Hidden issues in the cultural war

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Steve Simms

The hidden issue is cruelty. Abortion isn’t about “reproductive rights.” It’s about prenatal cruelty. Legalized slavery wasn’t about skin color. It was about cold-hearted cruelty. Human life in all of its stages and skin-shades deserves kindness and respect.

The most fundamental right is the freedom of conscience — the right to disagree with and disapprove of other people’s beliefs and behaviors. To call people who disagree with you “haters” or “phobics” is to reject true diversity by demanding compliance to your viewpoint.

Government approval doesn’t make cruelty less cruel. That was true about the cruelty of legalized slavery and it’s still true about legalized prenatal cruelty. If trying to help a human fetus be healthy is called “prenatal care” killing one should be called “prenatal cruelty.”

Two powerful creative joys of sex have been attacked, shoved aside, and slandered by our society:

1) Reproduction–the amazing delight of being a mother or a father!

2) The opportunity to create and maintain a life-long, healing, heart-to-heart, honest, committed, exclusive intimacy with someone of the opposite sex!

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From spiritual stupor to supernatural interaction with Jesus . . .

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Steve Simms

Saul of Tarsus, who was a violent persecutor of the first Christians, went from spiritual stupor to a super relationship with the living Jesus! For the rest of His life, he boldly proclaimed that Jesus is alive and wrote much of the New Testament. He was eventually executed for His faith in Christ.

Wake up, sleeper, from your spiritual stupor. Step out of the shadows and let the living Jesus shine on you. Continually soak up His radiance.

Stupor toward God and toward your conscience (unawareness, insensitivity, and unresponsiveness) is sneaky. It makes the living, resurrected Jesus seem like a mere myth, an ancient historical figure, or a being confined to Heaven.

Don’t settle for stupor. God created you to have a super relationship with Him. Religion, without the active and direct presence, reality, and Headship of the risen Jesus, subtly produces a dazed state of spiritual stupor — “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

The living Jesus turned Paul’s stupor into vibrant awareness of His presence and power! If you will continually open your heart to the risen Jesus and begin to daily read the Bible like an intimate love letter written from God to you personally (instead of like a college textbook) Christ’s supernatural presence will banish your stupor with His glorious light.

The Bible is an alarm. It’s a super stupor detector that will wake you up to the supernatural reality of Jesus, if you will humbly listen to it.

Here are some signs of being in a spiritual stupor.

* Most of the time Jesus is off of your radar.
* You rarely if ever read the Bible and when you do you quickly tire of it.
* God seems more like a distant theory than a present reality to you.
* You feel like attending church is all the spirituality that you need.
* People who live like Jesus is alive and present throughout the day annoy you.
* You seldom notice your conscience and when you do you mostly resist it.
* You enjoy entertainment that is contrary to God’s values and principles.
* You think that you’re a good person and that everything’s alright between you and God.

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Do you realize your desires contain real lies?

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Steve Simms

Unless we realize
That our feelings,
Thoughts, and desires
Contain real lies
We’ll be misled
By their false disguise.

No matter how much
We’ve been taught
Until we’ve sought
And bravely fought
To make every thought
Obedient to Christ
We’ll be caught
In deception.

To be led by the Spirit
Is to do what God inspires
By obeying His desires
Instead of your own
And continually resisting
Whatever conspires
To try to compel
You to rebel
Against what God requires.

Christianity is a fight
To live in God’s light,
A life-long race
To run
Empowered by His grace,
A determination
To always seek HIs face
And to ever be in pace
With His Spirit.

The most important spiritual warfare is to continually resist and overcome every thought, feeling, and desire within you that contends against the will of God. It takes a lifetime of courageous ongoing mental, emotional, and spiritual warfare to fight to bring every thought, feeling, and desire within you into obedience to Christ. Never ignore that fight even for a moment. To seek first the kingdom of God (the literal rule, control, and Lordship of the risen Jesus over every moment of your life) you must refute, rebuke, and refuse every thought, feeling, and desire that tries to override Christ’s control within you and attempts to replace His grace with bondage.

Fight to open your heart and keep it wide open to the living Jesus as He speaks in and through your conscience and through the words of the Bible. Resist everything that tries to get you to ignore or disobey Him. Grace doesn’t eliminate your calling and need to resist every tempting thought, tormenting feeling, and demonic desire, but it does offer you free access to Jesus and to His power to help you win your inner battles.

