Steve Simms's Blog, page 260

God woke you up one more time today!

God did it one more time today. He woke you up this morning! I’m so glad that Jesus can be personally encountered and related to and not just learned about through others.

What you experience is more powerful than what you hear about. Experience Jesus! When people gather and experience Jesus together in a group, an amazing sense of community occurs. Don’t keep Christ locked up in you. Let Him flow out of you in words and actions.

When I read the Bible with an open heart, I experience Jesus working in my spirit, not just words about Him. “May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself…encourage your hearts and strengthen you.” –2 Thessalonians 2:16. “Jesus Himself” — the greatest need of the body of Christ in the 21st century is the active presence of “Jesus Himself.”

When Jesus begins to stir inside you, don’t hold Him back. Let Him go and follow His leading. To put restrictions on what we will allow Jesus to do is to curtail hope and impede miracles. Christians should never put restrictions on Jesus and on what He is allowed to do when we meet. Christianity is about following Jesus — not about staying put (and comfortable in one place) with Him.

Christians are called to go on a life-long faith safari with the risen Jesus as our ever-present Guide. Biblical Christianity is a call for rough riders, not an invitation for pleasure seekers. Christ-followers should be satisfied with nothing less than an intimate, daily walk with the living Jesus.

Christianity isn’t about watching a show. It’s about showing the living Jesus everywhere you go. However, it’s easy to sit until we’re settled and set in our comfortable ways and then be upset when we’re challenged to get up. Christianity is a supernatural way to live by daily following and obeying the resurrected Jesus. It’s not a fast food restaurant where you stop by for an occasional religious burger.

Religion recycles week after week. Christ calls us to let Him change our heart, our thoughts, and our behaviors day by day. The concept of comfortable Christianity is unknown in the Bible. Ponder this rhyme: Sign up for Jesus prime! Don’t try to follow Him part time.

Wealth doesn’t make people good, happy, wise, smart, or important. It just makes them rich.

Keeping love “the greatest”

“The greatest of these is love.” The greatest calling of the body of Christ is love. If we could get everything else “right” but leave out love, we’d be off base. Love is active surrender to and obedience to Christ as Lord, even when we want to do otherwise, not passive adherence to an organization, to a program, or to religious beliefs. Religion often tries to use outward order, tradition, and programs, as an attempt to hide inner chaos.

The good news of the Kingdom of God is an invitation to be directly ruled by God, to let the King of Kings actively lead you. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” means “realign your thoughts and your lifestyle to obey and follow the living Jesus.”

If you follow Christ, He will often lead you to do loving and noble things that you don’t particularly want to do. Do them and then preach the story of what the risen Jesus has done in your life. God wants Christians not just to preach Jesus in history, but also to preach about what He has done to heal and change your life. You need an outlet to share what you have experienced and learned about Jesus. Since church seldom provides that, social media is a good place to start.

For better or for worse, words impact your mind and emotions, yet people tend to consume and use words with no caution or discernment at all.

Meanness and rudeness have been made very loud in our culture. It’s time to make kindness and love even louder! More and more people seem to be using words as weapons rather than as communication tools. When media is covered with trash talk it takes work not to step in it and get it all over yourself. So many people are using negative, mean, or hurtful words, it takes a whole lot of effort to avoid hearing or seeing them. Profanity is a form of rudeness, unkindness, and disrespect.

For a practical handbook on love, check out my new book: Off the RACE Track–From Color Blind to Color Kind.

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It’s time for Christ-followers to live in direct awareness of Jesus.

The direct awareness of God is far more powerful than mere information about God can ever be. Eyesight is wonderful. Heart-sight is even better. How’s your spiritual vision? Eyesight sees physical things. Heart-sight sees Christ & His inner Light!

Jesus is living in all His followers. So why does church require silence from everybody but “the pastor”? I’ve discovered that a church meeting full of people preaching Christ is more powerful than a church full of people listening to one man preach.

All soliloquy and no dialogue can make a dull meeting. A church service can be so tightly run that there’s no room for Jesus.
Spiritual family isn’t cultivated by continual lecture but by heart-to-heart interaction.

All Christ-followers are called to preach the Gospel and operate in the gifts of the Spirit–not just a pastor on Sunday morning. However, church almost always makes one person the minister and everybody else passive consumers of his ministry. Don’t just be a sermon-hearer. Proclaim and live the Gospel yourself! Church often chooses to be a stage for a soloist instead of a platform for God’s orchestra. However, a Christian leader is called to be a servant who puts others ahead of self, not a celebrity-like expert who tries to keep all the attention on himself.

Church that doesn’t demonstrate Jesus and facilitate personal interaction with Him is like an ice cream party with no ice cream. Hearing a weekly commentary about Christ is quite different than childlike delight in Christ. When one person dominates a meeting, everyone else is forced into the role of spectator.

How can we expect Jesus to transform our culture if we won’t even let Him transform church? Numerical growth without growth in Christ-like maturity, godly character, and spiritual power, is merely an illusion of progress.

