Steve Simms's Blog, page 49
June 23, 2024
The Concept That Life Is More Than Physical Continually Revitalizes My Mental Health
View all responsesI find the idea that the physical world is all that there is to be quite disconcerting. Without spirituality I don’t see any hope for me or for humanity in general. Without a vision beyond the material a human life is just a highly complex machine that ends in annihilation — nothing more; nothing less — purposeless and meaningless.
I encountered and opened my heart to Jesus-centered spirituality when I was a freshman in college, and it began to immediately revolutionize my thinking, my perception, and my life. Cultivating and developing an ever-growing relationship with the risen Jesus continually fills me with hope, peace, and faith, regardless of my outward circumstances. I totally recommend it to everyone! How many stars do I rate Jesus-centered spirituality? Go to a totally dark place deep in the country and look at the heavens.
When God is set aside the following things happen to a person. This is based on Psalm 10 and on my observation of American culture.
When there’s no room for God in people’s thoughts, they begin to pridefully think: “I can run my own life, keep myself happy, and stay out of trouble,” “What I’m thinking and doing is hidden from God,” and “I’ll never have to answer to anybody for my thoughts, words, and actions.” Those people renounce God, embrace self-focus, and boast about cravings and compulsions.
If you will make room for God in your thoughts, open your heart to Him, and start to listen to and obey His still small voice, He will begin to direct you from within by His presence, and lead you to love, joy, peace, and all the rest of the fruit of His Spirit. Dare to prepare the way for God to continually work inside of you. Then you will inwardly begin to soar like an eagle.
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June 22, 2024
The Best “Self-Care” Is to Turn Your Focus Away from Self
View all responsesThe more I try to find myself, the more I experience unhappiness. The more I turn my focus away from myself, the happier I am. It’s a paradox. Forgetting about yourself and your problems is a wonderful way to find heart-felt joy. People who consistently regularly do acts of kindness to directly help other people experience that kind of spontaneous inner joy. You can too. Go physically help somebody who is hurting or struggling and see for yourself. Go volunteer.
Another way to turn focus away from self and receive great joy is to open your heart to the presence, power, and reality of the risen Jesus Christ. Start humbly and honestly talking with Jesus from your heart. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. When the inner light comes on you will be overcome with awe and amazement and the awareness of your problems and struggles will fade away in His presence. Surrender all to Him and begin to listen to and obey His still small voice throughout each day. Then His presence inside of you will begin to produce the fruit of His Spirit in your life: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” No form of self-care can compare with fully surrendering yourself to Jesus.
One thing that helps with self-surrender is a simple and humble gift of the Spirit that is presented in two books of the Bible: Acts and 1 Corinthians. It’s called speaking in tongues and involves the action of supernaturally speaking words that you don’t know. It’s an extremely powerful action that I do every day. (In yesterday’s post I described its benefits.) Here’s something I wrote about it today:
I was amazed to read in today’s Wake-Up Call blog:
“I was asleep living in my own comforts and daily life. A friend called me and told me in so many words that God had more for me and needed me. He sent me a sermon to listen to. I’ll be honest I had eight other tabs open and was kinda sorta listening. At one point the man speaking started to pray in tongues. Suddenly the Holy Spirit flooded me and I started weeping, overwhelmed with God’s love and presence. It had been years and years since I had felt God in that way.”
I wrote this before I saw Today’s Call:
Tongues isn’t about self. It’s about surrender, brokenness, and humility. There’s nothing prideful about it. There’s no point to prove. Tongues isn’t about the mind; it’s about surrender of the heart and the will to the direct control of the Holy Spirit and letting Him freely flow from within with Spirit-given utterance. Testifying about gift of tongues is no different than testifying about salvation. They are both supernatural works of God that we need to shout from the housetops so that people trapped by hopelessness and despair can hear and see the reality and power of the living, resurrected Jesus.”
If you listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying and do what He says, amazing things will happen. The world needs to see people who say they are Christians, living a Spirit-led, book of Acts, lifestyle. Will you?
