Steve Simms's Blog, page 243

Christians don’t need to defend our faith. We need to demonstrate its reality in daily life by loving the way Jesus loved.

The best ministry?

When humble Christ-followers talk about their love for Jesus, you can sense His presence. I love to meet people who radiate the presence of Jesus. I find them in the humblest places (and in the humblest churches).

Heart-felt humility aligns us with God’s favor. “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Your love for God is no stronger than your willingness to treat all people well. The more you love God, the better you will treat people. When you deeply appreciate life, you will radiate love and joy.

The most effective evangelism happens not from programs, but when Christians begin to radiate the presence of the risen Jesus. Sometimes the best thing you can do for people is to give them a radiant hello, soaked in Christ’s love.

The best ministry is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We’re all invited to daily surrender to and experience the Spirit’s ministry. When I’m in control, the Holy Spirit isn’t. To be “led by the Spirit” (Romans 8:14), we must let the Spirit take control.

Politeness primarily provokes positive responses

People respond positively to politeness. Please try it today and see. Thank you. However, rudeness offends people unnecessarily and creates needless enemies.

When you love people politeness comes easy; when you don’t it’s a pain. How people act toward you frequently reflects what you are radiating toward them. People who radiate hate need love, not debate. Dare to, “Love your enemies.” (Anybody can berate them.)

Sow a sincere compliment, reap a thank you. Sow a thank you, reap caring interaction. Sow caring interaction, reap true friendship.

Self-focus is toxic. The antidote is to think outside the self-pox and to daily focus on loving, serving, and encouraging others.

It takes love and strength to lift people up, but you only need fear and weakness to put them down. Encouragement matters. When you interact with people, find some way to sincerely appreciate, thank, and/or compliment them.

Of all that’s on the planet, people are most important. Treat them all well. The more people you encourage with hope and kindness, the better you will feel about your life.

Scruples seem scarce

Scruples (inner desires to avoid doing wrong) seem scarce in today’s society. Without scruples, people do whatever they want with little regard for ethics or honesty.

This basic principle of life, “Don’t do things you shouldn’t do,” seems to have melted away in many minds and hearts. If you look eye to eye, into someone’s pupils, and don’t see solid moral scruples, run.

No drug (legal or illegal) can cure a compromised conscience. Humbly receiving God’s forgiveness can. Guilt speaks louder than forgiveness, but asking for forgiveness makes guilt shut up.

When cravings and compulsions are considered more important than conscience, culture is cruising in a downward spiral. To self-identify by our feelings instead of by our conscience often leads to deception. You can’t live a win-win life with a sin-sin mentality.

Grace isn’t an excuse for bad behavior (fake grace is)

Grace is not an excuse to do your own thing and follow your own desires. It’s the supernatural power to live a Christ-like life.

Fake grace excuses sin. True grace gives power over sin. Christianity is good news we can be forgiven and set free to live a joyous and victorious life. It’s not fake news that grace makes sin okay. Fake grace is dangerous and deceptive. It whispers, “Go ahead and do whatever you want. God won’t care cause I’ve got you covered.”

True Christianity doesn’t just stir up emotions or comfort you in pain. It empowers you to live a consistently godly lifestyle! If we truly believe God loves us we will love Him back with our whole heart and lifestyle, not ignore His love or rebel against it.

Biblical Christianity isn’t a service to attend. It’s supernatural power to put an end to your sin.

The Bible reveals a Christianity based on “Christ in you” that challenges its readers to continually surrender to Jesus’ transforming presence. The Bible is a map directing its readers to the risen Jesus and showing them how to follow and obey Him daily.

The body of Christ isn’t a religious meeting or organization. It’s all people worldwide who have the risen Jesus living in them. When two Christians are in conflict and not relating in love, one (or both) of them isn’t hearing and obeying Jesus.

Most people are looking for joy and inner peace. Ongoing surrender to and connection with the living Jesus delivers it! Christianity can be a 24/7/365 experience with the risen Jesus (and that’s awesome)! Christianity can be experienced as a spontaneous spiritual movement, as programmed methods, and/or as a religious monument.

