Fight for your dependence by surrendering

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Steve Simms

To answer the Bible’s call to daily dependence on Jesus is to really live. If Jesus isn’t working in and thru you, you’re not experiencing what He wants you to.

If you don’t focus on Jesus, you won’t be able to follow Him. If you do, you won’t want to follow anything or anyone else. You can’t follow the risen Jesus with hollow words. He requires total surrender and dependence.

If you won’t hear directly from Jesus and respond to what He tells you, what you hear in a sermon won’t help you much. Christian beliefs are no substitute for a godly lifestyle. “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.” There’s no reason to claim Christianity, if you don’t want to obey the risen Jesus.

Grace doesn’t replace obedience to the living Jesus. It empowers it.

When the living Jesus is your attraction, all the rest is just distraction. Christianity, without daily dependence on the living Jesus, is just an empty shell.

Discipleship is surrendering to what Jesus wants, not demanding what you want. Biblical Christ-followers live to please God, not to satisfy their own desires. If you don’t align your desires with God’s will, they’ll gradually malign your life. However, if you let Jesus have His way in your thoughts and feelings, He’ll fill you with light and delight!

Get to know Jesus the way you get to your friends, thru relationship, not by hearing lectures about them. To miss out on the joy of heart-to-heart interaction with Jesus, is to miss it all! People who truly believe that Jesus is alive, should continually try to make direct connection with Him.

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Seeing truth when you don’t wanna

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Steve Simms

Continually accusing others makes us blind to our own faults, but we’re not innocent. You can help people more by sincerely listening to them, than by accusing them. To ignore your conscience is to ignore the way to a better life.

Blindness to injustice, past and present, is widespread. Compassion helps us see it. To go beyond deception, we need to see truth that hurts, not just truth that we like.

When seeing truth costs us something, it’s easy to look the other way. If you openly look at truth, it will mess up your fantasies. Any truth that we refuse to see, holds us in bondage. Check out: Off the RACE Track.

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10 year anniversary on Word Press

Posted on January 25, 2021 by Steve Simms

Thank you, Word Press, for supporting my blogging for 10 years!

You offer a great platform for freedom of speech and I appreciate it!

I love being able to share Free Gas For Your Think Tank and hopethoughts.com.

Here’s to 10 more years!

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Desire or conscience–which leads you today?

Posted on January 24, 2021 by Steve Simms

Not getting what you want is often a blessing in disguise. Some desires are helpful; others are harmful. It helps to know the difference.

Satisfying a wrongful desire, doesn’t end it. Instead, its demands return even stronger.

Wanting more can easily become a distraction from fully enjoying what you have. When we put feelings before facts and desire before discernment, we “ignore the science.” Neither the facts of global warming nor the facts of physiology should be ignored.

Lack of self-control is the enemy of long-term happiness. To follow your feelings, without discernment, is to dive into deception.

More happiness can be found by controlling your desires than by letting them control you. All desires aren’t equal. Some pull you toward good; others toward evil. Be wise. People are happier when they avoid thoughts and activities that cause guilt. Desires, unregulated by conscience, wisdom, and self-control, are dangerous.

My thoughts, feelings, and desires, often try to turn me away from following Jesus. However, when I let your conscience, declare me a wretch, the concept of grace becomes amazing! Without guilt and remorse, I feel no need for forgiveness, mercy, or grace.

If there isn’t a way to “love your enemies,” Jesus wouldn’t have commanded us to do it. There’s no inequity in iniquity. The Bible says, “All have sinned & fallen short of the glory of God.”

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Host people with hospitality (don’t roast them with rage)

Posted on January 22, 2021 by Steve Simms

Recurring bad behavior isn’t a mistake. It’s a choice.

If we would behave, the way we think others should behave, the world would be better. Change your behavior from hostile to hospitable and people will respond differently.

Are you hosting people with kindness or toasting them with anger? Shall we be hostile or hospitable? That is the question.

I’m not responsible for how you treat me, but I am for how I treat you. May I be kind Expressing God’s kindness is more likely to change people than expressing my anger.

Phones, tablets. and computers don’t post hateful statements and accusations. People do. Social media isn’t hostile. It just reveals the hostility in people’s hearts. Angry responses say more about you, than about the people you’re responding to.

I have my opinions, but to claim I have my own reality is delusional. Truth matters. We’re all responsible for our behavior and there’s an inner judge. Guilt is a warning. If you won’t regulate your behavior by some moral standard, it will run amuck.

I’m capable of evil, but not of pure good. My best falls far short of righteousness.

If you believe bad things can happen, then good things can also happen. Have hope!