Good or bad
The words you hear
Will program you
And influence
How you feel
And what you do.
Choose to hear
Words of hope,
Of wisdom,
And of kindness
So mental health
And inner peace
Can flourish
Within you.
June 21, 2024
Self-focus Wastes My Time (This Helps Me Soar Beyond It)
View all responsesSelf-focus is a waste of my time and hinders my pursuit of inner peace, love and joy. Those things come from looking beyond myself. Here’s an amazing activity that always helps me to look beyond myself and to experience inner peace, love and joy.
I have discovered that a powerful way to move beyond my proud human spirit and loud self-focus, into trust in and surrender to God’s Spirit, is to pray in tongues every time I feel discouraged, tempted, or tormented. Because of that I pray in tongues many times each day.
This is what frequently speaking in tongues does in and through me:
* It confronts and humbles my pride as I regularly use such a simple and humble gift by surrendering control of what I am saying to Jesus and speaking out words that I don’t understand.
* It causes me to intimately and intensely experience the awareness of the risen Lord Jesus living inside of and freely flowing through me.
* It aligns and tunes my heart and will to the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
* It moves me beyond mere mental concepts of Christ into actual and active surrender to and direct interaction with His inner presence.
* It edifies me by encouraging, strengthening and empowering me.
* It gives me supernatural strength to resist the world’s negativity, temptation, discouragement, doubt, fear, loneliness, worry, anger, deception, and other carnal brainwashing.
* It opens me up to more of God’s inner power to resist sin, hear and obey Jesus, and be a more effective witness for Him.
* It trains me to flow with and appreciate the “least” of the gifts of the Spirit (tongues) so that I can grow into and experience other gifts of the Spirit operating in and through me.
* It helps me to cultivate, overflow with, and demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
One of the main purposes of the spiritual gift of tongues is to build up, strengthen, and empower individual Christ-followers. “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.” (1 Corinthians 14:4 NKJ) If we don’t first receive the gift of the oxygen of God’s Spirit to edify us, how can we help others to receive that gift of personal edification? Spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit, but they also must be received and used by believers. They don’t take over and control people. They work with our free will. The Bible says, “You have not because you ask not.” Jesus said, “Ask (in Greek ‘keep on asking’) and you shall receive.”
Here are two more things that the Bible says about tongues. “I would you all speak in tongues . . .” and “Do all speak in tongues?” (With an implied no.) I believe every Spirit-filled Christian can speak in tongues, but many don’t. Tongues (though the least of the spiritual gifts) is a beautiful gift that can help any Christian experience the risen Jesus in more powerful and intimate ways by releasing the Spirit’s inner rivers of living water through your voice.
Also, in Acts 2, the Bible says, “They began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.” They did the speaking and moved their own vocal cords, but the words came from the Spirit. As they spoke in various languages that they didn’t know (tongues), bystanders heard their own language. In a crowd of people speaking many different languages which one will you recognize? Your own language is the one that will stand out to you.
June 20, 2024
This Historical Figure Keeps Me Hysterical with Love, Joy, and Peace!
View all responsesRoaring crowds like to gather to shout the greatness of sports teams and musicians for hours. Sports and music are treasured to the point of idolatry, but they are no gods at all. They are merely a focus for pleasure producing pride — a place to shout, “We’re number one!” “We’re the coolest!” “We’re the greatest!”
There is one human being who is proclaimed as the greatest of all time — the Creator in human flesh. He’s not a sports or music “g.o.a.t.” He’s the lamb of God — the sacrifice for human sin who gave His life on the Cross, was buried, and rose to live again forever. He is Lord — the King, Sovern, and Master of the Universe.
“I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!’ Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever.’” (Revelation 5:11-13.) I love to join with that crowd throughout the day and boldly worship Jesus the risen Lord!