I believe that God wants church to be more than it usually is. I believe that He wants it to be an actual demonstration of the presence and direct control (kingdom) of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. When Christ-followers gather and let Jesus, Himself, actually run the meeting, amazing and supernatural things begin to happen. Jesus can lead a worship gathering so much more effectively than a merely human leader can. My heart breaks that Jesus isn’t allowed to do more in churches.

Greatness/being great/making a great nation

Greatness is not wealth, fame, prestige, or power, but honesty, compassion, humility, and character. Greatness is not striving to be at the peak of the hierarchy, but faithfulness to truth and love.

Greatness breaks the bondage of self-focus, soars in serving others, and lives out the principle of “liberty & justice for all.” Greatness is humble obedience to the living God, not forceful self-assertion.

Here is Jesus’ definition of greatness: “The greatest among you will be your servant.” –Matthew 23:11. When asked who is the greatest, Jesus pointed to a little child and said: “Whoever takes the lowly position of this child…” 

It takes radical courage, but you can do it. Dare to be great! Great people make a great nation.

The Happy New Year Myth

Until you train yourself to be happy inside, a New Year will never make you happy. Life goes better when you grow and mature through all your New Years, not just maintain the same ole orbit around them.

A happy New Year isn’t temporary distraction from inner misery. It’s learning how to live without inner misery. Don’t settle for just another year. Fill your 2019 with joy, peace, honesty, hope, compassion, integrity, service, and kindness.

Your New Year will be about as happy as your old one, unless you make positive improvements in your thinking and behavior. People are eager to say “Happy New Year” but reluctant to use their time in ways that will actually make their New Year happy.

The thoughts, words, and images that you allow in your mind impact your life much more than the year on the calendar. The changing of the year doesn’t change much if you don’t change. The best way to have a happy 2019 is to daily fill your mind with positive, uplifting thoughts, words, and images. However, if you fill your mind with negative, angry, depressive, mean, or violent thoughts, words, and images, your New Year will be bad.

What good is the New Year if you treat it just like you did the old one?
It seems odd that we celebrate the New Year just as it starts, instead of waiting until we’ve accomplished something worth celebrating.
Instead of starting the New Year by dropping the ball, perhaps we should begin it by accepting responsibility. To step into the future is good. To ignore the unfinished business of the past isn’t.

Since the New Year won’t be that “New” if you keep being the same ole you, let Jesus renew you in 2K19! 365 days in a daze won’t make a happy New Year, but 365 days to gaze at and praise Christ will.

Year end, year out;
What’s it all about?
Read the Bible
And find out.

Here are two other books that can give you fresh, creative new thinking for a great new year: 1) Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind @ https://amzn.to/2SssSRC and 2) Beyond Church–An Invitation To Experience The Lost Word Of The Bible–Ekklesia @ https://amzn.to/2Rqbrnt.

Beyond spiritual compromise

A clean heart doesn’t speak with a dirty mouth. Wise eyes recognize evil’s disguise and don’t compromise with its lies. To compromise with lies is to choose deception rather than reality, fables instead of facts.

A compromised conscience collapses into inner chaos. Christ heals compromised consciences.

Christians are called to: meditate on Jesus; do what He says; and facilitate interaction with Him. The best preaching makes people dependent on the risen Jesus, not on a particular preacher. The point of preaching is not to make a point, but to point out the risen Christ so that people can listen to and obey Him.

The Holy Spirit and the Bible never “sugar coat” the Gospel, but preachers often do. What I read in the Bible and what I hear from preachers, are often far apart. Passively listening to sermons can be misleading. (Jesus said that there will be “false prophets.” Be on guard.)

Don’t just revolve around a church or a preacher. Get actively involved with the living Jesus. If you want spiritual traction that grabs the road to peace and joy, you need lots of personal interaction with Jesus. Why should we settle to limp along in life when the Bible says we can “mount up with wings as eagles”?

Amazing testimonies are being silenced by churches!

Most churches are full of people with amazing testimonies about what Christ has done. Perhaps we should let them speak up. One of the best ways to be prophetic is to share how you met Jesus. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Rev. 19:10

Other people’s testimonies help people become aware of the presence and action of God’s Spirit in their own heart. Keeping silent about your relationship with Jesus, robs others of your testimony. Your testimony of how you met the risen Jesus has power to change lives. Share it.

If you don’t have a testimony about how you first met Jesus, there’s a strong chance you’ve never met Him. When Christ jumps out of history, the Bible, and church and suddenly becomes real to you, it’s hard not to tell people about Him.

The early Christians overcame the devil “by the word of their testimony.” Perhaps we should, too. Great power is released when someone openly shares how he/she first encountered the living, resurrected Jesus.

The salvation testimonies of ordinary Christians are a neglected spiritual weapon. Testimonies bring Jesus out of the past and into the reality of the 21st Century. If ordinary Christians were encouraged to share the miracles they’ve experienced, we’d all be amazed!