God is continually speaking to us. Any failure to communicate is due to our unwillingness to listen. People who are surrendered to Christ discover that they are being led by His Spirit into growing unity and agreement.

Attending church doesn’t make you a Christian. Christ living in and thru you does. Jesus is far more real, present, and powerful than we normally perceive Him to be.

Often I pray myself to sleep
Lying at my Savior’s feet.
Then when I awake
I have thoughts to take
And post on social media.

When conflict trumps kindness

When conflict trumps kindness, communication collapses and coercion commences. Some people’s only concept of conflict resolution is overpowering their perceived opponent.

People can choose to be our enemy and refuse to be reconciled to us, but no one can stop us from loving and forgiving them. It takes courage to listen to and consider truth that you don’t want to hear.

“Speaking the truth in love” prevents disagreement from becoming conflict. It also requires much more strength than speaking the truth in anger.

Often it’s better to end a fight than to win it. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” If a wall is painted black on one side and white on the other, unless you’ve seen both sides, you’ll think it is only one color. Take an honest look from the other side of the wall.

Some history should never be repeated

The answers that got you a passing grade in history class aren’t always the full truth about the way things really happened. Some parts of history are celebrated; some ignored (or hidden). The ignored parts can tell powerful stories.

If “fake news” exists then “fake history” also exists. Sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone to find the real. Popular history omits much and much of what has been omitted would change how we see things.

I think history is often repeated because too many history books make it look better than it really was. History doesn’t repeat itself, we repeat history by following our pride and human nature more than humility, mercy, and love.

History is full of people and nations eagerly doing evil when incited or ordered by leaders and governments. Rare are those who refused.

Historians, like all humans, are capable of telling lies — sometimes whoppers! History books are a mixture of truth and denial. The more truth we can uncover, the stronger we’ll be. Too often history idolizes violence & shames humility and forgiveness.

When we insist that history “be kind” to our nation, we overlook much truth that can transform and improve us all. A nation’s history books frequently leave out (or gloss over) things that make it look bad. History, like romantic love, often blindly overlooks (or minimizes) the wrongs done by its heroes.

History happened. It’s better to learn the truth about it than to ignore it or deny it. We can’t change history but we can discover many things that have been left out of history books. Many of history’s greatest heroes who truly stood for universal freedom have been maligned and/or ignored. I love the rare people in history who spoke, wrote, and lived passionately for “liberty and justice for ALL.”

To only accept history that makes you feel good and makes your heroes look good is to warp your perspective of the past. Much history is painful, shameful, cruel, humbling, and embarrassing. The details about that history have been too often been left out of history books.

Many people are bored by history. Some are inspired by it. Perhaps we need to be shocked by it. When I read about the past, it seems like the wrong side of history is much larger than the equality, love, and compassion side of history.

If the past doesn’t matter, history is a waste of time. If it does, exposing the injustice of history can help heal the present. Even when it’s ignored or denied, the past reaches into the present. If we aren’t completely open and honest about the past, it’s hard to be so about the present. To minimize, ignore, or excuse the injustices of history is to endanger the present.

Nations frequently use monuments to boost their pride in their accomplishments, seldom to humbly acknowledge their wrongs. By its nature history books are selective. The part left out (the hidden history) is sometimes the most revealing.

Most history books focus on and exalt the powerful while ignoring the plight of the poor and the oppressed. The goal of many history books isn’t to tell the truth, but to make a nation, its leaders, and its heroes look good. However, it’s a stretch to call people who are unkind to people who look differently and/or think differently than them, “Good people.”

Most American history presents the majority slice of the American pie and gives little respect to the other slices. From 1619, history cruelly repeated itself for many generations until American slavery was ended in 1865.

The saddest freedom in American history was the freedom for human trafficking. When that truth is faced it will break our hearts. Slaves looked at slavery differently than slaveholders did. Their viewpoint should be widely told.

Justifying the sins of a nation’s past makes it easier to repeat them in the present. Truth and openness can bring healing and reconciliation. If we are unable or unwilling to see the injustices in history, we probably won’t notice them in the present either. History is too often built on pride and glorified. Much of its truth is denied and defied.

To minimize the evils of American slavery is to deny the full humanity of its victims. All Americans should feel free to openly talk about their history because the history of all Americans is American history.

