat over your supposed moral superiority.” Violence is extreme pride, the belief you have the right to physically harm people. To set pride aside and sincerely apologize, gives relationships a healing, fresh start.

Pride and conscience can’t get along. One usually pushes aside the other. Every sin is birthed through pride. A little pride casts a big shadow that hides much truth. “It’s not bragging if you’ve done it,” unless you’re using it to win praise.

Authentic greatness is hard to find. Much that we call great is pomp and circumstance. Seeking and embracing truth sets us free from the inner dictatorship of self-deception. Pride is the denial of the unpleasant realities about yourself.

Pride too often enjoys and celebrates other people’s humiliation. It often trounces on truth and justice. Pride can’t see anything that it wants to praise more than self.

Pride never dares to compare itself to perfection. That’s too humbling.

Pride is a threat to equality. It always wants to be better than others, not equal to them. Pride needs an audience of inferiors.

All pride is illusion. Honestly facing reality generates humility. Pride puts self first, but self-focus evades happiness because self’s never satisfied.

If it hurts your pride to let go of an opinion, it may not be based on facts. Pride and honesty seldom get along with each other. Weaponized pride can intimidate people and help you get your way, but recoil’s coming.

Pride flaunts its inflated opinion of self. A puff of suddenly released pride can proliferate a lot of damage. Pride demands respect, but any respect given as mere compliance is usually fake. Pride puts self on a fragile pedestal in order to admire and promote it.

Pride’s not a foundation of self-worth. It’s more of a bold mask for insecurity. People who don’t know their value as a human being, look for other labels to wear.

Pride basks and gloats in success, whether it’s real or fake. It surrounds itself with empty phrases and hollow words. Pride is an attempt to avoid owning up to our faults and misdeeds. It seldom minds twisting the truth to protect itself.

No amount of money, possessions, power, or fame can satisfy human pride. Pride or shame aren’t life’s only options. We can be forgiven and grateful.

Emotions can make you feel that what’s unreal is real. For example, by falling into pride, people think that they have risen and are unaware that they have actually fallen.

Pride demands a pedestal, but a damaged ego can learn the joy of humility. Pride would rather be praised for what it knows, than taught what it doesn’t know. It prevents accurate self-assessment. Pride believes that it has the privilege and right of superiority.

The Bible presents pride as a major sin. That’s not a popular point of view. Pride and total honesty can’t walk hand in hand. Pride has no room for the living, interventionist God and His truth.

Pride admits no need for forgiveness and thus perceives no need for Christ’s mercy. Our pride is the major source of our anger. If you pull down and dismantle your pride, you won’t have to protect it from others.

Pride can trick you into believing that you’re better than you really are. The more you experience God’s grace, the less room you have for self-righteousness. Grace wounds pride. Religion turns pride into self-righteousness.

Spiritual pride attempts to justify itself by claiming God’s favor and approval. Your love and humility can slip behind other people’s pride and help them open up their heart.

Pride that elevates your skin color over other skin colors, is racism. Pride is an idol, at odds with God — an attempted substitute for His inner peace. The idea of self-supremacy is dangerous. All humans are made out of the same stuff.

The sin of pride is sneaky. It usually disguises itself as noble and virtuous. Instead of following God’s way, pride hinders God by continually getting is His way. Pride flees an open, honesty, mutually supportive environment. Churches seem to, too.

Jesus doesn’t say ′′ love yourself.” He assumes that you already do. He says that you should love your neighbor as much as you already do love yourself. Nations cease to exist. People are eternal. Love them more than governments.

People enter the kingdom of God by abandoning pride and surrendering their will and obedience to the King of Kings — the living Jesus Christ. Jesus’ sheep listen to His voice and humbly let Him lead them. Do you?

It’s freeing to acknowledge that Jesus is number one, and to realize that you don’t need to be! The inner buoyancy of Jesus’ water wings transcends the self-effort of treading water.

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Backwards Christianity puts self first

Too many Christians ignore the living Jesus and focus on self. That’s backwards.

My way is seldom the high way. When I go low, Jesus calls me high.

Self is deceptive. When you align with self you miss much reality. Look beyond self.

Jesus often contradicts my will and leads me to go His way instead of mine. Jesus helps me sort thru my feelings and thoughts and then throw out the harmful ones.

People who think that they don’t need Jesus aren’t open to experiencing His reality. Who you let govern your life is vital to your mental health. Choose Jesus over self.

If you hate all the people who think and/or do evil, there’ll be no one left to love. When you really “know yourself,” you know you need mercy, forgiveness, and healing.

Stuck in pride, missing out on self-deprecating laughter

Pride misses out on the joy of having a good laugh at yourself. (If you won’t laugh at yourself, you’re missing out on a lot of good humor!)