The Bible never presents Christianity as effortless. It challenges Christ-followers to: “seek first the kingdom of God,” “fight the good fight of faith,” “earnestly contend for the faith,” “press toward the mark of the high calling of God,” “draw near to God,” “resist the devil,” “cast out demons,” “run in such a way as to take the prize,” “rejoice in the Lord always,” “repent,” “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires,” “deny yourself,” “humble yourself,” “consider others better than yourself,” etc.

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Learn to yearn for more of Jesus!

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Steve Simms

Heart-level connection with the living Jesus can’t be explained in human words. It must be experienced to be understood.

Simply to learn
Bible information
But not to yearn
To experience
What you learn
Is to neglect
To discern
Your great need
To grow in grace
By following Christ
And letting
Your heart burn
To more closely
Connect with Him
And to turn
Away from
Every distraction.

Log on to Jesus
Remove the many masks
From your heart.
Begin to evade
The charade
That you parade
For others to see.
Let your ego fade.
Openly confess the mistakes
That you’ve made
And humbly step out
Of the dark shade
Into God’s truth and light.
Return from where you’ve strayed.
Let Christ’s presence pervade
Every part
Of your heart!

True Christianity is about experiencing and maintaining heart-to-heart connection with the risen Jesus and with His followers. Modern Christians have been trained to connect with and listen to a pastor but not to Jesus and to His everyday followers. Part-time Christ-followers miss out on much quality time with the risen Jesus.

If you are connected heart-to-heart with Christ, you will be automatically connected at a deep level to others who are connected to Christ. Learn to discover, nurture, and treasure those Spirit-led connections.

Heart-level connection with the living Jesus can’t be explained in human words. It must be experienced to be understood.

Jesus came to heal any disconnection between you and God so that you may overflow with God’s presence, peace, love and joy. If you will set aside everything that’s in between you and God and humbly listen to and obey His voice throughout the day, He will lead you to amazing and joyous connection with Him. A closed heart can’t connect with other hearts or with God’s Comforter (the Holy Spirit) and often feels isolated, alone, troubled and misunderstood.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

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Trying to locate Jesus

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Steve Simms

Jesus in His resurrected body is seated at the right hand of the Father. He’s no longer on earth in the flesh. In other words, if we’re looking for a physical connection with Jesus, we will miss Him. No relic, no building, no organization, no ritual, no program, no place, no archeological discovery, no spiritual leader, or no physical action can give us a physical connection to Jesus.

Yet Jesus clearly told His disciples that if He goes away, He will come again to be with them and to live in them. How is that possible if Jesus is physically in Heaven? Jesus’ presence on earth is no longer limited by physicality. He has come as the Comforter — the Holy Spirit — to be with His followers and to live inside of them as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Now he can be worshiped in spirit and in truth everywhere and all the time and we can abide in the vine by humbly maintaining direct ongoing heart-to-heart connection and communication with Him and thus being led by the Spirit.

To miss the invisible Holy Spirit and His “still small voice” is to miss out on the reality, presence, and power of the living resurrected Jesus and His daily reign and Lordship in your life. The book of Revelation proclaims that Jesus is coming back physically! The book of Acts proclaims and demonstrates that Jesus has come as the Holy Spirit. To truly be His disciples we need to ever experience and surrender to the Spirit of Christ!

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Where are the Christ-sent feet?

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Steve Simms

If people don’t believe that Jesus is alive and willing to hear them and respond with mercy, forgiveness, and healing, they won’t be motivated to call on Him. If they’ve never heard and believed that people today are personally experiencing Christ’s life-changing mercy, forgiveness, and healing they won’t know that it’s available to them. If no one tells them about the supernatural experience of encountering and surrendering to the living Jesus, they won’t hear about it. If no one has a strong enough relationship with the risen Jesus to be sent out to radiate and proclaim His presence and reality, people will assume He’s just a religious myth. However, when people are sent out with their heart strangely warmed and the fire of the risen Jesus glowing within them, their feet carry and reflect the beautiful presence of the living Jesus everywhere they go. I’m so glad that some beautiful feet like that walked into my life and showed me the present-day reality of the risen Jesus! O that my feet will be sent to do the same! (See Romans 10:14-15.)

