Steve Simms's Blog, page 35
December 9, 2024
I Admire Transcribers of Hope
This world is desperate for genuine, heart-felt hope. I admire people who keep their inner ear tuned to hope and transcribe what they hear so others can be comforted and inspired by it.
I love to hear and transcribe the words that I sense God putting in my heart so that I can share them with others. Words, spoken as prompted by God’s Spirit, speak louder than human actions.
Don’t ignore God’s greetings that spontaneously come to your heart and mind. Do not be afraid to observe and obey the Holy Spirit’s promptings within you! Instead of doubting, wonder with awe at what God is saying and doing inside of you. Let God’s life develop and flow from your innermost being like rivers of living water.
When God’s still small voice appears in your heart, He’s not giving you obstacles. He’s giving you miracles! Don’t demand the full picture from God. Simply follow Him in faith — being led by the Spirit one prompting at a time.
The Holy Spirit has come to comfort, teach, and lead the people of God from within them. Align your heart, obey, and be transformed! The priesthood of the believer means pastor or plumber, physician or painter, professor or puppeteer, paralegal or pharmacist, psychiatrist, or parking attendant can all hear from God, be directly led by His Spirit, and speak His very thoughts.
Biblical Christianity is about experiencing heart-to-heart intimacy and ongoing community with Christ and His followers. It’s not a religious organization!
Words, spoken or written (and obeyed) as prompted by God’s Spirit, speak louder than human actions or opinions. Continually ask yourself this question: WIJTMTSAD? What is Jesus telling me to say and do? Then obey.
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December 8, 2024
Joyous Light Jumps Within Me Without Cartoons!
View all responsesI smile and enjoy life without cartoons. What I watch, look at, think about, and behold lights up my heart and makes me joyously ponder and live in awe and wonder.
Passing by God’s presence,
Overlooking the bushes
Ablaze with testimony
About their Creator
And the glorious sky
That declares His greatness,
We humans tend to walk
Relying on our own shoes,
Trusting our own feelings,
Opinions, and desires
To lead and direct us,
Instead of the Spirit
Of our Emmanuel,
Jesus Christ, “God with us.”
It’s a wonderful life
To surrender to Christ
And let Him take control
So He can make you whole!
Being born again
Is to awaken to
The awareness of God
And become so conscious
Of the presence of Christ
That you let Him come
And live His life
In and through you
As your hope of glory.
Spiritual growth is
Little by little,
Moment by moment,
Step by step,
Becoming more and more
Like Jesus Christ
As you let Him
Work within you
To overflow your heart
With the fruit
Of His Spirit.
When Jesus is presented
As distant, dead, or in Heaven
It can be rather boring,
But when He is presented
And demonstrated to be
Active, living, and present
There’s life changing excitement!
It’s a wonderful life
To live for Christ.
December 7, 2024
MCPA! Make Church Participatory Again!
————-MCPA!————
Make Church Participatory Again!
(See 1 Corinthians 14:26.)
(Google: Beyond Church Ekklesia.)
Don’t just go to church. Head directly to the Head of the body of Christ and say and do what He tells you to! If you’ve got the notion and it aligns with the Bible, it’s most like from God.
A Spirit-prompted notion
Is more than an emotion.
If you’ll truly obey it,
It leads to pure devotion.
Less darkness, more light!
I want less darkness in my life and more light. I want less self-focus and more love for others. I want less ego and more humility. I want less defensiveness and more kindness. I want less sin and more purity.
There’s enmity between sin and sanctity. You can’t welcome both sin and the Holy Spirit in your heart at the same time. Focusing on one will distance you from the other.
Sin embraced is Christ denied. Christ embraced crushes the sin that’s in your heart and drives it out. The one you host the most will win the day. “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” Spend your time and energy “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”
Sin brings shame and shame makes us lame. Instead of limping through life in the shadow of sin’s shame, Jesus invites people to soar in the strength of His Spirit.
Focus on, welcome, and embrace God’s inner voice, not sin’s temptations. Welcome and obey your conscience, not your cravings and compulsions. Fight the good fight of faith — so that you can truly rely on and totally depend on the presence and power of the risen Jesus throughout each day. Be persistently led by the Spirit, not by sin.
Nothing can compare to the wonder of keeping your heart and mind centered on the living Jesus. These words — happy, blessed, high, thrilled, delighted, jubilant, elated, and enraptured — can’t begin to describe how keeping my attention focused on Jesus makes me feel!
Staying focused on Jesus requires much more than passive church attendance. It requires ongoing concentration and yearning for His presence. (In fact, with so much attention in a church service focused on the person upfront, it makes it hard for me to zero in on the presence of the risen Jesus during the Sunday program.)
There’s enmity
Between sin
And sanctity.
Sin produces shame.
Shame makes us lame.
Learn to live and walk
Throughout each day
Led by God’s Spirit.
