Steve Simms's Blog, page 41

Beyond Pride to Gratitude

The longer I live the more I realize that I have nothing to be proud about. My life overflows with blessings not accomplishments. Every good thing that I have done and every accomplishment that I have experienced has been because of the goodness of God.

Like Paul in the Bible, I can say. “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” (Romans 7:18 NIV.) Jesus described my situation when He said: ” If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 NIV.)

I am so thankful that Christ lives in me and is working in me to lead me by His Spirit away from my pride so I can embrace His offer: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV.)

Gifts of Grace

Jesus offers spiritual life
Beyond routine religion.
Religious rules
Are useless tools
For calming the whirlpools
Of anxiety
In human hearts.
But the gifts of the Spirit
Are supernatural power tools
That demonstrate the presence
Of the risen Jesus.
“Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
Be eager to prophesy,
And do not forbid
Speaking in tongues.”
1 Corinthians 14:39 NIV

Go beyond
The religious loop.
Gather with
Other believers
In a Spirit-led
Support group.

Christians, it’s time to take the spotlight off the same speaker week after week and focus it instead on the risen Jesus! It’s time to set aside pride and embrace humility.

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I’ve Been Working on Courageous Obedience

Throughout the centuries the institutional model of Christianity has tended to imply that people can collect enough religious sentiment and Bible information on Sunday morning to carry them through the week. However, the Bible says that God’s “mercies begin afresh each morning.” (Lamentations 3:23 NIV.) The mysterious manna in the wilderness that the Israelites called “What is it?” demonstrates that Christ-followers need to be trained to receive fresh activation from the Holy Spirit every morning and to let the Spirit lead and sustain them throughout each day.

Making disciples is much more than preaching to people once a week. It involves training them to be Holy Spirit activated and directed every day and night. That training focuses on helping people to recognize and listen to the Spirit and then to say and do as He individually directs them from within their heart.

Jesus told His disciples: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26 NIV.) To be Christ’s disciples Christians need to be taught and reminded by the Spirit, day and night.

But “What is it?” What is the teaching and reminding of the Spirit? Many Christians don’t know what it is. The teaching and reminding of the Holy Spirit is God’s still small inner voice. Jesus, the God-man, said, “My sheep hear My voice.” The Spirit of Christ speaks within His followers in various ways: with their conscience, with thoughts, with images, with impressions, with ideas, with insights, with Bible verses, and more.

Christ’s sheep recognize His inner voice and refuse to follow the deceptive voice of strangers (the devil and his associates) or trust in their own voice. When something comes to your mind or heart and you want to do it, it’s most likely the voice of your own desires. If you don’t want to do what an inner voice says that voice isn’t from you. (It’s either from God or from the devil.)

If an inner voice violates Scripture and is in any way morally wrong, it’s not God’s voice. (It’s either from you or the devil.) If it’s tempting or coercive, it’s from the devil.

When an inner voice aligns with goodness and the other aspects of the fruit of the Spirit it is from God. A voice from God will not contradict Scripture or biblical morality.

Learn to recognize the still small voice of God’s Spirit. He’s speaking within you throughout each day. Be still and notice His voice. Train yourself to obey Him promptly whether you feel like it or not.

Begin to demonstrate courageous Spirit-led obedience in front of other people. Teach and train them to be Spirit-activated and Spirit-directed disciples. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Romans 8:14 NIV.)

Most People Don’t Know That My Freedom from Guilt Comes from Being Forgiven

If we would do as we are told by our conscience, the mental torment of guilt and shame wouldn’t be able to destabilize our mental health. If we would consistently obey God’s moral voice within us instead of rebellious inner voices, we could avoid the mental and heart pollution that produces the agony of inner confusion.

The best guide to mental health is to listen to and obey your conscience (the still small voice of God) and let it lead you to the freedom of being forgiven and empowered to live a wholesome life. A society that mocks and disrespects the conscience and trains people to disobey it, will be flooded with mental health issues.

Poor moral health produces poor mental health. Our society’s mental health crisis won’t be solved until we reverse the moral crisis that paved its way. Character, principles, honesty, and morality matter. Calling wrong right isn’t the way to get rid of guilt. Humbly and sincerely confessing the wrongs you’ve done and receiving God’s forgiveness is. For better mental health, stop violating your conscience.

When you do wrong
Your conscience sings
A guilty song
To warn you that
You are off track
And guide you back.

A key solution
For mental health issues
Is to stop moral pollution.

To alleviate
The mental health crisis
We need to do more than
Just medicate
Hurting people.
We need to liberate
Those in mental torment
By training them
To saturate
Their mind with wholesomeness
So they can eradicate
Moral pollution
From their mind and heart.

