Steve Simms's Blog, page 288
July 22, 2017
ABCs of Beyond Church
Body of Christ
Christ’s city council
Dependence on Jesus
Ekklesia
Family of God
God-gatherings
Hooked on Christ
In Jesus’ name
Jesus is the Head
Kingdom of God
Life together
Meeting with Jesus
New creatures in Christ
Orchestrated by Jesus
Prompted by the Spirit
Quench not the Spirit
Recovery group for Christ-followers
Spirit-led support group
Team Jesus
Unity in Christ
Victorious Christian community
Worship in the Spirit
Xylophone played by God
Yielding to Jesus
Zone of the Spirit
Read more about Beyond Church
July 21, 2017
Theology without testimony is like learning about ice cream without eating it
Many people have never discovered that when people open up and begin to testify to one another about their love for Jesus, they experience an amazing sense of kinship.
Christianity isn’t just about dispensing information about God. It’s about making and maintaining a deep, heart-felt connection with risen Jesus and with others! Christianity involves the risen Jesus working in and through ordinary people as they testify about what Christ has done for them.
Theology without testimony is like learning about ice cream without eating it. However, people coming together around the risen Jesus reflect His love to one another and actually experience Him together. When they meet to all collaborate with the Holy Spirit, Heaven breaks out in their midst.
[image error]
When people who have been transformed by the living Jesus, open up and share how He became real to them, awe fills the atmosphere. Perhaps we need more testimony about how Jesus is working in people’s lives & less theological argument.
Telling people about your encounters with Christ is much more powerful than sharing your opinions about Him. People can refute your logical arguments about Christ; but not your honest testimony about how you have experienced Him.
If the risen Jesus has ever done anything in your life; don’t keep it a secret. Show & tell what Christ has done for you! “The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Bible is full of testimonials about what God has done. Those testimonies amaze me when I read it.
Pursuing self-fulfillment produces frustration. However, self-forgetting to pursue Christ sets you free and fills you with the desire to testify about Him.
If you’ve ever benefited from a support group, you’ll love a testimony meeting where ordinary people show & tell what God has done. Those meetings are somewhat like AA, Al-Anon, or NA meetings — Christ-led support groups where people encourage you and you encourage them.
Experience a worship meeting based on testimony @ The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville.
Read a book about how you can have more testimonies in the church you attend.
July 18, 2017
Influence others to hope or be influenced by them toward despair
Seek out people who will influence you to aspire & work to be the best you can. Saturate yourself with positive, upbeat, encouraging, wholesome, & hopeful influences.
Negative influences are bold, seductive, and pushy. It takes great courage & effort not to get entangled by them! Here’s the recipe for misery: Jump into a sea of negative influences and go with the flow
Influence others toward hope, serenity, & happiness. Don’t let others influence you toward chaos & confusion. If something’s not a good influence on your life; ignore it, avoid it, & resist it! Care enough about yourself to stay away from self-destructive influences!
Life’s an influence tug-o-war! If you’re not pulling towards God, you’re being pulled away from Him.
The influences you have followed have led you to where you are. If you’re not happy with where you are, change your influences. If you don’t like the influences you are surrounded by; change your surroundings!
Here are the influences I embrace: Jesus, the Bible, my conscience, and passionate, faithful Christ-followers (both present & past).
To walk in the Spirit is to let yourself be continually influenced by God. Every moment we can choose to be influenced by God or to ignore Him. What percentage of your time do you spend ignoring God and His influence?
Whatever you allow to influence you will begin to shape you into its image. To follow negative influences is to be slowly dragged toward hopelessness.
There’s a self-inflicted drag on the human spirit, weighing it down–personal rebellion against God. To rebel against God is to bite the hand that feeds you. However, to stop doing your thing & start doing God’s thing is to begin to experience life at its fullest.
Self-Inflicted Negativity (SIN) is rampant among human beings. Saying that something isn’t a sin doesn’t suddenly make it innocent or harmless. “Go and sin no more.”
If everybody was influenced to think and act like you, what would the world be like? All the explanations and/or excuses in the world don’t make a wrong behavior right.
People need more than reason. They need Christ’s hope! If reason is followed to its logical conclusion; it leads to meaninglessness. It takes faith to produce hope & purpose.
The footprints of grace are humility & holiness.
Rob Bell: This is what the Bible is . . .
