Steve Simms's Blog, page 85

All in with awe

Daily writing promptWhat positive emotion do you feel most often?View all responses

I’m all in with awe. It’s a positive emotion that blows my mind, transcends my comprehension, and keeps me in a state of wonder, ponder, and gratitude.

When I am in awe, I find great beauty and astonishment both in my surroundings and within my own mind and heart. The emotion of awe is so wonderful to me that I have spent most of my life training myself to continually look for it, focus on it, and contemplate it. Making it my habit to behold beauty (not just with a glance, but with an ongoing and appreciative gaze) continually beacons me to let the emotion of awe fill my heart. And I do!

The longer I stay in a state of awe, the more I find myself aware of a sense of glorious and inexpressible joy and the more inner peace I feel. An amazing kind of love flows from out of my inner being.

Some keys to are are:

Observation: Notice the positive things in your surroundings and in your life. Don’t just see them. Admire them as if you were seeing them for the very first time.Meditation: Open your heart and let it be touched (and even deeply moved) by all the good experiences and the good things that are in you and around you. Appreciation: Express gratitude throughout the day to people and to your Creator, even when you don’t feel it. Before long your expressions of gratitude will release the real presence of gratitude and awe.Focus on the awesome: Although some negativity, pain, and evil are present in everybody’s surroundings and in everybody’s life, fasten your focus on what is wonderful and amazing. Talk and write about the awesome things you see and experience.

For about 8 years, I have been seeing numbers repeated 3 or more times. It happens most on digital clocks. At lease 3 or 4 times a day I will notice the same number repeated 3 times on a digital clock. After all these years I’m still in awe every time I see it. I also often see even more that 3 repetitions of the same number on my odometer.

Throughout each week indescribable positive things happen in my life that defy statistical odds and send me into an orbit of awe. I live a life of amazement and can only attribute it to the reality, love, presence, and working of the living Jesus Christ in and around me. For this I will be eternally grateful and abounding with awe.

We live in a famine of awe. However, if Christ-followers would freely testify about what God has done and is doing in, through and for them, churches would be full of awe.

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Unplanned goals are powerful

Daily writing promptHow do you plan your goals?View all responses

Perhaps goal planning isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. People like to set (and even to write down) all types of goals that fail to motivate them to take decisive, direct, and consistent action. Those goals do little more than produce frustration and discouragement.

However, there is another way to find goals than by setting them for yourself. That way is much more effective and motivating. That is the way of goal recognition — of the balancing necessity in front of you and the passion within you.

I ask myself two questions: 1) “What do I need to do for today and tomorrow and for the future of myself and those I care about?” and 2) “What am I deeply passionate about doing and how can that help me answer question #1?

Those two questions are about goal recognition, not about goal setting. Goal setting tends to be mostly based on our superficial desires (like what people will think about us or how much money we want to make) and not based on a fuller view of what we and our dependents truly need. Also, goal setting is frequently based on feelings of obligation and often overlooks the deeply meaningful desires that come from the depths of our heart. That’s why we usually aren’t consistently motived by goals that we set for ourselves.

However, goal recognition can set a fire in your heart that will keep you moving and working until you arrive at the vision, and it manifests visibly in your life. Why not ask yourself the two questions today and begin to discover the goals that are waiting for you to recognize them and to implement their peace and joy in your life and in the lives of those around you?

Here’s a simple summary. For goal recognition, embrace your responsibilities with creativity while you embrace your passion with joy and let them work together to show you the goals that will put a fire in your heart.

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Discipleship means to be trained and sent in the power of the Spirit.

What is discipleship? Discipleship means being sent to make more disciples in the power of the Spirit!

I woke up with this thought this morning: “True Christianity is a new normal for how to live life. (‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’)” Jesus is always sending His people, but we aren’t always going where He sends us.

As Christ-followers we are all sent into the world to share, to show, and to serve in the presence and power of the risen Jesus as we are led by His Spirit each moment. We are all sent to go and make disciples and to be Christ’s witnesses right where we are and wherever else He sends us. Like Isaiah we need to say, “Here I am, Lord, send me,” and say it every day!

Jesus didn’t just send a message to be taught. He sent you to be the light of the world. If you’re not aware that you’re Heaven-sent, you’re overlooking the truth of the Gospel. God sent His Son to live in you so that He can send you to show people His love and to demonstrate His presence to all you encounter.

At the end of each day
I should be able to say
“I went
Where I was sent.”

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Who took Judas’ place?

