Steve Simms's Blog, page 268

Do the things you need to learn . . .

Too often Christianity presents Christ like a tame lion locked up in a cage on Sunday mornings. Dare we let Him out? Is Christianity, presented without wonder, passion, surprise, power, conviction, and awe, biblical Christianity?

Perhaps Christians in church spend too much time listening to things we already know instead of doing things we need to learn. In most churches the body of Christ is all ears (except, of course, for the preacher). Christians get stuck in a preacher’s solitary pronouncements and often miss the wisdom of the people in the congregation.

Christianity is like knitting. You learn it by doing it, not by hearing talks about it. People learn to pray by praying, not by hearing sermons about prayer. Christians learn to forgive by forgiving, not by a sermon series on forgiveness.

Christians aren’t called to just listen to a preacher. They’re called to be preachers! Share the Light!

John the Baptist said to clear the way for the Lord. Today church still needs to clear out whatever is blocking the Lord. Church is often like a spiritual logjam, blocking Jesus’ rivers of living water, trying to help people survive on dry river beds. It’s irrelevant how much Bible you know if you refuse to let the Holy Spirit freely flow.

People meet for unorganized conversations all the time. Why don’t we climb out of the box and meet for unorganized praise & worship? Controlled and contained Christian meetings can’t freely flow with Christ’s contagious joy and power.

When the flow of the Holy Spirit is shut down, church tends to rely on programs, rituals, talks, and entertainment. Our ways are not God’s ways. (Isaiah. 55:8) Following our own human ways leads us away from God’s ways.

The next time you are in church, learn by doing not by listening. Do what you want to learn–forgive, pray with someone, encourage, testify, etc. Instead of making people sit and silently listen in church], perhaps we could do what the Bible says and let them “spur” and “encourage” one another! “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.” Hebrews 10:25

When Christians gather around the living Jesus they don’t need a program because He will personally lead and direct them. Unfortunately, church invites Jesus to meet with us but allows Him no time in the meeting to do anything.

It’s more important to have a heart that’s tender to the Holy Spirit than to be a church “attender.”People aren’t supposed to attend the kingdom of God. We are supposed to live it out and demonstrate it in our daily lives.  Early Christianity was a grassroots movement that followed Christ. Today it seems more like a monument to memorialize Him.

Jesus didn’t come to start Sunday morning church meetings, but to establish the kingdom (government) of God, in human hearts. The kingdom of God is not subject to human programming, direction, or management. It’s run directly by God.

Following Christ is a lifetime marathon, not a once and done! Sort your thoughts. Refute and reject the destructive ones; embrace & cultivate the uplifting ones. If you don’t resist evil in your heart, it will eventually control you from within.

Christ’s kingdom is inside out. He wants to govern people’s conscience, not to be a figurehead in a human institution. If we put as much focus on letting God govern our conscience as we do on who governs our country, we’d be transformed from within.

If human beings are controlling it and calling the shots, it’s not the kingdom of God. It’s sad that, to avoid being saturated by the Holy Spirit we put up our umbrellas of religion and control.

 

 

 

 

Spiritual body building or religious institutionalism?

Early Christianity was a joyous, loving, holy, and supernatural lifestyle, not a religious affiliation. Christians are called to be body builders — to build up the body of Christ by ministering to one another. (See Ephesians 4:16.) Institutionalism has splintered Christ’s body into separate pieces controlled by organizations, programs, and men.

As God moved in people’s hearts, they wrote the Scriptures. As God moves in my heart, He confirms the Scriptures. If you pick and choose what Bible verses to believe based on how you feel, how can you be sure you made the right choices? No one wants to live in a society with no laws, yet some people claim they want God to have no laws and accept anything they do. Religion is rigid and locked into a pattern. Faith is fluid and continually open to God’s supernatural intervention.

Daily growing closer to Christ is an option in life. Unfortunately, it’s an option many Christians choose to opt out on. Rather than surrendering to the living God, people prefer to build a god of their choice. A Build-A-Bear sale created chaos in American shopping malls. A build-a-god attitude creates chaos in human hearts.

Change is hard. Sometimes it’s easier and more effective to change yourself before you try to change your circumstances. If you’re not growing through what you’re going through, you’re overlooking something important.

