Steve Simms's Blog, page 250

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.)

Thoughts to calibrate pride

Some of my thoughts about pride:

When people are open and honest with each other, pride melts away and is replaced by heart-felt love and compassion. Pride and conscience can’t work side by side. One always overrides the other.

Pride is unkind to anybody who gets in its way. It’s a lie-infector, infecting human ego with all sorts of distortions.

When pride is our guide, “me” gets a glorified ride. Me! Pride perceives no need for forgiveness, mercy, or grace.

Most arguments are more about pride than about substance. Pride is a security blanket for our insecurities.

When pride and truth collide, truth frequently loses. Pride is self-deception. It always spins self in the best light, even twisting the truth to do it. In order to save face, pride resists facing facts.

It’s hard for us humans to get beyond our pride and to see our life from God’s perspective. However, the greater your perception of the presence of God, the less place there is for pride in your life.

Pride makes God seem small and irrelevant. When pride moves into religion, it shifts the focus from God and His authority to self, feelings, and control.

Religious thought or supernatural relevation?

Church focuses too much on religious explanations and not enough on ongoing interaction with the risen Jesus. Theology is religious thought. Revelation is direct perception of God. If we neglect to observe what the Lord is doing in our heart, we’ll miss out on much that He has for us.

Jesus said, “Come unto Me,” and “Follow Me.” Where do you go to Jesus and follow Him? (How about everywhere?) To treat Christ as a mere historical figure is to miss the joy and glory of His presence in the 21st century!

God’s not looking for a well controlled religious meeting. He’s looking for people who will meet to surrender to His control. When Christ-followers gather and let the Holy Spirit take direct control of the meeting, the kingdom of God begins to manifest.

When faith and obedience flow together from deep within your heart — that’s grace! When church became a showcase for one man’s speaking ability, it turned away from the 50+ New Testament “one another” commands.

When tormenting thoughts bang around in your brain, know they don’t belong there. Drive them out in Jesus’ name!

Who can conduct a revival — a spiritual awakening?

A preacher can conduct a church service, but only God can conduct a revival — a spiritual awakening. In a church service a preacher follows a program. In a spiritual awakening people surrender to the living God.

In Acts chapter six, seven men were chosen to wait on tables for the apostles in Jerusalem. Two of them, Stephen and Philip, quickly broke out of their confining religious roles. Spiritual awakening soon followed!

When church is unplugged from the Holy Spirit’s current, God’s light goes out. “Quench not the Spirit.” Spiritual awakening happens when people let Jesus innergize them with His presence, energy, and love surging through their heart.

Jesus is always present but it’s a struggle to be persistently aware of His presence, for His holiness makes us aware of our sin. To try to make Christ comply with culture is the converse of the Gospel. He came to free us from conformity to human culture.

Hearing a talk about bread isn’t the same as being fed. Neither is hearing a talk about Christianity. Perhaps it’s time for church to pop the cork on God’s new wine & let people fill up with the Holy Spirit.

A talk about electricity is never as shocking as a touch of electricity. The same with Jesus.

Christian’s aren’t called to be controlled by custom and religious tradition. They’re called to be completely committed to Christ.

“The truth will set you free.” A lack of truth equals a lack of freedom.

Pride is dangerous for all human beings. It also holds back spiritual awakening. The Bible says: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Love Chapter — fresh glimpses of 1 Corinthians 13

“Love your enemies.” Be patient and kind to them, without envy, boasting, or pride. Don’t dishonor them. Refuse to be easily angered with them. Keep no record of their wrongs.

Love “is not self-seeking.” Being controlled by our own desires diminishes our ability to love.

“Love does not delight in evil.” Be careful what you enjoy and delight in watching on TV and other media.

According to the Love Chapter, love celebrates truth, not falsehood. A lack of trust, hope, or perseverance is a lack of love.

Love flows from heart to heart. To close your heart is to shut off the switch on the life enriching current of love.

Christianity isn’t about winning political battles. It’s about loving God, loving others, and even loving your enemies.

Beauty treatment is more than cosmetic

Beholding beauty beckons you beyond the bounds of botched behaviors and bummed out beliefs, into the peace of God. Skin-deep beauty is cosmetic, but beauty from deep within is character-based.

If beauty was rare it would be continually cherished, but because it saturates the world we often neglect to savor it.

Beauty is perceived in the soul, it’s not just seen with the eyes. When beauty is seen with the eyes it pleases; when perceived in the heart it transforms.

To misperceive something and falsely believe it’s true is to deceive yourself. Always ask: Am I seeing things correctly?