Who took the place of the twelfth apostle? If Peter correctly applied the two verses he quoted from the Psalms, no one human could take and “dwell in” Judas’ place but throughout the centuries there have been millions of “sent ones” who have shared the message and shined the light of the present-day reality of the living Jesus, under the direct, personal leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus gathered disciples and called them “sent ones” (the English meaning of the Greek word “apostles”). First, He sent out twelve. Later He sent out seventy. One of the original twelve betrayed Him. Another openly denied Him three times. All of them fled when He died. But when Jesus rose, He assembled 120 of His disciples and gave them the rock (see Matthew 16) and foundation of direct personal revelation through the coming of His Spirit at Pentecost and suddenly 3,000 more people were “cut to the heart” and called to be disciples so that they too could be sent to preach and testify to the reality of the risen Jesus. A movement began that day and although the world has greatly resisted it and fought to stifle it, that spiritual movement has never stopped.

Perhaps Peter made a mistake in appointing Matthias to “dwell in” Judas’ place. Click the link for more thoughts on this.  

Too many Christians live like Jesus is nowhere around and nowhere to be found. To only talk about Jesus in the past tense or in the future tense is to miss out His presence and reality in the present moment.

Jesus is everywhere not just somewhere. You can experience Christ’s Spirit-led town hall meeting in a house, on a Zoom call, in a meeting room, on the phone, in a church building, in a park, or anywhere. All it takes is a willingness to gather with one or more Christ-followers to listen to Jesus and then say and do what He tells you to.

Everyday
Jesus hears
What you think
And He knows
What you say.

Open your heart
To testify
And be a part
Of the town meeting
Jesus is building.

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True emergency preparedness requires Jesus

Daily writing promptCreate an emergency preparedness plan.View all responses

True emergency preparedness requires Jesus. A human plan will never be enough. A human plan can supply survival supplies and physical relief, but it can’t strengthen and supernaturally heal the broken hearts of people who have suffered great loss. Only the living Jesus Christ can do that.

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Reality, Jesus, and us . . .

Because the risen Jesus
Is physically unseen,
That doesn’t mean
That you should be unaware
That He is everywhere.
How wonderful it is
To wake up and find
That Jesus hasn’t
Left us behind
To deal with life
Through our own mind.
Don’t be confined
To a Christ far away.
Now is the time
To be fully aligned
And surrendered to
“Christ in you
The hope of glory!”

Freedom Declined

To be defined
By your desires
Is to be confined
To their control.

The confinement of Jesus Christ to organized religion removes the conscious awareness of His presence from everyday life. Look to the living God as your spiritual source, not to a preacher! Jesus told Peter, “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood but by my Father.” Paul said, “I did not rush to consult with flesh and blood.”

Notice Jesus today. He’s not hiding from you. Really? Yes, really! Any moment can be a Jesus moment. Why not now?

We assume that physical matter is real because we can see it. But it’s really not real. Everything we see with our physical eyes is not what it seems to be. It is an illusion created by collections of microscopic empty balls consisting of energy sparks that are orbiting empty space (with the exception of a few mystical/subatomic “particles”) at a lightning-fast pace. We are stuck in their cosmic illusion, so we live like it is reality. However, if there is reality, it must exist beyond the illusion of physically matter which will eventually come to an end when the energy balls all collapse.

The very thoughts that I have written here and that you are now reading reveal that human consciousness (though encased in physical matter) is beyond it. Without the transmission of physical matter my ideas are being transferred from the inner (intangible but real) me to the inner (intangible bur real) you as the nonphysical you reads them.

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Power to be a strong witness

The inner fitness
To be Christ’s witness
Is released within people
Who obey the promptings
Of the Holy Spirit.

There’s an inner power flow
That lets people know
That the risen Jesus
Makes His followers grow
To be and to live like Him.
Without that inner flow
We can’t an effective witness
And demonstrate His presence
Because we have nothing
Supernatural to show.
Always surrender to Jesus
And let the inner rivers
Of His Spirit freely flow
Everywhere you are
And everywhere you go!

You won’t be an effective witness for Jesus Christ if you aren’t seeing and experiencing Him working in your life. Perhaps people don’t testify more about what Jesus is doing in their lives because they aren’t experiencing His presence and His working.

In order for Christ’s light to shine through you, you have to open your heart and let people see what He’s doing in you! There’s no limit to the power that can be released through Christ-followers who will testify about how Jesus is working in them!

An unspoken testimony has no power to impact people’s lives. It is time for churches to allow and to empower people to show and tell what God has done for them! When Christians aren’t allowed to freely be a witness for Jesus in church, it’s crazy to expect them to openly be a witness for Jesus in public.

Jesus said that His followers will be witnesses (people who will boldly proclaim what they have seen and heard Him say and do) not just preachers who merely lecture about what they have learned by studying. Since Jesus said that, shouldn’t churches allow them the freedom to testify when they gather in His name?

If you are a believer you have been summoned to testify about Jesus! To many Christians get so caught up in one man’s “call to preach” that they forget that all Christ-followers have been summoned to testify about Jesus!

Gravity and sin are invisible forces that pull down toward the ground. Life is an invisible force that mounts up as an eagle. Testify to life.

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Two-way communication with God!

