How to have a grateful day on Turkey Day!

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Steve Simms

Focus on your blessings, not on the things that you think you’re missing. Taking things for granted eradicates gratefulness. It’s hard to be grateful for unnoticed blessings.

Thanksgiving is much more powerful as a daily habit, than as only an annual holiday. Daily gratitude washes away negative emotions. Gratitude is the recognition and appreciation of unearned favors. It’s is a form of celebration, a way to get high by showing appreciation.

Pride takes credit for success and blames others for failure. It sees no reason to say “thank you.” Humility is grateful for success and takes responsibility for mistakes. Gratitude recognizes that we all receive many good things that we didn’t earn. It rejects the spotlight and gives credit to others (and to God).

Half full or half empty? Just be grateful for the glass and what’s in it! Grateful living is glorious! Thinking about and expressing gratitude ignites joy! Gratitude matters.

Fact: life is a gift. It wasn’t earned or deserved. We were given life and all it’s amenities. Look for reasons for gratitude. If you can’t find any, pinch yourself, because you’re sleeping thru life.

Unexpressed gratitude fades into grumpiness. Begin to express gratitude to people (and to God), and grateful feeling will follow. Expressing gratitude in the present will give you hope for the future. True happiness is to be grateful for the gift of any given moment.

Gratitude is a behavior, not just a feeling. Show some today! Have a gratitude visit: Call or go see someone and express your gratitude to them. Regularly expressed gratitude leads to much inner healing and happiness. Show appreciation and return some kindness and you’ll feel uplifted today.

Recall in detail some good things that have happened to you. That’ll shoot you up with gratitude! Don’t let appreciation be “once and done.” Re-appreciate your blessings everyday.

Grateful eyes see life differently than grumpy eyes. Greater gratefulness will lower your level of stress, anxiety, and worry. When you’re gratefully aware that you’ve been blessed, it’s hard to stay stressed. Yet, gratefulness is more than a coping skill; it’s an inner thrill!

To experience the greatness of gratefulness is to be overcome with joy. Grateful people see value in everything that comes their way. Gratitude requires humility, but pride tends to push it aside. Entitlement is the opposite of gratefulness.

A grateful person lives with awe and wonder. Gratefulness is a wonderful goal and appreciation a beautiful destination. When people feel appreciation for their blessings, they want to bless other people. Hateful people are seldom grateful.

Have a grateful day! Thank you, Lord, for the gift of gratitude.

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To blame your foes is to step on your own toes

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Steve Simms

If you blame your foes for your woes, you’ll step on your own toes! Defy foes. Continually put your kindness under their nose.

When you know that your biggest foe is yourself, you don’t feel a great need to fight someone else. You can let your fingers dance on the keyboard, without making it a war dance.

Disagreement doesn’t create a foe. Fighting does. Find common ground. If you really get to know the heart of your foe, you might find a friend.

No amount of anger, blame, and hostility can turn falsehood into truth. The they-cheated-card is usually played from the bottom of the deck. To blame others is to refuse to take responsibility. Accepting responsibility makes a brighter future. Blame gets stuck in the past. Blame doesn’t empower you or fix a situation. It just keeps you stuck in anger.

Blame often leads to anger and retaliation. Taking responsibility leads to healing. Beating the blame drum will make you feel glum & think you’re a victim. (“The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.” ― President Dwight D. Eisenhower)

It’s easy to see things the way you want them to be; hard to see how they really are. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize plain falsehood, even when its standing right in front of you. It’s hard not to get mad at anyone who points out our fantasies.

Many people don’t know that their hate hurts them more than it does their foe. Perhaps your biggest foe is what you don’t know about the people you see as threatening.

Instead of seeing a face as friend or foe, you can see a person made in God’s image. If you get to know your foe, heart-to-heart, your animosity will go.

When people say “no,” don’t attack them as a foe. Listen and let them show you what they know.

Biblical Christians extend love beyond family and friends — all the way to foes. They try to touch their foes with God’s kindness and love. There is no kindness so amazing as that given by a foe.

