The renewing of your perspective — seeing as Jesus sees

Posted on July 5, 2023 by Steve Simms

What does the biblical phrase “the mind of Christ” mean? Most English translations of the Bible translate the Greek word “nous” as “mind.” However, if you search through the definitions of “nous” you find that it has a broader meaning than just the intellect. Here’s an example: “reason in the narrower sense, as the capacity for spiritual truth, the higher powers of the soul, the faculty of perceiving divine things, of recognizing goodness and of hating evil, the power of considering and judging soberly, calmly and impartially.”

As humans we observe life from the very narrow perspective (“nous”) of our self-interest. When humanity rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden our perspective (“nous”) shifted from God’s point of view to self-focus. Now our thoughts, feelings, desires, and opinions are skewed. They distort the way we view and interpret the things in our life. For us to be transformed and aligned with God, our perspective (nous) needs to be renewed so that it becomes accurate and impartial rather than deceptive.

If we learn to see our life and our circumstances from God’s point of view and surrender our will to Him, we will be transformed. Seeing from His perspective/nous, we will begin to behold the reality of the Lamb of God working in, through, and around us to make all things work together for our good.

Our human perspective/nous is like a man watching the Macy’s Parade in New York City from deep within an alley. He only sees a few feet of the parade at a time. However, the mind (nous/perspective) of Christ is like a man in a helicopter above the city and able to view the entire parade of life at one time.

The perspective of Christ is eternal. The human perspective is temporal and very shortsighted. Much of our pain, frustration, and rebellion is the result of our human shortsightedness. When we renew our perspective by continually looking beyond our own thoughts, feelings, desires, and opinions, and begin focusing on the “author and finisher of our faith” what glory, wonder, and awe come into view!

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Learning to rely on Jesus and His mercy

Posted on July 4, 2023 by Steve Simms

Viewing God’s mountain of mercy from the valley of dry bones.

When strength is gone,
When pride has vanished,
When self-inflicted shame
Has exposed our guilt
And wrecked our life,
When we can honestly say:
“I know that within me,
That is within my flesh,
Dwells no go thing,”
From that low place
We can view God’s mercy
As He runs as the Father
To embrace His rebellious child
Humbly returning home.

We need revival not just survival.
When we’ve come to the place
Where we’re willing to replace
The pride of group compliance
To a religious program,
With humble heart alliance
And genuine reliance
On the risen Jesus,
We’ll experience His glory
Not just hear His story!

When Christians gather for worship it’s a wonderful time to demonstrate radical reliance on the risen Jesus rather than reliance on a religious routine. The lack of direct ongoing reliance on the presence of the living Jesus creates a Christianity of religious pride, programming, and passivity.

Here are some keys to being the good and fruitful soil in Christ’s “Parable of the Soils” and to learning to rely on Him day and night:

1) Open your heart to God and keep it open all the time.

2) Let Jesus work deep within you.

3) Be a weed whacker warrior and keep all weeds and thorns out of your heart. (Weed whacker warriors remove the weeds in their life that interfere with their willingness to radically rely on the risen Jesus.) It takes humility and brokenness to be able to handle the truth and not deny it.

We humans can think up words. God can inspire words. Demons can inspire words. We humans need reliance on God’s discernment to recognize the difference and His wisdom to reject demon inspired words. It blows my mind that people who claim to be Christ-followers use words that are anointed by demons (commonly called profanity).

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Can you see God’s mercy?

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Steve Simms

“In view of God’s mercy” provided by Christ’s sacrifice (My hope is built on nothing less!)

If you are unwilling to view and accept the truth that you deserve and have earned God’s judgment, you won’t be aware of God’s mercy. Instead, you will falsely believe that you’re entitled to God’s favor and blessing.

Mercy is releasing someone from punishment that they justly deserve. Where there are demands and entitlement, there is no room for mercy. Pride never views mercy. It only sees entitlement.

The Beatitudes bring mercy into view. Those who are poor in spirit are aware of their great need God’s mercy. They humbly (meekly) mourn over their rebellion against God (in their actions and in their heart) and that makes their heart hungry and thirsty to fully submit to God’s kingdom authority and to always live according to His righteousness. They are comforted in their brokenness and their heart is purified so that they can continually view God and ever experience His mercy. They make peace with God and become His children as they are no longer led by their own desires but by God’s Spirit. Because they begin to obey God’s will and kingdom authority those who are rejecting God’s mercy will persecute them.

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Be an inner weed whacking warrior.

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Steve Simms

Be an inner weed whacking warrior. Aggressively resist, cut down, and remove every thought, feeling, desire, and opinion in you that hinders Jesus from freely working in you.

To be an Inner Weed Wacker Warrior you need to:

  • Be aware of and notice your weeds;
  • Care that they’re there and want them gone;
  • Dare to aggressively resist them;
  • Continually tear them out;
  • Share your need for and accept help and accountability;
  • Keep on fighting your inner weeds with prayer and great effort;
  • Never surrender to despair.

