Steve Simms's Blog, page 261

Considering Christ & conscience

It’s hard to feel right when you do wrong. For me, a conscience-following lifestyle is much more fun than a guilt-producing lifestyle. A violated conscience clamors for correction, crying out for you to make things right.

A person without a conscience is like a car with no warning lights, gas gage, or speedometer. If we don’t live by the Bible’s high moral values we are following something (or someone) other than the risen Jesus. True Christianity goes beyond Sunday preaching to radical discipleship and hands-on disciple-making: training people to obey Christ.

You don’t have to hear about Jesus through a sermon. You can have a direct conversation with Him by yourself. He speaks in your conscience. Take time to listen.

Don’t have a religious go-between between you and God. Keep in direct contact with Him. It’s easy to follow religion and ignore God. Try not to do that. You can learn more about life by opening your heart and mind to God than by decades of church attendance and sermon-hearing.

God is beyond human understanding, but Christ has opened the door for humans to experience Him. Christian mysticism happens when you open up your heart and mind to the living God.

Where the Christmas shepherds drunk (in the Spirit)?

I think the shepherds who saw the herald angels were drunk in the Holy Spirit on Christmas Day. There’s no high like the Most High!

The illogical labels of “black” & “white”

In America, someone of mixed blood is called “black” instead of “white” or “mixed.” Isn’t that racist?

The false labeling of mixed (black and white) people as “black” goes back to the slavery and Jim Crow racist lie that “one drop” of “black” blood makes a person black. But that’s absolutely untrue. 

Take President Obama for instance. He had a white mother and a Kenyan (black) father so he is 50/50 — just as much white as black. If fact, if we go by the laws of the Old South (which declared that a baby was of the status and race of her/his mother) then Obama is white. So why is he called the first black president?

Perhaps that is because the concept of racial divisions and labeling is not built on a logical foundation, but on an emotional one. For example, at the end of the Civil War, when the American victims of human trafficking were freed, thousands of the slaves looked white. They were 1/32 black, 1/64 black, or even less. Because of the American lie that blacks were inferior, those former slaves, “passed” into the white population.

Christians like to say that history is “His story.” However, if history is “His story,” we should be willing to openly and honestly explore the whole story, not just the parts that make us or our country look good. To create a better future, it’s important that we take an open, honest look back. Here’s a book that does that: Off the RACE Track–From Color Blind to Color Kind.

[image error]

Grow some happiness

If you don’t learn how to grow happiness inside of your heart, you won’t find it anywhere you go and nothing you get can produce it. Life goes better when you go better!

Don’t just say the same. Improve your conversation with positive, uplifting, life-enhancing words. 

When you want to do what’s right, go for it. When you want to do what’s wrong, don’t! 

Close your mind to Satan’s “fiery darts.” Open it to God’s “still small voice.”

Cussing — it ain’t good for you! (Or your hearers.)

Using profanity ambushes you (and your hearers) with negative and self-esteem-destroying thoughts and emotions. Cussing fills your life (and your hearers) with the same destructive words, repeated over and over.

Normalizing profanity is normalizing publicly spewed crudeness, rudeness, and lewdness. It’s not normal for humans to be crude, rude, and lewd. It’s part of the abnormal human condition that the Bible calls sin. 

People who can’t think of anything better and more helpful to say, than profanity, aren’t thinking very much. Using cuss words is a public admission of a lack of creativity. 

Here are a few quotes about cussing:

“I simply do not think swearing, threatening, or belittling will get you to the place you want to be faster than kindness, understanding, patience, and a little willingness to compromise.” –Rachel Nichols (Frequent cussing causes sensitive people to want to get away from you and stay away from you.) “Profanity and obscenity entitle people who don’t want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.” –Kurt Vonneget

“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.” –George Washington (Unfortunately George Washington was a human trafficker so, by definition, he wasn’t a person of sense and character. To learn more about how many of America’s founding fathers practiced human trafficking, go to this link.)

“Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly.” –Spencer Kimball

“Profanity is the common crutch of the conversational cripple.” –David Keuck

Michael Andretti’s racetracks quote

“Running on different types of racetracks is challenging.” -Michael Andretti
America’s race track has taken us in circles for centuries.

To get beyond the race tracks: In the midst of divisiveness, search for the image of God in the people who disagree with you. There’s something likeable in every person. Why not try to find it? Inside every person there are amazing insights, experiences, and strengths, if we will only take the time to look.

When Christians worship in ethnically and racially diverse groups, they show the world what Heaven looks like.

Sometimes we have to take a searching look at the past to free up the future. 
Perhaps it is time to talk about race openly, honestly, and compassionately. For example: American slavery is often considered to be an anomaly instead of a 246 year atrocity. For practical ways to get off the race track, go to this link.

+-Following Jesus is a long haul, not a quick fix.

Lite year: 365 days with little or no personal or spiritual growth–the road to incessant immaturity. Life goes better if we avoid lite years and instead open our hearts to God’s light. Don’t go through life at the speed of lite, avoiding personal and spiritual growth. Instead, step into the light and stretch yourself!

True greatness is complex. It requires honesty, compassion, moral character, kindness, justice, and humility.

Following Jesus is a long haul (and a long hall) not a quick fix. Don’t just go to church. Go to the living, resurrected Jesus and let Him take control of your life. Did the early Christians meet to passively hear the same man speak every week?

Without an intimate, submissive relationship with the risen Jesus, hearing sermons about Him does little good. JESUS Talks! Listen directly to Him and you’ll never be the same! 

When church fails to manifest the dynamic power and presence of the resurrected Jesus, people “attend” unchanged. Many of society’s problems would be overcome if churches would let the living Jesus take over and run their meetings.

Elvis, Tupelo, & race

My mother grew up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, next door to Elvis. In spite of the strong Jim Crow (forced segregation) laws, they played with both black and white kids.

My Southern parents raised me in Arkansas and Tennessee and taught me to be kind and to respect everybody. Because of their influence I was mostly unaware of the shocking reality of racism, until I began to research history on my own, as an adult. Then I discovered many secrets that had been hidden from me in my school history classes and are still not widely known. I share much of what I learned in my new book: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind.

Christian lectures? Or a demonstration of Christ?

To focus on a man’s talk rather than on Christ’s presence is to settle for a 2nd-hand account instead of a 1st-hand experience. Instead of listening to lectures about Jesus, perhaps Christians could passionately demonstrate our love for and obedience to Him.

Preachers speak on Sunday morning but Jesus speaks 24\7\365. You listening? A sermon without an aha, a touch from God, an inner transformation, a new degree of freedom — is just a religious lecture.

Christians today need HEAVY-METTLE — the inner strength to follow and obey Jesus instead of obeying our own feelings and desires. Christ-followers have an implant–the risen Jesus embedded in them. “Christ in you–the hope of glory.” Follow Him. When Christians follow Jesus they love one another & even their enemies. When they don’t; they don’t.

All talk and no hands-on training can’t make a surgeon, a pilot, or a mature Christian. Christianity is a miraculous lifestyle generated by the risen Christ within, not a series of Sunday morning lectures.

Making pastors teachers made church a classroom. Making pastors facilitators can make church an interactive team of equals. Sermons are like audible CliffsNotes. It’s important to read the Bible for yourself and not just accept what a preacher says.

Never buy enough (be enough)

You can never buy enough physical things to make up for inner emptiness. Don’t settle for incomplete shopping: “With all your getting get understanding.” –Proverbs 4:7

An abundance of stuff has failed to “Make America kind within.” Greatness exudes kindness in every direction. Never try to buy enough — instead let God show you how to be enough.

A life without God functions like a court with no judge. God’s love should never be manipulated and used as an attempt to justify and/or approve of sin.

Some people say that history is “His story” (God’s). but if we leave the parts we don’t like out, it becomes our story. Left out parts of American history make it difficult to understand race.

The idea that skin color delineates quality, status, intelligence, or class is a lie that has caused immeasurable human suffering.

A vision for loving community —

There’s only one race, you and me,

No matter the color that we see.