Rob Bell has written a book called What Is The Bible? Here’s a poem and a few thoughts to help answer Rob’s question:
Let The Bible Ring Your Bell
I learned
What the Bible is
By reading it,
And as I did
The words burned
In my heart,
Transformed my life,
And made Jesus
More real and powerful
Than I could have imagined.
No one can adequately tell you
What the Bible is.
Read it and
See for yourself.
It’s easier to to twist the Scriptures, than to let the Bible untwist you. However, without faithfulness to Scripture, we’re left solely to our own (or others’) subjective discernment of what’s the voice of God. To avoid subjective answers to the question: “Did God really say…?” read the Bible daily.
We need an epidemic of heart-felt Bible reading where Jesus jumps off the pages and the words of Scripture burn in our hearts! Scripture isn’t a collection of suggestions. It’s supernatural revelation from God. The Bible fills my heart with continual aha moments as the words of Scripture jump off the pages and dance in my soul!
To deny the authority of the Bible is to set aside what God has revealed in the past for your own opinions. If people who put down the Bible would humbly put it into practice instead; they’d soon discover its truth and power.
A Bible basher who says he’s a believer in Christ is chopping down the tree he’s sitting in. Most of what we know about Jesus comes from the Bible. To deny the Bible’s authority is to declare our faith merely subjective.
To divorce Christianity from the authority of Scripture is to jump overboard into the choppy sea of your own perceptions. Making the Bible a smorgasbord where you choose what you like, is to override the testimony of the earliest Christ-followers.
History’s full of testimonies about how God spoke through the Bible and transformed people’s lives. Read it & let God change you.
The Bible is collection of ancient writings from God that multitudes ignore; some analyze; and some try to explain away. However, I absorb it as a love letter from God.
Denying the authority of the Bible doesn’t excuse you from the consequences of ignoring its truths! Many people if they disagree with something in the Bible, deny its authority, rather than letting the Bible hold them accountable. Perhaps it’s time to set aside theological, critical, legalistic, self-protectionist approaches to the Bible and simply read it as God’s love letter.
If what Jesus taught isn’t true; then He was dishonest or deceived. If His teachings are true, then we should wholeheartedly follow & obey Him.
Some people are proclaiming that because Jesus is the Word that the Bible can’t be the word of God. However, Paul of Tarsus disagrees with those who are making such claims. He wrote: “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
The word of God that Paul is referring to is the message (the words) that he taught the Thessalonians; which they could have written off as being merely human words. However, instead they received Paul’s message as the actual word of God and it began to work in the hearts of those who believed.
Don’t follow or believe the people today who are trying to get you to write the Bible off as a mere human word. Instead, begin to read the Bible daily and believe it. Try this experiment: Read the New Testament for at least 5 minutes everyday for 21 days without missing a day. Before you finish the 21 days, you will begin to experience “the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”
Learn more about how powerfully the Bible can work in a community of believers at this link.
July 14, 2017
Don’t throw the Bible out for the bathwater of deception
Let Scripture challenge & change your perceptions, feelings, & opinions. To depart from Scripture for human opinion is to dance with deception.
To avoid deception: lay down your opinions, continually search the Scriptures, & always let God’s Spirit direct your heart & mind. Beware of people who promote their own religious ideas by trying to make people doubt or disregard the Bible. Don’t throw the Bible out for the bath water of deception.
To think that you don’t continually need to read and apply the wisdom of the Bible is to gamble with your soul. Before you believe a teacher, preacher, or writer; check out her/his words with the Scriptures. (Acts 17:11)
Don’t just blindly read & swallow anybody’s opinions about eternity. Search the Bible yourself! If falsehood & deception weren’t aggressively seducing human minds & hearts, it might be safe to ignore the Scriptures.
Don’t bite the bait of books promoting unscriptural ideas about God, Christ, & eternity. Before you read any book that claims to be about the Bible; read the Bible through & through. Without faithfulness to Scripture, we’re left solely to our own (or others’) subjective discernment of what’s the voice of God.
When I read the Bible, I can feel the Holy Spirit downloading His software in my heart. Jesus asked: “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” He said: “Scripture cannot be set aside,” and “Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching.” “Then He (Jesus) opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:45) Has He opened yours?
Paul’s letters say things “…unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16) It’s easier to to twist the Scriptures, than to let the Bible untwist you.
