Steve Simms's Blog, page 230

"Crytearia" for shedding tears

Tears are often a sign that people have the strength and the courage to open up their heart. A culture that refuses to welcome and appreciate tears, (or humiliates those who cry), makes it hard for people to open their heart. Tears have an amazing power to open people’s heart. That’s why people with closed hearts, don’t want to see anybody cry.

To fight to hold back your tears is to fight against your own healing and relief that will flow through them. Perhaps the world would be a better place if we lowered the “crytearia” for tears — if tears were appreciated and allowed to flow, instead of hidden in embarrassment. So many people have been trained that, “It’s bad to let anybody see you cry,” so they feel forced to cry in secret and thus they deprive others of the opportunity to comfort them and to “weep with those who weep.”

Perhaps when open tears are taboo, much inner healing is missed, and that pain finds other means of expression like anger. To refuse to cry is to desensitize yourself. To be “unable” or unwilling to cry is to miss out on a powerful means of inner healing.

Most of us are encouraged to dry our eyes too soon, way before the healing process is done. The belief that crying should be avoided, robs many people of healing for their heart and of compassion for the needs of others. Crying is a human right. Perhaps we shouldn’t try to stop people from doing it.

Crying is a shower for the heart, cleansing it from life’s debris. When tears begin to flow from your eyes, you’re not far from the presence of God. Pride opposes tears. Perhaps the fear of shedding tears also comes from insecurity.

Tears are both natural (that’s why we have tear ducts) and supernatural (that’s why we have a heart). It’s not good to hold them back. To tell someone, “Don’t cry,” is to ignore his need for tears, because his exposed heart is making you uncomfortable.

Are tears part of the “crytearia” for spiritual growth? “I served the Lord with great humility and with tears.” –Acts 20:19 (NIV) When tears are prompted by the Holy Spirit, to hold them back is to quench the Spirit and reject a gift from God. Instead of feeling awkward when we see someone crying, the Bible says that we should cry with them. “Weep with those who weep.” Perhaps church needs to train people how to cry along side of people who are crying.

When your mind can’t quantify what is happening to you, perhaps your eyes can liquefy it with tears and bring you peace. It’s one thing to study the causes of violence in our society. It’s another thing to cry about it. Perhaps we need both.

Tears don’t always come from sadness or lack of self-control. They’re often a sign of happiness and a courageously sensitive soul. Tears are multipurpose. They can flow from: joy, sadness, compassion, physical pain, remorse, love, grief, heartbreak, worship.

Verbal attacks often leave hidden (heart-broken) tear tracks. Be kind. What an odd time we live in. People brag about their sins, but are ashamed to let anyone see them cry.

Let compunction function in you

There are t wo common responses to guilt: 1) Self-justification and denial, or 2) Compunction — sorrow for sin that leads to confession and changes in behavior.

To reject compunction (moral responses to guilt, that prompt you to quit guilt-producing thoughts and behaviors) is dangerous. Compunction is the inner unction that tries to lead you away from sin.

Shame says, “You’re no good.” Guilt says, “You missed up.” Compunction says, “There’s a better way to live.” Compunction is an inner compass that lets you know when you’re morally off track and jumping into the torment of guilt and shame. When you’re at the junction of right and wrong, let compunction steer you in the godly direction so that you don’t malfunction.

A hard heart allows itself no compunction for sin and little compassion for others. If you feel no compunction in your heart, steering you away from sin, then you’re not following the risen Jesus. When you let your heart be guided and changed by God’s compunction, then peace, joy, and love will begin to flow from within you.

If heart-felt expressions become formalized, they tend to leave the heart and settle in the mind. Jesus calls us back to the heart.

You can’t undo what you’ve done, but you can expose it, renounce it, and then act to make it right and not repeat it. That’s called repentance.

Some thoughts are better not thought. Some words are better not said. Some actions are better not done. Be better. The idea that, if you have a desire to do something then it’s a good thing to do, is illogical.

Disagreement's not the problem it's cracked up to be

Respecting people’s right to disagree with you, doesn’t diminish or increase the truth of your opinions and beliefs. The idea that we need to fight people when they disagree with us, is a myth. Kindness is always an option.

People who agree with you might overlook rudeness, but courtesy will even win the respect of those who disagree with you. Try it and see!

Reproductive blights on "all lives matter"

Perhaps babies are conceived to be received with love, not to be ripped apart by prenatal violence. Abortions are reproductive blights, not “reproductive rights.” Disposable human life is a terrible concept.

Here are two major blights on American history:

1) For many years America said that black lives don’t matter (and can be held in slavery and/or lynched with impunity), and that the lives of America’s first peoples don’t matter.

2) Today America says that prenatal lives don’t matter. (However, to take innocent, prenatal life is to proclaim that no lives really matter.)

To resist the Holy Spirit is to make life problematic

Life is problematic when we try to keep the Holy Spirit under our control. We need to be under His control. Christ didn’t come to give us another religion, but to offer us continual access to God. Now we can experience God 24/7/365.

When religion defines spontaneity as chaos, people are afraid to follow the inner leadings of the Holy Spirit. Christ-followers are called to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, not the provocations of frustration, anger, or fear.

To hit a target you need to aim at it. Aim your life at daily following and fully obeying the living Jesus Christ. Search the internet for: The Joy Of Early Christianity.