Thoughts and feelings about God are fine, but they can never replace being consciously perceptive of God and interacting with Him. An encounter with the risen Jesus is worth 1,000 sermons. An ongoing relationship with Him is priceless!

To believe in God, pray, read the Bible, and go to church and yet be unaware of God’s presence in your life, is faith short-circuited. The best face lift (and faith lift) comes from open heart surgery. When Christ transforms the heart a person’s face begins to shine.

Repentance isn’t just to change behavior. It’s to change the way you see–to “behold the Lamb of God” and see from His perspective rather than from your own.

Community requires caring, open, heart-felt interaction. Without that a group of people is just a crowd or an audience.

Few people think they need mercy

Mercy is not merit based. It treats people better than they deserve.

Mercy is compassion and/or forgiveness shown to someone who has done wrong. It’s not the approval or justification of wrong.

To dehumanize, disrespect, and/or kill a human fetus is merciless and dehumanizes all humanity.

God’s mercy and forgiveness will transform your heart and reboot your conscience. Lord have mercy. There is no one who needs no mercy. (Romans 3:23.)

Grace combines judgment and mercy. Christ takes the judgment you deserve so that you can be set free. It’s amazing! However, r eligion without a relationship with God is empty ritual.

The devil likes to gag Christians (and church sometimes helps).

Does the devil want Christians to be quiet about their faith? Is the way church is usually conducted a factor in helping keep people silent about their love for Jesus?

What if Christians were ungagged and trained to spontaneously talk about Jesus from their heart? Revival!

Some thoughts to remedy awe deficiency

Today’s culture suffers from a lack of awe — an awe deficiency. Perhaps we all need to take some time to let the now, wow us with its unnoticed wonder.

Analysis minimizes awe. Wonder wallows in it! Without awe life is bland.

When life is superficial, it’s wrapped in tinsel. When it’s meaningful, it’s rapt in awe.

There’s an element of awe in everything that’s good. Find and experience some of that astonishment and life will sparkle inside you.

It’s impossible to be in awe and bored (or depressed) at the same time. Beholding beauty begets awe. Look past your routine and absorb some of the awe that is all around you.

Conflict shuts down the human heart. Love opens it to awe.

Most people carry awe-inspiring experiences inside their heart, that they’ve been trained not to tell. Now many people fear speaking about those experiences because they’ve been taught to be embarrassed about them.

When we experience awe but then quickly withdraw from the awe, we miss most of its life-changing power. Appreciate awe for awhile. Prolonged awe often makes people uncomfortable because it muddles the mind’s methods of maintaining the myth of control.

A systematic life can be full of accomplishment, but a heart-felt, compassionate life is overflowing with gratitude and awe. An awe filled heart must be cultivated and trained by its owner; it doesn’t just happen awe-tomatically.

An ongoing state of awe overwhelms our fears, angers, desires, and other emotions, leaving us mesmerized in wonder and gratitude. When you’re consciously in awe of the incredible majesty of human life, it’s hard to be mean, hostile, or cruel to anyone.

Look for awe. I find it in nature, science, people, the Bible, prayer, and God. Awe calls the human soul to soar beyond the bonds of body and mind, into the realm of spirituality.

Church should be awe-time — Christians deeply in awe of God together. Being astonished by Jesus Christ is far more powerful than any explanations about Him can ever be.

The best and most awesome thing that can happen to you today is heart-to-heart interaction with God.

AWE INSPIRED POEM
Lake currents
Reflecting the sun
Show me a lively light show
On leaves bowing above
With the breeze.

13 war statements that make you think twice . . .

When Jesus said, “Turn the other cheek,” I don’t think He was using it as a punch line.

War is the most destructive, painful, brutal, hateful, and costly choice for international relations.

When peace is lost, death ravages both sides.

War trains people to serve their country by killing people who are serving other countries.

War requires countries to use coercion, manipulation, propaganda, lies, drafts, fear, and shame against their own citizens.

Every war seeks to shame and silence the voices of any who oppose it.

To speak against war in general (and not just a specific war) is nationalism’s “unpardonable sin.”

The American Civil Rights Movement and India’s Independence from the British Empire demonstrated an effective alternative to war.

War is the use of violence, brutality, and cruelty by nations or other political entities, to try to accomplish their goals.

The goal of war is to outdo the other side in killing and destruction, thus guaranteeing great and terrible loss on both sides.

The horrific loss of life, remembered on Memorial Day (by various names) in countries around the world, should remind us of the world’s great need for peaceful alternatives to war

The Christian concept of spiritual warfare is a powerful alternative to physical warfare that is often neglected.

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” I don’t think He was trying to be a stand up comic.