Jesus steps are better than “baby steps”

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Steve Simms

Every step you take with the living Jesus brings you closer to the truth that sets you free. Every step prompted by the living Jesus will deepen your relationship with Him and will increase His power in your life. When Jesus is prompting you to take a step, don’t wait for human approval.

One solitary, Jesus-prompted step is more powerful in your life than a Fitbit full of self-directed steps. Take Jesus-prompted steps every day and you’ll begin to experience His miracles as a regular part of your life. One small, Jesus-prompted step can lead to a giant leap in spiritual growth!

Jesus-steps don’t follow a plan or a program. Jesus said, “I am the way.” They follow Him. To take Jesus-steps, we need to be directed by the living God, not by our own feelings or desires. When you take a Jesus-prompted step, don’t look back, or you’ll miss the miracle in front of you. Jesus-prompted steps will lead you outside your comfort zone and into His miracle zone.

When I look back in my mind and trace my Jesus-steps, I’m amazed how the Lord has led my life! Every time I’ve taken a Jesus-prompted step into the unknown, I’ve grown.

If you’re stuck in the past, you won’t have the faith to Jesus-step into the future. Every failure that motivates you to take a Jesus-prompted step, is a success. When you take Jesus-prompted steps, you walk in His footprints.

Jesus-prompted steps always involve humility. You can’t take them with pride. Jesus-prompted steps deny the odds and produce amazing outcomes. Sometimes God lets our problems pile up to motivate us to take a Jesus-prompted step that we’ve been ignoring.

It takes two to take Jesus-steps; Christ in you and you’re cooperation. The missing step in your life is probably the one you that you sense Jesus is prompting you to take. Take the Jesus-prompted step that you’ve been putting off.

Begin taking daily Jesus-steps and soon you will flow with divine choreography. The steps you take, under the influence of the living Jesus, will change your life and intoxicate you with love.

Hearing God’s melody and the beat of His heart, will make you want to dance with Jesus-steps. If you lose yourself in Jesus-steps, you’ll find joy like never before.

The living Jesus can choreograph my life far better than I can. When life tries to give you a blackout, let the living Jesus give you a light-up. Repentance is to take a step backwards and do your best to make things right.

Spiritual growth is a lot of Jesus-steps put together. You don’t have to understand the entire Bible. Just begin to take Jesus-steps day by day. Taking daily Jesus-steps will teach you how to actively follow Him.

You can’t walk in the Spirit by just Sunday-sitting in church. It’s a daily thing! The secret to “walk in the Spirit” is to begin to regularly take Jesus-prompted steps. Let the living Jesus choreograph your every step. A few occasional footsteps with Jesus do not make a Christ-follower.

Begin to baby step with the living Jesus and one day you’ll be giant stepping with Him. It’s hard to take Jesus-steps when we’re following our own opinion. Take distinct Jesus-steps by listening to His voice & doing what He says.

“Walk in the Spirit.” Let your steps be prompted by the living Jesus. To “rest in the Lord” is not to do nothing. It’s to wait for His prompting with eagerness to obey. If you follow and obey the living Jesus, He’ll lead you to the right steps at the right time.

Take some Jesus steps-everyday, until all your days are filled with them. To begin a lifestyle of Jesus-prompted steps, you have to be willing to take the first one.

Jesus stepping:
Sensing His nudging
And obeying
Without begrudging.

Take one Jesus-step
After another
And soon you’ll discover:
He’s propelling you.

The crowd follows
The status quo
But the living Jesus
Wants you to go
With Him.

Inside you,
The living Jesus
Longs for your heart
To fully surrender to Him.

Let the living Jesus
Be your stepping stone,
The solid rock
You build your life on.

Christianity is more powerful when lived on your feet in the street than on your seat in church. Daily Bible reading is a great gift in my life–stirring my heart with love for Jesus and training me to hear and obey His voice. If Christians don’t share testimonies, people won’t know the amazing things that Jesus has done in their lives.

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Apollo G? No apology . . .

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Steve Simms

A sincere apology helps two people. It eases one’s hurt and relieves the other’s guilt.