Direct your anger at the devil, not at people

Angry? Use it wisely to “resist the devil” by aggressively fighting within you to overcome your own wrongful desires, thoughts, and behaviors. Seize the kingdom of God today by continually seeking to fully follow and obey the risen King of Kings.

Want better government? Surrender yourself to the living Jesus as King and let Him govern your daily life. It’s wonderful to be consciously reconciled to God and to begin to experience His kingdom being daily established inside you.

If you won’t let Christ rule in your heart and in your daily life, trying to understand Him with your mind is a waste of time. To justify wrongful behaviors is to abort your conscience and to quench the Holy Spirit.

When your prayer is all about you talking to God, that makes it difficult to hear Him talking to you. Try listening to Him. Let the living Jesus steer you away from the inner turbulence in your life.

Much Christianity is built on negligence to follow and obey the risen Jesus. Early Christianity was built on diligence to do so. Search the web for my book: The Joy Of Early Christianity.

Ekklesizers — people who want to make church ekklesia again

God is raising up ekklesizers who want to ekklesize modern, western Christianity. It’s time to make church ekklesia again!

Compunction, grieving over sin, may be out of style, but it's powerful

If you never see and grieve over your own sin, you never sense any need for God’s grace. Repentance requires sincere remorse and sorrow for our sins. That’s called compunction. Grace is the invitation to repentance, not a substitute for it. Grace without obedience is counterfeit. Obedience without grace is prideful.

Churches like to talk about, “Resources for Lent.” Perhaps the best resource for Lent is compunction — deep remorse and genuine repentance.

Christ-followers are called to live, propelled by the inner workings of God’s Spirit — not compelled by the propensity to sin. It’s not unloving to believe that certain behaviors are wrong. In fact, that’s the essence of ethics and morality.

If there’s no supernatural light inside of you, the idea of “Christ in you,” will seem like religious doctrine not everyday reality. You cannot know the sun’s light thru your intelligence; you must see it. The same with the light of the Son of God. It’s good to think about Jesus, but it’s much more powerful to live face to face with His glorious resplendence.

There is an internal way to experience and follow the risen Jesus that is far more powerful than any outward religious way. However, If you are determined to resist the Holy Spirit, the living Jesus won’t force His way into your life.

When you recognize the reality of the risen Jesus, Christianity comes bursting out of the walls of religious tradition. Without Christ’s internal inspiration working inside your inner being, sermons won’t help you much. Do you experience inner manifestations of the living Jesus, where He shows up with power in your soul?

Much is made of “God’s love.” However, until you’ve been deeply smitten by it, it will remain a mere theological concept to you.

Your inner activities can either improve or mess up your life. Be careful what you do with your mind and your heart. Absorb God’s positive thoughts into daily actions. Toss negative, tormenting, and/or destructive thoughts out of your mind and heart. Perhaps the worst pollution is self-pollution, when you, of your own accord, trash your own life.

Those who never learn to fight and control their harmful and/or wrongful desires, experience and cause much misery in life. Hostile thoughts and a contentious spirit are often motivated by feelings of self-justification.

“The right to own slaves” and “the right to prenatal killing,” seem equally, morally indefensible to me. America at various times, has embraced both of those evils. Perhaps it’s time for compunction.

Do some Spirit-led lab work in your own heart

The human heart has a secret laboratory for continually experiencing Jesus, that few people seem to discover. To me Christianity is daily doing Spirit-led experiments in God’s laboratory of life, not just weekly classroom-style lectures.

Daily life is the research laboratory for the Bible. When I put its principles into action, I experience amazing results. The Bible is a wonderful lab handbook, full of spiritual experiments we can daily conduct. “Be doers of the Word.” The living Jesus is best known thru experience, not thru intellect.

Early Christianity was a laboratory for experiencing the risen Jesus, but somehow church evolved into a religious museum. When church became a lecture room, it set aside much of the community aspects of early Christianity. When Christianity evolved from community and daily relationship with the risen Jesus, to programs and rituals, ekklesia turned into church.

Christianity still should be more than weekly classroom-style lectures. It should be daily applied in the laboratory of life! What kind of laboratory is your life? Are you experimenting with sin, or are you experimenting with following the risen Jesus? Without ongoing experiences with the living Jesus, Christianity’s merely theoretical.

Many of life’s questions have intuitive, supernatural answers. Learn to listen to the Spirit of God within your heart. Then the living Jesus can give you deep meaning, purpose, and revelation. Following the living Jesus isn’t something that’s done by will power, but by the Holy Spirit living in and thru you.

Perhaps it’s time for Christianity to get beyond lectures to labs — to actual demonstrations of the living Jesus. Too many people blindly “accept” or blindly reject Jesus without experimenting with His words in the Bible to see if they’re true. It takes time, passion, and commitment to live out Christianity. You can’t do it sitting passively in a church service.

You can't (or at least shouldn't) legislate immorality

When people try to impose their immorality on you, kindly hold fast to what you know is morally right. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) legislate immorality.

Coercion and Christ’s love contradict. Coercion can compel outward compliance, but Christ’s love can change people from the inside out. Let the living Jesus be your inner plumber, unclog your heart, and release the Holy Spirit to freely flow from within you.

Christians should never ignore the risen Jesus. We should always pay close attention to Him.

Perhaps time and energy put into daily following and obeying the risen Jesus would be more effective than promoting politics. Indeed, if we would follow the living Jesus with as much passion as people are following political leaders, we’d change the world.

May you let Christ’s inner light shine
In your heart and mind,
In all the places
Darkness tries to hide.