Jesus said: “Take the lowest place.” When we all do that, we’ll experience the glory of God in our midst.
Word choice matters
Your lingo leads your life. Choose to use uplifting lingo! It’s hard to build a positive life with a negative vocabulary. Bad words don’t produce good outcomes.
Your feelings follow the verbiage you daily use and consume. Volatile verbiage creates volatility. Serene verbiage will lead you to serenity.
All lingo matters. Some is helpful, some harmful; but every word that you think, read, say, or hear has an impact on your life.
Embrace the terminology of hope and practical optimism! The terminology of discouragement traps people in despair. However, if you build your life on a virtuous vocabulary; guilt & shame lose their power.
If you don’t consciously choose to use uplifting terminology; negative words will capture your mind and heart. Fill yourself with life-changing lingo, victorious verbiage, & transformational terminology. Read the Bible everyday!
The words you think & say lead to attitudes that lead to actions. Choose them wisely. Thousands of thousands of words have molded who you are, one word at a time.
Be an enthusiasts for encouraging, uplifting words. Talk ’em up! Humanity suffers from a failure to communicate; 1) encouragement, 2) transformation through Christ, & 3) heart-felt love.
Hurtful words: once said, always said. They can’t be erased or intentionally forgotten. Only forgiven. You will live out in your daily life, the words that you continually think, say, & hear.
Christ-pleasing words are transformational. To let Jesus edit our words before we say them, would solve many problems. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up.”
–Ephesians 4:29
We’re called to conform our desires & our words to the will of God, not the other way around. Outward illusions can never compensate for lack of inner peace.
It’s beautiful when people come together in enjoyment & inspiration of the Holy Spirit & the words that the Spirit inspired in the Bible.
People who regularly lie spin deceptions that keep them out of touch with the real world. Faith helps people face real world reality with honesty, humility, and hope.
July 12, 2017
Do fishy, smelly words jump into your mind?
[image error]
People become like the words they think, say, write, hear, & read. Do you need a change in words? Lay down put-down words & take up uplifting words!
Holy Spirit promptings, when humbly obeyed, turn into amazing God moments! When first coming to Christ, people are prompted by the Holy Spirit. Once we know Him, the Spirit prompts us even more. You listening?
God often speaks through the promptings of your conscience. God still speaks to human hearts in a still small voice. All we need to do is listen. Too often we let the voices around us override God’s still small voice within us.
The more we obey God’s still small voice that speaks within us, the more confident we become of His leading. Then we spread His hope more and more.
Profanity is the language hopelessness. The world has enough of hate and hopelessness. Christ-followers need to spread hopeful words! To counter the myth that says that “Christians need to use profanity to be listened to,” I share this:
For 5 1/2 years I was the chaplain in a Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center. During that time I worked with more than 1,400 addicted men right off the streets. I never used profanity but still connected with them in a powerful, Spirit-led way; and in all those years I almost never heard one of them use a cuss word. However, I saw many of them begin to seek God, pray, & devour the Bible.
Therefore, when fishy, smelly words jump through your mind, quickly kick them out. Don’t let them land in your thoughts or in what you say.
The most effective way to respond to hurt is to love more–to increase the amount of love in your words, thoughts, and actions. People are like porcupines; our quills hurt others (often unintentionally). However, speaking and acting in love quells the pain.
Experience exceeds explanation. Seeing surpasses statements. God’s love must be caught, not just taught. “Taste & see that the Lord is good!” To know about Jesus, yet not continually experience His presence, is to miss out on life’s most amazing companionship!
Here’s an adventure for your bucket list. Take a journey through the Bible with the risen Jesus–there’s nothing like that trip! When Jesus speaks in your heart, you can feel the words! Insights inundate me when I read the Bible with simplicity, brokenness, & desperation for help.
No theology, no matter how grand, can take the place of personal interaction with the risen Jesus. To encounter the living Jesus is to be forever changed, always yearning to know Him better.
I wish I could put down in words, how wonderful my heart feels when I follow Jesus. However, it takes the entire body of Christ to do that! In Christ’s body, everybody has something, but nobody has everything. (1 Cor. 12)
The living Word–
The voice of Christ
Speaks within your heart.
The written Word–
The ancients heard
Christ speak to them
And wrote it down.
Check what you hear
In your heart
With the Bible.