Feet that walk on the mountains of the glorious hope of “Christ in you” and proclaim the good news of His reign of inner peace and rescue from the dark shadows of the valley of despair and death have a beauty beyond description. (See Isaiah 52:7.)

Let your feet be sent by Christ to be continually led by the Spirit. When Christ-sent feet meet a hungry, humble heart there’s a release of revelation and spiritual life.

Jesus sends His followers as sheep among wolves not to rely on their own power and effort, but to humbly depend on the supernatural power He gives them to tread on serpents and over all the power of the enemy. Feet that walk in the Spirit stand on the mountains of the kingdom of God.

Christians are sent
To let our heart be bent
To the will of God
And to follow Jesus
Wherever He leads.
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Salvation comes by dependency on Jesus

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Steve Simms

Making a one-time decision to “accept Christ” isn’t Christianity. Daily surrendering your life to Christ’s direct Lordship and control is.

To truly believe in Jesus is to daily depend on Him instead of depending on your own effort, knowledge, desires, or opinions. Go beyond belief that Jesus is real. Begin to rely and depend on Him to take direct, day-to-day control of your life.

Christian discipleship is daily dependency on the risen Jesus. That’s why it’s so rare. Pride rejects dependency on God but embraces dependency on possessions, habits, relationships, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc.

Who is calling on the name of the Lord? Who is appealing to the living Jesus? Who is hungering and thirsting for righteousness? Who is drawing near to God? Who is tasting and seeing that the Lord is good? Who is being led by the Spirit? Who is invoking and surrendering to the presence and power of the resurrected Jesus? Who is making Jesus their daily Lord and Master by allowing Him to align their heart and lifestyle to conform to His will? Who is being transformed from glory to glory? Those are being saved! You will recognize those who are calling on the name of the Lord by their fruit — the fruit of the Holy Spirit flourishing within them and freely flowing from them.

Call on the name of the Lord. The ancient Jews feared that they would break the command not to take God’s name in vain, so they called Him Lord instead of using His Name. The first Christians boldly proclaimed that “Jesus is Lord,” and that His name is above every other name. In other words, Jesus is the God-man — the Creator of all that exists, who became a man and was “manifest in the flesh.” Anyone who proclaims Jesus as less than that is proclaiming “another Jesus” and has departed from the Jesus proclaimed by the early Christ-followers and the Scriptures. Continually call on, appeal to, and rely on the living Lord Jesus to work in and through you.

Forcing someone who doesn’t want to be around you to spend time with you isn’t love. Surely a loving God wouldn’t do that. You’re free to depend on Jesus or to ignore Him.

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What determines your concept of reality is your Lord

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Steve Simms

Let the living Jesus inhabit and rule your heart and define reality for you. Refuse to inhibit His presence and authority.

A culture that proclaims that people’s desires and feelings are Lord (determine reality) doesn’t want to hear that Jesus is Lord. It’s impossible to follow the Lordship of your desires and feelings and the Lordship of Jesus at the same time!

Seeking the depths of Romans 10:9. Live your life like Jesus is truly living! To “declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” is to openly and publicly proclaim (not just once, but regularly) that Jesus is your absolute Master — that you seek to live and be controlled by His presence and His will throughout the day. To “believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead” is to take your belief beyond mental assent to the point that your heart continually burns with never ending passion to love and obey Jesus, and where you daily live your life like Jesus is truly living by fully surrendering to and continually relying on and depending on His moment-by-moment presence with, in and around you.

The Bible is infinitely more than religious information. It is the deep personal, Spirit-led accounts of people who were deeply touched and led by God and who opened their heart to receive His presence and the gifts of His Spirit. If we will read it with an open, humble heart it will lead us to the same experiences today. If you don’t want a relationship with the living God, He won’t force you to have one even though your avoiding Him breaks His heart.

The risen Jesus is a much more capable teacher than most Christians realize. Ekklesia, a Spirit-led gathering of the body of Christ, is very simple. It lets the risen Jesus be the teacher. Some people who are inhabited by the living Jesus assemble in His name to let Him be the literal Head as they pay close attention to and obey His inner promptings.

