Steve Simms's Blog, page 40

Taking Off My Shoes So I Can Put On the Best Shoes Ever

I don’t like to go barefooted. I like to keep my shoes on. However, sometimes I need to take off my shoes so that I can clean my feet and so that I can put on even better shoes.

God called to Moses from a burning bush. He told Moses to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground.

Jesus told His disciples to take off their shoes and then He washed their feet. Today God’s not looking for holy places but for holy feet attached to people who have been made holy by the blood of the Lamb and by the indwelling presence of the risen Jesus — people who will daily be led by the Spirit. Their feet bring demonstrations of the good news of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” everywhere they go.

Take off your shoes. Step out of the prideful human ways of walking. Go beyond routine religion. Put the Gospel of peace on your feet and begin to walk supernaturally in the Spirit.

If a church is just presenting information about Jesus and not training the members of the congregation to daily listen to Him and walk in His shoes, it isn’t fully proclaiming and demonstrating the Good News of walking in the Spirit. It’s time for a shoe change!

If people aren’t trained to turn on the faucet and regularly drink the water, it does little good to teach them the details about the plumbing. (If churches don’t train people to open up and experience Christ’s living water day and night, merely teaching them the details of the Gospel won’t impact their life very much.)

As I watched a preacher, filled with passion for Jesus, talking about the Bible in front of a stone-faced congregation, I wished that he would lead the people into experiencing and expressing life-changing passion for the living Jesus instead of just excitedly sharing information about Him. Information about Jesus will be little applied and even forgotten, but experiencing “Christ in you,” burning like a never-ending fire, will empower people to continually spread His presence, power, and love to everyone they meet.

Preaching with passion and trying to get Christ’s living water to flow from the heart of people in a church service is like preaching to a shut-down faucet and trying to get water to flow. I’ve tried that many hundreds of times and it’s not very effective (preaching to a passive congregation, not to a literal faucet).

To get water to flow from a faucet you have to turn it on and open it up. To get Christ’s living water to flow from people’s heart you have to train them to open up their heart and stop blocking Christ’s inner rivers. Then you have to give them opportunities to open up in the meeting and speak from the Spirit as the risen Jesus prompts them until person after person begins to open their heart and let the Spirit lead them to humbly and honestly do what Jesus tells them to.

Preaching to people who are passively parked in church pews (or chairs) is like trying to steer a car that is parked in a garage. No matter how hard you steer, you won’t change its direction. The Bible never says, “Sit and hear a talk about the goodness of God.” It says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Church is one man
On a platform
Trying to inform
People about God.
The Gospel is
Jesus the Christ
Working to transform
People from within.
“Christ in you,
The hope of glory.”

The sound
That creates
Holy ground
Is the sound
Of God’s voice.
Open your heart.
Hear His word.
Let Him confound
You with awe
Till you abound
With the fruit
Of His Spirit.

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The Red Flag of Comfort (and the Courage to Go Beyond It)

The personality trait of being passively settled into the cozy zone of a comfortable life is a red flag. A life caught up in daily routine misses out on the excitement and adventure of an inspired existence. A man named Moses spent 40 years in a desert land going through the daily routine of tending the sheep that belonged to his father-in-law. Then one day he bumped into a burning bush.

Moses encountered God through that bush blazing with flames that weren’t harming it. Moses’ encounter with that supernaturally burning bush connected him heart-to-heart with the living God and empowered him to zoom with zeal and zest far beyond his zone of comfort and to change the world (in spite of his fears, mistakes, and insecurities).

Jesus sent the Holy Spirit as a flame so that people could encounter His glorious presence through His fire that has now come to burn in the heart of each one of His fully surrendered followers. Will you keep stirring up the Spirit’s fire within you? Will you refuse to quench or to let God’s inner flame go out?

Instead of constantly choosing to stay in (and defend) your comfort zone will you stop zigzagging and begin to daily follow the trail that the risen Jesus is blazing for you into the unknown? It’s time for ordinary Christians to burst into flame with supernatural fire that never goes out.

Jesus is the answer! There’s no other Savior than Him.

Make the decision
To do the things
That will cause you
To love Jesus
More and more.

Ask Jesus
To search your heart
And show you
Everything
That’s keeping you
From getting
Closer to Him
Day by day.
Then lay it all down
And let Him burn it
At His cross.

Keep your heart
Continually aware
Of Christ’s presence.
Always do
What He prompts
You to do.

Keep a two way
Conversation
Going with Jesus
All the time.
Talking to Jesus
And listening
To what He says
Will stoke your heart
With more and more
Love for Him.