July 10, 2017
Faith focus — trusting Christ, not accumulating stuff
Keep faith always in front of you & fear will be forced to stay in the rear.
When we have no idea what to do if God doesn’t come through; we can either stand on faith or give up in despair.
Faith is an intense fight against doubt & fear; not a causal, untested belief.
When you pull the ripcord of faith in Jesus; you’ll stop your freefall through life and make a safe landing!
Faith knows the Son still shines, even when hidden behind dark clouds.
It’s easy to be encouraged when you see what you want to see; but it takes firm faith to remain hopeful when you don’t.
Faith isn’t always getting what you want; it’s trusting God even when you don’t.
Faith’s not a way to manipulate God. Faith is trusting God enough to surrender to Him.
The more you get to know the risen Jesus, the easier it is to have faith in Him. The more time you spend with someone, the better you get to know her/him. The same is true about the risen Jesus.
Faith is not a way to lead God around. It’s letting God lead you around.
The stronger a person’s faith is, the more she/he surrenders to God.
Proclaimed belief without corresponding behaviors is defunct.
Faith is trusting God even when you are treading through topsy-turvy turf.
By faith you can speak to mountains of doubt & cast them out of your thoughts.
Faith is like a muscle. It grows stronger the more you use it.
Need proof for God? Ask Him to show you that He’s real. He will!
What nation holds no territory but its citizens are scattered all around the world? Answer: The Kingdom of God.
The Lord’s Prayer in bite size bits
“Our Father,” Jesus invites us to be sons & daughters of God.
“In Heaven,” a holy & pure dimension of existence beyond the physical realm.
“Hallowed be Your Name,” may His name release holy astonishment in all who hear it.
“Your kingdom come,” may the government of God be revealed & established.
“Your will be done,” may we lay down our resistance to what God wants.
“On earth as it is in Heaven,” Heaven is the example of how to live on earth.
“Give us today our daily bread,” one day at a time.
“And forgive us out trespasses,” Lord, have mercy on us.
“As we forgive those who trespass against us,” show us the same level of forgiveness that we show to others.
“Lead us not into temptation,” steer us clear of our wrongful desires, cravings, & compulsions.
“But deliver us from evil,” set us free from sinful thoughts, words, & behaviors.
“For Your’s is the kingdom,” our loyalty belongs to God.
“And the power & the glory forever,” all power & glory belong eternally to God.
July 8, 2017
12 steps for one another groups
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous established 12 steps to help people overcome an addiction to alcohol. As the program gained success, various support groups for other addictions began to apply the steps for their own needs.
In 50-something places the New Testament tells Christians to do things for one another in a reciprocal way in order to help bring about our healing, recovery, inner peace, and freedom in Christ. Perhaps, based on the 12 step example, we could embrace 12 steps to help create an environment where Christ-followers can more effectively fulfill those “one another” instructions.
Here’s my attempt:
1) We acknowledged that we were powerless over certain circumstances, situations, and behaviors and that our lives had become inconsistent, painful, and often chaotic.
2) We came to believe that the risen Jesus Christ could help us recover inner peace.
3) We chose to turn our will and our lives over to the living, resurrected Jesus as revealed through the Bible.
4) We began to meet in groups with other Christ-followers in openness, humility, equality, compassion, and mutual support as prompted and directed by the living Jesus.
5) Those Christ-led one another gatherings helped us to see how that in our struggles, we have much in common with others.
6) Sharing those insights and experiences allowed us see each other’s hearts, and knitted us together in a genuine community of heart-felt caring and concern for one another.
7) We began to learn how to personally hear Christ’s voice, to obey Him, and to share what we hear with each other.
8) We began to see the risen Jesus actively working among us, in and through the faces, the sincerity, the words, and the actions of each other.
9) This made the Bible come alive in our hearts as a present day reality and we began to continually search it and read it, not as a religious rule book, but as a daily guide to help us more fully understand, hear, and obey the living Jesus.
10) Our hearts grew in gratitude and love for Jesus, for one another, and for the whole world.
11) Almost without trying, we put this love into action beginning to show more and more kindness to one another and to everyone we met.
12) Having been spiritually transformed by following these steps, the way we lived our daily lives changed. We began to share the good news about how our relationship and encounters with Jesus is changing our lives, with people outside of our one another groups, and to invite them to experience Him with us.
