The joy of being a Jesus-first person

Posted on October 2, 2021 by Steve Simms

When the risen Jesus is priority one, it clearly shines through what a person says and does. Jesus-first people keep Jesus always on their mind and overflowing from their heart. They are so filled with joy and excitement about what Jesus is doing, that they can’t keep quiet about Him.

It only took one glimpse of the risen Jesus to make me a Jesus-first person. That started a joyous fire in my heart that’s burned for decades.

Simply hearing the name of Jesus causes Jesus-first people to light up with joy. It’s difficult to be a Jesus-first person if you only have second-hand contact with Jesus.

Regardless of politics, social status, race, religion, or nationality, when Jesus-first people meet, they connect heart-to-heart. If you open your heart and humbly ask God to make you a Jesus-first person, He’ll revolutionize your priorities from the inside out.

Jesus-first people stay focused on Jesus throughout the day and avoid anything that tries to distract them from His presence. Jesus-first people are His biggest, most faithful and loyal fans. The Bible calls them disciples. For Jesus-first people, the priorities of life on earth grow dim in the daily light of His radiant glory.

Churches seldom welcome Jesus-first people, because they follow the risen Jesus more than a pastor. Jesus-first people often find that church distracts their focus away from the ongoing presence of the risen Jesus.

Jesus-first people run all their thoughts, feelings, desires, and opinions by Jesus first, and if He doesn’t approve them, they lay them aside. Jesus-first people prioritize Jesus before self, family, friends, country, pride, status, money, politics, race, sports, etc. For a Jesus-first person, daily following and obeying the risen Jesus, matters most!

Some of my most powerful experiences of ekklesia have been one-time, Christ-centered, heart connection with a Jesus-first stranger. Church is built on organization and hierarchy, but the ekklesia Jesus is building is based on shared revelation and Jesus-first heart connection. Churches will never unite as one, but Jesus-first people are humbly connected, heart-to-heart, even if they don’t know each other. The less that people focus on thoughts from God, the more they disagree with each other.

Biblical Christianity prioritizes Jesus-first! See Matthew 6:33. Jesus-first people refuse to allow ungodly thoughts to stay in their mind. Too many Christians deprioritize Jesus to a Sunday meeting, a devotional time, a prayer group, etc., and leave Him out of daily life.

Jesus-first people,
Called Jesus Freaks,
Used to be everywhere.
Now they’re so rare.

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Warning: Trivialized Christianity is not a substitute for the risen Jesus

Posted on October 1, 2021 by Steve Simms

The attempt to make Christianity acceptable (even comfortable) has made it trivial. Trivialized Christianity is a century’s-long attempt to tame, cage, domesticate, and control the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (the risen Jesus). A trivialized Christian finds many things to be of more interest than the living Jesus.

Today people are longing for more than the trivial–for reality and significance. Trivialized Christianity won’t satisfy them. Religious trifles and trinkets can’t satisfy a hungry heart, but the living Jesus can!

Religious trifles are far removed from biblical Christianity. The more church engages in trivial pursuits, the less power it has.

Jesus made the lame to walk, but too many of His followers walk all over the lame. Trivialized Christianity breeds religious pride. Actualized Christianity produces a lifestyle of genuine humility.

When the glory of “Christ in you” continually breaks out and overflows from your heart, trivialized Christianity loses its appeal. When Christianity focuses on insignificant things, it disrespects the living Jesus.

Trivialized eyes have trouble seeing the maximized Jesus, the Lord of Lords before whom every knee will bow. Jesus wants to be the Commander of your heart, not a trinket that adorns it.

The living Jesus is powerful and fantastic; the scholastic Jesus is academic and plastic. Don’t just study Jesus; obey Him!

Trivialized Christianity would rather hear a weekly sermon on the Bible instead of daily reading and obeying it with an open heart. Trivialized Christianity prefers to hear talks about the Jesus of history rather than to daily follow and obey the living Jesus.

Trivialized Christianity is a spiritual lullaby. We laugh about people sleeping in church, but what’s funny about an organization that puts people to sleep?

“Christ in you” needs to be an actual, inner influence in Christians, not just theology. Internalize Jesus; don’t trivialize Him. Detrivialize Christianity. Make Jesus an active part of your life, 24/7/365.