Walk a pure walk
Don’t just talk the talk.
December 6, 2024
My Heart-Song Has Grown Stronger!
View all responsesThere’s a song in my heart that grows stronger and more joyful every year. It overflows with hope and positive words. The beautiful melodies in my heart strengthen and empower me. I try to unceasingly listen to them and let them lift me up. My inner song comes from: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Christ came to “enable us to serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness.” (Luke 1:74-75.) He came to “to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:79.) Jesus came to give us light and to guide us from within by supernatural revelation!
Christianity is about the living Jesus Christ healing and revealing Himself to human hearts. It’s not about a religious institution.
“God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shinned in our heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6.) Are you continually receiving and living in Christ’s light of revelation?
The foundation rock of Christianity is neither a religious institution nor theological information. It’s the light of Christ’s supernatural revelation shining brightly in your heart. It’s so much more than human organization or doctrinal explanation. “You must be born again.”
Let the risen Jesus
Revelation-ize
And revive your heart
With attentive ears
That hear what the Spirit
Is saying within you
And supernatural eyes
That see the Lamb of God.
Jesus is the Light.
The closer we get
To the risen Jesus
The more the darkness
Is exposed in our heart.
Too many Christians
Use religion to avoid
Getting too close to Jesus.
December 5, 2024
The Beauty of Nature Amazes Me
View all responsesThe beauty of nature (both plants and animals) amazes me! However, there is another beauty that amazes me even more. That’s the beauty of seeing the reality of Jesus Christ living in and flowing through everyday people.
When people are filled with awe and wonder in the presence of the living Jesus Christ, they can’t stop exuberantly talking about Him and how He wows them. That is contagious Christianity and it’s a super-spreader!
I believe (and the book of Acts seems to indicate) that overwhelming awe that causes people to daily live undone and surrendered to the presence of the risen Jesus is the missing ingredient in contemporary Christianity. That lack of awe often keeps Christ-followers from openly and enthusiastically proclaiming and demonstrating the presence, power, and love of Jesus.
When the risen Jesus
Is the one true Header
Christianity is
A super-spreader
And a doubt shredder
That wakes people up
To the presence of Christ.
When Christianity
Shifted from mystical
(From being Spirit-led
With Jesus as the Head)
To analytical
And statistical,
It became logistical
And egotistical.
Set your pride
To the side
So that Christ
Can reside
Within you
And be your
Inner Guide.
For joy unspeakable:
Let God be your inner Guide.
Live in rhythm with Jesus.
Stay in step with the Spirit.
A dead God needs a religious organization to speak for him, but the risen Jesus can speak for Himself. “My sheep hear My voice.”
December 4, 2024
The Place a Special Book Takes Me
View all responsesThere is a book that is very special to me. When I read it, it inspires me and transports me to my favorite place. Reading it with my heart wide open fills my consciousness with the awareness of God and places me in the presence of the living Jesus Christ.
The Bible can overpower your doubt and release God’s wonder and awe within you. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”
Sometimes, when I feel prompted to tell a group of people about the importance of the Bible, I’ll have it hidden close to me. Then I begin to talk and suddenly I start to shake, squirm, and stammer as I excitedly say, “It’s alive! It’s alive! My God, it’s alive!”
Then I quickly pull out the Bible, hold it up for all to see, and say: “It’s the Word of God and it’s alive!” People are a bit stunned, so I say, “The living words in this book can burn in your heart and make you aware of the presence of God.”
Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit “will remind you of everything I have said to you.” I’ve discovered that the Holy Spirit often reminds me of a Bible verse. There is a big difference between me trying to remember a Scripture (like trying to remember someone’s name) and God bringing a Bible verse to my mind.
When the Holy Spirit reminds me of a Scripture, I hear the miraculous. It goes beyond my human understanding and speaks directly and profoundly to my heart. That isn’t supposed to be something rare. It should be a common experience for a Christ-follower.
So how can you experience the Holy Spirit bringing a Bible verse to your remembrance? Well, first you have to have read or heard something from the Bible. (You can’t remember something you’ve never read, heard, or experienced.) The more you read the Bible the more of it the Holy Spirit can remind you about.
Next, ask God to remind you of a Bible verse. (“You have not because you ask not.” So, ask.) Then don’t try to use your mind to come up with a Scripture. Instead, simply quiet your mind and wait for one to appear. When a Scripture comes to you, refuse to analyze it with your brain. Rather let it touch your heart. Then you will notice that when an unanalyzed Bible verse is allowed to go deep into your heart it will have an amazing impact on you. Try it and see for yourself!
Asking the Holy Spirit to prompt you with Scriptures will revolutionize your life. Doubting the Spirit’s ability to do that (and only reading the Bible with your own understanding or with the analysis of a Bible commentary) will confuse you. Because we modern day Christians have been trained to merely read and analyze the Bible with our mind (or listen to a preacher’s analysis of it) and not to open up and surrender our heart to it, we tend to be “silent and not able to speak” from our heart about what Jesus has done and is doing within us and through us.