Slave narratives, books written by slaves about their experience in bondage, read like a Stephen King novel. American slaves weren’t legally allowed to tell their own history, but some did anyway. Read a “slave narrative” and get the full story. (Also check out my book. Search for: Off the RACE Track book.)

If certain parts of history (like slavery) are treated as “off limits” because they’re in the past, then by definition all history is off limits. Read history carefully, because it is usually kind to a nation’s heroes, overlooking their villainy while glorifying their good deeds.

The Bible is the world’s most honest history book, openly exposing the sins of Israel and its leaders. Outside ancient Israel, full-disclosure history is hard to find. They openly told it all–the ugly, the evil and the good. History studies the processes that produced the present.

I love finding Jesus Freaks in history. Seeing how much their experience of the living Jesus in the past matches mine today inspires me. The most amazing tomb in history isn’t the regal Taj Mahal in India, but the empty one Jesus exited outside of Jerusalem.

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Truth is for telling

Truth is for telling. That’s called honesty. When mixed with mercy and love, it’s powerfully healing. People who are kind, fair, and compassionate in their interactions with all sorts of people are rarely called racist.

If you’re not a racist, be an equalist. Embrace people of all colors as equally human, equally ranked, and deserving full equality. An equalist sees the color hierarchy in American history as great injustice and as the perpetrator of extreme cruelty and abuse.

Supremacy based on skin color makes no more sense than supremacy based on eye color. How does “blue-eyed supremist” sound?

To ignore the pain and injustice that racism has caused over centuries and to get annoyed if anybody mentions it, seems a bit racist. Closeness of heart diminishes divisiveness. Hardness of heart creates callousness. Perhaps there is discomfort between races because we lack heart-felt familiarity with each other.

It’s hard not to be at least somewhat influenced by racism if we are unaware of it’s historical significance in American culture. Emotional proximity overcomes racial differences. Openheartedness heals divisiveness.

Heart-to-heart proximity between people of various colors overcomes racial myths and releases healing. Closeness leads to caring and compassion. Make an effort to hang out with and get to know people you don’t normally associate with and see.

Growing up in close proximity to crime, violence, anger, abuse, depression and drugs is overwhelming. No one should have to do that.

Bullying and intimidation attempt to silence and control people. Love attempts to listen to and learn from people.

For centuries the term “racist” stood for a popular, government-supported way of life. Today it’s an insult. That’s progress. Yet even today, white people in black neighborhoods are seldom stopped by suspicious police. Unfairly, the reverse isn’t true.

Search for: Off the RACE Track book.

Heart proximity leads to compassion leads to kindness

Proximity promotes community and compassion. Failure to facilitate heart-to-heart proximity enables isolation. Bring your ear close to hear people’s heart and you’ll see them differently than you did before.

Without a soul goal, life is easily trivialized into maintaining its existence and obtaining lots of stuff. There’s a helpful, hopeful inner voice trying to lead you in a good direction. Follow your conscience.

Insight gives hope and when hope is in sight, life becomes a delight. Where you wind up in life is far more important than how fast you get there.

It’s sad today that people have difficulty talking about political ideas without insulting and demeaning those who disagree. Being unkind when expressing your views, makes it seem like you don’t think they are very strong ideas.

Weaponized words enable violence (just ask Cain & Able)

There is both good and bad in every person. Find and focus on the good in everyone and you can love them.

Walls in the heart tear people apart. Open hearts connect with caring and compassion. Hard hearts disconnect and even disrespect those they see as different.

Everyone needs someone who cares (even the people who disagree with you). “Love your enemies.” Some people seem to love their iconic idea of the past more than they do the people around them in the present.

Hostility in the heart enabled a guy named Cain to kill his brother Able. It still enables violence today.

Breaking humanity into compartments is commonly used to justify cruelty and abuse. Love overcomes those compartments.

To weaponize words is to debilitate communication. To speak to people with insult and hostility is to inflict hurt and to flirt with violence.

We need drum majors for equality, kindness, and justice, not anger and agitation to return to a hierarchal status quo. Think outside! Go outdoors. Breathe some fresh air and think. Search for: Off the RACE Track book.