Steve Simms's Blog, page 99

“Jesus is Lord!” Say what?

Jesus is Lord, means:

Christ’s choices, not my choices.Sold-out discipleship, not shipwrecked religion that has abandoned the practice of daily discipleship.Christ’s control not my control.In Jesus’ name, not in my name.Christ’s will be done, not my will be done.Jesus sets my boundaries, not me.“Christ in you, the hope of glory,” not human-powered religion.Self-surrender, not self-care. What the living Jesus desires, not what I desire.I belong to the risen Jesus, not to myself.

Jesus, I belong to You . . . (O Lord, help me to let You fully control the keyboard of my life every moment of every day and night so that You can continually write whatever You want to on the tablet of my heart and mind and freely direct my thoughts, feelings, words, and behaviors according to Your will not mine.)

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“This is that . . .” What is “this”?

In Acts 2:16, Peter quotes Joel, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel . . .” referring to what was suddenly happening in and through the disciples on the day of Pentecost. So, what exactly is “this”?

“This is that . . .”

Spirit-controlled meeting, not religious programming.Fire and passion, not passivity and inaction. Boldness, not coldness.Utter amazement and bewilderment, not boredom.Christ’s ongoing presence and power, not just a religious hour.Spirit-given, heart-felt utterance, not one man’s mentally prepared speech based on study.Actual demonstrations of Jesus reality, not just presentations about Him.Gifts of the Spirit freely operating, not collecting gifts from those present.An outpouring of God’s Spirit, not a sit-silently-and-hear-it lecture.Sons and daughters prophesying, not being silenced by a program.Dreams and visions being released from God, not dry methodology.Tongue-talking, not miracle-balking.People “cut to the heart” by what they’ve seen and heard, not people eager to get away and get on with their day.Perplexed people asking, “What does this mean?” not impatient people asking, “When will this be over?”Christians looking like they’re drunk, not looking like they’re sitting through a formal service.People speaking up while Peter was talking about Jesus and asking, “What shall we do to be saved? not, adhering to a religious protocol of silence.Warning and pleading with people to repent, not helping them to live their “best life now.”Calling people out of the “corrupt” contemporary culture, not making them comfortable within it. Supernatural impact (thousands set on fire for Jesus and baptized), not church (or synagogue) as usual. Being actively Spirit-led, not just being casually preacher fed.

I want “that” with all my heart. I’ve searched for and sought “that” all my life and will continue to do so as long as God gives me breath. Lord, send Your fire!

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A plea for less sensuality and more sensitivity

Sensuality is about the feelings of the body. Sensitivity is about the feelings of the heart and conscience. Our self-focused culture is full of sensuality but the open expression of heart-felt sensitivity to conscience is rare.

Sensitivity to your conscience isn’t a weakness. It’s a strength that many people don’t have.

Sensuality is focused on self-gratification. Sensitivity is focused on kindness for others and speaking the truth in love. ‘

People who are easily offended are self-focused and insensitive to the fact that “hurt people hurt people.” True sensitivity has such compassion for other people that it’s not easily offended.

Society today focuses almost totally on sensuality while mostly ignoring sensitivity. Our culture is in trouble because following the feelings and desires of the body is seen as strength, while having a sensitive conscious is seen as a weakness.

Just because someone has a desire to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do! The strength or weakness of a desire has nothing to do with the morality of a desire.

To refuse to notice what your conscious is saying opens the door of your life to much self-destruction and self-deception. To be sensually minded is to be a prisoner of your desires and feelings. Sensual desire is often deceptive. Many of our sensual desires need to be resisted and rejected, not justified and embraced.

Uncontrolled sensual desire leads to the bondage of compulsion. Putting sensuality above sensitivity leads to many human problems such as, drug abuse, alcoholism, overeating, other addictions, divorce. hatred, violence, abortion, casual sex, pornography, sex trafficking, child abuse, fraud, corruption, etc.

Sensual desires want to dominate and dictate your life. Don’t let them. Follow and obey the risen Jesus instead. Sensuality asks, “What do I want to do?” Sensitivity asks, “What does the risen Jesus want me to do?”

To be led by the living Jesus you need to begin to be aware of and sensitive to His presence. He wants His followers to be led by His Spirit not by their desires! See Romans 8:14.

Sensuality can never permanently satisfy the longing of the human heart, but awareness of and surrender to the living Jesus does! Look where following your own desires has gotten you inside and out. Following the risen Jesus has to be an improvement.

“Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality.” Ephesians 4:19. Turning away from the sensuality of our human desires, feelings, and opinions and keeping our heart wide open to the presence, intimacy, and Lordship of the risen Jesus is the great miracle all humans need.

Whether governments acknowledge it or not, sensitivity and compassion declare that a human fetus is a human life and is of no less value than any other human life. Medicine heals or treats illness. Pregnancy isn’t an illness. Sensitivity to conscience recognizes that abortion pills are not medicine.