A closed heart closes the door on the power of Scripture and the Spirit’s ability to bring it to our remembrance. Then we can’t see the wonder that is staring at us when we read or hear the Bible speaking deep within us.
Perhaps it’s time to let God prophesy over you directly from His Word. Don’t dissect the Bible verses that come to your mind. Savor them! Obey them!
The Bible can overpower your doubt and release God’s wonder and awe within you. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”
Sometimes, when I feel prompted to tell a group of people about the importance of the Bible, I’ll have it hidden close to me. Then I begin to talk and suddenly I start to shake, squirm, and stammer as I excitedly say, “It’s alive! It’s alive! My God, it’s alive!”
Then I quickly pull out the Bible, hold it up for all to see, and say: “It’s the Word of God and it’s alive!” People are a bit stunned, so I say, “The living words in this book can burn in your heart and make you aware of the presence of God.”
Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit “will remind you of everything I have said to you.” I’ve discovered that the Holy Spirit often reminds me of a Bible verse. There is a big difference between me trying to remember a Scripture (like trying to remember someone’s name) and God bringing a Bible verse to my mind.
When the Holy Spirit reminds me of a Scripture, I hear the miraculous. It goes beyond my human understanding and speaks directly and profoundly to my heart. That isn’t supposed to be something rare. It should be a common experience for a Christ-follower.
So how can you experience the Holy Spirit bringing a Bible verse to your remembrance? Well, first you have to have read or heard something from the Bible. (You can’t remember something you’ve never read, heard, or experienced.) The more you read the Bible the more of it the Holy Spirit can remind you about.
Next, ask God to remind you of a Bible verse. (“You have not because you ask not.” So, ask.) Then don’t try to use your mind to come up with a Scripture. Instead, simply quiet your mind and wait for one to appear. When a Scripture comes to you, refuse to analyze it with your brain. Rather let it touch your heart. Then you will notice that when an unanalyzed Bible verse is allowed to go deep into your heart it will have an amazing impact on you. Try it and see for yourself!
Asking the Holy Spirit to prompt you with Scriptures will revolutionize your life. Doubting the Spirit’s ability to do that (and only reading the Bible with your own understanding or with the analysis of a Bible commentary) will confuse you. Because we modern day Christians have been trained to merely read and analyze the Bible with our mind (or listen to a preacher’s analysis of it) and not to open up and surrender our heart to it, we tend to be “silent and not able to speak” from our heart about what Jesus has done and is doing within us and through us.
A closed heart closes the door on the power of Scripture and the Spirit’s ability to bring it to our remembrance. Then we can’t see the wonder that is staring at us when we read or hear the Bible speaking deep within us.
Perhaps it’s time to let God prophesy over you directly from His Word. Don’t dissect the Bible verses that come to your mind. Savor them! Obey them!
(I don’t believe that God intended for Christianity to become a non-prophet organization. He wants it to be the Spirit-led body of Christ where “you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” See 1 Corinthians 14:31. True worship isn’t a “service,” a sermon, or a Bible study. It’s a human heart overflowing with honest sincere adoration of God. “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” See John 4:23.)
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Fact: Throughout history multitudes of people have been w...
Fact: Throughout history multitudes of people have been willing to kill and be killed in the name of their country, but very few have been willing to love their enemies in the name of Jesus. Perhaps we should listen to Christ and begin to honor, recruit, train, and send huge armies of nonviolent peacemakers to love their enemies in the world’s troubled places.
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Find Your Marvels
View all responsesI’m good at:
Getting out of the box.Leaving my comfort zone.Being unscripted.Speaking spontaneously from my heart. Finding marvels.Because Jesus is alive, present, and living within His Spirit-led followers they are free to live outside the box of ordinary days and routine religion. Every day will overflow with extraordinary revelation, God-sightings, and God-winks if they will keep their heart fully open, surrendered, and obedient to the risen Christ.
Small children see life as full of marvels, but far too many adults have lost their marvels. Kind, unscripted words that flow from the heart of an innocent child are inspiring. When the children of God (who have been truly made clean and righteous by the blood of Jesus) gather for worship, the meeting will overflow with joy if people will courageously and spontaneously share with one another the beautiful, Spirit-prompted words that God puts on their heart.
The best texts aren’t on your phone, they’re in the Bible. The more we allow biblical words and the voice of “Christ in you,” to ignite His glory within us and cause our heart to continuously marvel, the more we will reap the spiritual awakening that we have been praying and sowing for. While you wait, daily marvel with your heart and keep it ever abounding with awe.
Scripted Christianity
Without the Holy Spirit’s
Living spontaneity
Is just empty liturgy.
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