Is “You’re very self-loving,” a compliment?

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Steve Simms

It’s not a compliment to tell someone, “You are very self-loving.” When you tell someone, “I love you,” you wouldn’t want them to say, “I love me, too.” Your hope is that they will express love back to you. I think God feels the say way. What Christians call “self-love” is too often a subtle form of ego-gratification.

Self-love wants to avoid sacrifice. Love for God embraces it. Jesus commanded us to “Love your enemies.” He never commanded us to “Love yourself.”

When people love a sports team, they set aside their self-focus and adore the team. Surely Christians can do the same for God. Trying to increase your self-love is frustrating, but every openhearted look at the living Jesus will grow your love for Him.

Jesus never said, “Go into all the world and love yourself.” He said, “Go into all the world and make disciples (sold-out Christ-followers).

“Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” –Philippians 2:5. Jesus’ mindset was self-sacrifice, not self-love.

Self-love asks the question, “How am I feeling?” A better question is: “How can I open up my life more fully to God’s will?”

Philippians chapter 2 shows how Jesus laid down His life for others. He didn’t cling to His life or try to pamper or protect Himself. Instead, He hung on the cross, suffered, died, and as the Apostles Creed says, “descended into Hell,” giving it all in acts of self-sacrificing love. For me, suffering leads me to freedom from self-consciousness. In my pain, my focus is drawn to God. Instead of trying to love myself, my will, and my desires, I’m compelled to let them go and I cry out to God for mercy, healing, and deliverance thus finding ever-growing dependence on the risen Jesus.

Trying to love myself traps me in painful self-focus. Surrendering to God’s love for me frees me from self-consciousness.

2 Timothy 3 lists the sins of the last days. The first one listed is: “People will be lovers of themselves.” Self-love is a trap.

The human problem isn’t a lack of self-love. It’s self obsession. Many times, the New Testament commands us to “love one another” but it only refers to self-love the few times when it quotes the 2nd Greatest Commandment from the Old Testament (which assumes that we humans already love and prioritize ourselves). “Love one another,” is a command but loving yourself is human nature.

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Self-forgetfulness is powerful. Try it.

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Steve Simms

My will and God’s will
Are often in conflict
And then I must choose
Who’s will to restrict.
And who’s will to pick.
The more I love my will,
The harder it is to say,
“Not my will,
But Yours be done.”

Self-focus
Blurs reality
And makes me forget
That it’s all
Not about me.

My self-will
Tells me
That it’s a thrill.
Instead, it’s usually
A poison pill
That tries to spill
My inner peace.

Step out of
Your self-will
And you will
Be able to see
Life more clearly.

Think about when you were the happiest. Then you will remember the joy of self-forgetfulness. Self-focus crowds out happiness.

Neither self-loving nor self-loathing brings inner peace but self-surrender to the living Jesus does! When we lay down our will by setting aside our pride and forgetting our self-focus, we can let God take control, Then He makes all things work together for our good like a beautiful mosaic.

The more I forget about myself and concentrate on Jesus the happier I am and the freer I am to love other people. The more I care about and focus on my needs and desires, the less inner peace I have.

Without self-forgetfulness it’s very hard to focus on other people and their needs. When offense rises up inside of you, don’t take it! Instead, choose “speaking the truth in love.”

Without self-focus it’s hard to take offense at what other people say and do. Instead, we can have mercy and compassion for them. Pride is quickly offended; humility rarely is.

Self-focus is a huge obstacle to inner peace. Self-focus is nerve wracking. Christ-focus is comforting.

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God’s love can’t hatch when we’re self-attached.

Posted on November 9, 2022 by Steve Simms

If you deny yourself
And let God’s love hatch
Deep within your heart
It will strike a match
That will set you ablaze
In the haze
Of this world
And loose the latch
Of self-love
That holds you in bondage.

Ego and pride
Try to hide
In the shell
Of self-love.

The human heart tends to harden like a hard-boiled egg. Self-love is the shell that keeps it closed down. We’ll never be able to fly in God’s Spirit as long as we stay in the shell of self-love. Let God crack your self-love!

Self-love identifies with and defends our desires, emotions, and opinions. It deceptively resists fully surrendering to God. The egg of self-love must break before God’s life can freely emerge in us.

Self-love leads to self-obsession. “Humble yourself.” Step out of your self-spotlight and into God’s glorious light. The shell of self-love blocks God’s light.

Loving yourself is like giving yourself money. If you try to be both the subject and the object of your love, you’re just recycling it. Being self-attached and denying yourself are opposites. We are compelled to choose one or the other. The Cross is all about self-denial, not about self-love. Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ.” John the Baptist said, “I must decrease, and He must increase.”

Self-love turns into self-protection and often causes us to quench God’s Spirit before His promptings have the opportunity to hatch in our heart. To be led by the Spirit is to surrender yourself to God’s control.