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Poems that point the way to peace

Inner peace
Is release
From anxiety.

Troublesome times
Call for a peaceful heart.
A peaceful heart comes from
The inner presence
Of the risen Jesus,
Not from current events.

Anxiety
Makes time
Feel like
Eternity,
But Christ’s
Inner peace
Makes anxiety
Cease.

The risen Jesus
Can shift the gears
In your heart
And drive out
All the fears
That have
Stalked you
For years
As He steers
You to peace.

Let the living Jesus
Continually do
Whatever He wants to
Both in and through you.

Be about
Hanging out
With people who
Are all about
Humbly interacting
With Jesus.

Spread hope.
Be a mouthpiece
Of Christ’s presence
And peace.

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When Jesus is revealed in your heart

For too many Christians the presence of the risen Jesus has become rarefied instead of being verified and ratified by personal revelation and by a lifestyle that demonstrates His reality. Revelation makes reveals His reality!

Revelation is when spiritual eyes open and an inner awareness of the presence and identity of the living Jesus resounds within a human heart. Revelation occurred when Peter proclaimed to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” It happened when the resurrected Jesus walked the road to Emmaus with two broken hearted disciples who didn’t recognize Him until the moment that He took a loaf of bread and broke it in two. Revelation happened when Paul took the road to Damascus to persecute and arrest Christians there, but on the way was transformed when he saw a light and heard the risen Jesus call His name.

Almost 2,000 years later, revelation happened to me. I went to a Christian meeting in a college dorm and heard two people tell how the risen Jesus had changed their lives. In an instant Jesus became real to me and has been my constant companion and the joy and desire of my heart ever since.

There’s no high like the Most High! Jesus is the Most High God, the Creator of the Universe in human flesh! When that revelation resounds within you, you will never be the same!

Put and keep humble obedience to the risen Jesus first, far above every other desire and interest, not only in words, but also in thought and behavior. The fruit of the Spirit dries up when passionate Christ-followers let Jesus’ inner rivers of living water become an ex-stream situation.

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Help your country steer clear of chaos and corruption!

Our chaotic and corrupt culture is collapsing all around us and desperately crying out for help in the confusion of its spiritual lostness. We are now frequently seeing cruel and bloody mass shootings that prove that a culture that lives like we don’t need the living God desperately needs Him.

Breaking hearts are crying out to God for peace, safety, and hope. The myth that says we don’t need the living God is being shattered by the demonic cruelty of random mass murder.

As long as people want to be entertained by violence and disrespect for righteousness, the profit motive will supply that entertainment for them. The more a culture consumes violent and disrespectful entertainment, the more they will experience it in their society. We need the living God to change our heart so that we as a people enjoy entertainment that vividly demonstrates the beauty and joy of kindness and a clear conscience, instead of overflowing with cruelty and rebellion.

Now is the time for Christians to cultivate, embrace, and demonstrate continual awareness of the presence and power of the risen Jesus Christ — to rely on and illustrate His ability to change human hearts and set people free, instead of relying on the proven ineffectiveness of guns, politics, laws, and law enforcement.

Flee the inner emptiness of trying to entomb the living Jesus in intellect or in religious ceremony. His resurrection can neither be rationally explained nor institutionalized.

We need the internal stirring of awe produced by the awareness of Christ’s supernatural presence as an ongoing heart experience. Choose to humbly open up to and consciously abide in His present-day reality.

The risen Jesus longs to release His ever-flowing inner rivers of spiritually uplifting power and hope in and through His contemporary followers. Put and keep humble obedience to the risen Jesus first, far above every other desire and interest, not only in words, but also in thought and behavior. See for yourself!

Refuse to quench God’s Spirit. Keep the stone rolled away from your heart. In full surrender ever embrace and obey Jesus’ presence. Let Jesus off the religious chain!

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The risen Jesus is working on me (and you)

I have encountered the Lord. Now the risen Jesus interacts with me heart-to-heart.

I wake up in the morning with encouraging words running through my mind and heart. Then I get up and write them down.

Throughout the day hope-filled thoughts come to me and make me aware of Christ’s reality. I delight to bask in them and to savor His presence.

When I read the Bible, the words come alive. They cause me to feel that Jesus is real and with me in the moment.

Sometimes Jesus corrects me. Sometimes He directs me. Sometimes I even sense Him calling my name and saying that He loves me. He releases rivers of living water that flow out my heart and fill me with the fruit of His Spirit.

This morning I awakened with this poem flowing from within me:

The risen Jesus
Isn’t stuck far away
Back in history
Or in some future day.
He promised to be
With His people always
So He can now
Live inside of you
And give you victory
Throughout each day
As “Christ in you,
The hope of glory.”

The best day to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection is every day. The best place is everywhere!

Easter Sunday may be over and done with for another year, but the resurrection of Jesus never passes away! Experience Him today!