Pride feels a constant need to impress. What an unnecessary stress!

Pride distorts and twists truth to make itself look good. The spin never ends. It usually hides a lot of important details.

Pride looks for equals to associate with, but often all it finds is other pretenders. It is a veil that hides what people really are.

Self is a narrow perspective. Pride keeps you stuck in it.

Following pride and following conscience will take you down two vastly different roads. To close your conscience and harden your heart is driving blindfolded. Crash is coming.

Pride wants to be thought right. Humility wants truth, even if it proves you wrong. It hides truth behind the ego where only honesty and humility can find it. Pride is tricky and illusionary, hiding much more than it reveals.

When pride tries to puff it up, humility rejects the hot air. Pride is easily offended at things that humility hardly notices. When questioned, pride gets hostile. Humility prefers to be hospitable.

If you set aside pride, you’ll see much beauty that’s been hidden from you. Pride says no to tender tears. Humility embraces their healing.

Pride boasts of what it knows, until it convinces itself that it knows what it doesn’t know. Pride often lies, but conscience will usually tell you the truth if you’ll listen.

Pride jettisons anything that doesn’t support it. It throws all distractions from ego, overboard. Pride refuses to humbly bend, but it does often break.

It’s hard to sustain pride when there’s nobody around to be impressed by it. Pride and shame are polar extremes. Truth is somewhere in between them.

Pride’s based on comparison and competition. It looks down on others. Humility looks up to God. To take pride in what God’s given you is to confuse an undeserved gift with your ego.

Pride usually thinks God agrees with it, but the Bible says, “God resists the proud.” Pride believes it has a right to make its own rules (and ignore God’s). Pride boast in nations, but the glory of no nation can compare to the slightest glimpse of the glory of God.

Jesus doesn’t want us to focus on “self-love” but on “neighbor-love”

I find self-focus very discouraging, but Christ-focus extremely invigorating and enlightening! If self-love doesn’t look outward and focus on loving others, it becomes like stagnant water. It needs to flow out of us, not sit in a self pit.

Jesus never says “love yourself.” He assumes that you do. He says that you need to love your neighbor as much as you do self. Caring for your neighbor as much as you care about yourself is one of Jesus’ greatest (yet most ignored) challenges to humanity.

Shifting from self-love to neighbor-love isn’t easy. When I try to, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” self screams for attention. However, when I shift my love-focus from myself to my neighbors, I lose my self-focus in serving others and become much happier.

If you would spend your time focusing on serving others (instead of your own agenda) you’d enjoy life more. If “loving yourself” isn’t making you happy, try spending a day loving and serving others. It may surprise you how good you feel.

Forgiveness can’t be compartmentalized. If you won’t get past your self-focused hurt and forgive someone, it will be difficult for you to feel like you’re forgiven.

The more I know myself, the less I trust my own effort and opinions. My trust is in Jesus. I don’t want to be true to myself. That would cause a lot of pain and trouble. I want to be true to the living Jesus!

Self-will will only make self miserable

Self-will is based on insufficient data; on our feelings and desires, not on truth. When self-will prevails over God’s will for you, misery manifests.

A life, battered by self-will, is continually frustrated and stressed. The ravages of self-will reek havoc around the world, both in society and in the human psyche. Unrestrained self is devastating to individuals and to society. Unrestrained self-will isn’t freedom; it’s being continually chained to your own destructive tendencies.

Trying to impose self-will is exhausting. People won’t do everything you want them to (including you)! Ever since the Garden of Eden, humans have been stuck in self-will. Jesus came to free us form the tyrannical dominance of self.

Law and order tries to enforce the outward restraint of destructive self-will, but it can’t restrain self-will in the human heart. Politics can change laws, but the living Jesus can heal human hearts from the inside out. My hope is in Him.

The living Jesus wants to lead people to freedom, but guilt tries to condemn us and to keep us in our self-imposed misery. Self-will gets in the way & blocks us from dynamic intimacy with the living Jesus. Restraint of self, prepares the way for the living Jesus to have His way inside you.

Surrender to Jesus brings healing. People who are surrendered to the risen Jesus, don’t live like people who are given over to self-will. To be spiritually asleep in a self-focused haze, is a distorted way to live.

Goodness is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Any goodness I have is from Christ working in me, not from my self-will. To “wait on the Lord” is to restrain from self-will — to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

Self-will quenches God’s Spirit. A restrained self allows the living Jesus to freely work inside you. The living Jesus wants you to surrender your self-will to Him, so that He can freely mold you from within. Without a Spirit-activated conscience, self-will is easily deceived & stubbornly holds to its opinions.