Christianity should be the realization (not the trivialization) of “Christ in you.” To trivialize Jesus denies His Lordship and preeminence. To trivialize Christianity is to rob it of much of its power.

Trivialized Christianity trains people to be a passive audience and to ignore the the thoughts that come directly from God. It puts out the fire of God. A sign of trivialized Christianity is ceremony without testimony, words without works.

Jesus said that people who believe in Him will experience inner rivers of living water. To trivialize Christianity is to minimize its impact in your life. Learn how to maximize Jesus in your life.

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We need a humble eye, not humble pie

Posted on September 30, 2021 by Steve Simms

A humble eye learns to see things the way God sees them, not the way we see them. It sees life and all it’s amenities as undeserved gifts.

Humility has nothing to boast about. It doesn’t pretend to outsmart reality. Humility realizes and admits that our desires, feelings, and opinions may be completely off track.

Humility is the willingness to learn and to accept the truth, even when you don’t like it. It is to be open to correction and immune to rejection. To embrace humility is to be more concerned about conspiracy and deception in your own heart than in the world around you.

Humility is freedom from self-focus. It isn’t distracted with a desire for recognition, approval, or applause. Humility is the willingness to do small things that seem insignificant and to do them well.

Humility is the courage to be honest. Pride likes to hide behind lies.

Humility lets God set the rules, seeks to live by them, and openly admits any failures to do so. It believes that God loves us, not because we are lovable, but because He is loving and merciful. If you won’t learn from “Christ in you,” you surely won’t learn from a sermon.

The way
To pray
Is to say
Humble words
From the heart.

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It takes courage to think about humility

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Steve Simms

Humility is what it is. It doesn’t try to impress other people. The phrase “humble beginnings” implies humility is something to be left behind, but to abandon humility is to surrender to ego.

Humility requires being honest about your faults, and mistakes. It requires the courage to openly admit when you’re wrong and the willingness to be looked down on by other people. Humility requires the loss of self-focus.

The feeling of awe is humbling. Our human nature is only willing to experience it briefly and infrequently.

Humility is open to learn. It is open to correction. Ego believes it already has things figured out.

Humility seeks to see things as they really are, not as it wants them to be. It recognizes and openly acknowledges personal weakness, flaws, and mistakes. When ego rises, humility sets like the sun.

True self-awareness causes great humility. As Paul of Tarsus said: “O wretched man that I am.”

Humility is to consider yourself as no better than anyone else. It feels no need to have other people’s applause, appreciation, or approval. It freely abandons self-focus.

Humility overflows with appreciation, gratitude, and thanksgiving. It realizes that even its merits are flawed and need mercy. Humility never boasts.

Humility produces inner peace and freedom from anxiety. It says no to ego.

The use of logic requires humility. We have to admit that there are laws, principles, and circumstances that we can’t control.

Life begins and ends with humility. It’s a gift that we’ve done nothing to deserve. Human pride is but an illusion.

To truly have a relationship with God requires that we check our pride at the door. Christian discipleship requires humility. Ego will never fully obey God.

What the Bible says about you: 
"Humble yourself."
"Deny yourself."
"Consider others better than yourself."
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You’ve got ’em (thoughts from God)

Posted on September 28, 2021 by Steve Simms

Thoughts from God aren’t hidden from you. When you don’t notice them, it’s because you’re hiding from them. If you begin to notice and focus on thoughts from God, you’ll begin to experience amazing new perspectives on life. Thoughts from God, when pondered with a tender, open heart, bear loud witness to His reality!

Humans aren’t deaf to thoughts from God, but we do tend to use selective hearing to avoid them. If you don’t want to notice thoughts from God, they’ll pass through your mind unnoticed.

God is trying to teach us by dropping thoughts into our mind, giving us flashes of inspiration, and awakening our conscience. Thoughts from God are often called “conscience” because they direct us toward good and away from bad. Will we respond to or reject God’s efforts to guide us?

Our culture believes the lie that says that people who are skeptical about God are smarter than those who believe in Him. Because pride sees thoughts from God as hindering its plans and freedom, it overlooks them. When we are living in disobedience to God, thoughts from Him are seen as unwelcome intruders. When we’re unwilling to obey God, thoughts from Him are an inconvenience.