Read the Bible
Every day
With an open heart.
Let the words
Burn deep within you
Like a roaring fire.

Find and hang out with
(And read books by)
People who are
More excited
About Jesus
Than you are.

Talk about how much
Your love Jesus
And your love for Him
Will grow and grow.

Self-Absorption Soaks Up Distortion

Self-absorption
Is disproportion.
It’s a distortion
And a contortion
Of reality.

Self-absorption is a house of hazy smoke and twisted mirrors that drastically distorts reality through the lenses of human pride. It hardens your heart, shuts down your mind, and fills your mouth with arrogance.

To be self-absorbed is to be trapped with the one person who can do you the most harm. Self-absorption is like a sponge. It quickly soaks up the dirty dishwater of self-obsessed desires.

Consumerism cultivates and captivates people in the chaotic cravings of self-absorption. Then they try to buy their way into happiness.

People with a self-absorbed swag often try to gag other people and intimidate them into silence. We humans like to compare ourselves to others, but our pride won’t let us do it fairly. We’re usually far too self-absorbed to take the time to compassionately find out what’s really going on in the heart and mind of other people.

If your opinions matter, then other people’s opinions also matter. Listen, kindly discuss, and try to persuade, but refuse to let your self-absorption cause you to be rude to people who disagree with you.

Let the risen Jesus gently squeeze the self-absorption out of you. Then He can fill you with His presence and reality.

When church is seen as a business, leaders are chosen based on their influence, human abilities, social status, or financial situation rather than on their character, brokenness, and humility before God. Does going to church keep you excited about, obedient to, and absorbed with the living Jesus all week long? If not, perhaps something is missing.

Be reliant
On Jesus
And compliant
With His will.
Know the thrill
Of seeing
That He’s real!

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Making the Ideal Real

To discover the reality of the ideal sometimes we have to tramp through the desert. The worst wilderness, the most disturbing desert, is in the human heart. That is the lonely place where we are tempted to follow our desires instead of God’s, to misuse Scripture for our self-focused benefit, and to worship the devil by recklessly pursuing worldly pleasure and power. See Matthew 4:1-11.

Jesus wants your heart. The wilderness in your heart is the place where you can find “the mountain of God” — “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and cultivate the fruit of His Spirit to grow and prosper within you. We humans desperately need inner discernment so that we can recognize the difference between the fruit of the Spirit and the deception of the devil who “disguises himself as an angel of light,” and whose servants are disguised as “servants of righteousness.” See 2 Corinthians 11:14-15.

Here is a guide to discernment — a map to the mountain of God. Whatever:

* Diminishes love,
* Dismantles joy,
* Deletes inner peace,
* Disrupts patience,
* Dumps kindness,
* Drives out goodness,
* Destroys faithfulness,
* Denounces gentleness,
* Dismantles self-control,
Isn’t the fruit of God’s Spirit.

Christ burning in your heart and speaking from His fire within you will illuminate your steps and empower you to follow and obey Him throughout each day and to continually demonstrate the reality of the inner mountain of God. Stir up the gift of the Holy Spirit if He lives within you. Quench not the Spirit. Be always looking unto Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God. Make your heart and life an altar where the fire of God ever burns.

The geography of the human heart is confusing. It’s mega-dimensional. We need the living Jesus to be our inner Guide to healing and spiritual growth. He calls to all, “Follow Me.” Will you continually listen to His still, small voice within you and then say and do what He tells you to?

Open wide your heart, Let the living Jesus lead you through the spiritual topography of your inner desert to the Mountain of God. Without 𝓙esus as the active, literal Head and director of meetings of His body on earth, Christianity is decapitated and looks like this; “__esus,” or this; “_______ianity.” It’s time for Christians to begin to let the living 𝓙esus direct us from within our heart.

If Christ is in you, you are a house of God, a temple of the Holy Spirit. Be an open house. Refuse to allow wrongful thoughts, feelings, and desires to hide and work inside of you. Walk humbly in the light of the risen Jesus.

Does going to church keep you excited about and obedient to Jesus all week long? If not, perhaps something is missing.

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Hope Is Found by Looking Beyond Political Blame

Instead of making
A nation great
The political
Blame-game will make
People learn to hate.

Words that are unkind
Pollute the mind
And the heart
Of those who say them
And those who hear them.
It’s better to find
Ways to say
Words that are aligned
With encouragement,
Hope and optimism.

