Steve Simms's Blog, page 310

Row v. Flow (Religion or Holy Spirit)

Row v. Flow

Should we dutifully row to a droning drumbeat in the galley ship of religion?

Or freely flow in rushing rivers of living water released by the Holy Spirit?

Put Jesus in the driver’s seat. Learn to go beyond church and flow in the power and presence of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ and His Spirit by reading Beyond Church: An Invitation To Experience The Lost Word Of The Bible–Ekklesia.

These bodyguards are better than guns!

The world’s most amazing bodyguards . . . When you have the top bodyguards in the world (like the President of the USA or a billionaire who employs an elite bodyguard service) you have no need to carry a gun.

So guess who has better bodyguards than money can buy? Christ-followers! We have angels watching over us! They are better than the US Secret Service! We just need to trust them.

My angel bodyguards have protected me many times. One summer I sold books door-to-door during race riots in Columbus, Georgia. Never once was I harmed. My wife and I have prayer walked regularly in a violent neighborhood in East Nashville for years and our bodyguards have always kept us safe. Once I was running full-speed across a street and something suddenly stopped me in my tracks (had to be an angel bodyguard) at the yellow line. A moment later a car zoomed by and missed me by a foot. I thank God for my bodyguards!

Here’s a bodyguard painting by my friend, Melanie Jackson. The book in front of the painting is about how Christ-followers can go beyond church and experience the supernatural presence of God when they meet together. Check out the book here.

Sometimes love loses . . .

Love wins has become a popular slogan. However, love doesn’t always win. Sometimes love loses.

Love loses when bullying becomes a political strategy.


Love loses when a child in the womb is viewed as an object to be killed and disposed of.
Love loses when entertainment promotes violence, vulgarity, and disrespect.
Love loses when a wall is seen as a cure-all.
Love loses when when people disrespect others and call them names on social media.
Love loses when honest disagreement is called hatred.
Love loses when life becomes about personal pleasure and self-gratification.
Love loses when an assault rife is seen as an important weapon in the arsenal of self-defense.
Love loses when people are singled out for mistreatment because of their race, their religion, their nationality, or their opinions.
Love loses when people are rude to one another.
Love loses when people respond to perceived rudeness with various forms of aggression such as road rage.
Love loses when we take offense.
Love loses when we lie.
Love loses when we brag and act in pride.
Love loses when we succumb to compassion fatigue.
Love loses when we expect government to take care of us.
Love loses when we do what we feel rather than what’s morally right.
Love loses when laws command people to violate their conscience under threat of punishment.
Love loses when sex is seen as a casual activity.
Love loses when we let mass murders and other violence make us numb.
Love loses when we are unkind to those who disagree with us.
Love loses when political correctness stops open and honest communication.
Love loses when  when fear prevails.
Love loses when the horror of war is celebrated and glorified.
Love loses when we steal or cheat.
Love loses when we ignore the poor.

When else does love lose?

 

 

Beyond shame & guilt (without depending on denial)

Without remorse, regret, and repentance for our wrongful thoughts, rhetoric, and actions; our self-righteousness retains us in resistance to and rebellion against God and His call to right living. Meanwhile we reach out for mindless diversion in entertainment and/or superficial consolation in religious rituals and/or ceremonies.

Without sorrow for our sins we’re stuck in a superficial (yet stressful) search for self-justification. And secret shame silently sucks the solace out of our soul.

“The whole Christian family stands desperately in need of a restoration of penitence, humility, and tears. May God send them soon.” –A.W. Tozer (Wouldn’t it be amazing if Presbyterians became Presby-tear-ians and began to weep for their sins?) The Bible puts it this way: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” –2 Chronicles 7:14

 

Beyond verbal bullying and belligerent boasting!

Christ-followers are called to love our enemies, not to blast them with verbal bullying and belligerent boasting! Jesus wasn’t kidding when He said “love your enemies”!

What a person is, is more important that what a person says. A man can share (even good ideas) with a messed up attitude — with hostility, arrogance, and meanness. This is happening on social media, in politics, and all over our society.

However, the Bible says that we should be “speaking the truth in love.” Why are so many people who proclaim allegiance to Christ contradicting the Bible and speaking from a spirit of hostility, arrogance, and meanness? If we aren’t willing to speak kindly when we disagree with people, how will we ever obey Jesus’ direct command to “love your enemies”?

Jesus being God in the flesh was always in the right spirit. Me, not so much. I can easily get in the flesh or even be influenced by an evil spirit. The early Christ-followers overcame the hostility of the Roman Empire by love. They obeyed Jesus’ command to “Bless your enemies.” Christ-followers are called to live by the standards of the kingdom of God, not by standards of the flesh and of earthy governments. And that’s an incredible challenge that takes great humility and supernatural power.

Question:What causes shootings?

Answer: People listening to demons speaking in their thoughts (and in the media they consume) and eventually obeying the evil that they allow demons to dump in their mind and heart.

What can we do?


We need to go


Beyond bullying,


Beyond secular media,


Beyond our own pride, impulses, & opinions,


Beyond a religious professional’s presentation,


And beyond a human understanding of the Bible!