Human foes are people too.
They’re really very much like you.
Take the time to say, “How do you do”?

Friend or foe, I want you to know the amazing peace and joy of daily following the risen Jesus.

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Be careful what you believe; many want to deceive

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Steve Simms

IQ and DQ (Deception Quotient) are not corelated. When the words won’t add up, there’s probably some deception in the equation. My own thoughts and feelings are deceptive. I have to wrestle them to get to truth.

Life is a mindfield of deception, exploding with lies. Be careful where you walk. Often deception begins with the faulty reception of truth. Truth has a lot of counterfeits. It’s often hard to recognize the difference. Without discernment & accurate fact checking, it’s easy to believe many lies.

Baited hooks can be deceiving. Better look closely before you bite. Pride guarantees deception because it refuses to see any side but its own. Not seeing is deceiving. Instead of looking for truth, we’re often searching for ways to justify our opinion.

Seeing the truth requires gazing and pondering, not just glimpsing and running. Falsehood in your heart, makes it hard to see truth when you look at others.

To ignore your conscience is to embrace deception. As the two sides of the same coin, when life flips you, you will land with either discernment or deception showing. The ability to accurately differentiate between truth & fiction seems to be in short supply.

Deception tries to force circumstances to fit your opinion. Truth does the opposite. People who are afraid to disagree with their friends are easily led into deception.

Crowds gather around deception, not around complete honesty and total truth. Twisted truth can be as deceptive as the boldest lie. A deception remains a secret as long as we allow ourselves to be deceived by it.

Some people want you to discover truth. Others just want you to believe exactly what they do.

Subjectivity is subject to deception. Feelings are often inaccurate and try to steer you away from facts. It’s best to verify your emotions and desires, with reality. Truth is a humble pursuit, not an arrogant opinion.

Second-hand “truth” is always watered down with human opinion. It’s wise to look beyond it. We humans often decorate truth with our desires, making it indistinguishable from falsehood.

If you’re not correct 100% of the time, that proves you’re capable of being deceived. The nature of deception is that you don’t know when it has snared you. When deception dances with truth, it spins tricky traps that ensnare many people.

To be deceived is to think you’re right when you aren’t. Deception happens to us all. The unquestioned reception of someone’s views, always leads to some deception. Deception’s not just here and there, it’s everywhere (including inside of us). Be careful what you believe; many want to deceive.

Deception wants you to believe what it says with no evidence but hearsay. We humans often choose to deceived rather than be embarrassed by the truth. Comfortable deception is difficult to overcome. The journey from deception to light takes courage, but it’s worth the trip! The path of least deception is the courageous uphill climb toward unveiled truth.

Triumph isn’t more important than truth, nor victory than virtue. If a cause claims to transcend truth and begins to make its own rules, that’s deception. If you won’t deceive yourself, plenty of other people will try to do it for you.

You can deny it and try to hide it, but truth stays true, even when hidden or denied. Who you listen to will influence what you believe is true. Have multiple sources.

Deceivers abound and are often popular. Jesus warned: “Beware of false prophets.” History shows that religion can make us think we’re following God when we aren’t. We’re all deceived in various degrees and need God’s light to show us our deception.

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Handoff to the living Jesus

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Steve Simms

Anything you handoff to Jesus will be handled better than if you keep it. Jesus can give you the power to resist the ungodly desires that insist you obey them.

Be so full of Jesus that the people who backbite you get a taste of His love. When I start to get stuck in stale, Jesus tells me to lift my sail. (Sin, like stale bread, doesn’t taste good, but if you’re used to it you think it does.)

To gaze on the living Jesus sets my heart ablaze. Bible reading helps me gaze at the risen Jesus with the eyes of my heart. To talk about Advent and other Christian topics, but not experience the living Jesus, Himself, misses the point.

Jesus, help me see beyond the stale veil that alienates me from You and other people. True prayer doesn’t interrupt life. It is life–the inner flow of the living Jesus.