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To “deconstruct” the fundamentals is to deny the faith

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Steve Simms

Too many people who say that they want to break free from fundamentalism abandon the Christian fundamentals about who the living Jesus is and what He did to invite us into an intimate relationship with God. Rejecting the fundamental teachings of Christianity doesn’t “deconstruct” the faith. It denies it. Here’s an example: To say that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead is to deny the faith as recorded and experienced by the earliest Christ-followers.

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Heart connection reveals amazing significance

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Steve Simms

Without a solid sense of significance, meaning, and purpose, it’s easy to slip into sadness, discouragement and despair. Your life has a purpose. Find it. Pursue it. Fulfill it. If life was without meaning the very concept of meaning would have no meaning to us.

I’m conscious, I care, I have a conscience, I’m aware of good and evil, I analyze, I choose to resist or to obey thoughts, feelings, desires, and even truth; therefore, I exist as more than a material mechanism.

Knowledge can easily replace awe and mystery with the pride of intellect. It often makes people proud of their ponderings and causes them to abandon their wonderings. Unanswered questions are an invitation to awe and wonder, not a threat to your intellect. They encourage us to ponder mystery with an open heart, not just analyze with the mind. The mind can articulate definitions but meaning in discovered with the heart.

Joy is the intoxication of wonder, not the inebriation of liquor. To live like life is meaningless is unbearable. Even materialists attribute meaning to their life and live like it has some significance.

To experience the fuller meaning of life I have to look beyond me. For me insight is much more enjoyable than self-focused diversion. “There’s pleasure in sin for a season,” but it knows nothing of the wisdom that fills the heart with joyful dance.

Connecting heart-to-heart with other people is one of the most significant and lasting things a person can do. A moment of genuine heart-connection can last a lifetime. I’ve been fortunate to have had countless moments of heart connection with multitudes of diverse people. When just one of those moments comes to my memory, I am filled with awe and gratitude. O that Christianity would lay aside formalism and embrace humble heart connection with Christ and with one another.

Too often heart-connection is labeled as emotionalism and looked down on by rationalistic forms of Christianity. How unfortunate that Christianity which should facilitate intimate heart-connection has been turned into a program for passive spectators who mostly protect their heart from each other. The more Christ-followers you make heart-to-heart connections with the more closely you’re connected to the body of Christ. Too many Christians avoid heart connections altogether or make them with only a tiny inner circle.

People avoid heart connections because they fear having their heart exposed, however, Christ-followers have been given the power to overcome that fear. See 1 Timothy 1:6.

Awareness of the presence of the living Jesus makes every moment deeply meaningful. The feeling of meaninglessness is indicative of a loss of focus on “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If you feel like you’re running on empty you probably are. Let Jesus take over the wheel and fill you with the thrill of His ongoing presence.

Heart connection reveals that finances are a false measure of a person’s net worth. A person’s net value is caught up in the wonder of their existence.

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God — refuse to dim Him!

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Steve Simms

Fix your focus on God’s inner fire in the sky of your heart. Let nothing dim it! The awareness of God will give you a bright outlook. Without Him we’re left with a dim blurred view of what life is about. When people try to dim Christ’s light in you that’s because it’s shinning in a way that’s disturbing the darkness that they’re comfortable with.

Life’s full of light dimmers
That hide our glimpses
Of God’s glorious
Inner glimmers
And replaces the awe
That produces holy tremors
With a machine-like routine
That leaves God’s light
Mostly unseen.

Where’s God?
When your inner light is dim
It’s hard to see Him
Even though nature
Is filled to the brim
With His glory!
Every living stem
Shouts out that
Life is God’s design
Not a just whim.

God wants
To enlighten
And brighten
Your heart
And heighten
Your awareness
Of His presence.
Pride wants
To frighten
You so much
That you flee
From God.

There’s a big difference
Between a belief that God exists
And the awareness of His presence
And conscience reliance
On His daily sustenance!

When it seems
That life’s struggles
Are dimming my dreams,
I look to the beams
Of Christ’s inner light
And He gives me reams
Supernatural delight.

Christianity should never be confined to programmed activities in a church building. Never!

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God’s recipe for healing a culture (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Steve Simms

Pride turns down God’s offer of mercy through Christ’s sacrifice and instead blindly demands His justice because it refuses to humbly recognize its own rebellion against God and its huge need for forgiveness.

Mercy me! I’m eternally grateful that God doesn’t give me what I deserve.

We need to always look to God’s mercy. God’s justice will give us what we deserve. We will have to personally pay the penalty (the wages of sin is death) for all the wrong thinking and actions that we have done–even the ones that no one knows about–even the ones we have forgotten–even the ones we thought were no big deal.