June 19, 2024
Popular Culture and Contemporary Religion Are Both Denying Much That Is Self-Evident,
In the Gospels, Jesus warned His followers to beware of false prophets. That’s a warning that Christians seem to ignore today. Almost anybody who says he or she is a Christian minister and starts a church or buys radio or TV time (regardless of what they teach) is honored and respected. We know false prophets exist, but we hesitate to point them out because if we do so we will be called judgmental and unloving by both Christians and non-Christians. We need to learn to boldly yet humbly speak the truth in love. That’s what I try to do.
Christ-followers are called to go with the inner flow of God’s Spirit, not with the turbulence of temptation, deception, and popular opinion that shuts down their conscience and drowns out the still, small voice of God within them. We need to search the Scriptures and let their words continually burn in our heart and constantly renew our mind.
Society says “follow the science” but many opinions promoted by society reject these self-evident truths:
* The massive amount of carbon emissions caused by human activity are negatively impacting the planet.
* There are only two genders.
* A growing human fetus is alive and to abort it is to take his or her life away.
* For a two-party democracy to work, neither side can force its will on the other. Compromise and working together are essential for its long-term survival.
* Creating blame, confusion, anger, and hostility will eventually produce chaos.
* Kindly disagreeing with someone’s behavior or opinion is neither hatred nor judgment. It’s the freedom of conscience and the freedom of speech.
The bold and public rejection of such self-evident truth will eventually undermine the foundations of society and civil discourse. Constantly repeated falsehoods never become true, but they eventually deceive many people into believing that they are true.
True transformation isn’t about changing your body, it’s about renewing your mind. (Romans 12:2.) Without the clear boundaries of male and female, sexuality becomes a jungle of confusion.
Here’s a popular miss-use of words:
When conception has occurred and a new life has begun to grow and develop, killing that life stops reproduction. It’s not “reproductive” and isn’t a “reproductive right.”
True love is to put the well-being of someone else before your own:
Your mother
Let your life
Live and grow
In her body
For nine months.
She chose love.
June 18, 2024
I Recently Had an Amazing Visit to Costa Rica
View all responsesLast October I attended a Spanish language immersion school in Costa Rica. My class only had three students, an 18-year-old guy from Germany, an 18-year-old guy from the USA, and me. Our teachers was a 40ish year-old guy with extreme gay mannerisms named Jesús. There were about 7 classes in the school and about 20 or so total students while I was there.
The classes were conducted in Spanish and were very conversational. Jesús began our class by asking us how we had been learning Spanish. I told everyone that I had been reading the Bible every day in Spanish for 9 months. That got some curious looks from my two classmates and from Jesús.
God is mentioned quite a bit in the Spanish language. Every time you say adios, which means goodbye, you mention God — Dios. So, I had many opportunities to talk about the Creator. Eventually Jesús asked me if I grew up in a religious home. In my broken Spanish I told him that my parents weren’t religious, but that as long as I remember I believed in and talked to God even though my parents didn’t attend church until I was about 12. Then they only went because I kept asking them to.
I told Jesús how the routine religion of going to church helped turn me into an agnostic. I still believed in some kind of distant creator, but I had no idea who or what the creator was. Then I shared with him how that all changed when I was in college. In Spanish I said to my teacher Jesús: “I went to an informal campus meeting where people were telling how Jesús had changed their life and in an instant, my life was forever changed when I met Jesús — but not you, the other Jesús.”
For a second or two Jesús looked stunned. Then he burst into genuine, kind, uncontrolled laughter that went on and on as tears rolled down his face. My two classmates looked at me as if to say, “What is going on?” I had no idea.
Eventually Jesús got up, went into the hall, closed the door, and continued to laugh cathartically outside the room. I had never seen such a spontaneous response to the name of the living, resurrected Jesús. When my teacher Jesús finally came back into the room to continue the class, he seemed different. He was relaxed, openhearted, and humble. During the rest of the class, he continued to ask me about my faith. When I “graduated” and left the school, Jesús gave me one of the warmest, kind, non-threatening hugs I have ever received. Every time I tell people this story tears fill my eyes. I continue to pray for Jesús to personally get to know, follow, and obey the other Jesús.