Living water, flowing from Christ’s inner rivers, continually refreshes my life. Let the oil of the Holy Spirit lubricate your heart and your mind.

The living Jesus is tapping your tight shoulders. Look up. Behold the Lamb of God. Without daily, fresh encounters with the living Jesus, our faith becomes stale.

Live and breathe in Heaven’s air. You’ll find it’s refreshing everywhere. Refresh your prayer life. Talk to God like He’s real, present, listening, and speaking.

Trust in the living Jesus. Everybody and everything else will eventually fail you. Listen to the living God: “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me.” Psalm 16:7.

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When life gets stale

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Steve Simms

When your life gets stale, set your sail to catch an encouraging fresh wind. Love unexpressed gets stale & molds. Give out some kindness today!

Think refreshing thoughts; reject depressing ones. Make hope your heartbeat! Negativity will give your heart a beating and discourage you.

Life is beautiful. If you don’t take time to admire the view, you’ll miss out.

Find and appreciate the good in people. Don’t let the bad distract you. A greasy, torn dollar bill and a fresh, clean one, both have the same value. Same with people.

Kindness refreshes and revives both the person who gives it and the one who receives it. Having a negative opinion about certain people, is no reason to be unkind to them. Our self-crafted ethics often overlook the needs and rights of other people.

People who turn up the volume of their conscience and do what it says, soon align with one another. The intuition in your gut that we call conscience, is often the voice of God. People’s behaviors and words reveal whether they are ignoring or obeying their conscience.

When you’re secure in your beliefs, you feel no desire or need to insult people. Many people seem to have lost the ability to have strong opinions without being rude. (America seems to be full of insulticide, trying to kill people with words. Very sad.) The idea that “truth is what my party says and falsehood is what the other party says,” is a great threat to democracy.

We often fail to “take pride” and put humility in its place. Instead we let pride take control of us.

Try this:
1) Pray, “Speak, Lord,”
2) Listen,
3) Write down what He tells you.

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Elect to serve love to all

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Steve Simms

This sentence isn’t logical. “Let’s play tennis. If I lose, you cheated.” 

Elect to serve love to all

Cries of cheating, 
Unproven allegations 
Bouncing out of court 
Like tennis balls, 
Won't make America great. 
Perhaps it's time to 
Stop the racket 
And add love to all.

Accusations of cheating, without hard evidence, are irresponsible and undermine the foundations of a free nation. Undermining the legitimacy of an election is a great threat to democracy. When counting the votes is called “stealing the election,” we’re all in trouble.

If one side is accused of cheating, then the other side could have also cheated. My fellow Americans: Anger, arrogance, and divisiveness are not good. Be kind and be aware that your ideas and opinions, just might be mistaken.

I haven’t heard this many accusations of cheating since elementary school. Let’s not make America eight again.

Here’s a special thought for people who believe they’re going to Heaven. Humans who have a common citizenship in Heaven shouldn’t divide because of politics.

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12 CQ — A dozen Conscience Questions for the courageous

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Steve Simms

Ask these questions in your heart. Then listen for answers. You might get silence on some questions and that’s alright. However, you might have a specific situation come to your mind. If so, be courageous and do what you can to make it right. Then you will experience relief, inner peace, healing, reconciliation, quilt-release, forgiveness, and much more.

Go ahead. Ungag your conscience. Your conscience will talk to you, if you will ask it questions and listen.

It takes courage to ask yourself questions that will show you your faults and short comings, but do it anyway. Often the best questions are the ones you ask of yourself. The question is: Will you ask yourself revealing questions or not?