When God wakes up your conscience, it’s called the conviction of the Holy Spirit. If you allow Jesus to activate and control your conscience, you’ll find Him gently leading you to recovery, healing and mental health. When Christians deactivate their conscience, the Holy Spirit is quenched. When Jesus asks if you want Him to activate your conscience, click “allow.”

People with an activated conscience are essential heroes in any human society. Self-will dislikes an activated conscience because it brings God’s inner restraint to self’s desires, deceit, and pride.

Be true to the living Jesus. Your heart may deceive you, but you can trust Him! Restrain me, Lord, from thoughts, feelings, words, and actions that ignore Your will and continually try to enslave me.

Insider Christianity is essential (it’s not just Sunday church-going)

Insider Christianity burns in your heart and daily changes you from within. It isn’t the same thing as Sunday church-going. The great joy of insider Christianity (Jesus living in and through you) can’t be fully communicated with words. It must be experienced.

Without Jesus’ insider formation of my heart and mind, I’d be a mess. Insider Christianity starts in the heart and works outward. For many Christians, the risen Jesus is an outsider, but when you make Him an insider and let Him rule within, everything changes.

Insider Christianity is essential. Without it we only have a “form of godliness” that ignores “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” I’ve never much enjoyed formal prayers, but I find insider conversations with the living Jesus utterly amazing and life changing.

Insider Christianity isn’t based on outward organizations, lectures, or religious activities. It’s a spiritual fire in the heart!

Making the living Jesus an outsider to your heart and mind, subjects you to the turmoil of your own feelings and opinions. Many Christians do try to keep Jesus as an outsider to their mind and heart. They practice Christ-distancing.

Christianity is holy insider trading: Your worry for Christ’s peace; Your sin for His forgiveness; Your will for His will.

When you surrender and let Jesus live and rule inside of you, He will overcome the insider threats that are at work within you. For powerful insider point of view, listen to His voice in your conscience! Freedom from self-focus is amazingly liberating!

True ministry connects people to the living Jesus. It should never be a substitute for Him. For more on Insider Christianity, check out my book, The Joy Of Early Christianity.

The Bible Resurrection events / everyday Easter

The Resurrection events in the New Testament off a closer walk with the here-and-now Jesus to everyone. Unfortunately, Christians have too often rejected the biblical, foundational rock of supernatural revelation, for the gravestone of religious knowledge and programs.

The Bible shows how human government and religion teamed up to seal Jesus in a tomb, but He rose and broke free from both of them! “The chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate,” to “secure” Jesus’ tomb. Of course, their efforts didn’t work!

“The women hurried away from the tomb…Suddenly Jesus met them.” Leave the tomb and discover the risen Jesus!

“Who will roll the stone away?” “When they looked up they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled away.” Look up!

“She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” We need to recognize the risen Jesus.

As His disciples gathered behind locked doors, the risen Jesus “came and stood among them.” Jesus, break through our locked doors!

When Thomas heard the risen Jesus say, “Stop doubting and believe,” he responded, “My Lord and my God!” Will you?

The risen Jesus “stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.” Maybe you’ve seen Jesus and missed Him.

When an amazing thing happens, sometimes we need someone to tell us, “It is the Lord!” and motivate us to jump “into the water.”

Jesus gave His disciples, “many convincing proofs that He was alive.” He’s also convinced me! I love following the risen Jesus!

The Resurrection declares, “No more absentee Jesus!” Let the risen Jesus live in and through you 24/7/365!

Distancing from the risen Jesus has distracted far too many Christians and caused them to depend on religious programs and pastors. Hierarchies are backed up by spiritual “principalities.” That’s why Jesus told His followers not to set them up. Luke 22:25-26.

If we don’t read the Bible with our heart open to the voice of the risen Jesus, we tend to impose our own study and opinions into it. The idea that the risen Jesus isn’t present and active in the daily life of His followers is a false Gospel. Some people say it’s not safe to vote absentee. I say, it’s not safe to worship an absentee Jesus.

Biblical Christianity isn’t the passive experience of weekly group-think, but daily obedience to the living Jesus. Check out my handbook about experiencing the risen Jesus, here-and-now: The Joy Of Early Christianity.

The absentee
Jesus leaves me
Empty.
Christ, living in me
Releases inner glee!

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Following the living, here-and-now Jesus (not an absentee Jesus)

Christians ask, “Where do you go to church?” I prefer, “How do you follow the living Jesus?”

Too many churches and Christians act like they have an absentee Jesus. (Sometimes they even seem to use the Bible as a note from Jesus’ Father, to justify their belief that Jesus is an absentee from their everyday life.) However, if Christians would exchange their absentee Jesus for the here-and-now Jesus, spiritual awakening would flood them.