True wholesomeness comes from surrendering to the presence of the living Jesus Christ. To make disciples for Christ you have to train people to listen to and obey the risen Jesus as He speaks within them. (Otherwise, they are someone else’s disciples.)

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Lazy Passive Religion is Unproductive

Something about human nature causes people to not want to deal directly with God. We’d rather sit through a weekly talk about Him (or ignore Him completely). But God wants to move us beyond religious ceremonies (and/or spiritual denial) so that He can deal with us heart to heart and train us to continually live in right, direct, and personal relationship with Him and with one another.

To sit and hear a talk
About God’s Word
And then kick it to the curb
Isn’t Christianity.
We are called to read,
Hear, speak, and heed
What God has to say
And let Him disturb
Our complacency
Until we begin
To follow His Spirit
And do His Word
Throughout each day.

Disciples daily do
What the Bible says.
They don’t simply
Sit through
Sunday school
And a church service.

Christ’s focus was on
Disciple construction.
He went far beyond
Religious instruction.
Jesus trained people
To daily receive
The inner production
Of the fruit of the Spirit,
It’s not enough to hear
A Sunday sermon.
We need to draw near
And let Christ appear
With demonstrations
Of both the fruit
And the gifts
Of the Spirit
In our midst.

It’s time for a shift from religious lecture to hands-on training, from Sunday school and passive sermon-hearing to Sunday do. Let’s train Christians to listen to the living God. Let’s allow them to say and to do whatever He tells them to in the safe atmosphere of a gathered Christian community and Spirit-led worship. Then their confidence in the leading of the Spirit will grow and they will go and be led to do the Word in their daily life.

Church as usual is in decline, but people need God’s love and presence as much as ever in history. Let’s create an atmosphere where people can gather to experience Jesus and demonstrate His presence to one another. To make disciples for Christ you have to train people to listen to and obey the risen Jesus. (Otherwise, they are someone else’s disciples.)

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True Success is Inner Peace

Daily writing promptWhen you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?View all responses

When I think of the word “successful” the first person who comes to mind is someone who continually radiates inner peace, love, and joy. I’ve been fortunate to have numerous friends who do that. You, too, can be a person who radiates real success.

Begin partaking of the fruit of the tree of life. Live beyond human analysis and human desires. Continually surrender your heart and lifestyle to the presence of Christ in you and to the 9 aspects of spiritual transformation that His Spirit wants to produce in you–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Quit consuming and building your life on the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Lean not to your own understanding. Human analysis is a dead-end street. It can tell you how nature works, but it can’t tell you why nature exists.

Human analysis leads to self-righteousness. It falsely makes you think that you’re out of Egypt–that your life is free from the dominion of evil. “God, I thank You that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

God’s Spirit wants to remind you that you desperately and continually need the love, forgiveness, cleansing, and healing that comes from the blood of Jesus and the resurrection life of Christ in you, the hope of glory. “God have mercy on me a sinner.”

Halt your analysis. Let God replace your thoughts with His thoughts and your desires with His desires. Let Him lead and direct you moment by moment by His Spirit.

Not everything that’s called love is love. Listen to the voice of God in your heart. Obey your conscience. Stay in line with the revelation God gives in the Bible.

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Good Neighbors Don’t Grumble

Daily writing promptWhat makes a good neighbor?View all responses

The way to experience ongoing inner peace and life beyond guilt is to turn away from following and grumbling according to your feelings, desires, and opinions. Instead begin to gratefully follow and obey the Spirit of God, the Bible (the ancient writings inspired by the Spirit), and your God-given conscience. Not everything that’s called love is love.

Gratitude and heart-to-heart alignment with God lead to great inner peace. Grumbling leads to grumpiness.

“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.” –Philippians 2:14-16. It’s hard to love your neighbors as yourself if you’re grumbling about them.

True Christianity isn’t about grumbling about human politics. It’s about training people to be inwardly governed by God.

The more you grumble
The more your hope will crumble
Until you stumble
And then tumble
Into anger and despair.

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Don’t Just Try, Rely!

Daily writing promptWhat could you try for the first time?View all responses

If you learn to rely
You can say goodbye
To all your guilt and shame.
You can try and try
To get rid of shame
But it’s better to rely
On Jesus the Lord
And let Him supply
The forgiveness you need.
If you will defy
Your pride and self-effort
Jesus will untie
Shame’s hard knots in your heart.
Don’t just barely scrape by.
Continually trust,
depend, and rely
On the living Jesus!
(Read Psalm 25)

Sermons and reasoning
Can’t explain Christ’s seasoning.
You have to taste and see.
Begin envisioning.
“Behold the Lamb of God”
And let Him set you free.