  1. CQ-1: Where am I being unkind?
  2. CQ-2: Who do I need to apologize to?
  3. CQ-3: What do I need to make right?
  4. CQ-4: Where am I twisting the truth?
  5. CQ-5: Who do I need to forgive?
  6. CQ-6: What thoughts do I need to keep out of my mind?
  7. CQ-7: Am I making any accusations without proof?
  8. CQ-8: What do I need to do that I’m neglecting?
  9. CQ-9: How am I being unfair?
  10. CQ-10: What do I need to ask God to forgive me for?
  11. CQ-11: Is there anything I need to return or debt to payback?
  12. CQ-12: Do I ever look down on any individual or group because of skin color?
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Conscience & Divine interference will take you to peace & joy

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Steve Simms

Without Divine interference, my life would be a wreck. The risen Jesus rescues me! Christ-followers let the living Jesus daily interfere with and disrupt their life. My best decision was to ask Jesus to continually interfere with my life.

We have a name for God’s interference in our life. It’s called “conscience.” The best instructor is the living Jesus working in and thru your conscience. To subdue and silence your conscience makes you dangerous to yourself and others.

If you’ll obey Jesus’ inner instruction, you’ll avoid much self-destruction. Some behaviors produce peace & joy; some don’t. Let Jesus show you the difference.

Thoughts, desires, and temptations constantly try to interfere with and disrupt the kingdom of God in your life. When you receive God’s forgiveness, guilt for your past has no right to torment you.

If you won’t protect your mind from harmful influences, you’ll be overcome by them. When you lie, you embrace evil as your ally.

If you won’t let the living Jesus daily interfere with your life, you’re only pretending to follow Him. If you want the risen Jesus to help you, you need to obey His instructions.

“Ambassadors for Christ,” no matter what country they’re in, live under and represent Christ’s government. 2 Corinthians 5:20. There’s too much foreign interference in the kingdom of God. Follow the living Jesus, not your own opinions, feelings and desires.

“The cares of this world” choke God’s word and make Christians unfruitful. Avoid anything that interferes with your relationship with the risen Jesus Christ. If we don’t have the right to kindly disagree with people, we don’t have any rights.

I love to gather for worship with no interferences to the free flow of God’s Spirit. Jesus, help me hear and obey when You interfere in my life today.

Christmas is about God interfering in the world. Too often we don’t want God to interfere with our Christmas plans.

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The kingdom (government/authority/rule) of God is for now

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Steve Simms

The Gospels begin with both John the Baptist and Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus told many parables about it.

The book of Acts begins with the risen Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God and ends with Paul in Rome teaching about it. Perhaps we should pursue and support the kingdom of God instead of human governments.

All Christ-followers need to surrender to God’s authority and yield to the signs of the kingdom of God, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The kingdom is for now, not just for the future. Let the kingdom (government) of God come to you and be established as the authority over your life, as it is in Heaven.

Jesus said that some people can’t see the kingdom of God. Can you?

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3 feet — footsteps, footnotes, & footprints

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Steve Simms

If you wonder where your life is headed, look at your footprints. By observing footsteps, you can tell if someone is follow Jesus or their own desires. Biblical Christianity’s about living in step with Jesus and staying in sync with Him.

Let the living Jesus daily direct your footsteps. He’s not just a footnote in life. When your daily footsteps go where the risen Jesus leads, that’s true Christianity. Footsteps that don’t follow the living Jesus won’t take you to peace with God. If you let the risen Jesus direct your footsteps, you’ll be led into many marvels. Eyes on the living Jesus see much more clearly than eyes focused on our own desires.

Christians need to be Spirit-led, not spoon-fed with their Bibles unread. Romans 8:14. If your footsteps aren’t following the risen Jesus, you’re on your own track, not His. Christianity’s about taking Spirit-led footsteps, not citing religious footnotes.

Christianity isn’t about religious talks (footnotes on life), but obeying Jesus. If you love Jesus, let your footprints show it. Biblical Christianity makes the living Jesus the essential storyline of life, not a mere footnote.

When history’s over politics will be a mere footnote. Jesus is the main plot. This is His story! Words are revealing. People tend to talk about what they love most.

People aren’t rubble to kick out of your way, but gems to treasure and polish. Humanity isn’t crayons to sort thru and pick your favorite color. We’re a work of art, not to be torn apart.

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