Self-love battens down the hatch and keeps us from hearing and obeying God’s voice when He corrects us. God’s love can’t hatch in our heart when we’re self-attached.

Self-love is the shell
That makes us believe
That we’re too good
To go to Hell.

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If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t . . .

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Steve Simms

Humans love themselves but we’re not so good at loving God and our neighbors. You love yourself because if you didn’t you wouldn’t:

  • Want and/or insist on your way.
  • Try to protect yourself.
  • Do self-destructive behaviors hoping they will ease your pain.
  • Care if you were unhappy.
  • Become offended when you’re insulted
  • Want to be healed when you’re sick.
  • Care if you were treated unjustly.
  • Worry about yourself and your health.
  • Feel ashamed when you know you’ve done wrong.
  • Trust your own opinion.
  • Want to fulfil your feelings, your desires, your dreams, and your needs.
  • Physically hurt yourself to attempt to distract yourself from emotional suffering.
  • Want to be praised and appreciated.
  • Take medicine when you are sick.
  • Feel proud of and/or boast about your accomplishments.
  • Work hard to get other people’s approval.
  • Feed, clothe, and bathe yourself.

Self-love is no stronger than we are, but God’s love is as powerful as He is. Self-love is weak and unable to heal our deep wounds and hurts but experiencing the reality of God’s love brings about amazing freedom and inner transformation. Experiencing God’s love for me causes me to forget about myself and concentrate on Him. It doesn’t focus my attention on me.

Experiencing God’s love for even one moment is far more powerful than a lifetime of attempted self-love. God’s love will not only heal you, but if you will get self out of the way it will freely flow through you to others. If we would seek to surrender to God’s love as much as we focus on self-love, we’d live a miraculous life of awe and wonder.

Self-love makes self-surrender difficult, but self-denial facilitates it. Perhaps as humans we need self-denial and self-surrender more than self-love. It’s easy to love yourself, but hard to deny yourself.

Self-love is weak and unable to heal our deep wounds and hurts, but God’s love brings about freedom and inner transformation. Understanding that God loves people is nice, but continually experiencing God’s love for me as an individual is indescribable.

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Church members matter . . .

Posted on November 7, 2022 by Steve Simms

Church members matter.
They’re not ornaments
In an audience.
They should meet to be
Part of Christ’s body
Directed by Him,
Led by Gods Spirit,
Hearing what He says
And then doing it.

Let’s forget about self and comfort. Let’s focus instead on letting Christ live in and through us. Then instead of sitting through services we can let Him begin to fulfill the two greatest commandments from deep within us.

I hear Jesus commanding two attachments, not three in the two greatest commandments. An attachment to self is presumed by Jesus when He says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He’s assuming that you already love yourself, not commanding you to do so. In fact, In the Gospels Jesus tells you to deny yourself, not to love yourself. He wants you and me to surrender our attachment to self so He can replace it with supernatural attachment to God and to our neighbor in our inmost being. We can’t freely lay down our life if we are attached to it. However, detachment from yourself prepares the “narrow way” for the living Jesus to give you His powerful heart, soul, and mind attachment to God and to your neighbor.

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Posted in audience, Beyond Church, Christ in you, church, church attendance, spiritual formation | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Every church needs an after-sermon-practice-session

Posted on November 6, 2022 by Steve Simms

Rituals, programs, and ceremonies? Podiums, platforms, and pulpits? Liturgy, lessons, and lectures? Be careful not to replace the risen Jesus with religion. When religious practices become routine it’s easy to do them without heart-felt involvement.

A sermon that doesn’t facilitate the occasion for people to practice together what they’ve been taught, is incomplete. “Be doers of the word not hearers only.”

No matter how many sermons are heard, without hands-on practice sessions, people won’t learn to effectively do God’s word. Christ-followers should always practice to be more effective at doing the word.

If people were treated on a sports team the way they’re treated in church (all lecture with no hands-on practice) that team wouldn’t be very effective. Many Christians have never been trained and motivated to install God’s playbook in their mind and heart.

All sermon and no hands-on practice makes church a place of hearing but not doing. To train Christians to hear and do God’s word, a sermon should be followed with a practice session.

When religious systemization shuts out the living Savior it’s gone too far. Better than a sermon on hearing God’s voice is a group learning to listen to God together. Better than a sermon on prayer is people praying together. Better than a sermon on repentance is a group crying out to God for forgiveness and deliverance.

When Christians meet and the focus is on one person, it distracts people’s attention from the risen Jesus working in and thru the various members of His body. It’s time for Christians to shift their attention from podiums, platforms, and pulpits to the living resurrected Jesus Christ.

For too many people church is a check off box. They check their faith at the door as they walk out of church, and it’s left behind.

If a church has a roof and a floor it’s a building, but the body of Christ consists of people. It’s not a building you go to.

To resist God (even to ignore Him) is to sacrifice and miss out on the beautiful new life He wants to freely give you. Learn not to do that.