Forcing someone who doesn’t want to be around you to spend time with you isn’t love. Surely a loving God wouldn’t do that.

The best parts of life are beyond cash value! Refuse to sell out to rebellion and moral collapse.

The intrusion
Of moral delusion
Is destructive illusion
That releases the infusion
Of much ethical confusion
In the name of inclusion.

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Prideful knowledge is a dangerous tree to climb

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Steve Simms

Human knowledge leans against the wrong tree. Climbing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil requires much caution. When done with pride it’s extremely hazardous.

The most dangerous condition in the world is to think that you have life and God figured out. You don’t and you won’t! If you did you wouldn’t need Jesus. (Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is deeply deceptive because it makes us think that we are smart enough to control and manage our life with nothing more than our limited human brain and fallible information processing.)

However, the more relational, personal, interactive, intimate, and heart-piercing our direct knowledge of God, the more we rely on the living Jesus to work with, in and through us by the power and presence of God’s Spirit. We learn to daily rely on the risen Jesus to personally direct us and empower us from within instead of relying on our own plans, desires, programs, and effort. We have an inner zeal that is Spirit-prompted and real, not created and carried by human hype, pride, and insecurity.

Instead of striving to understand and program life according to your smorgasbord of desires, surrender all to Jesus. Holding on to what you think gives you control will never make you whole. Letting go and letting God will! The Holy Spirit is a much more capable teacher than most Christians realize.

There is a huge difference between second-hand Bible knowledge that we learn as information to be filed away in our brain and direct communication (revelation) from the living God that transforms our heart. There is value in both, but one is essential and too often neglected. Without direct revelation all we have is hearsay religion. If you don’t want a relationship with the living God, He won’t force you to have one even though your avoiding Him breaks His heart.

Revelation:
Whenever I do
The slightest good thing
I’m amazed how pride
Rises up inside
To congratulate me.
And how Jesus
Gently whispers:
“Step aside
From your pride
And follow Me
In humility.”

God’s love
Is never an excuse
To follow
Your own desires
And to ignore
What He requires.

Recipe for joy
Look beyond self-focus.
Fill your eyes with
Appreciation
For God’s creation.
Build an attitude
Of great gratitude.
Let joy always grow
By resisting thoughts
That hold back its flow.

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Father thoughts to help your day

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Steve Simms

When we think about the man (who along with our mother) conceived us, we can find both positives and negatives in him. To varying degrees, all human fathers do some things well and some things not so well. If you have trouble finding a way to get your heart to honor your father, honor him for enabling you to have God’s gift of life. Forgive him for where you feel like he let you down. If your heart automatically honors your father, you are blessed indeed, both by a caring (although imperfect) human father and by the ability to be grateful for his positive contributions to your life.

I was fortunate to have a father who I greatly loved and admired and who greatly loved and cared for me. Everyone is not so fortunate. I was also fortunate to discover the perfect Father and when I did my heart instantly connected with Him crying out in amazing relief and joy unspeakable, “Abba, Father!” Prior to that, even though my parents were rather agnostic and didn’t encourage it, I believed in and talked to God, but He always seemed somewhat distant from me. Then one day (O the day!) I heard people enthusiastically talking about Jesus like He was alive and present with them and in a moment something that I can’t describe happened within me. It changed my life forever and instantly made the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit more real to me than my physical surroundings and filled me with deep ongoing adoration for God and caring concern for people.

If there’s ever a ranking of fathers from the best to the worst, yours will fall somewhere in between. No matter where your father would be on that list of billions, you can honor him for his role in giving you life.

You can also get to know and to have a wonderful relationship with the Father at the top of the list — God the Father. Open your heart to the living resurrected Jesus and let Him connect you with the perfect Father who is longing for you to come and receive His love, mercy, forgiveness, and healing.

Second-hand Bible knowledge is often lifeless, academic, and deceptive. Why settle for second-hand Bible knowledge that comes through a sermon, a book, a web search, or a commentary? Set aside your preconceived notions and read it for yourself. Open your heart and let the Bible directly communicate with you and show you how the risen Jesus can lead you into a glorious relationship with the heavenly Father.

Every day is the Heavenly Father’s day! Every day is a gift from Him!

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