Steve Simms's Blog, page 249
June 20, 2019
C+ to Seymour
C+ to Seymour
See plus
Get insight,
Look beyond
Inner darkness,
Behold light,
See more.
June 18, 2019
The mystery of your beating heart (life’s poetic meaning)
Discover the mystery
Of your beating heart,
Why it keeps you going
Day after day.
There’s no bill
For your heartbeat.
It’s a free gift.
Awe and wonder
Shout out meaning
Beyond logic,
Comprehended by the heart.
Point to sadness
And life feels pointless.
Point to hope
And life’s on point!
Some people
Attempt to stand out;
Others to fit in.
Perhaps it’s more meaningful
To try to obey your conscience.
From DNA
To solar systems,
The universe has meaning,
As if it were words.
Goodness, beauty, and truth
Overflow with meaning.
Meaningless freedom is frustrating.
The ability to desire meaning,
To search for it,
Is amazingly meaningful.
To see life as meaningless
Is an emotional evaluation,
Not a rational one.
Treasure, recall, and share
Your most moving, meaningful memories
And let them fill you with purpose for today.
There’s great meaning
In continually working
To overcome fears,
Tormenting thoughts,
And compulsions,
And finally experiencing victory!
Rational understanding
Can give you facts.
Inner revelation (aha)
Can tell you why.
To experience
A sudden awareness of meaning
And be swept over by significance —
That’s awe.
Many people
Believe in nothing
Other than their own feelings.
It’s okay
To rationalize and emote
About your experiences,
But perhaps it’s better
To find the meaning in them.
To ask the meaning of life in general is good,
But it’s even more powerful to ask yourself:
“What does my life mean to me?”
Your breath
Means magnificence
Automatically pulling in air,
Sustaining your life.
Aimless wandering
Can be discouraging,
But searching for goodness
Is always meaningful.
To live
Without appreciating life,
Is to fail to notice
The rich meaning
That surrounds and
Indwells us.
Modern media
Isn’t very good
At conveying meaning.
It’s mostly
Full of distractions.
Elaborate presentation
Without heartfelt meaning
Is fluff.
If you’re tired
Of searching for yourself,
Surrender to Christ
And find joy.
Faith says
No to discouragement
And surrenders to God.
Meaning is not invented.
It’s discovered.
Meaningful words
Are more powerful
Than chatter.
Even a babe in a womb has meaning.
To dull your discernment
With drink, drugs,
Or distractions,
Is to deny your destiny.
To unfriend God
And block
His holy presence
From your life
Is tragic.
When you follow Christ
With all your heart,
Meaning and purpose
Will resonate in your life.
No one can explain
The inexplicable presence of Jesus.
However, you can experience His presence daily.
[image error]
Two consenting adults
It is said that two consenting adults can’t do wrong together. However, to consent to wrong is wrong.
Two consenting adults can do wrong together, even privately. Adultery’s an example.
June 17, 2019
Actively hearing God’s voice — His comments inside you
Sometimes a comment will flash out of nowhere into your mind’s sky and the words will flame in your heart. That’s God’s voice!
Sermon hearing trains Christians to be passive. Now some preachers are telling people that grace means it’s okay to be passive and ignore the voice of God.
The Bible says that faith shouldn’t “rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” Experiencing God’s power is convincing!
The Bible talks about the gifts of the Spirit, but not about the offices of the Spirit. Paul said that the Christians in Rome were “competent to instruct one another.” (It’s the same today if pastors would let them.) The Bible says, “Encourage one another.” One man was never meant to monopolize the ministry in a church meeting.
The Bible contrasts “words taught us by human wisdom” and “words taught by the Spirit.” They are not the same thing.
The Bible says: “No more boasting about human leaders,” and “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
The Bible says that the rulers of this age “are coming to nothing.” Perhaps we need more than politics.
I love unorganized faith
That freely flows
From people's hearts,
Instead of programs.
What’s it all about? Life’s meaning . . .
If the universe was meaningless, nothing would mean anything. There would be nothing of meaning for our mind to apprehend. However, without a sense of God’s presence, life can feel like meaningless existence.
Drunkenness celebrates life as meaningless. Faith in Christ celebrates a life of profound meaning! Meaningless reactions to life, will never discover life’s meaning.
When life is
Infused with meaning,
Everyday's a mission
Not just existence.
Words have meaning.
They're not just sound.
Life has meaning.
It's not just hanging around.