However, God’s mercy gives us what we don’t deserve. It presents us with undeserved life, unmerited forgiveness, and a beautiful unearned eternal relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Seek God’s mercy, not His justice, in your relationship with Him. Revival is a result of Christ-followers being willing to be poor in spirit and to embrace 2 Chronicles 7:14 with a humble tender open heart.

God’s recipe for revival: If the people who call themselves Christians will humble themselves (lay down their religious pride) and pray (communicate heart-to-heart with the living God) and seek His face (continually pursue surrender to and intimacy with Him) and turn from their wicked ways (openly admit and fight to stop their wrong thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors), then God will forgive them and heal their land. Are you willing to follow God’s recipe today and every day?

  • If you want to see healing in your land from hostility and conflict,
  • If you’re tired of lies and want a society built on honesty and integrity,
  • If you’re concerned about the direction your country is headed,
  • If you want a peaceful and prosperous future for your nation,
  • If you don’t want to live in a culture gripped by fear, worry, and depression,
    –Then it’s 2 Chronicles 7:14 time!
    Look around now and notice the signs of the times before your time runs out and it’s too late for you to turn around. Get started with living out 2 Chronicles 7:14 today!
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Fight for and rally around humility

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Steve Simms

“Do not be arrogant, but tremble.” We need a rally of humility that motivates us to remove everything within us that in anyway hinders what Christ wants to do and prepares the way for the Lord to have His way in us. Humility’s worth fighting for!

Pride and entitlement are never the result of grace. Grace produces awe, trembling, and poverty of spirit that comes from the conscious awareness of Christ gloriously living in you.

Grace puts you in the fight of faith. Without it you are powerless. I want to pursue the risen Jesus as the Dove flies by following and obeying the Holy Spirit every day.

If Christ is living in you, it’s by the grace of God’s grafting you into the Vine of His presence. You didn’t (and still don’t) earn or deserve His presence. Now you need keep the free gift that is in you stirred up and continually fight the good fight of faith by always resisting and seeking to remove any thought, feeling, desire, or opinion in you that in any way hampers how Jesus wants to freely flow and have full control within you. A world that looks to human leaders needs to see people who are led by the living Jesus, not by desires, feelings, thoughts, or opinions.

God’s grace
Doesn’t erase
Or replace
Our need
To seek His face.

Lord, make me aware
Of your might.
Give me insight
To resist and fight
Everything in me
That impedes
What you want to do.

Fight to remove everything in you that obstructs your ability to receive God’s grace. Fight words from the Bible that will help you make room for God’s free grace in your life:

  • “Fight the good fight of faith.”
  • “Earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.”
  • “Deny yourself.
  • “Bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
  • “Resist the devil.”
  • “Stir up the gift of God that is within you.”
  • “Cast out demons.”
  • “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”
  • “Put off falsehood.”
  • “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.”
  • “Live by the Spirit.”
  • “Press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
  • “Draw near to God.”
  • “Stand against the schemes of the devil.”
  • “Train yourself in godliness.”
  • “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.”
  • “Quench not the Spirit.”
  • “Always strive to do what is good.”
  • “Put off the old man.”
  • “Live a holy life.”
  • “Pursue righteousness.”
  • “Avoid sexual immorality.”
  • “Be not entangled again in the yolk of bondage.”
  • “Flee youthful lusts.”
  • “Turn away from wickedness.”
  • “Repent.”
  • “Prepare the way of the Lord.”
  • “Having done all stand.”
  • “Rejoice in the Lord always.
  • “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.”
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A hard heart is an escape room, not a comfort zone.

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Steve Simms

When life
Tries to drape
Your heart with discouragement
Don’t play the same tape
Over and over in your mind.
Never stop searching
Until you find
The way of escape.

A closed heart is an escape room. The purpose of an escape room isn’t to make yourself comfortable with it. It’s to get out and to get to safety as soon as possible.

The most important escape room is in your mind. Escape from the fears, fallacies, and fantasies of false feelings, thoughts, and desires. We humans need a rousing inner belief that we will win in order to inspire us to escape from the mental and emotional escape rooms that are holding us in bondage.

When your heart is hard you’re not living in a comfort zone. You’re ignoring the ticking clock of a dangerous, real-life escape room. People take escape room games seriously and give their best to beat the clock, however, when it comes to escaping from their sin they too often sit back and milk it for pleasure and comfort while ignoring its dangers.

The clues about how to escape from the bondage of sin and darkness are found in the Bible. If people would go after those clues the way they race the clock to search for clues in an escape room, they’d be celebrating their freedom every day!

The clock is ticking in the escape room of your heart. If you don’t find the way out of the sin that has shut it down before you die, you’ll be forever trapped in its bondage. Follow the living Jesus into freedom while you still can!

Make more room in your heart and mind for Jesus. Escape from all your inner distractions that hinder His Spirit and hold Him back. The living Jesus is the Light. He’s the Way out of darkness. Escape into heart-to-heart intimacy with Him.

To escape the room
Of self-obsession
Surrender your life
To Christ’s possession.

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