It takes great strength to humbly apologize. To apologize is to value truth more than you do your pride. Reluctance to apologize when you’re wrong isn’t a matter of logic, but of pride.

A true apology includes an admission of wrongdoing. Some people will never apologize. You’ll feel better if you forgive them anyway. To sincerely apologize is to value another person’s feelings more than your own.

I was wrong.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
These are words
Of courage and healing.

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Grudge-be-gone–grudge-busters to set you free!

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Steve Simms

To retaliate against hatred with hatred is to imitate evil instead of good. It is to escalate the hatred. Hold forgiveness; let grudges go.

Forgiveness heals hurts. Revenge extends them. It takes courage to behave better than the people who hurt you. To ignore the nudge from your conscience and refuse to budge from your grudge, isn’t sanity. A grudge is a life-disturber.

Grudges are like ghosts. They are invisible ideas that people allow to haunt them. When grudges get going they release a floodgate of hatred. To let a grudge get a grip on your mind is to allow anger to rip off your inner peace. To hold a grudge is to give someone you don’t like power over your life.

Grudges are the bars in the fence that entraps your mind in focusing on people’s bad behaviors. A grudge makes you the only judge and jury.

The more your grudges the greater will be your pain. Forgiveness brings freedom from your emotional strain.

Revenge keeps anger swinging back and forth on the hinge of hatred. Hatred is the absence of love. It’s overcome by spreading love, not by withholding love.

Reverse retaliation is powerful. Get back at evil back with good. If you want to retaliate, use kindness. Jesus teaches us: “Do good to those who hurt you.”

Defensiveness sees people as dangerous. Kindness sees them with compassion. Humble people seldom hate.

Retaliation focuses your enemy’s anger. Kindness confuses and distracts him.

To be glad
Remember the good
Done to you
And forget the bad.

For help in forgiving think about this: The Bible works within the people who read it with an open, humble heart and changes them from the inside out.

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What does skin color mean?

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Steve Simms

Scientifically we have race all wrong. In reality, white is the blending of every color and black is the absence of color.

To feel like you’re better than someone because of your skin color is total nonsense.

“Take the lowest place,”
That’s what Jesus said.
If we all did that
He could be the Head.

For creative, hopeful and inspiring ideas about race, check out this.

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inspirational wake-up thoughts

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Steve Simms

When something deeply inspires you, you’ll be like an elephant and never forget it.

Counting sheep will put you to sleep. Counting the elephants in the room will wake you up!

If you make your home your happy place, you’ll have no need to imagine it. You’ll get to live there!

May your happiness be as big as an elephant!

Let this herd of uplifting elephants trample the negativity in your life.

Paying attention to the uplifting elephants in your room, can change your life. They’re not irelephant!

When obvious, optimistic observations are overlooked, they become inspirational elephants the room.

Persistently reading positive platitudes will gradually produce a positive attitude in you.

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Glad to be overjoyed

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Steve Simms

The next time you see someone who is obviously overjoyed, let yourself share in the delight. Being overjoyed becomes a common occurrence when you believe that delight is your destiny.

Dogs are often overjoyed and freely frolic without embarrassment. We could learn a lot from them. If you playfully frolic and do a silly dance, you’ll soon begin to feel happier.

Make your mind a glad-theater. Fill it with heart-felt dreams and treasured memories.

Life offers many opportunities to be overjoyed, but they’re often overlooked. There are many encouraging elephants hidden in plain sight in the rooms of your life. Noticing them will cheer you up!

Being overjoyed is often misunderstood and seen as inappropriate. The truth is: Everyday invites us to delight. Even when you’re overwhelmed, you can still find reasons to be overjoyed!

Be a “glad-iator” for joy. Fight against the thoughts and feelings that try to keep you from delight.

They’re many words for happiness: gladness, bliss, felicity, jollity, delight, jubilation, euphoria, cheerfulness, joy. Choose one and look up its definition.

For the most part your conscience won’t let you be bad and be glad at the same time. Choose glad.

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The “you-niverse” of self-focus & resentment

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Steve Simms

The “you-niverse” is tiny and confining. The universe is huge and liberating. Think outside your self-box.