When life's about nothing,
Nothing seems to satisfy.
When life's about Christ,
It overflows with fulfillment.
An uplifting purpose
Makes you smile
Even when you're alone.
The belief
That life is meaningless
Makes mental health
Difficult.
Meaninglessness
Is one step away
From hopelessness.
Your perspective matters!
Grace is not a thing. It’s the presence and power of the risen Jesus energizing and empowering a person to live a Spirit-led life. You’ll learn more about grace by humbly surrendering to Jesus than you ever will from sermons about grace.
Grace isn’t a religious doctrine or program. It’s God-given faith that flows out from deep within a human heart filling life with meaning!
Their are rong waze to spell & their are rong waze to live.
Curiosity points in many directions. We can follow it to godliness or to evil. Their are rong waze to spell and their are rong waze to live.
Everybody believes in right and wrong. When we are mistreated, our first impulse is to say, “That’s not right!” or “That’s wrong!” If there is no right and wrong, then you have never been wronged or mistreated, and there’s no such thing as “rights.”
We like to blame other people for the guilt we feel, but guilty feelings come from our own awareness of our own wrongdoing. It’s usually easy to know right from wrong, but it’s always hard to do right when you want to do wrong.
We humans are all a blend of right and wrong, truth and lies. By ignoring our conscience, we easily confuse morality and immorality. Wrong is deceptive and likes to initially present itself to us as pleasurable and seductive, hiding the pain and misery it carries until it has captured us. Through illusion, confusion, and delusion, wrong can lead us to the false conclusion that it is right.
Freedom let’s you live how you want but it doesn’t give you the right to demand other people’s approval of how you live. Society can make wrong popular, but it can’t make wrong right. Humans don’t determine right and wrong (anymore than we determine what is light and what is darkness), yet we almost all acknowledge some behaviors are morally wrong. No one has the right to tell people they can’t believe certain behaviors are morally wrong.
Sin isn’t a word to use against others. It’s a condition that effects all people. When we are controlled by sin from within (the guilt of past sin and the bondage of present sin), life is quite distressing. Denial is an insufficient solution to sin. Confession, remorse, repentance, forgiveness, and deliverance are much more effective.
Notice the “I” — sIn and prIde. There are so many ways to sin, yet Christ calls us to turn away from all of them and follow Him instead. Many people want freedom from specific sins, but they don’t believe it’s possible. It is! Jesus is still setting people free!
Every time we do wrong, we waste our freedom — trading it for self-inflicted bondage and pain. There’s nothing glamorous about being in bondage to a wrongful behavior and repeating it over and over.
If you’ve done or said things you feel bad about, that means that you have a conscience. Follow it for inner peace. If we humans would follow our conscience instead of our feelings (and public opinion), the world would be a much better place.
Continually choosing to make conscious choices against your conscience, cultivates self-condemnation. Conscience will continue to protest wrongful feelings and desires, even when we bury it as deeply as we can and choose to ignore it.
American slavery was legal, backed by the Supreme Court, and widely considered morally right, even though it was evil. There is no racial supremacy among humans. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Many thoughts
Come from within,
Some lead to good
Some to sin.
Which will you chase?
June 16, 2019
Unorganized faith (a very short poem)
That freely flows
From people's hearts,
Instead of programs.
June 14, 2019
It’s not unloving to kindly speak your conscience!
Love continues to care about people when they advocate and/or do things you disapprove of. When people are shamed and/or bullied into saying they approve of things they believe are wrong, freedom of conscience is destroyed. It’s not unloving to kindly speak your conscience!
People’s rights should be protected. So should people’s right to disagree with what other people do with their rights.
Humans have a greater purpose than to be controlled by their desires. When wrong feels right, our feelings can deceive us. Feeling good about wrong doing doesn’t cure guilt. It denies and represses it. A person can feel innocent yet be guilty.
For example, I truly don’t understand how on-demand prenatalcide can be considered any more just or civilized than infanticide. Ancient cultures practiced infanticide. Modern cultures have advanced to prenatal killing, but prenatal care is much kinder than prenatal cruelty.
Conscience is the part of a person that can perceive God and hear His voice. It’s hard to stay conscious of God’s presence when we choose to ignore and violate our conscience.
God’s light doesn’t just expose what you want to see. It exposes everything. “Walk in the light.”
