Steve Simms's Blog, page 227

Help & encouragement for prayerphobics

I think some people refuse to pray, not because they think God isn’t real, but because, deep down they believe He might be. That could be frightening for them.

Sometimes people pray for a miracle and then try to explain it away when it happens. Why not accept your miracle with gratitude? It’s safe to express your heart openly and honestly to God. It’s also healing and insightful.

Self-focus blurs the meaning of life. Christ-focus brings it clearly into view. The primary purpose of prayer is not to understand God or to get things from Him, but to personally connect with Him.

Prayer is like breathing. It doesn’t require instructions and you can do it thru out the day no matter where you are. However, words spoken to God, without a heart that’s open to God, are only a “form of godliness” without power. When your heart prays, powerful words will follow. When your mind alone prays, your heart is unmoved.

Prayer is connecting with Jesus. Teaching is being told about Him. Too often modern Christians are taught, but not connected. Prayer isn’t something you “say.” Prayer is spending time interacting with the living Jesus — personally hanging out with Him. Genuine prayer and faith are great ways to jettison worry.

Prayer needs no building, no preacher, no liturgy, no songs, no sacrament, no “service,” no offering, no sermon. Just do it. Lord Jesus, please give peace to everyone who is worried and hope to those who are discouraged.

There is healing in verbally expressing your heart, but people often want you to hush. God doesn’t! Tell Him what’s on your heart. Sometimes people think that a person is listening to them, but he isn’t. Sometimes people think God isn’t listening, but He is. I can usually tell if I’m talking and no one is listening. However, when I pray, I never feel like no one is listening.

The more you hear and do what God tells you to, the more you learn to trust His inner promptings. The way to grow spirituality isn’t just to sit thru religious programs, but to surrender to Jesus who says, “I am the way.”

Pay attention to God. To stop praying is to ignore the Bible which says, “Pray without ceasing.” Awareness of and interaction with God need never stop. For me, talking with the risen Jesus is encouraging, comforting, and exciting.

Don’t wait for an audience before you tell others what God has put in your heart. Share it now and let God decide who needs to hear it.

If Christians begin to meet with reliance on the present-day activity of the risen Jesus, rather than on a program, we’ll see miracles. Hearing a sermon about following Christ isn’t the same as actually following and obeying the risen Jesus.

A talk about following Jesus is like a talk about laughter. It’s much more powerful to do it than to hear a lecture about it. Many “church services” have quite a bit of singing, a few announcements, and a lot of one person’s teaching, but very little very little opportunity to listen to and to talk to the living Jesus.

Are you willing to hear God speak a word that goes against your own desires, feelings, and opinions? Few are willing to do that.

When the Light of Christ begins to sparkle in your heart, life blasts off into joy unspeakable. Search for: The Joy of Early Christianity.

Corona virus has gripped the consciousness of the world. Now, Jesus, grab our awareness with Your presence!

Sermon-free church podcast interview

He Stopped the Sermon

Thoughts about conversing with Jesus

The longing, lurking somewhere in your soul, is a call to connect with the living Jesus Christ. Connection with the risen Jesus is comforting, encouraging, healing, strengthening and joyful.

Converse with the risen Jesus Christ. He’s listening and speaking and waiting for you to engage. Panic passes and is replaced by inner peace, when you surrender to the forgiving and restoring presence of the risen Jesus.

When talking to Jesus becomes dialogue, rather than mere monologue, amazing insights will erupt in your heart. Dialogue with the risen Jesus is real. Millions of people, around the world, are strengthened by it everyday.

Connection with Christ releases inner light. It takes courage to look at yourself in His light, but it releases supernatural healing. People who have experienced loving dialogue with Jesus, don’t want to stop.

If communication with Jesus is a lifestyle (and not just an act of desperation or religion) the joy of the Lord overflows your soul. Conscious contact with Christ is awe-inspiring! Talking with Jesus does amazing things in my heart and life, that no other conversation can do. Jesus is alive and active in this world. He can’t be confined to Heaven!

A bucket, full of hardened concrete, has no room for anything else. A hard heart, full of diversions, has no room for the risen Jesus. Regularly conversing with Jesus will cause us to stop our wrongdoing, or else our wrongdoing will stop our conversation with Him.

Cage free Christianity is amazing–being led from within by Christ in you and not cooped up in religious corrals, crates, and customs. Church is not a conversation pit for a dialogue with God. But your heart is!

It’s better to question God than to ignore Him. It’s okay to ask Him why. Hearing someone else talk to God in church, isn’t the same thing as talking to Him yourself. When a small group of people have a joint conversation with God, incredible things happen. Try it and see!

Ask not what God can do for you. Ask how you can fully surrender to Him. Maybe it’s dishonest to say a memorized prayer that you don’t really mean deep in your heart. The Prayer of St. Francis is beautiful, but God wants to hear your prayer–the one that comes from your own heart. People who confess their every sin to God, stay in continually contact with Him.