Hope is found by looking beyond political blame. I don’t want politicians to fight for me. I want them to set aside ideology and work together to make our country better.

People like to use the argument that Jesus got angry to try to justify their anger and abusive language. The Bible says “Be angry and sin not. Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.” I see many people on Facebook who say they are Christians but repeatedly hold on to their anger and insult people day after day. They seem to have allowed anger and rudeness to take control of their life.

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Inner Athletes

The athletes I respect the most are inner athletes — those who compete against and overcome the inner agonies that try to torment them with the bondage of discouragement, moral defeat, and heart-breaking despair. I admire the ones who go beyond their pain and train until they gain the great victory of inner peace and joy.

When the ancient Israelites were being held in cruel bondage in Egypt, they groaned and cried out to God because of their slavery. God heard their cry for help and responded with His concern and supernatural action. He took a humbled group of slaves and surrounded them with marvelous demonstrations of the power and greatness of His presence. (See Exodus 2:23-25.)

I woke up today with this thought on in my heart (about “thoughts and prayers”): To let people know that you’re praying for them is one way to show them that you care. Prayer is much more than mere human thoughts. Heart-felt prayer is a cry of compassion and concern that comes from deep within you. It is to humbly and sincerely plead with the Engineer of all that exists to do good on someone’s behalf.

Let the curriculum of circumstances that circumvents you now create a deep craving for God in your heart until your slavery and painful circumstances cause you to begin to continually groan and cry out to Him. Let that curriculum train, empower, and prepare you to always yearn for, hear, surrender to, follow, and obey the risen Jesus.

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The Invisible Cartel (That You Can Overcome)

There is a thief about. He and his cohorts work together as a cartel. They operate under cover and many people don’t even believe they exist. They love to steal, to kill, and to destroy. The thief’s name is Satan. He is known as the devil. (John 10:10.)

There is a powerful way to overcome the thief and his torment and destruction. It is through the presence and power of the One known as the Lamb of God. His name is Jesus, the Christ. He is the God-man, the Creator in human flesh.

The devil and his demons are invisible, non-physical beings. They have no physical power. Their power is the influence they have over human beings. They use lies, accusations, guilt, shame, worry, fears, insecurity, depression, self-righteousness, pride, lust, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, rebellion, suspicion, doubt, and many other weapons to tempt, torment, and manipulate human beings into destructive thought, words, and actions that steal our peace, kill our hope, and abandon us to the inner prison of quiet desperation and lingering despair.

There is a way you can overcome that cruel cartel. Revelation 12:11, says: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.”

–The blood of the Lamb: Jesus died on the Cross as a sacrifice for your sins. Your sins are the things that you are thinking, saying, and doing (or have been in the past) that separate you from heart-to-heart connection and deep daily intimacy with the living God. The blood of Jesus (the Lamb of God) isn’t just a religious idea. It’s a powerful weapon. Here’s how you can use it to overcome the guilt and shame that Satan puts on you:

“If we say that we have fellowship with Him (God), and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” (1 John 1:6-9.)

–The word of their testimony: A testimony is a verbal telling of how the risen Jesus became real to you — of how you were transformed from darkness to light — how you once were blind but now you see. It declares how you lived before you met Jesus, the way you met Him, and how your life is different now.

To share the Good News about Jesus, it’s necessary to use words! If you will frequently testify how Jesus became real to you and about the things that you have seen and heard Jesus do in and through you, you will overcome the devil and help other people to overcome him.

I believe that almost every church has at least a few people in attendance who have personally experienced the risen Jesus as alive and real. However, the members of the congregation don’t know about those people’s encounter with and transformation by the risen Jesus, because they have been trained to sit in silence and not to testify. It’s time to obey the Bible. “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” (Psalm 10:2.) Testify about how you were born again and testify about the other things that Jesus has done and is doing in and through your life. Start today and overcome the devil and his torment and temptations.

Here’s the short version of how I got saved form the devil’s darkness and brought into Christ’s light. I was an agnostic college freshman. I sensed that there was more to life than our physical existence, but I I was stuck in darkness and couldn’t see any convincing evidence of that. A classmate kept inviting me to a weekly meeting that he called “Dorm Devotion.” I wasn’t interested, but he wouldn’t leave me alone, so I finally attended in order to get him stop pestering me.

I heard something in that meeting that I had never heard before — people talking about Jesus Christ like He is real, alive, present, and working in their lives. As they testified something happened inside of me. I suddenly became aware that Jesus is alive and with me. As if a switch had been switched, I could feel myself being changed from deep within me. Ever since that moment, I’ve been filled with the awareness of Christ in me and hungry to follow and obey Him and to know Him better and better.