Religion makes Jesus an absentee Savior. To the early Christ-followers, He was their present Lord and Master. Religious institutions seem to need an absentee Jesus. The living, present Jesus would present too much of a threat to their programs.

A dead-and-gone, absentee Jesus would need religious organizations to carry on for Him, but the risen, present Jesus doesn’t. I don’t think that the living, present-day Jesus likes for His personal leadership to be replaced by religious hierarchies. Listen to & obey Him.

The living Jesus, alone, is the Head of the body of Christ, even if other claims of headship try to usurp His authority! When Christians continually hear and obey the voice of the risen Jesus, they come into supernatural love and agreement. (I’ve experienced that many times!)

The living, here-and-now Jesus will compassionately interact with you, if you will stop keeping Him away. Focus on religious institutions and leaders can keep you from a direct relationship with the risen Jesus. I don’t believe Jesus intended for His followers to be an institutionalized religion, but rather to all hear and obey His voice.

When we all live like Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. Let’s do it now and not wait until we die!

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Can good people be found? Not according to biblical Christianity.

If you believe that you’re a good person, perhaps you haven’t examined your own heart (and listened to your conscience) very closely. Every person is capable of doing wrong (and even terrible) things. So where are the good people?

It’s easy to think you’re a good person, until you make an all out effort to be a good person. Then your point of view changes. I can do good some of the time, but I’ve never been able to be good 100% of the time, no matter how hard I try.

A good person wouldn’t do bad things. However, the Bible says that “all have sinned.” Good people can be trusted to do what they say, 100% of the time. Can you? I can’t.

People like to proclaim, “I’m a good person,” but a good person doesn’t think, say, or do wrong. A truly good person is consistently good all the time. Are you? Try to be good for an entire day (with no bad thoughts, words, or actions). Can you?

If you hide some truth so that others will think you’re a good person, are you a good person? Good people don’t need laws to make them behave.

Merit or mercy? Good people have so much merit, they don’t need mercy. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner!

If you’re a good person, it should be easy for you to consistently “be good.” Is it? (It’s not for me.) If you think you’ve found a good person, don’t watch him too closely because if you do, you will eventually see him say or do something bad.

Occasionally doing a good thing doesn’t make you a good person, if you’re not consistently good, inside and out. (I’m not.)

It’s easy for a good person to consistently think good thoughts. It’s extremely difficult for me to do that.

Medicating or denying guilt is not very effective. Repentance and Christ’s forgiveness removes it!

Happiness doesn’t rhyme with anamosity (but a lot of things do)

When the velocity of animosity exceeds the speeds of kindness, of understanding, and of truth, we’re all in trouble. Animosity reduces luminosity, until the light in our heart grows dim and in our darkness we think we’re right.

Where there’s much anamosity, there’s little jocosity (joyful humor). Continual anamosity leads to callosity of the heart.

The reciprocity of animosity benefits neither side. When pomposity feels threatened, it lashes out in animosity.

The voluminosity of anamosity today can be overwhelming. Too much animosity is being mixed with religiosity.

Strenuosity (intense energy) isn’t enough to overcome animosity. It requires forgiving the people you have taken offense at.

If you create animosity in people, you shouldn’t be surprised when they attack you. Unchecked animosity in human hearts eventually leads to atrocity. The verbosity of animosity is making a mess of American politics. Unrestrained animosity, whether from the right or the left, leads to a government monstrosity overflowing with ferocity.

Nursing animosity isn’t heroic behavior. If you won’t make your point without animosity and attack, you have little chance of convincing people who disagree with you.

What people are filled with flows out of them in how they talk about other people. Feelings don’t randomly occur. They’re constructed by your ongoing thoughts and behaviors. You feel the way you think and act. Too often our hostile emotions are freed to run full force, like an unmanned fire hose flipping forcefully in every direction.

Although you’re born with DNA in a life full of many uncontrollable circumstances, your thoughts and choices shape your character. People who flop around spewing their negative feelings at others, surrender their power to choose, to their whims.

To say that you want peace, while constructing hostility with your words, thoughts and actions, is a contradiction. De-escalate your anger and you’ll feel much better. Cruelty (in words or deeds) to any person, disrespects all human life. Unfortunately, cruelty is sometimes legalized and accepted as normal (slavery and abortion).

“They,” they say, as they make conspiracist accusations against them. But they confuse me. Who do they think “they” are?

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” If I’m not doing that, I need to repent. The living Jesus wants to supernaturally change your perspective, clear up your understanding, and heal your heart.

At the most divisive time in American history (Civil War and race-based slavery) Lincoln spoke “with malice toward none.” Learn practical ways to overcome anamosity in my book: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind. Thank you.

[image error] “With malice toward none, with charity for all . . .”