Let your heart surge toward God. Stop holding it back because you are worried about what other people may think or say. If you’ve never been in awe of God, you’ve missed out on so much. If you’re making an effort to stay away from God, you’re not an atheist.

For a fresh, healing perspective on life, turn around and face God. When you talk to God, look at Him, not at your problems. God grant us the wisdom to know the difference between “saying a prayer” and heart-felt praying, and the courage to surrender to You.

Fancy words don’t facilitate connection with God. Sincere words do. Avoiding God indicates that you have some level of belief in His existence. Sane people don’t avoid imaginary beings.

When we ask God for help, we won’t hear His answers, unless we listen to His voice. When we ask God something, perhaps we shouldn’t ignore Him, but rather listen to His answer — His “still small voice.” People who won’t listen to God are like athletes who won’t listen to their coach.

Sometimes the answer to prayer is Spirit-prompted action (SPaction) but we ignore the Spirit and stay in our comfort zone. When you have a inner nudging that prompts you to do a godly, self-denying thing, that’s the voice of God.

Most people have prayed for another person. Not so many have prayed with someone. Heart-felt praying with someone is powerful.

When talking with God, there’s no hierarchy. We’re all equally human and He is our Creator. Of course God knows what you pray. He also overhears your every thought, but heart-felt prayer is much more personal.

Too often Christians try to straighten God out to fit our agenda. Perhaps life would be better if we let Him straighten us out. To humbly request and surrender to God’s help, is powerful and life changing. We won’t truly know God’s power, unless we surrender to and connect with Him.

To say, “I don’t pray because it doesn’t work,” is like saying, “I don’t talk to my friend because it doesn’t work.” If you’re not comfortable talking to God, write Him a letter or email. He doesn’t need an address to know what you wrote.

Some people deny God; some ignore Him; others blame Him; some use Him; a few surrender to and obey Him. Profanity and sincere prayer lead in opposite directions. One to pride and a hard heart; the other to humility and a tender heart.

If you ask God for justice, be prepared for some major accountability issues in your life. We can learn a lot from things that frustrate us–things we don’t want to happen–or we can rebel against them. God listens. Perhaps we should learn to, too.

Jesus told us to ask God to do good things for our enemies. He said pray “for” not against them. Dare we obey Him?

“God bless us, every one!” Bless us with humble hearts that are hungry for Your presence and eager to follow your will. To pray, “My will be done,” is to miss the whole point of prayer. We don’t need to talk God into something. We just need to discover and align with His willingness.

God loves us without conditions. His laws are not conditions, but guardrails to keep us safe. We ask God to open our eyes to see. Perhaps we should also ask Him to open our eyes to cry.

Church is changing. What's it gonna be like?

Church may shut down, but not the risen Jesus. Daily obeying Him is the key to inner peace.

If you have trouble being close to God when church services are closed, maybe you’ve been too dependent on a religious program.

Perhaps the best way to have church at home is to go “on line” with the living Jesus, instead of with a preacher. People who have worshipped in interactive, participatory ekklesia gatherings know how to meet at home without a preacher’s sermon. Perhaps your spiritual breakthrough of healing and deliverance isn’t going to happen in church, but in your home.

People often don’t realize they’re spiritually asleep until something alarming wakes them up to the reality of invisible things. The world is experiencing a wakeup call. It’s time to turn around and surrender to the living Jesus. If people would pursue the living Jesus with the same zeal they go after toilet paper, they’d be seeing mighty miracles.

Faithful pastors, right now people may not need another sermon. They do need someone to phone them and pray with them individually. When organizing replaced the fire of the Holy Spirit, the ancient ekklesia turned into church. Make church ekklesia again!

You don’t have to get out of your house to connect with the risen Jesus. He wants you to be His house. I think Jesus likes small “church.” He promised to be wherever “two or three” gather in His name. (Matthew 18:29.) When everything’s shut down, God’s not.

When nature creates pain, the supernatural Jesus offers to comfort, to strengthen, and to guide. Why not let Him?

Church is changing!
–What to know about the future of church . . https://amzn.to/398nPNL

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God is full of loving kindness. Maybe Christians should be, too.

The Bible says, “Love casts out fear,” and “Love is kind.” Focus on being kind to people and watch fear run! God is full of loving kindness. Maybe Christians should be, too.

Let solitude lead you to gratitude. Then it can’t make you come unglued. That’s the power of heart-felt appreciation. Got something to eat and clothes? The Bible says, “Having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”

Many of my pleasures are free and not dependent on the economy–uplifting reading, encouraging others, open-hearted praying, etc. For decades I have read inspiring books and filled 36 journal books with uplifting quotations. Need hope? Start your collection.

There’s so much that people are against. I’m for skin-color-appreciation, prenatal-compassion, and kindness to all.