My Salvation Testimony

–Not loving your life (abandoning self-focus): “Love not their lives unto death,” doesn’t mean that you have to physically die for your faith in Christ. It means that you abandon self-focus — that you die to your thoughts, feelings, and desires and replace them with daily obedience to the living Jesus.

I am the most miserable when I ask myself if I am happy? And when I focus on myself. I am the happiest when I forget about myself and focus on other people and on the presence and activity of the living, resurrected Jesus. You will be too. Try it and see.

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The Word I Want to Use More — Glory!

Let God work in you the way that He worked in and through Jochebed, a Hebrew slave in Egypt. God used Jochebed to save her infant son from the Pharoah’s order of death for all newborn Hebrew boys. Here’s how she trusted in and relied on the Lord to save her son. She made a basket that would float by covering it with tar. Then Jochebed had her daughter put the newborn baby in the basket-boat and release him to float down the Nile River.

Soon the slave baby (condemned to death) was drawn out of the Nile River by the Pharoah’s daughter and into membership in the royal family with all its benefits. The Pharoah’s daughter named the baby Moses, which means “draw out.”

At 40 Moses was drawn out of great political power, wealth, and fame, and into the obscurity of the desert. At 80 he was drawn out of obscurity and into the impossible task of freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. However, Moses was able to supernaturally speak for God, demonstrate phenomenal nation-wide miracles, and to draw out the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the glorious presence of God that set Mount Sinai on fire. That fire from God shined on Moses’ face so brightly that people wanted him to cover it up.

We humans have been covering up and avoiding God’s glory ever since. We look for human glory instead of God’s. But the opportunity to behold God’s glory wasn’t limited to Mount Sinai. “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” –2 Corinthians 3:14.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Now is the time for Christ-followers to “Behold the Lamb of God,” to be personally and directly led from within by the Spirit throughout each day, and to radiate Christ’s presence and reality so that we can draw people out of the darkness and into the Light of the World! Now is the time for Christ-followers to be drawn out of routine religion and into Spirit-led awakening!

You may not remember Moses’ mother’s name, Jochebed. In Hebrew it means “the glory of the Lord.”

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” –Ephesians 3:20. Let the God of Moses work in you and draw you out of everything that hinders His Spirt from releasing His glory in and through you!

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Be Grudge-Free (Even During Election Season)

God gives people free will. He doesn’t force us to behave a certain way. Instead, He demonstrates His love to us and asks us to follow and obey Him voluntarily.

People who claim to love God need to respect people’s free will and not try to force or coerce adults into behaving the way they want them to by insulting, bullying, or holding a grudge against them. Some laws are necessary, but if a society tries to legislate against more and more behavior, it will eventually become totalitarian. Christ-followers are told to use love instead of coercion to influence people’s behavior — to speak the truth (not unproven speculation, opinion, theories, or accusations) in love.

I don’t want politicians to fight for me. I want them to set aside ideology and work together to make our country better.

The most important choice for Christians isn’t a political choice. It’s to choose to daily demonstrate the kindness, love, and other qualities that are produced as the fruit of God’s Spirit — “Christ in you” — (no matter what other people say or do). It is to obey Jesus’ commands to “Love your enemies,” and “Bless those who curse you.”

Christians need more
Than talks on theology
Or political ideology.
We need to rely on
And demonstrate
The reality
Of “Christ in you,
The hope of glory.”

Making Unproven, Prideful Accusations

A personality trait that always raises a red flag with me is peoples’ tendency to make unproven, prideful accusations. This is rampant nowadays, especially in politics.

Too many people who say they are Christians are stating their unproven opinions and accusations as if they are facts. That’s the way to deception. Jesus said that many false prophets are coming. Don’t believe their unproven allegations! Put your hope in the risen Jesus, not in people who trash other people because they don’t like their political positions.

American politics has become like a wrestling show, with both candidates desperately taking turns slamming each other down and fiercely describing how evil the other one is. (What if they are both correct in their evaluation of each other?)

Because there is evil in all human beings and power tends to bring the worst of it out, the American government was set up in 3 branches so that no one person (or group of people) can have total power and control. Divided government can be frustrating, but it sure beats having all the power in the hands of one individual. Instead of “fighting” each other, America needs the people in power to find ways to peacefully work together. If you want one party to forcefully impose its will on the other, you are working against the foundational American concept of the separation of power.

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