When someone blesses your life in ways beyond anything you could have imagined, it’s very easy to talk about them. That’s what Jesus has done for me.

The concept of self-identity ignores the real possibility of human self-deception. We all need accountability. Self-identifying as not guilty doesn’t relieve the burden of guilt. That takes Christ’s substitutionary death. There’s a good chance people who self-identify as heretics actually are. Jesus said “Beware of false prophets.”

E-race card

America needs an e-race card. A psychological app to erase the myth of race.

When people are negatively labeled by their skin color, the race card is displayed on their body, like a giant tatto. Before there was race baiting, there was race slating – tying a negative fate to certain people’s skin color.

Bystanders vs. spiritual revolutionaries

Too many Christians have been trained to be bystanders and onlookers rather than spiritual revolutionaries. If you look at church as a training center, what is it training Christians to do? Sit and listen.

Perhaps pastors need to be coaches (not lecturers), running people through spiritual drills, training them to thrive with Christ. Maybe church should be a Spirit-led workout with the gifts of the Spirit instead of a passive, sermon sit-in. When discipleship was replaced with spectatorship Christianity lost much of its power.

What you learn by sermons is soon forgotten. What you learn by the living Jesus working through ordinary people you never forget. If church would create an atmosphere where people can freely hear and obey Jesus, they won’t forget that!

You learn to use your phone by daily interacting with it (not by a weekly lecture about it). Learn to follow Jesus the same way. Christians need to be trained to hear, follow, and obey Jesus rather than trained to sit and listen to a preacher. We don’t need more sermons. We need church to create the conditions where we can actively hear and obey Jesus when we meet together!

To learn about Jesus yet not get to know Him personally is like learning about restaurants but never eating out. To go to a pool every week just to hear a talk about swimming misses the point. When will church let people swim in the Spirit?

Christianity without the supernatural presence of the risen Jesus is like power lines with no electricity. When church became spectatorial it lost much of the supernatural power of early Christianity.

The heart can learn things that the head will never understand. Open your heart to be taught by the Holy Spirit.

Wood in a pile doesn’t necessarily make a fire. People attending church don’t necessarily worship.

The Bible & anti-malware . . .

Daily reading the Bible with an open heart may be the best anti-malware for the human brain. Many people are far more careful to install anti-malware on their computer than on their mind and heart. Don’t give up! Jesus will break your chain of thought if you let Him speak to you through your conscience and the Bible!

Learn new things about yourself. The Bible’s a mirror and will show things you never knew about you. Read it with an open heart. I’ve only found one book that burns in my heart so much that I read it everyday. It’s the Bible!

Too many people assume they know enough about Jesus to have a ticket to Heaven and be done with Him. That’s not Christianity. Christianity is not just believing in the historic Jesus but experiencing the living Jesus.

People who stop growing in Christ may not be “abiding in the vine.” (See John chapter 15.) Paul said that he wanted to demonstrate Christ, not just talk about Him. (See 1 Corinthians 2:4.)

Don’t settle for one preacher’s ideas about the Bible. Get out of the religious corral and read it for yourself! Whoever came up with the idea that some Christians are experts and the rest are spectators? I can’t find it in the Bible.

When I read the book of Acts and see the passion and joy of early Christianity, I wonder what happened? Many people miss understand the Bible concept of grace. Grace is not permission to disobey God, but the free gift of supernatural power to obey Him.

Why focus on the Bible? Whatever you read, listen to, or watch, you download into your brain and invite to mold your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Habitual thoughts are the mental programs that direct your life. If you don’t change them you’ll keep getting the same results.

 

 

When sermon-hearers aren’t allowed to make a peep, they easily fall asleep

When people fall asleep in church, instead of asking what church is doing to bore people, we make jokes about it. Church too often gives people this message: “If you don’t like the Sunday morning rap, you can always take a short nap.”

Pay attention to the sermon? That’s a question a lot of people like to sleep on. If a congregation looks bored — they probably are.

When sermon-hearers aren’t allowed to make a peep, they easily fall asleep. For too many Christians, their greatest spiritual challenge is not to fall asleep in church. However, other church members think that a sermon is nothing to lose sleep over.

Maybe church could install sleep-number seats that tell you how many minutes into the sermon you fall asleep. Here’s a definition: church-sleep-number — the amount of people who slumber during a Sunday church service. Do you know your church-sleep-number? How many minutes a year do you sleep in church?

