Something began when I was conceived that has continued unto this moment — my life! Life begins in a moment, but growth requires patience. It took nine months for me to grow from conception to birth.

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Steve Simms
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Inner fruit can keep you smiling

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Steve Simms

Jesus, teach me
How to be a field
Where the fruit
Of the Spirit can flourish.

Abundant fruit
Of God’s Spirit
Can’t grow
Inside me
Until I allow
Jesus and His
Rivers of living water
To freely flow
And irrigate me
From within.

The fruit of God’s Spirit
Is a slow grow.
It doesn’t come from
What you know
About God
But from letting His presence
Continually cultivate and hoe
Your heart.


God designed your life to be a fruitful faith farm. Try not to turn it into an overrun weed field. Today, life weeds and forbidden fruit overflow with deceptive appeal, false advertising and misleading marketing. Those who consume them seldom love their after taste and outcomes.

Your life overflows with the fruit of your own doing. If you aren’t happy with it change what you’re doing.

I want to be a fruit basket of God’s Spirit. Then people can “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Christianity is about “Christ in you.” To experience its fruit in your life it something Christ needs to continually be experienced in your daily life, not just lectured about on Sunday. “The hope of glory” isn’t you in church. It’s “Christ in you.” When God touches your heart, and His tears begin to flow don’t hold back His rivers of living water.

Most of what you find in your personal “produce section” has been produced by your choices and behaviors. It’s the fruit of your actions and reactions. When you plant bad seeds in your life, you’ll grow a lot of bad fruit. However, today’s common nonsense says that you can plant seeds of self-destruction and never have to face their harvest.

Branches loaded with the fruit of God’s spirit bow low. They don’t rise up with pride. Apart from Jesus and His living water, we might grow lemons but we’re unable to produce the fruit of the Spirit.

The further you get from the tree of life, the less good fruit you will have in your heart. Awareness of God is the fruit of observation. Nature and your own inner being reveal His reality.

The fruit of the Christian life is that “Christ is formed in you.” God’s purpose for Christ-followers is that we “be conformed to the image of his Son.” True Christ-followers are the people continually “press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I’ve noticed that many people who vigorously resist the fruit of being influenced by God, eagerly embrace the fruit of the influence of other people’s destructive behaviors. The fruit having a religious expert lecture you about God is greatly inferior to the fruit of experience Him for yourself.

Self-love goes up and down but God’s love never fails. Which love will you trust? In this spiritually dry world, the fruit of God’s Spirit can be irrigated by reading the Bible with an open humble heart.

To successfully navigate
Your way thru life
And cultivate
Well being
You’ll need to subjugate
Some of your feelings
And desires.

Trees and bushes
Are known by
What they produce:
An apple orchard,
A grape vineyard
A peach plantation.
A blueberry patch,
A lemon grove,
A Mulberry tree,
A tumble weed,
A thornbush.
What kind are you?

The sun at night
Though out of sight
Still shines.
The same with
The Son of God.

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Posted in Christian spirituality, discipleship, fruit of the Spirit, Holy Spirit, spiritual, spiritual food, spiritual formation, spirituality | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From atheism to mysticism (attitudes toward God)

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Steve Simms

The art
Of walking with God
Requires an honest,
Surrendered,
And open heart.

Approaching God
With a big head
And small heart
Isn’t the way
To start
Seeking Him.

I’ve noticed that many people who resist being influenced by God, eagerly embrace the influence of people’s destructive attitudes and behaviors. Way is that?

Religion tends to formalize God and utilize Him to promote an organizational structure. I prefer to let Him revitalize me from the inside out. When you feel distant from God take that as constructive feedback telling you to come to Him with less pride and more humility.

The intricate complexities of nature make a Creator obvious. Nominal religion tries to placate God. Agnosticism ignores God. Atheism denies God. Mysticism seeks to have experiences with God. Pharisee-ism demands outward adherence to rules about God. Scholasticism tries to understand and explain God. But the Bible says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

I like to enjoy God throughout the day–to continually stay aware of and surrender to His presence ever working inside of me. In a society that chooses to ignore God, I continually yearn to know Him better.