During my two weeks in the school, I got to have friendly, non-threatening conversations about reading the Bible in Spanish and about the other Jesús with most of the 20 or so students and a few of the teachers and staff. When I left, I gave many of them my blog address. The next day or so I had almost 100 views from Costa Rica. I have always wanted to be able to talk to people about Jesus and it has always been awkward for me, but at the Spanish language school, conversations about faith naturally (or supernaturally) flowed from me.
In this pic, I’m talking with my German classmate, Erik, at the Costa Rican Spanish language school.
June 17, 2024
Being a Guide Receiver
View all responsesMy favorite thing about myself really has nothing to do with me except for my willingness to listen to and surrender to the inner Guide who leads me day by day. He is known as the Holy Spirit.
Are you an ever-tuned-in receiver of the Holy Spirit’s inner rivers? I woke up this morning with these words in my spirit:
“Instead of rivers of living water, Christianity is too often presented as a dried-up puddle. Without the experiential awareness of the risen Jesus, Christianity becomes a mere religious routine.”
What does it mean to receive? A wide receiver in football catches the ball and runs with it. A radio receiver picks up radio waves and makes them perceptible by letting them freely flow through it. A receiver of encouragement takes what is said to heart and puts it into practice.
As Christ-followers we need to catch the wind of the Spirit and let Christ take us wherever He wants. We need to catch the Spirit’s energy and run with it. We need to pick up the Spirit’s invisible signals and make them perceptible to our conscious awareness and to the people we encounter throughout the day. We need to take to heart the Spirit’s inner promptings and always do what He urges us to do.
How is your Holy Spirit reception? Is it loud and clear? Or is it rare and sketchy? To receive the Holy Spirit is to let the risen Jesus live and freely flow from deep within you as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Holy Spirit reception isn’t a once and done deal. It is moment-by-moment reliance on the ever-flowing presence, power, and love of Christ living and working in and through you. All Christ-followers are called to be an ever-tuned-in Holy Spirit receiver.
The institutionalization of Christianity tends to put out the Holy Spirit’s fire and spontaneity. It can easily shut down people’s Holy Spirit reception. I saw this happen during the Jesus Movement. The Jesus Freaks who I was around in various places seemed to be far more excited about Jesus when they met spontaneously than they were when they began to focus primarily on regularly attending church.
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I want to re-tire with hope and a never-ending mission.
View all responsesAlways re-tire. Never retire.
Forget about retiring! I want to re-tire with hope and a never-ending mission. As long as I live, I want to put new tires on my dreams and keep on rolling to encourage and serve other people.
Difficulties can bring hope instead of despair. The hope of the afflicted is to look to the Lord as their refuge. When people can see no human way out of a difficult situation, they either give up and self-destruct, or they begin look intently to God for deliverance. Hurting people who wholeheartedly seek the Lord as their refuge and stronghold are never left in the hopelessness of despair. The Lord sees their affliction and rescues them.
People who God has supernaturally delivered from the angst of affliction, bondage to tormenting thoughts, and enslavement to sin, have personally experienced the risen Jesus as so real and so present that gratitude constantly overflows from their heart. They tell the wonderful things Christ has done and is doing in and through them. They tell how He has overthrown their inner enemies and even erased the memory of their torment. Never-ending gladness runs through their heart like inner rivers, and they sing out praises to His name. They don’t retire; they re-tire!
Your inner media — what you say, hear, and allow in your mind — will raise you up or crush you down. Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice.” Constantly stay tuned in to His hope-filled media. Jesus is so real and so present that you can connect heart-to-heart with Him without going through a religious institution. I believe in non-religious, non-political, and non-proud Christianity that flows like rivers of living water from deep within the heart.
Let hope always abide.
Never allow anything
To override
Christ in you
The hope of glory.
Abound in hope.
Rejoice in hope.
Overflow with hope
And tell Christ’s story
By the power
Of God’s Spirit
June 15, 2024
The Really Old Recipe Book That I Use Every Day
View all responsesI have a really old recipe book. It’s a collection of many recipes written by many authors that has been passed down for centuries. It’s actually only a copy of the original anthology that has been translated into English.