You know you have acute insomnia when you can’t even fall asleep in church. However, church should light your fuse, not make you snooze. Worship should be a glorious, Spirit-led fiesta, not a sleepy, tightly-monitored siesta.

All the jokes about people falling asleep in sermons show that contemporary sermons aren’t very effective. Church isn’t supposed to put people to sleep. It’s supposed to wake them up. They should leave church roused, alert, and excited! If the senior pastor is putting you to sleep, quit listening to him and talk to the Chief Shepherd. Jesus will wake you up.

Rather than joking about church being “the frozen chosen” perhaps we should find a way to thaw it out. (1 Corinthians 14:26 can show us how to do that!)

Perhaps church could be more effective at spreading the Gospel if it woke people up instead of hitting their snooze button. It’s sad that Christians often present the world’s most exciting subject–the living, resurrected Jesus Christ–in a boring way. Why do we do that? Football games keep people alert, excited, and awake. Why shouldn’t church?

It’s very hard to fall asleep if your listening to someone sharing fresh insights on a subject you’re passionate about. Christianity isn’t supposed to just be a sleepy message for your mind. It’s should be Christ’s real presence transforming your life.

Open, Holy Spirit prompted sharing, testimonies, and gifts of the Spirit create a no-doze spiritual environment.

The good thing about going to sleep in church is that it gives you the opportunity to wake up in church. Perhaps we all need a spiritual wake up call.

Don’t sink your conscience — get it in sync . . .

People with a guilty conscience often feel like other people are judging them even when the judgment is coming from within. To clear your conscience, sincerely ask God (and anyone else you have offended) to forgive you.

If you feel like your life is a mess, wake up your conscience and begin to follow and obey it. It will put you back together again. A guilty conscience never knows inner peace. To be serene come clean.

If people would trust and follow their conscience like they do GPS apps, the world would be a much nicer place! Life catches up. You can’t continually fake a clear conscience and you can’t always outrun a guilty one.

To stay out of sync with your conscience is to sink into guilt, discouragement, and despair. There’s still time to realign. Ancient Orthodox monks continually reset their conscience with this prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner.”

The human conscience is God’s moral GPS carried by DNA and installed in the womb. It’s dangerous to ignore and/or override yours.

An ignored conscience leads to guilt. A clear conscience leads to peace. To ignore and/or resist the voice of your conscience is to miss God’s light and to choose to walk in darkness.

Trying to carry all the burdens of your past, present, and future makes you tense. Don’t sink your conscience. Get it in sync.

Is race a myth?

This week’s episode of Crazy Bible Stuff discusses one of the world’s biggest problems race. Is race even real?

Fireworks for supernaturalized citizens

A nation’s fireworks flash and are gone. Christ’s fireworks go on and on. Don’t miss out on them!

Your soul was created to be ablaze with Christ’s fireworks, not to waste away in darkness. When God’s fireworks illuminate your heart, you suddenly start to see other people as His amazing artworks! I love to watch God’s fireworks explode in my soul with light and awe.

Sin is the border wall that keeps us out of the kingdom of God. Without Christ’s mercy and forgiveness, we’re all undocumented and illegal.

Christ calls us to pursue the kingdom (government) of God as our first priority. The borders of the kingdom of God are inside human hearts. You must enter from the inside out. The you can become a supernaturalized citizen of God’s kingdom.

[image error]

Even if you’re right, it’s wrong to be rude

Many people use rudeness to try to cover up their weakness and insecurity. However, even if you’re right it’s wrong to be rude.

When Christ-followers gather and minister to one another as led by the Spirit, they learn Christ’s kindness and compassion. The fruit of the Spirit includes kindness. Spirit-led people overflow with it.

“Love is kind.” Where kindness is lacking there’s a scarcity of love!

“Be kind to one another.” –Ephesians 4:32. A whole lot of people are ignoring that Bible verse! However, for Christians kindness isn’t optional: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone.” 2 Timothy 2:24.

Unkindness creates enemies. Kindness produces friends. Which do you prefer? People who get stuck in being rude, almost never experience the feeling of gratitude.

Don’t let other people’s unkindness make you unkind to yourself or to others! People who like to say unkind things also like to say, “I’m not being rude, I’m just . . .”