The only fully satisfying solution for the human need for companionship is ongoing heart-to-heart interaction with the living God. When God is avoided and kept at a distance the primary reason’s not unbelief but an unwillingness to be accountable. By presenting God as an impersonal force, pantheism tries to avoid being accountable to the living, personal, and interactive God.

Most human attitudes toward God reject His omnipresence and keep Him at a distance as “someone in the great somewhere.” Any desire that doesn’t lead to God is a distraction from following the living Jesus.

Too often sermons are quickly forgotten religious speeches that produce no fruit. However, Spirit-led Christ-followers radiate His presence and love wherever they go. As long as you’re on the planet, it’s never too late to approach God with a humble, open, and honest heart.

It doesn't require
Wisdom or faith
To be inflamed
By the fire
Of evil desire.
That's why 
We need accountability
To our conscience
And to God.
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Society’s desire fetish distorts reality

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Steve Simms

Desires and feelings
Don’t determine reality
But often
Deceitfully twist it
And make truth
Their casualty.

Our culture seems to be obsessed with teaching us to live according to our desires instead of according to moral and ethical principles, but that doesn’t seem to be producing the vibrant mental health that most people would like to have. Instead of following rationality or science society is training people to follow and identify themselves by their illogical desires.

My desires don’t determine what’s good or bad — what’s right or wrong. Sometimes the things I want are morally wrong. If I make the strength and/or persistence of a desire my justification for obeying it, I admit that I’m its slave.

The first place I need to fight to overcome evil is within my own heart. Reality should always trump my desires!

Here’s an example: It’s irrational that society views a human fetus as either precious or disposable based solely on the desire of the mother. When prenatal human life is illogically seen as disposable no human life is safe.

Here’s another one: People have a right to practice gender denial. They are free to ignore biology and believe their desires and feelings instead, but they don’t have a right to impose their irrational denial on society.

Selfish desire
Isn’t a map
Or an app
That leads
To happiness.
It’s a trap
That needs
To be handled carefully
So that it doesn’t
Enslave you for life.

What we call self-love is often
Self-destruction in disguise,
Denying and distorting reality
To gratify our desires.

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My appreciation of “Pastor Appreciation Month”

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Steve Simms

True pastor appreciation
Brings us to the realization
That to pastor
Is to facilitate demonstrations
Of the presence, power, and love
Of the risen Jesus,
Not just to give talks about Him.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. It’s a great time for you to appreciate the joy of pastoring by encouraging and helping other people to daily follow and obey the living Jesus. I appreciate the professional pastors who haven’t settled into routine and haven’t given up their passion for the fire of God to fall.

Most professional pastors start out loving Jesus and wanting to lead people to Him, but their zeal is often drowned out by the demands and expectations of the religious system. To stop being the pastor of an institutional church isn’t to quit the ministry. Ministry is proclaiming Christ and serving others in the name of Jesus. All Christ-followers are called to be in the ministry wherever they are.

The Bible calls Jesus both the Great and the Chief Shepherd. As under shepherds, people who pastor need to train and disciple people how to daily hear the voice of the ever-living Jesus and do what He says.

Someone who pastors (helps others to follow Jesus) is a pastor whether paid for it or not. The 50+ New Testament one another commands show that all Christ-followers are called and ordained (set apart) to minister to one another.

Team Jesus needs coaches, not just lecturers — people who will train and disciple others to daily follow and obey the risen Jesus. Too often those called to be coaches in the body of Christ have surrendered their calling and become instead weekly lecturers and local church CEOs.

Some Christ-followers are hiring Christian coaches to train and disciple them. That’s the function of pastoring. Let’s freely pastor one another. Anytime you help someone to follow and obey Jesus more closely you are engaging in the ministry of pastoring.

Jesus came to start a fire — to fill His followers with passionate love for Him. To pastor is to stir up that fire in people, not to make them passively dependent on religious meetings. Pastoring is to make faithful and passionate disciples of Christ, not to perform for passive church spectators.