Perhaps church could train people to share their salvation testimony and let a different person each Sunday morning share theirs. One piece of a jigsaw puzzle can never convey the whole picture. Let all Christ-followers testify!

What if there’s a more effective way of doing church and we’re not seeing it?

Christians could become stronger if we turned church services into ministry practice for all who attend. Have you ever been to a listen to Jesus meeting–where believers come together, listen to Jesus, and do what He says? Christianity is supernatural interaction with the living Jesus as well as ongoing submission and obedience to Him. When Jesus lives in people, they’re equipped to do mighty things for God, but church sits them down to hear sermons.

Christians are called to be directly connected to Christ. Don’t let anything or anyone come between you and the risen Jesus. As various people obey the Spirit’s promptings, the kingdom (government) of God becomes manifest in a meeting. For an alternative to religion and politics, seek the kingdom (inner government) of God. Jesus said it is “within you.” The Bible never says that one person in a pulpit is the voice of a church. However, it’s easier to sit through a nice sermon than it is to listen to Jesus and openly share what you hear.

Whatever quenches (ignores or restricts) the Holy Spirit’s promptings is not done “decently and in order,” but is out of God’s order. Preachers try to teach people but they seldom present them with the opportunity to actually use what they have been taught.

Modern Christians are given lectures, not hands-on training — sermonship instead of discipleship. The early Christians filled the world with disciples. We modern Christians try to fill church buildings with sermon-hearers. Early Christianity was full of supernatural transformations. Modern Christianity is full of logical explanations.

A Christian disciplemaker trains people to actively hear the risen Jesus and daily follow and obey Him–not just to listen to sermons. If more pastors spent more time making disciples instead of in their office making messages, modern Christianity would be transformed. It costs nothing (but an hour) to hear a sermon, but it costs everything to be a true disciple of the risen Jesus.

When lectures replaced discipleship, Christianity morphed into sermonanity. However, Jesus told His followers to make disciples, not to make spectators. Christians are called to preach to nonbelievers but to make disciples of believers. (So why do pastors preach to church members?)

Church has a duty to disciple its members, not to sermonize them.
Discipleship is not “pastor appreciation.” It’s radical obedience to the living Jesus. Church has benched Jesus’ disciples and made them watch a preacher and a program, instead of training them to use their gifts as the Spirit leads.

Discipleship takes practice. Church needs to get people together and let them practice hearing & obeying the living Jesus.

When church tries to be relevant it becomes weak. When it allows people to listen to and obey the risen Jesus, revival breaks out.
Bottom line: Do sermons equip modern Christians to live and act like the early Christians? If not, perhaps something’s off.

Perhaps it’s a good thing to question tradition and to look for ways that church could be more effective in making disciples. I know that many Christ-followers view church differently than I do and I respect that. However, I feel like one model of church has monopolized Christianity for many centuries.

I believe there are alternative models presented in Scripture. So I have a passion to proclaim, to the many who are bored with (and/or done with) the traditional model of church, that there is a biblical alternative to the widespread model. Many people feel like hearing sermons works for them, but for those who don’t, 1 Corinthians 14:26 presents a powerful and wonderful alternative. Blessings to all!

Don’t make Christmas memories

Don’t just make Christmas memories. Make Jesus’ birth something that daily touches your heart and directs your life. The purpose of the Christmas holidays is to give Jesus praise. “O Come Let Us Adore Him.” Perhaps the best way to celebrate the birth of Jesus is to listen to and follow Him everyday.

Christmas isn’t just a seasoning to spice up your holidays. It’s a bold declaration that God became a human being.

It’s easy to celebrate the birth of Jesus yet neglect to interact with Him in the present. Try not to go through Christmas in a holi-daze and miss lmmanuel. Find Him in Matthew 1:23. Don’t settle for a blue Christmas when Christ wants to fill you with His love, forgiveness, joy, and peace.

As you celebrate Christmas, remember that Christ was born so that you could daily hear and obey Him. (Do you?) Between the birth of Jesus and His second coming is the present moment where we can experience His wonderful presence!

Christ’s birth in Bethlehem comes alive with wonder and power when Christ is born in you! Christmas is about Immanuel (God with us). If God is really with us, perhaps we could let Him personally lead us when we gather in Jesus’ name? There was no room for Jesus to be born in the inn. Is there any room for Him to come alive in and take over your church?

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Why “Off the RACE Track” is Patriotic

The Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag calls for “liberty and justice for all.” Off the RACE Track does too.

The Declaration of Independence declares, “all men (people) are created equal.” So does Off the RACE Track.

The National Anthem calls America “the land of the free.” Off the RACE Track respects the Anthem by honoring forgotten (or ignored) American freedom fighters.

The US Constitution calls for “the equal protection of the laws.” So does Off the RACE Track.

Both the Gettysburg Address and Off the RACE Track advocate liberty and equality. They both also call for “a new birth of freedom.”

So why not try a fresh expression of patriotism? Read Off The Race Track. Get a copy at this link.