The recipes give all the information and explain in detail the processes necessary to make incredible experiences. All I have to do is to read them and to do what they say. The more accurately I follow the recipes, the better the results I get.
I use my ancient recipe book every day to cook up a better attitude and better behavior than I would have without its powerful daily influence in my life. It’s the world’s bestselling book of all time. It’s called the Bible. Chances are you have seen one and you may even own one.
When I pick up my copy and read it with an open heart, the words stir up a fire within me (even when I read it digitally) and fill me with hope and joy. I encounter the risen Jesus on every page and sense Him applying the Bible’s recipes directly to my life. Through the words of Scripture, the living Jesus Christ trains me to hear His still small voice within me and makes me aware of His supernatural presence both inside of me and around me. He empowers me with a burning desire and with the spiritual strength to follow and obey Him throughout each day.
“Christians are called to follow Christ beyond the culture around them and to live by the values of the kingdom of God — to be in the world but not of the world — to be lights that radiate the presence, love, and reality of the risen Jesus, not mirrors that reflect the thoughts, feelings, desires, and beliefs of the society where they live.” That’s why I daily read, ponder, write about, and seek to obey that wonderful recipe book called the Bible and the living Jesus who it makes so real to me.
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My Apollos Moment
View all responsesI had a moment decades ago that still reverberates loudly within me every day of my life. The way water moves a mill wheel, Christ’s living water moves me from within my innermost being throughout each day. It all started in an instant. I call it my Apollos moment.
When someone has a good education, extensive Bible knowledge, religious fervor, and talks accurately and boldly about Jesus, is anything missing from their Christian faith? According to the Bible, that’s not enough. Jesus said: “Apart from Me you can do nothing?” It’s vital that Christians stay consciously aware of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and continually surrender to being “led (controlled) by the Spirit”?
The story of a man in the Bible named Apollos illustrates this. You can read it Acts 18:24-28. My story is very similar. Here is my Apollos moment.
I had been a Christ-follower about a year. During that time, I had devoured the Bible daily. I was very excited about Jesus. However, some people explained to me that God had something more for me. They called it the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and said that it included the “gift of tongues” which they said was a supernatural prayer language that flowed with power and love from deep within you. They showed me several Scriptures about speaking in tongues and asked if I wanted the Holy Spirit’s power that comes with that gift. Although I didn’t mentally understand it, my heart was hungry, so I said, “Yes, I want anything God has for me?”
My good news bringers laid hands on me and began to pray for me in tongues. I felt something stirring deep within me when suddenly words that I didn’t know began to flow out of my inner most being. In a moment Jesus was more real to me than my physical environment — gushing like a fountain, like a mighty rushing wind, like rivers of living water, from somewhere deep inside of me. I prayed in tongue for hours basking in Christ’s presence, love, and power.
Ever since that moment I’ve had an awareness of Christ in me. He never leaves me alone. Even in my darkest and most painful moments, He has been with me, comforted me, and strengthened me. I pray in tongues off and on throughout each day and when I do, I experience that amazing moment once again and am lifted up by the Spirit’s inner flowing. The biblical concept of “joy unspeakable and full of glory” isn’t just a religious idea, it’s a present moment reality.
If you’ve never had an “Apollos moment” I recommend that you make sure that your life is fully surrendered to the risen Jesus. Then ask God for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues.
When the gift of tongues is first mentioned in the Bible in Acts chapter two, it says: ‘They began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.” Although speaking in tongues is supernatural, we have a part to play. We speak but the words we utter come from God’s Spirit. When you ask God for the gift of tongues, step out in faith to receive it by moving your vocal cords and speaking out in a few words you don’t know. As you exercise your faith a stream of unknown words and a flood of joy will flow from within you.
Pray in tongues often. Don’t give up on it. The more you do it the more you will experience the presence, power, and love of Jesus flowing from within you.
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