Jesus always has more for us. That’s why we are called to follow Him and be led by the Spirit. Like Peter and John said: “We must obey God rather than men.” Step out and start pastoring today!

It’s Pastor Appreciation Month. I appreciate everyone who pastors (who helps people daily follow and obey the ever-living Jesus)!

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Religion is predictable. The Holy Spirit is unpredictable.

Posted on September 30, 2022 by Steve Simms

As a Pharisee, Nicodemus preferred predictable, programmed, and rigid religion, but Jesus told him that God’s Spirit is unpredictable like the wind. (See John chapter three.) Religiously satisfying the flesh (our human desires and our need to look good before God and people) isn’t enough.

We need to come alive to and to fully enter into a new kind of life, the unpredictable and free flowing life of the Spirit. Paul said: “Those who are led by the Spirit by the Spirit are the children of God.”

Courageously experiencing the unpredictable joy of being led by God’s Spirit throughout the day will awaken you to ongoing, childlike exuberance and faith! It’s not enough to just rock the boat a bit. (That can deceitfully rock you to sleep.) Instead, lay down your pride, daily step out onto the water, and walk in the Spirit.

A predictable church service misrepresents the creative way God wants to lead us by His Spirit. When church attempts to program God, it quenches the Holy Spirit. He can’t be programmed! The rigid predictability of church neglects to prepare us for the unpredictability of life.

If your attitude and actions are taking your life in a direction you don’t want to go, change them! (Sin is deceitful. It can make you think you’re free while it holds you captive.)

Jesus didn’t demand that the Roman government make sin illegal. Instead, He told people to “repent” — to “go and sin no more.”

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Did Jesus say, “Blessed are those who love themselves”?

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Steve Simms

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” not, “Blessed are those who love themselves.” It takes humility, self-restraint, and self-denial to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Pride puts self ahead of neighbor.

Self-love doesn’t show us what love is; Christ’s love does. It inspires and empowers us to lay down our life for our neighbor.

Our deep human need to be loved is only fulfilled when we open our heart to encounter God’s love which is greater than all our sin. We’ve been told that we need more self-love, but perhaps what we really need is to experience more of God’s love.

Because self-love is self-focused its easily deceptive. Because God’s love is Christ-focused, it leads us to truth and freedom. The second greatest commandment is often twisted to focus on self-love. Its intention, however, is to focus us on loving our neighbor.

Jesus loves me. I don’t need to focus on loving myself. His love is enough! Instead of trying to love yourself more, learn to experience and celebrate the amazing love that Jesus has for you.

The second greatest commandment is about neighbor-love, not self-love. It’s a command to love your neighbor more, not to love yourself more. Self-love is assumed. The focus on the 1st commandment is all out love for God; the 2nd is loving neighbors as much as you already do yourself.

If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t defend yourself or be offended if someone insults you. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t get upset when you don’t get your way. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t be so concerned about trying to make yourself happy. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t spend money on things that make you feel better. If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t jump out of the way when you saw danger headed toward you.

Ongoing self-sedation often leads to degradation but self-surrender to the ever-living Jesus leads to jubilation. Unless we know the depths of our sin, we won’t know the inexpressible glory of our salvation.

Being humbled is no fun. The more we focus on self-love the harder it is to obey the Bible command to humble yourself.

The closer I get to the Light of Christ the more I’m aware of my sin and the more I realize how amazing is His grace and love for me. Preachers should proclaim the risen Jesus to people who don’t know about Him and encourage those who do know Jesus to listen to Him more than to them.

Posted in deny yourself, die to self, dying to self, Examine yourself, love yourself, self-denial | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When you believe in Jesus you rely on Him every moment

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Steve Simms

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” ―C.S. Lewis. When you believe in Jesus you rely on Him every moment

Believing is trusting–
Relying on someone
So much that
We comply
With what they say.

If we aren’t
Living in reliance
On the risen Jesus,
We’re living in defiance
Of Him.