Freedom from anxiety and compulsion comes through self-forgetfulness. Self-centeredness can’t achieve it. Self-absorption creates loneliness, not happiness. Self-centeredness and joy refuse to coexist.

To drive you don’t focus on smudges on the windshield. You look beyond them. To be happy don’t focus on self, look beyond it. To be self-concerned in ‘my, my, my”–causes many unnecessary problems.

To be self-absorbed is to be caught up in an ongoing whirlwind of tormenting thoughts and emotions. Self-focus causes you to obsess over your feelings and self-analysis, leaving you to bask in anxiety. Other-focus creates compassion.

Self-absorption always results in a distortion of the truth. Self-detachment brings truth into focus. Self-focus intensifies your needs and desires. Self-detachment sets you free from them.

The fuller you are of yourself, the emptier you are of unrestrained joy. Instead of insisting that your opinions are right, treat people right, with kindness and respect. To truly understand a situation, we must detach our self-interest from it. The more you distance from self-focus, the better you will understand various points of view.

Detachment lets you forgive those who hurt you, while appreciating what you learned thru the pain. Resentment is a bear trap that many people step into and drag around their entire life.

To resent is to allow the pain from a past experience to be “re-sent” thru your heart, every time you think about it. You can’t have both contentment and resentment. I choose contentment.

Self-pity is a lonely city–population 1. To forgive is to give up your perceived right to accuse or blame someone. It doesn’t require forgetfulness.

It takes courage and strength to forgive. Holding a grudge is a symptom of weakness.

Like barnacles on a boat, we can be carrying biases and be completely unaware of them. It takes courage to find them and scrape them off.

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To confuse the things of God & the things of Caesar is to cross into idolatry.

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Steve Simms

The twisting and distorting of conscience is of human origin. Conscience itself comes from God.

To ignore God’s daily presence and power is perhaps a stronger form of atheism than the verbal denial of His existence.

No matter how much you cater to your crater of inner emptiness, only surrender to the living God can fill it.

Too many church goers believe more in material power than they do in spiritual power.

Church services are built on what is controllable, but God wants us to experience Him in ways that are beyond human control.

The living Jesus can only be encountered and obeyed through your own personal experience.

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“U” thoughts for you

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Steve Simms

The universe is incomplete without “u.” Your life is significant.

You are “you-nique.” You’re a priceless, one-of-a-kind work of art.

When you’re headed in the wrong direction, you have the right to make a “you-turn.”

In the great race for conception, your sperm won. That makes you a winner!

The human self is like a spoke on a wheel. It doesn’t function very well all by itself.

More than matter matters! What’s unseen is often more important than what’s seen!

Self-interest can easily substitute for truth without your awareness.

When life shuts off your “you-tilities,” prayer can restore power.

To follow yourself is to go in circles. To ignore your own desires frees you up to follow Jesus. (Experience: The Joy Of Early Christianity.)

Lifeless tradition stands in opposition to humble, heart-felt, spontaneous, Spirit-led Christianity.

Compassion is a much better counselor than anger can ever be.

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Take awhile & smile

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Steve Simms

A journey of many smiles can begin with a grin. Take some time today to go the extra smile. Make a frequent smile a regular part of your daily lifestyle.

If you’ve lost your smile, you won’t find in in your teeth. You’ll find it in your heart.

Before you judge a smiler for being “too happy,” walk a mile with a smile on your face. Happiness doesn’t require a perfect norm.

Happiness is often only a smile away. You haven’t missed the boat. It’s not too late to get on board with happiness. It’s not erratic to let yourself be ecstatic about the gift of being alive.

Even when you’re
Going through a trial,
You can smile awhile.

To embrace joy, repeatedly run a smile across your face, at a very slow pace. Smile after smile, keep putting them on your face.

Cheer up, because if you’re reading this, you’re blessed today with the incredible gift of life. Positive thoughts are mood makers that you can use to elevate your attitude. Words attract and repel. Find words that attract inner peace and repel misery.

Our feelings and desires are frequently false, distracting us from truth. All feelings, desires, and behaviors are not equal. Discernment matters.

Words read,
Heard or said,
Can fill your head
With joy or dread.
Don’t be misled.

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