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The lures that flyfish in your mind

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Steve Simms

The more
We allow sin
To numb
Our conscience
The more dumb
Things we say and do.

Beware of the temptations that flyfish in your mind with enticing lures to yank you out of the inner river of life-giving joy. When you let your desires distract you from God’s direction you’ll be dragged into deception.

Most people don’t really believe they’re sinners. That’s why they don’t ask for and receive God’s forgiveness and deliverance from their sins.

Heaven is a sin-free zone. It would be a living hell for people who love to sin. If your heart can only feel at home dancing to Hell’s tune, Heaven would be torture for you.

Many people suffer from GRD–God Recognition Deficiency. They’re unaware of and fail to enjoy His omnipresence.

Throughout history politics has wallowed in the sin of cruel words and antagonistic actions. True freedom requires respect, compassion and kindness, even for those you disagree with. Instead of anger, we can speak the truth in love.

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Refreshing inner rivers

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Steve Simms 
When you ask Jesus
To enter your heart
And lay down your life
To His full control
Refreshing rivers 
Start to freely flow
From deep within you
Streaming awareness
And revelations,
Inner reality
Beyond your belief.

I move my mouth
And a river
Of unknown words
Creatively flows
From deep inside me
Washing my being
With awe and delight
And with amazing
Connection to God.
Flow on word river,
Such a beautiful
Gift from my Father
Keeping me aware
Of His glorious
Presence and power.

God wants you to be
His conveyer belt
Always flowing with
The fruit of the Spirit
Wherever you go
And with whomever
You encounter.
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Self-focus is confusing, not identifying

Posted on November 4, 2022 by Steve Simms

Self-denial’s not
Self-sacrifice,
But a pearl
Of great price
That leads
To paradise.

Self-focus blurs everything else. Self is like a telescope. If you focus on it, you won’t see much but if you use it to look beyond it, you’ll see a glorious universe. One of the greatest blessings in life is to lose your focus on self by getting caught up in a worthy goal or purpose.

Self-focus messes us up. It doesn’t set us free.

When we’re led by our self-focused desires, we often step into self-deception. Your own self is often the goo that’s holding you in bondage. Instead of identifying or loving yourself, step beyond yourself. Until you find a compelling focus other than self-fulfillment, you’ll stay stuck in futile attempts at making yourself feel good.

Self-focus is the enemy of happiness–the key to unhappiness. It is confusing, not identifying. Clear vision requires looking beyond self, not staying self-mesmerized. I’m happiest when I ignore the sticky clamor of self. Never side with the desires and demons that try to torment and destroy you.

Desires are something you have, not something you are. Identifying yourself by your desires is completely misleading.

Wanting to be a good person and/or self-identifying as one doesn’t make you a good person. Jesus said that none are good. Until we set aside what we want to do, we won’t be able to focus on what God wants us to do.

Christian discipleship involves learning to set aside self and to identify and align with the inner promptings that come from Christ. Any sermon that doesn’t stir us up and make us hungry to be free from selfishness and closer to God hasn’t done its job. Too often church is like attending weekly lectures at a travel agency but never taking a trip.

I am a being of limited consciousness with the ability to freely choose where to focus my attention. I can focus on physical objects and activities, on internal thoughts, feelings, and desires, and on intangible realities like self, justice, good, evil, forgiveness, and God. I can make choices that help or harm myself and others.

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How I realized I’m a mess without Jesus

Posted on November 4, 2022 by Steve Simms

I used to compare my behaviors to the worst human behaviors that I knew about. By that standard I believed that I was a good person with a good inner instrument panel. Then one day I had an encounter with the living Jesus Christ, and He became a continual real presence and guide in my inner life and gave me a hunger to read the Bible. The more I read it, the more I began to see that although by my outward behaviors I considered myself to be a good person, my thoughts, desires, feelings, and opinions were full of sin.

Then I began to see that many of my outward behaviors were also sinful. I tried to stop them, but some held me so tightly in bondage that all I could do was cry to Jesus for mercy, forgiveness, and deliverance. Gradually I began to see that my sin was deeper than my behaviors and realized that I was a sinner by nature. I began to ask God to set me free from the bondage of self. That’s when He began to show me that I need to die to self (my old man–my human nature–the faulty instrument panel in my inmost being) and I wrote these words:

Watching your old man die
Makes you want to cry,
Seeing all your hopes and dreams
Take their wings and fly.
I know that old man
His name is myself,
But I can’t help him now,
He belongs to someone else.

Cause, Jesus, I gave myself to you,
Said you can do
Whatever you want to.
But watching him die
Is such a painful thing
Although, I know
New life it will bring.

It’s hard to say,
“Lord, have Your way.”
That old man sticks around
And says He’s gonna stay.
He moans and groans in agony
Till I just can’t bear to see,
Then he grabs me by the hand
And says, “Save me boy, I’m your old man.”

Jesus, I give myself to you.
Go ahead and do whatever you want to
To me.
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