To believe
In something
Is to rely
On it.
To rely
On Jesus
To comply
With His will.

My self-reliance
Puts me in defiance
Of God’s mercy
And grace.

When I deeply consider
My insufficient ability,
My unreliability,
And my emotional instability,
I realize
That it’s not wise
To rely on
Myself alone.

Belief in self
Eventually collapses.
Believe in Jesus
Who never lapses.

Believing in Jesus isn’t as easy as we’ve been led to understand. It involves relying on Him instead of on self-effort. When you believe in a chair you trust it; you rely on it; you surrender to it. When you believe in Jeus, you do the same with Him. Faith isn’t just a declaration of belief. It’s an ongoing demonstration of belief.

The more we trust in self-effort, the less we have faith in and reliance on the ever-living Jesus. The more we believe in (rely on) self, the less we believe in (rely on) Jesus. “He must increase; I must decrease.” Rely on Jesus first — more than on self, church, preachers, government, media, or anything or anyone else!

Pride often causes us to believe in (trust in) self-effort more than we believe in (trust in) the risen Jesus. When we truly believe in Jesus, we trust Him and rely on Him throughout the day. Until we do that we haven’t fully believed. To say we believe in Jesus if we don’t trust and rely on Him is a lie. We may acknowledge His existence, but we don’t fully believe.

To fully rely on God’s grace, we must deeply realize that we are lost and hopeless without His mercy and forgiveness. Following the risen Jesus and following self are mutually exclusive. We can’t do both at the exact same moment.

To rely on myself more than I rely on the ever-living Jesus is a sin. Instead of trying to love yourself more, start loving your neighbor (and your enemy) as much as you already love yourself.

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Self-righteousness is sneaky

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Steve Simms

One of the reasons we Christian humans don’t live without sin is that when we start to believe that we have stopped sinning we accidently slip into the sin of pride and become modern religious Pharisees. That’s so easy to do and to not even realize that we are doing it. Yes, we have power over sin, but the devil deceives us into believing we are without sin long before we really are. Then we are eager to “cast the first stone” at those we see as still sinners. Paul who as a Pharisee thought he was holy, persecuted and tried to kill the Christians because he thought they were sinning against the Law. History shows that self-righteousness is perhaps a very dangerous sin. Because of that sin, the Pharisees had Jesus executed by Rome. After leaving the Pharisees to follow and obey the living Jesus, Paul saw the truth and wrote in Scripture: “I am the chief of sinners,” “O wretched man that I am,” and “I know that within me, that is within my flesh dwells no good thing.” I’ve never seen those biblical truths on a bumper sticker.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” (1 John 1:8) It’s easy to overlook our unintentional sins (and our sins that we do in unawareness) and to think we’re sinless when we’re not. Here’s an example: Quenching the Spirit is a sin. Unless we do every single thing that the Spirit tells us to without resisting Him in any way, we sin by quenching the Spirit. If we miss the mark (even once–even a tiny bit) we sin. Anywhere or anytime I’m not perfectly aligned with God’s will, I am sinning. It’s easy to overlook our unintentional sins (and our sins that we do in unawareness) and to think we’re sinless when we’re not. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Is it good for people to sample your example?

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Steve Simms

A bad example
Extinguishes
Good words.

When words
And actions
Contradict,
Believe the actions,
Not the words.

Before you follow
People’s example
Check out
How their behavior
Is turning out
For them.

Be careful
What you watch
Hear or read
Because it may lead
You somewhere
You don’t want to go.

You’re a role model,
Whether you
Want to be or not.
Whatever rolls
Out of your life
Is an example
For other people
To sample
Or to avoid.

People tend
To imitate others.
Make your actions
Worth imitating.

The way you live
Your daily life
Tells everybody
What you really believe.

When you do things
You don’t want
Others to do,
You encourage people
To do those things
By setting a bad example
For them to follow.

When selflessness
Is replaced
By self-love
Happiness
Is harder to find.

When you’re
Extra kind
You can unwind
People’s anger.

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