If easy
To just perch
On a seat
For an hour
In church
But not search
For Jesus
With your whole heart
And then depart
Still the same
As when you came.

Jesus doesn’t go to church. He doesn’t need to go because He’s already everywhere. Learn to hang out with Him wherever you are.

Most Christians don’t need more religious information. They need more spiritual formation until Christ is formed in them — in the way they walk and talk and live their daily lives. (See Galatians 4:19.)

I tried church for decades both as a preacher and as a sermon-hearer. Neither worked for me. When I would attend church, it always felt like I was putting Jesus in a religious box for an hour and then I got to let Him out again when it was over.

That was until The Salvation Army asked my wife Ernie and me to start and oversee a sermon-free church. We began with praise and worship and then let anyone present share as they felt prompted by God’s Spirit.

It was an awesome experience that lasted for ten years until we were forced by a Salvation Army leader to stop. Since then, we’ve been gathering with anybody who’s willing to meet like that and let the Spirit lead. We listen to God’s Spirit with people throughout the week and then say and do what He tells us to.

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I Try to Let “I AM” Define How I Live

A still small voice
In human hearts
Declares that
There is a Being
Whose existence
Doesn’t depend
On anyone
Or anything,
Who calls Himself
“I AM that I AM.”
Be still and listen
Attentively
And that voice
Will grow in you!

When I am
Listening
With my heart
I hear
“I AM” speaking.
I hear His peace
And purity
And His longing
For an eternal
Relationship
With me.

“I AM” says
“Come unto Me.
I am here
And you are dear
To Me.”

I am
Not defined
By my desires
Or my feelings.
I am
Who “I AM”
Says I am
And so are you.

Hear “I AM”
With your heart.
Let Him start
His cleansing
Fire in you.

Hearing a weekly sermon won’t train you to follow the God-man Jesus who said, “Before Abraham was I am.” You have to regularly hear and obey His voice to do that.

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It Wasn’t Great in America When . . .

There are many great things about America and its history but guess what. It all isn’t and wasn’t great.

I’ve been putting off writing and posting articles like this. That’s because I’ve written things like it before on my blog, on social media, and in my book, Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind, and when I do I get quite a bit of unkind comments.

It’s not great when Americans personally insult and attack fellow Americans because of their political beliefs. It wasn’t great when government forced Americans to segregate. It wasn’t great when the laws of America made human trafficking (called slavery) legal enterprise. It wasn’t great that millions of people in America and their children and descendants were forcibly held in lifelong labor without pay, bought and sold, not allowed to learn to read, and denied all human rights. It wasn’t great when more than 4,000 American citizens were publicly lynched without a trial between 1880 and 1960. (Go see “the lynching memorial” in Montgomery, Alabama.)It wasn’t great when Americas began to systematically attack each other and about 600,000 people were cruelly killed, while untold numbers of people were injured in the Civil War.It wasn’t great when about 100,000 people were marched from their homelands in the eastern USA to what is now Oklahoma, and many thousands died on their way. The victims called it The Trail of Tears.It wasn’t great when Americans were disfranchised in the South and kept from voting for many decades because of the color of their skin.It wasn’t great when the Supreme Court made prenatal human life disposable. It wasn’t great when the American capitol building was attacked by violent rioters in an attempt to overturn a presidential election. It wasn’t great when on numerous occasions some protestors became rioters and began to deface, burn, or destroy property and it wasn’t great when all protesters of a particular skin shade were falsely accused of doing that.It isn’t great when people are insulted for wanting to tell the fuller story about America and its history.

Be great! Get to know the broader history of America.

I’m Still Growing Up

It’s hard to say, “I’m broken,” but it’s the truth. I need to be healed. I was born into a broken world as a broken human being who needs to be fixed. I’ve discovered that proudly trying to justify my feelings, desires, thoughts, and behaviors only keeps me broken and immature. However, humbly letting the living Jesus change my heart and life from day to day (“from glory to glory”) keeps me on the path to the mental, spiritual, and physical healing and wellbeing known as “the kingdom of God.”

The Cross of Christ is the wood that is fixing me. When I take my feelings and desires to the Cross and surrender them to God’s will instead of insisting on my own will, the risen Jesus makes my bitter water sweet. My body being “a temple of the Holy Spirit” is more than theology to me. It’s daily reality. “Christ in you (me)” is indeed “the hope of glory.” Jesus is fixing me bit by bit every day all along the way.

We broken people are often too proud to admit that we need to be fixed. We frequently think and say, “The way I am is the way I’m supposed to be.” Try not to do that.

The living Jesus is the fix for broken people. If you feel like you don’t have a clue, let Him your daily growth hormone.

For a beautiful day in your online neighborhood be neighborly. When you disagree, do it kindly.

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