Jesus sacrificed His life to make mediation so that you can now experience direct, personal revelation from God! There’s no motivation like direct, personal revelation from the living God. People are crying out for satisfaction, validation, and restoration, but they’re only found one place — in the presence of direct, personal revelation from God! Ask Him to show you the reality of His presence!

The Bible says that Christ’s sheep hear His voice and that God’s children are Spirit-led. If those things aren’t happening, perhaps we aren’t what we think we are. What is Christ doing in you today? If you can’t answer that question, you’re distracted from His presence.

You don’t need more explanation about God. You need daily direct, personal revelation from Him! Direct, personal revelation from God opens the door to two-way conversation with Him.

Christianity is much more than having your mind convinced by religious concepts. It’s having the hurts in your heart healed by the rock of ultimate objectivity — direct, personal revelation from the Creator. Nothing is more real than God’s life-changing work in a human heart. To see God’s light in your heart is to be objectively and demonstratively set free from deception of darkness. If direct revelation from the living God isn’t objective, then all that we perceive is only passing illusion.

God was talking to me around three this morning and telling me to get up and write what He was saying, but all I wanted to do was sleep so I continued to lay there and resist Him. Then He asked me, “Isn’t what I’m saying more important than your sleep?” So, I jumped up and have been listening to God and writing what I hear for about 4 hours.

Some of the thoughts that come to you are thoughts from God. Train yourself to recognize, ponder, and obey those God-thoughts. Open your “cozy-zone” to the fire of direct, personal revelation from the living God! The invitation to direct, personal revelation from the living God is the rock that is proclaimed throughout the Bible. Keep God always the focus of your observation and let His revelation continually break through within you by the penetration of your heart.

Unless we open our heart to the reality of direct personal revelation from the Creator of the Universe, our mind will keep us in various states of deception by often misleading us with its subjective notions and analytical evaluations. No amount of Christian education is as powerful as one moment of direct, personal revelation from God.

A one-size-fits-all church service may not be what you need. Let Jesus speak His customized words to you.

Life is a series of passing moments. We have these moments to surrender and align our life to God’s will.

If your view
Of Christ is hazy,
It may be because
You're too lazy
To resist all the crazy
Ideas that surround you.My way will
Lead me to stray,
But when I pray
And let God's Spirit
Lead me His way,
His light fills my day!
Good or bad,
What you stream
On the screen
Of your mind
Will leave
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Why was Christianity turned into church?

Christians are willing to passively sit together in church but seldom willing to be gathered together in active heart-intimacy with the living Jesus and with each other. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . you were not willing.” Never be satisfied with knowledge about Jesus without ongoing awareness of His presence!

People like to turn Christianity into church but reading the Bible reveals it to be so much more than that! Christians like to gather as a passive audience, but Christ wants to build and to be the literal leader (the actual Head) of the interactive assembly of His people that He called His “ekklesia” (His interactive Greek-style town hall meeting).

The purpose of preaching the Gospel is to help people connect heart-to-heart with the risen Jesus so that He can directly lead them by His Spirit without them needing to always depend on a preacher. Giving a talk about Jesus like He’s not in the room seems to miss the point of His resurrection. The purpose of Peter’s preaching on Pentecost was to explain the Spirit-led, crowd-gathering things that were happening in the moment (celebration that spilled into the street, massive speaking in tongues, fire-like-glowing on people, and the sound of rushing wind), not to present a programmed sermon to passive people.

Religious institutions that have grown around Christianity often hide the reality of the risen Jesus. Since Jesus said that His sheep hear His voice, wouldn’t it be nice to give His sheep some time in a church service to share what He’s telling them?

Christ-followers
Are called to:
* Celebrate Christ,
* Participate with Christ,
* Partake of Christ,
* Radiate Christ.If Jesus isn't
Actively working
And living
In the meeting,
Then churching
Is just watching
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The Creator in human flesh

The Creator in human fleshHanging bloody on a crossIs the sacrificial Lamb of God.Surely He has borne our griefsAnd carried our sorrowsAnd by His stripesWe are offered healing,Forgiveness and restorationTo heart-to-Heart relationshipWith the eternal OneWho although He died,Rose to live foreverWith mortal woundsIn His back, head,Hands, feet, and side.Look, behold and experience,His blood will neverLose its power.Seeing real love in view of God's mercy (Romans 12:1-2)To truly viewGod's mercyYou needHis transformingPerspectiveSo you can seeLike Christ seesAnd become awareOf what it cost HimTo pay forThe forgivenessOf your sin.Life amissIn emptiness?We'll be hollowUnless we followThe risen JesusAnd no longer wallowIn the crud withinAnd around us.We needConscious awarenessOf the living JesusNot just to ease usOr to please us,But to melt our heartAnd to cease usWith never endingLove and adorationFor the One who diedFor us![image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-36976" />Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com