Every human experiences thoughts from God. A prophet notices, ponders, obeys, and proclaims them. Church is a vaccine too many Christians blindly accept without question–taking sermons as truth while ignoring thoughts from God.

To admit that a thought that comes to you is from God, makes you responsible for how you respond to it. It’s easier to deny it. Many people seek noise, distraction, and activity because they help them ignore thoughts from God.

Unbelief causes people to deny or ignore the thoughts that come to their mind directly from God. People who ignore thoughts from God often think that people who focus on thoughts from God are crazy.

Thoughts from God don’t contradict what He has revealed in the Bible. However, theology, thoughts about God, should never be used as an excuse to ignore thoughts that come directly from God to your mind.

If churches trained people to notice and obey thoughts from God, Christians wouldn’t be dependent on Sunday sermons anymore. Most Christians seem to trust sermons by mere men, more than they trust the thoughts that God directly sends to their mind.

Having a strong desire to do something doesn’t make it morally right. That’s one reason we need to pay attention to thoughts from God. To claim to be a Christian without having the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) flowing thru you is to be a branch cut off of the vine.

Secondary Christianity sees obeying Jesus as a low priority. Biblical Christianity’s focus is continually on obeying Jesus. If you don’t realize that Christ is in you, there’s a good chance He isn’t. When God deposits His thoughts in your mind, don’t ignore them.

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Thoughts from God (are common)

Posted on September 26, 2021 by Steve Simms

God is able to put thoughts in your mind. Ideas about God aren’t enough. Learn to recognize the thoughts that He sends you.

Thoughts that nudge you toward goodness, kindness, peace, and patience aren’t from yourself. They’re thoughts from God. Thoughts of gratitude and appreciation don’t originate with you. They come directly from God.

Thoughts from God are like the beauty of nature. They flood our mind, but we get so focused on self we neglect to notice them. Thoughts from God continually pass through the human brain unnoticed, not because they’re rare, but because they’re common.

Christianity teaches people thoughts about God, but too often it trains them to ignore the thoughts from God that flow through their mind. Be Spirit-led. Ask God to give you a thought. Then wait for His gift to appear. Aha!

Jesus is called “Emmanuel,” which means, “God with us.” He’s not watching us from a distance. You can hear His thoughts in you. If churches trained people to notice and obey thoughts from God, Christians wouldn’t be dependent on Sunday sermons anymore.

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The myth that modern society “follows the science”

Posted on September 25, 2021 by Steve Simms

We can’t “follow the science” and follow our feelings, desires, and opinions at the same time. When we, humans don’t like something, we tend to default to our opinions about it instead of pursuing the truth about it. Since our feelings, desires, and opinions are sometimes wrong, neglecting to fact check them, frequently leads us into denying the science.

Redefining words to make them fit our feelings, desires, and opinions isn’t “following the science.” Here’s an odd use of words that seems to ignore science. Stopping reproduction by taking a prenatal life is called “reproductive health.” In a society that denies basic biology, the phrase “follow the science” is meaningless.

When we learn from our mistakes, we get closer to scientific truth. When we deny them we drift into darkness. If we followed the science, we wouldn’t be trashing our planet. If we followed reason, logic, and science, we’d be nicer to each other.

Ask, "What's going on in me?"
And look within, rationally.
Objective, detached observation
Of your inner self
(Not driven by your
Desires, feelings, and opinions)
Can help set you free
From inner tyranny.

You consist of both physical body parts and immaterial consciousness, ideas, emotions, and rationality. Everything in your house that looks like it was designed, probably was; the same for things in nature.

Subatomic physics has shown that there are particles that don’t obey natural laws. Doesn’t that make them supernatural?

You can hide your guilt from other people, but that is denial, not science. Guilt can’t be explained away. Denying it won’t make it disappear. Only asking for and receiving forgiveness can dispense with it.

If you ask the unknown Designer to speak to you and then begin to listen, you’ll notice healing thoughts that don’t come from you. Examine those thoughts to see if they match reality.

You can’t save up time for the future, but you can spend it wisely today. Thank you for taking the time to consider these ideas.

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Optimize what beautifies your life

Posted on September 21, 2021 by Steve Simms

Negative emotions are optional. You have the opportunity to opt out of them by optimizing your optimism. A profound purpose produces passion and persistence. Do you have a compelling reason to live joyfully?