I was in the woods on Easter Sunday (2023) celebrating the big stone that rolled away and left Jesus’ tomb empty. I was thrilled to see that nature had written Jesus’ initial on another big stone. Enlarge the pic below and notice the J on the big boulder in the waterfall at the center of the picture.

Have a Spirit-filled, hippity hoppity Easter!

Have a hippity hoppity Easter! Hop out of religious formalism and into daily interaction with and obedience to the risen Jesus.

Christ-centered Christianity is continually conscious of the presence and power of the risen Jesus! Happy Resurrection Day! Church history shows that Christianity gradually drifted from individuals daily and passionately interacting with and obeying the living Jesus to holding the annual, formalized commemoration of His resurrection that we call Easter.

First century word of mouth took news about Jesus viral. Soon the good news of the risen Jesus was trending and generating persecution around the Roman Empire and even in the world beyond its borders.

Then over the next few centuries the glorious news about the active presence of the resurrected Jesus was institutionalized and replaced with a ritualized religious formalism that removed passionate commitment to the living Jesus from everyday life. The spiritual habit of being continually aware of and obedient to “Christ in you” that made Christ-followers a force to be reckoned with became so rare that the few people who had the habit which every Christian needs were canonized as “saints.”

Now hippity hoppity and dare to be Christ’s Spirit-led oddity! Hippity hoppity, surrender your life and become Christ’s property!

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A “handy” example of how Christ’s body should function

“If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.” (1 Corinthians 12:15.)

The resurrected body of Jesus ascended into the sky and disappeared into a cloud. His risen body is now in Heaven. However, the Bible also declares that all true Christ followers, world-wide and across time, are a part of His body (because He actually lives in us), whether we are actual members of a particular religious institution or not.

So how is the body of Christ (the children of God) on earth supposed to meet together? We’re supposed to be Spirit-led (Romans 8:14) — to be led by Jesus as our literal Head — not controlled by the headship of a human hierarchy or a religious organization.

So how should the body of Christ function under Jesus’ Headship? Let’s think about your hand.

Please follow along with me. Make a thumbs up sign. Now keeping your thumb up, open up your fingers. Then wiggle your thumb and observe.

That’s the way a typical church is set up. The pastor (your thumb) wiggles about on a stage and gives a talk while the congregation (your fingers) sits passively and comfortably still unless the pastor or program tells them to do something.

Now stop moving your thumb and point your fingers to the sky keeping your hand open and your thumb up. This time take turns randomly wiggling different fingers and your thumb one at a time. According to 1 Corinthians 14:26, that’s the way the body of Christ should meet together. Anyone present can speak as prompted by the Head of the body — the risen Jesus.

What did you just do? You illustrated the difference between the headship of a pastor (your thumb) and the Headship of Jesus. In the first example the pastor controlled everything as your mind directed him to wiggle. In the second example your mind directly directed each finger and the thumb when to wiggle. The pastor (your thumb) wasn’t the head, but your mind was the head.

That’s how Jesus wants to be the literal Head of His body. He doesn’t need a pastor or a human hierarchy to head things up. He Himself wants to be the Head and to directly direct each person present when to speak and when to listen without first having to run things through a pastor.

If you won’t allow Jesus to directly run a gathering of His body in that way, then you’re missing out on amazing demonstrations of His Headship and reality as He prompts ordinary people to speak as led by the Spirit. Perhaps it’s time to hand control of church meetings over to the risen Jesus and let Him be the living Head of His body!

By humbly and continually submitting to and obeying God while resisting and rejecting the devil’s temptations to self-focus on our own desires we put ourselves in the position where Jesus can lift us up to daily live and flow in the power of the Spirit. Be Spirit-led!

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Is the Easter holiday a spiritual distraction?

People who truly believe Jesus is alive and available either cling to Him or avoid Him. They don’t enjoy lukewarm religion. See Revelation 3:16. If you truly believe Jesus is risen from the dead and present with you, then you’ll live your everyday life as if Jesus is alive!

Don’t let Easter pageantry distract you from the actual presence and power of the risen Jesus! If you have a compulsive thought or behavior that you can’t seem to stop, that’s bondage. There’s hope though. The risen Jesus wants to set you free!

Jesus doesn’t want you to wear a religious Band-Aid. He wants you to be continually banded together heart to heart to Him and to some of His passionate followers.

Since there’s not much opportunity to learn to flow in the gifts of God’s Spirit in church settings, you need to let the risen Jesus train you in your daily life. The people I spend the most time with are those who are passionate about the living Jesus and those who want to be.

The Resurrection:
It’s not an Easter sermon.
It’s the risen Jesus
Calling your name!

The resurrection of Jesus
Shouldn’t only be
A once a year holiday.
Let Him be your living Way
Every single day!

Jesus died on
A cross-shaped tree
And rose to rescue
You and me.
We shouldn’t
Ignore His presence
While focusing on
Easter pageantry–
Ceremonies, programs,
Flowers, baskets,
Clothes, candy,
Eggs and bunnies.
Where’s the risen Jesus
In all of the distraction?

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