Skin color = eye color — as a minor difference

“Off the RACE Track” is FREE ON KINDLE thru tonight (03/20/2020) at midnight Eastern @ https://amzn.to/2U4sv2I. Tell your friends!

How did skin-color get to be such a big deal in America? Why does it still effect how we live in 2020? How can we get beyond the skin color hang up? Read, “Off the RACE Track.” It’s FREE on Kindle right now.

[image error]“Off the RACE Track” is FREE ON KINDLE thru tonight (03/20/2020) at midnight Eastern @ https://amzn.to/2U4sv2I. Tell your friends!

Closenessing — connecting heart-to-heart

Heart-to-heart closenessing replaces the feeling that nobody really cares about you, with the joy of feeling truly loved. Without openness, honesty, and compassion, heart-closeness with others won’t happen.

Love is closer than you think. It’s in your heart, waiting for you to release it and let it flow out to others. There should be no closure to heart-to-heart closeness. Love never fails.

Emotional closenessing isn’t built by a process of figuring people out. It’s developed by consistently showing people heart-felt love and kindness. Also, persistent prayer for people will cause your heart to care about them.

Heart-to-heart closenessing lets you see thru life’s fog and recognize the image of God in other people. Empathetic closenessing requires meaningful, heart-felt listening and sharing, not just small talk. Closenessing requires intimacy — the willingness to open up my heart and let someone “into-me-see.”

Heart-closenessing causes our soul to create and soar! Heart-distancing causes it to stagnate and sour.

Heart-distancing, emotional quarantining, and spiritual isolation, atrophy your soul to the point that you ignore (or deny) its existence. Many of our problems are caused by heart-distancing that is motivated by fear of discovery. Heart-closenessing is healing.

You can’t see heart-distancing with your physical eyes, but you can tell when it’s happening. You can feel the coldness. Hiding secrets behind walls to protect your heart from hurt, is a lonely life-strategy, stopping the healing power of honesty and humility.

Perhaps we need an inner-quarantine to keep our heart and mind away from contagious, destructive thoughts and emotions (not to keep us away from other people). Negativity, fear, discouragement, anger, and wrongful desires, can easily infect you if you don’t avoid them.

Instead of anger, accusation, and/or panic, perhaps we should try some contemplation, spiritual seeking, and wisdom reading.

Hatred is a dangerous road, littered with wrecks and crashes. Some cultures call cruelty that maintains (or maintained) their dominance a virtue, but cruelty is always evil.

Life is a journey, not a parking garage

Life is designed to be travel — a journey to wisdom. It was never intended to be a parking garage. The way you live is up to you. You have the power to use your life for love or hate, happiness or sadness, right or wrong.

Too many people speed up when they’re on the wrong road, when turning around would be much more effective. If you say you’re going one direction, but you’re walking the opposite direction, you’re not fooling anybody. Why not be honest?

Here’s an honest statement: When public profanity is approved but public prayer is taboo, things are backwards. Talking to God is a start. Listening to and obeying Him completes the circuit and let’s the Spirit freely flow. Then you can journey even closer to Christ.

It does little good to download the Bible onto a devise, if you don’t download it into your heart and apply it in your daily life. Try it.

Roadblocks can be God-stops

Roadblocks in your life are sometimes God-stops, changing your direction for your protection. Surrendering yourself to God’s construction will make your life so much better than giving in to self-destruction.

If you show love and kindness to those who hate you, they’ll be too confused to berate you, and won’t know how to debate you. Pride keeps us going in the wrong direction. Humility whispers, “Turn around.”

Relocating your life changes your circumstances, but without improved thoughts and emotions, your inner-stances stay the same. Don’t “collect your thoughts.” Evaluate them. Throw out the destructive and tormenting ones. Put the helpful ones into action.

Years go by like miles on the highway, but unlike miles, they’re gone for life. You can’t turn around and make them up.

Getting close to Jesus will improve your thinking

Distance yourself from negative thoughts, feelings, words, and images. Isolate from them. Then you’ll be less likely to catch anxiety and discouragement. Open your mind to thoughts that are true, uplifting, caring and pure. Close it to those that are false, destructive, hateful and evil.

Too many people practice spiritual distancing — keeping plenty of space between their heart and personal contact with Christ. As you use social distancing to avoid disease, use spiritual closenessing to improve your relationship with the living Jesus.

For peace of mind, prayer is more powerful than panic-buying toilet paper. It’s hard to panic and pray in the same moment. You can alternate between them, but it’s difficult to do both at the same time.

In a panic attack, counter-attack panic with peace, love, knowledge, wise caution, and faith in the risen Jesus. Panic is when caution gets drunk with worry and anxiety.

If Christians won’t listen with compassion to those who disagree with them, we’ve somehow gotten off track.

Scrimp on sin. Feast on holiness.