Think of something positive and helpful that you rarely do. Then do it consistently for a week and notice how it improves your life.

The more I pursue kindness, the more happiness happens in my life. People almost always respond positively to heart-felt kindness. Try it and see.

Take the time and make the effort to install helpful habits into your life. Uninstall negative and/or harmful habits.

To optimize your optimism, get your hopes up. Train yourself to expect good things in your life. The fear of disappointment and/or failure causes many people to minimize their hope and surrender to negativity without a fight.

If you want a better life, always strive to express the best of yourself and to overcome the worst. Repeat thoughts and behaviors that make your life better. Resist the ones that make your life worse.

Put your mind on thoughts that optimize your attitude. Target your thinking. Discover and continually spotlight thoughts that produce peace and joy.

Be a hope connoisseur. Consume positive, uplifting media, not negative, degrading media. An undefended mind is continually victimized by marauder thoughts that sneak in by stealth to torment and pillage it.

Without self-mastery, you’ll frequently feel like a jigsaw puzzle poured out of the box, completely unassembled. Courage is the willingness to take positive action when you feel afraid.

Keep your eyes on what beautifies. When we count our blessings, we always make the list too short. The kind of person that you become in life is more important than the money and things that you’re able to accumulate.

The myth that nothing produced everything makes life meaningless. To be pure, Christianity shouldn’t be mixed with anything that distracts people from the living Jesus. God’s plan for me is better than mine. Having people sit thru sermons isn’t the optimal way to help them optimize a Spirit-led lifestyle. See. Romans 8:14.

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Bible “overseers” are supposed to be like officials in football

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Steve Simms

I believe the Bible shows that Christian leaders should monitor and give humble oversight to worship gatherings, not dominate or control them. When Christians meet without the freedom to say and/or do what Jesus tells the to, the Spirit will be quenched.

I love it when Christ-followers gather and wait for Jesus to speak to people and prompt them to say and/or do what He says. To say that a Christian gathering can’t be led by the living Jesus (without human control) is to express doubt in His resurrection.

When Christians meet, they should be free to hear and obey the living Jesus. Any elders (mature Christians) present should observe the meeting, overseeing it and offering humble, loving correction if anything is said or done that disrupts the Holy Spirit’s leadership.

The Bible sees Christian leaders as plural, working as equals in a Spirit-led team, not as individuals. It calls them “episkopos” (overseers), meaning “those who look intently.” Their job is not to control a Christian gathering with human authority, but to observe and monitor it, (like officials in football observe and monitor a game). In a worship gathering, the goal of Christian overseers is to focus people’s attention on the living Jesus, not on themselves, as they closely watch in case they need to humbly correct anything that begins to shut down the Holy Spirit’s control of the meeting.

Powerless forms of godliness are lullabies that continually lull Christians into spiritual sleep. Christ in you is the present day “hope of glory,” not a done deal to be kept tucked away in the back of your heart until you die. If you believe you’ve maxed out your relationship with God, you won’t grow any closer to Him.

Christianity, without ongoing awareness of the presence of the living Jesus, is incomplete. An incomplete view of Christianity causes us to settle for less than God has for us. There’s much more than we perceive. God’s grace is complete, but my humility has plenty of room to grow. See: James 4:6.

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It’s time to move beyond skin color to joyful heart connection!

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Steve Simms 
No matter the color
Of the chin
I love to see kind faces
Radiating love from within!

History's big color-lie
That's far too slow to die
Says, "The darker the skin, 
The less valuable 
Is the person within." 

It's time we fully realize
That what matters lies
Under the skin
And in the heart!

Seeing color of skin
Isn't a sin,
But evaluating people
By their skin
Is. 

If history's tax on tea
And today's mask on me
Are called tyranny,
What about slavery?

A particular skin color doesn’t define beauty or character and the ability to speak English doesn’t define intelligence. Skin color is a superficial difference that history cruelly and falsely declared to be super important. Until history openly exposes and admits the cruel horrors and brutality of slavery and Jim Crow, it will be ever incomplete.

The ridiculous idea, that the color of the skin can somehow make a person less than fully human, has produced massive pain and injustice. The color-based victims of slavery and Jim Crow, for the most part, have been kept out of history. We know almost nothing about their lives.

It’s time to move beyond skin color to joyful heart connection! Search for: Off the RACE Track book.

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