It’s easy to talk about God’s love, but it’s much more powerful to bask in the inner awareness that God deeply loves you! Don’t let sin’s circuit breakers break your connection with God’s unconditional love! The worst identity theft is when we let ourselves believe that (and act like) we aren’t what God says we are.
If there is no Creator, life is a meaningless accident. If there is one, we are all accountable to Him.
There is much in life that tries to make us hurt, angry, hostile, and bitter, yet Christ calls us to love, humility, and forgiveness. Your life matters. Live it wisely. If you act on your feelings and desires without questioning them, they will probably take you places you don’t want to go.
Pentecost — O, what a day! What a lifestyle! Tongues!
On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit broke the bonds of religious control and energized the disciples to praise God like they were drunk. Cheers! (On Pentecost, Christ’s followers were so full of the Spirit, they spoke in languages they didn’t know and were thought to be drunk.)
Pentecost began to free the risen Christ from religious tradition. But tradition has fought back fiercely through the centuries.
On Pentecost, God disrupted religious protocol and took over the meeting by energizing everybody present to verbally praise Him! At the Tower of Babel languages divided people. On Pentecost hearing different languages brought people together in Christ.
People didn’t “attend” Pentecost. It wasn’t a “service.” It was active disruption of the status quo by the Spirit of God.
To “celebrate” Pentecost by hearing a sermon is like “celebrating” the NBA Championship by hearing a talk from the team historian. Since Pentecost was a move of God and not a religious program, perhaps Pentecost Sunday should be unprogrammed and Spirit-led.
Pentecost demonstrated that God’s Spirit can break out of man’s divisions and unite people in His supernatural power and presence. On Pentecost Peter had to explain to the visitors that the disciples weren’t drunk. Preachers today hope people don’t fall asleep.
The greatest sign that someone is filled with the Spirit is passionate obedience to Jesus and compassionate love for all. Speaking in tongues? If the very first Christians needed to do it, perhaps we do too.
Speaking in tongues flows from beyond both the mind and the emotions in what Jesus called “your innermost being.” For 48 years, I’ve spoken in tongues almost everyday. It immediately connects me with Jesus & fills me with awe for Him. Regularly praying in tongues is one of the most powerful tools for growing in Christ that I’ve ever experienced.
Speaking in tongues isn’t a rare thing. Most probably you know people who do, but unlike me, they may not tell you they do.
Speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift. It’s not learned or earned. It’s received by grace and faith. However, in many sermons about Pentecost, speaking in tongues is either ignored, discounted, limited to the past, or explained away.
Pentecost is a time to experience God’s fire, not to put it out with traditional, religious fire extinguishers. Be a live wire for Christ, always flowing with the shocking current of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s not commemorate Pentecost; let’s demonstrate it by letting the Holy Spirit disrupt our meeting, like He did in Acts 2. Pentecost shouldn’t be a “sit and listen” Sunday, but a fire-fall, everybody speaking, disruptive Sunday! Unfortunately, the structure of church often keeps the most passionate Christ-followers quiet.
Pentecost emboldened and revolutionized the first Christians. Don’t just commemorate Pentecost as religious history. Experience it!
God friended me (and you). Why unfriend Him?
God friended me (and you). Why unfriend Him? Don’t let lies lay around in your thinking & muddle your mind. Ask God to shine His light on them.
You can unfriend God but you can’t block Him. God always sees your page. If you will train your inner attention to stay tuned to God’s page, the “hope of glory” will be fulfilled in you.
Repentance is a change in behavior resulting from seeing things from God’s perspective. It’s the power to do right birthed from fresh insight.
To know God through a direct friendship is much more powerful than to know about Him through someone’s religious teaching.
If church was a TV show, it could be called: “The Preacher’s Got Talent.” Church trains weekly hearers of the word, but neglects to train daily doers of the word.
Hearing with limited doing makes a church service a safe place for comfortable passivity and religious lethargy. When church attendees are given nothing to do but listen, many sit and stare but their heart isn’t there. However, God in His friendship wants to give everyone direct messages.
Sermon hearers frequently forget what they hear, but friends of God who are daring doers remember what they’ve done. Unless a sermon inspires you to remember it and then do what it says, just hearing it will do you little good. Christianity has plenty of sermon hearers, but far to few Spirit-led, friends of God who are active Bible doers!
If church would undo the tradition that makes sermon-hearing dominant and train people to be doers of the Word, we’d see miracles. A Spirit-prompted action is never lost or wasted, but we can make the Word of God “of no effect” by our tradition. (Mark 7:13.)