Setting goals but not setting behaviors that will accomplish those goals, goes nowhere. Unlike behaviorless goals (and sermons), direct awareness of the living Jesus will transform your behavior.

Christians, try this. Let your time spent reading the Bible with an open heart, far surpass your time listening to sermons.

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Something to agree on

Posted on January 22, 2021 by Steve Simms 
Everyday you're alive, 
You can do more than just survive. 
Appreciate the blessings that arrive 
Disguised as ordinary human beings. 
Repair your heart connection 
So you can defeat 
Inner insurrection 
That tries to overthrow 
Genuine affection.

I've never enjoyed insulting people. 
To belittle someone would hurt me. 
I don't mind people disagreeing with me. 
Life would be boring if nobody ever did.

My real fight isn't with other people, 
But with my own fears and insecurities.
I find no need to berate 
Anybody at all. 
I agree about something with anyone 
Living anywhere on this planet.  
I love to find it and celebrate it 
Together with them!
That's union -- heart to heart communion. 
How exciting, common ground's been found!
"Me too, me too, that's how I feel! 
Our disagreement's not that big a deal." 
By fighting each other, 
We've been fighting windmills.

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Amazing Grace @ President Biden’s inauguration

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Steve Simms

“That saved a wretch like me . . .” is not just lyrics that Americans sang with Garth Brooks at President Biden’s inauguration. It’s an admission that we humans all need to be set free from the power & corruption of our self-destructive & morally bankrupt human nature.

In the light of God’s holiness, we humans desperately needs rescue and forgiveness. The risen Jesus Christ offers that freely to all who will surrender their lives to daily follow & obey Him. Many years ago, through God’s amazing grace, the living Jesus revealed Himself to “a wretch like me” & filled me with healing, freedom, & an ongoing, continually transforming relationship with Him.

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Thoughts for behavior modification

Posted on January 20, 2021 by Steve Simms

Anger, anger everywhere, without a kind thought to think. Lord, have mercy on us. To say you love God, but live without being honest and compassionate, is hypocrisy.

People who consistently do a bad thing, tend to ease their conscience by accusing others of doing that same bad thing. In reality, people’s behaviors reveal the truth about them, more than their assertions do.

Human behavior, without continual monitoring by the conscience, tends to follow temptation. However, when the living Jesus is the source of your behavior modification, your lifestyle begins to resemble His.

Human life is too valuable to be considered disposable or to be lived destructively. Treat all human life with respect!

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Lifestyle quicksand lurks in dark places

Posted on January 19, 2021 by Steve Simms

Some behaviors are like quicksand. They lure you in and then gradually pull you under. Behaviors motivated by feelings and/or desires, are often harmful.

We have the right to agree or disagree with people’s behavior, but we don’t have the right to be unkind to them.

Discovering and stopping our own wrong behaviors, will help us more than looking for other people’s wrong behaviors. No matter how much you blame others for your problems, your behavioral choices have shaped your life.

Though your words may try to hide it, what you believe can be seen in your behavior. Bad outcomes come from bad behavior.

Consistently good behavior is hard to maintain without courage and a strong conscience. Any good behavior I have, comes from Jesus. The bad I’m capable of on my own.

If Jesus isn’t continually influencing your behavior, perhaps you’re following the religious Jesus rather than the living, resurrected One. Following self and following the living Jesus, lead in two different directions.

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Reckless speech is costly

Posted on January 19, 2021 by Steve Simms

Reckless speech is as dangerous as reckless driving. Caution matters. Angry, hostile words, cause combative situations and destroy relationships

Attacking people with a verbal log isn’t dialogue. It’s bullying. Unfortunately, the freedom of speech seems to have become more about bullying than about communication. Friends who continually insult people, will one day insult you.

Speech is never free from consequences. Words have impact. I want to use my freedom of speech to encourage people to spread kindness. Every word of kindness, in an unkind environment, is an act of courage.

Jesus spoke about courageous free speech when He said: “Bless those who curse you.” When we hurt or harm a human, we disrespect the image of God. If you wouldn’t want something said (or done) to you, don’t say (or do) it to others.

Often freedom of speech becomes freedom of repetition — merely saying what someone else said. Perhaps our most neglected freedom is the freedom to do our own thinking. Too many people have surrendered their freedom, to think before they speak.

The living Jesus can give you freedom from the words that torment your soul. I love having the freedom to find and consume, uplifting, inspiring, encouraging words. I prefer to listen to and read hopeful voices and to ignore angry ones.

The free speech on most social media platforms is paid for by advertisers. Christians who won’t let people who disagree with them on their church program, are critical of social media for enforcing standards of conduct.

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