We need to go to the living, resurrected Jesus Christ


And let Him make the Word burn within us, transform us,


And live in and through us!

The root of evils (What can stop mass shootings?)

The further a society gets away from the acknowledgement of God and His standards the deeper it dives into depression, desolation, and destruction. The human heart is like a faucet. If we don’t let the living God run through our heart it gets rusty, stagnant, and stuck in self. Without the passionate and persistent pursuit of the presence and power of God, evil begins to slowly shape our soul.

When evil is welcomed into a person’s heart it will eventually come out in their actions. Hatred and pride are big steps toward violence and murder. We need to nip them in the bud and create a culture where all human beings are respected as infinitely valuable from the womb to the tomb. True love is to care deeply about people whether you agree with them or not, whether you like them or not. There is a great shortage of true love in our culture.

“Resist the root of evils from the very beginning.” –Nicholas Cabasilas

America needs the reality of God — not religion controlled by a preacher or a priest, but the real deal — the living God demonstrating His power and presence. I mean, we’re a mess. We need some real help. Government or politicians can’t fix messed up minds and hearts. Things are desperate and arrogantly calling people names isn’t going to help. It’s time to pray — no, not just say a prayer or two, but to persistently cry out with all of our heart. Help us God! We’re messing things up so baldly. Turn our hearts to You!

Muhammad Ali’s words show courage, conscience, & conviction.

Muhammad Ali, a man of courage, conscience, and conviction, left us. Here are some things he said:

“My principles are more important than the money or my title.”

“I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‘Why did you do that?'”

“My intention is to box, to win a clean fight. But in war, the intention is to kill, kill, kill, kill, and continue killing innocent people.”

“I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.”

“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so-called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.”

“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”

“Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

“Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you’re going to be right.”

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”

“I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I am free to be what I want.”

“If you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

“I wanted to use my fame and this face that everyone knows so well to help uplift and inspire people around the world.”

To read some more quotes from famous Americans against war, click here.

 

Link to Gloria Gaither’s review of Beyond Church

Check out Gloria Gaither’s review of my book Beyond Church: An Invitation To Experience The Lost Word Of The Bible–Ekklesia in Homecoming Magazine at this link. To get a copy in Kindle or paperback go to Amazon.

 

The separation of church and hate

The separation of church and hate (and/or political-correctness-warriors and hate) requires speaking the truth in love.  Hate is not based on truth. It is built on deception, denial, disappointment, dishonesty, misunderstanding, pride, prejudice, anger, hurt, impulse, irrationality, and/or insecurity.

Speaking the truth in love steps beyond the bondage of hatred. While we stay in denial we are stuck in the same situation, however, by facing facts, we find freedom.  Jesus put it this way: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

A culture of political correctness coerces us into the closet of communication conformity. It demands that we speak and write what is mandated by society, not what we really believe. That’s the opposite of love.  Love wants to hear us speak sincerely from the heart, not to hear us parrot a political position under the pressure to conform to contemporary culture.

Name calling, put downs, verbal bullying, mocking, bragging, intimidating, blasting people, accusing, etc. are just the opposite of speaking the truth in love. Political-correctness-warriors often use those tactics in an attempt to trump other’s right to disagree with them. Religious people sometimes use them, too. Even some politicians use those tactics.

Love’s not silent. It’s not passive accommodation.  Love boldly and courageously speaks the truth with kindness, civility, concern, caring, compassion, and even with tears. Love is assertive humility, intervening not to make a point or win an argument, but to make a difference — to heal a heart.

Christ did that. He spoke boldly about where people were off track, not to put them down; but to rescue them from their misery of self-deception and self-destruction.

 

John Doe Ministries (Is that biblical?)

Why do some ministers (even some God-anointed preacher’s and teachers) name “ministries” for themselves? That common practice in modern-day independent ministry doesn’t appear to be biblical. I can’t find an “Apostle Paul Ministries” or a “Philip the Evangelist Ministries” or even a “Peter the Rock Ministries,” anywhere in the Bible.

So many people have named “ministries” after themselves: “John Doe Ministries,” for example. However, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying: “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another.” And Peter said: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Jesus said: “For where two or three gather in My name, there am I with them,” and “And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

What would God do if someone who has named a “ministry” for him/herself took his/her name off of it and instead put Jesus’ name in the title of the ministry? I believe that simple act of humility would release a fresh surge of God’s power. Will anyone have the courage to take their name off of God’s “ministry” and see? There is amazing power in the name of Jesus!

I don’t know why people self-name ministries. Maybe it is because of tradition: Most of us have grown up hearing about ministries that people have put their names on. It is a popular and common practice. But perhaps they could be even more effective with a name that directly refers to Christ. Perhaps that is something to think and pray about.

Maybe self-naming is thought to improve promotion and fund raising. Maybe ministers believe (or are persuaded by a marketing company) that they need to promote their own name and image because Jesus and His image doesn’t sell well in contemporary society. Perhaps they believe that if they don’t get the public’s attention with their name, and instead rely on Jesus’s name, money won’t come in.  Maybe they think that people would rather “sow a seed” into a ministry that has a nice marketing appeal focused on them and their personality, rather than a ministry focused solely on exalting the living, risen Jesus.