Ponder the awe
That stirs within you
At the sight
Of nature’s beauty,
Inner glimpses of
Majesty and splendor,
Beyond all reason,
Defying your logic,
Intangible but still
Deeply and delightfully real.
Cultivate that sense
That you feel inside.
Let it grow until
It dominates your day
And overflows through
Continual wonder
And glorious gratitude.
Copyright by Steve Simms 05/06/2020
I’m dancing now
As the words
Move around
Before my eyes
And my fingers
Glide with them
On the keyboard —
My writing dance floor.
Everyone’s a writer — writing their life story by the choices that they make as they dance through the years.
Some choices morph into regrets. Some produce reasons to celebrate. (Even if your past choices weren’t worth celebrating, your future ones can be.)
The choices you choose to make will make or break you. Put the brakes on harmful choices and give the gas to helpful ones.
To let a thought say in your mind, is to choose it. Not to choose is to choose the status quo. If you don’t choose your choices, life will make them for you. To wait until it’s too late is to make a choice by default.
When you look back on your life, it can be said: “You had your choices.” Even when you think that you had no choice, you choose what you thought, what you said, and what you did. You may think that you didn’t choose where you are, but look back and you can see that a trail of choices brought you there.
Sometimes we choose to ignore a lie because it’s easier than telling insecure people the truth and experiencing their hostility. If you don’t choose to be really good, you’ll never know how hard it is to be even a little bit good.
People say, “You don’t choose your life.” That’s not true. You don’t choose your birth, but you are fee to choose your life.
Choose to mind your own conscience. The first step is to listen to it. Wrong choices aren’t always accidents.
Choose to read, watch, and listen to things that will make you mindful, not mindless. Before you choose other people’s choices, examine your own. Your own choices may be better.
I’ve chosen to pray so much that it has become a habit. Now I frequently find myself praying all day.
Choice Words
Every choice
Has a consequence.
They accumulate
And create your life.
And even when you don’t
Make the right choice
You can still choose
To make it right.
Life is full of intersections,
Where you can change direction
Or stay your course.
Each one impacts your destination.
History has divided Americans. Ignoring that history won’t bring us together. Facing it with humility, honesty, and justice will. When it comes to reading, I’m a nonfiction guy (and that’s the truth).
Even history that some people don’t want to know about matters. Overcome fear. Take a fearless look at American history.
History sorted us by color. Those assortments still impact us. It’s time to declassify people. Let’s flatten the curve on the skin-color-hierarchy. One millimeter of skin isn’t indicative of who a person is!
Because of colorism, we can have prejudice that is unintentional and subconscious, completely beyond our awareness. Skin tones ring a bell in the subconscious (created by 100s of years of racial lies) and cause us to see people differently.
History produced colorism. It lingers today and let’s skin shade (but not eye color) influence how we see and relate to other people. Colorism is a prism that distorts human vision and decision, allowing skin shade to keep us from seeing who people really are.
Your skin color is good! That’s how God painted you. I appreciate you and people of every shade of humanity! Ideally, we humans shouldn’t care what color we are, since all skin colors are a gift from God. How a person thinks and behaves inside his skin is much more important than its color.
You can’t help but notice a person’s skin color, but you don’t have to be influenced by it. Search: Off the RACE Track book.
Recklessness is not courage. Caution is not fear.
People often try to silence other people by accusing them of being afraid. However, expressing concern and/or caution is often wisdom rather than fear. Frequently, people who accuse others of being fearful, are trying to cover up their own fear.
There are three approaches to perceived danger: 1) fearful anxiety, 2) wise caution, and 3) denial–probably the least effective.
To ignore social distancing in a pandemic is to disrespect human life. Many people who claim to be prolife are angrily prochoice when it comes to social distancing. When people claim that their rights include endangering the health of others, something seems way out of line. I’m prolife, even for the elderly and compromised people who are most at risk of dying from Covid 19.
There’s no need to fear wearing a mask. All the healthcare heroes are doing it. Too many Christians are wearing the wrong mask, hiding their heart instead of their nose and mouth. I can’t control whether people disagree with me or insult me, but I can control whether or not I’m kind to them.
My rights come from the living God. Public health measures don’t make me afraid of losing them.
Christianity that’s out of sync with the risen Jesus morphs into self-ianity. For Christians to be in sync with each other, we need to hear and obey the Spirit and humbly and honestly open our heart to each other.
To present Christianity in a way that bores people (or puts them to sleep) is a terrible disservice to the living Jesus. When Christianity is presented as bland-man’s-bluff, it lacks the fiery passion and joy of the New Testament Christ-followers.
To go thru the motions of life, without excitement, enthusiasm, and high hope, tends to make people bland. When church went bland, it laid aside the excitement of the resurrection and settled into talks, ritual, tradition, and commemoration.
You can’t fully sink into and soak in God’s love if your unwilling to be in sync with His will. (Guilt will hold you back.)
Live in sync with Jesus; stay in step with the Holy Spirit. If you’re not in sync with your conscience, you’re not aligned with Jesus. Repent means to realign.
Pentecost is now. It’s not an annual thing. Let the Holy Spirit live in and thru you 24/7/365. Mysticism meets God’s majesty. Theology talks about it.
Perhaps preachers shouldn’t fear the people of God, but train them and allow them to testify during worship gatherings. Instead, too many Christians have been trained to be afraid to explore their own ability to hear the Holy Spirit and to understand the Bible. If church is your spiritual floor, that’s fine; if it’s your spiritual ceiling, something’s out of line.
Biblical Christianity isn’t about winning political battles. It’s about following and obeying Jesus and humbly serving others.
Too often, Jesus is a distant outsider, stuck in history or religion. However, when He becomes your trusted Insider, life soars. The living Jesus is the ultimate insider. He wants to live, rule, and reign within you. That’s called the kingdom of God.
The outsider Jesus of religion tends to be formal, programmed, and controlled. The insider Jesus (Christ in you) is revolutionary. When Jesus is the Insider (living in you), many people will call you an outsider, because they “don’t get” His inner reality.
Having the risen Jesus living and active within you isn’t optional for a Christian. It’s the definition of a Christian.
No one needs to settle for external religious activities without the internal presence of Jesus. He’s alive and available to all. However, it’s hard to follow Jesus when you are unaware of His presence.
The insider Jesus is no hider. He wants to be glorious and bright within you. If your internal life’s a mess of angst, eternal life will be miserable. If it’s floods of joy, wonderful.
The insider Jesus helps you see no one as an outsider and to even love your enemies. You alone determine if the risen Jesus is an outsider or insider in your life.
Let Jesus cross the threshold from outsider to insider. Then let Him rule and reign within you. Let Him be the spiritual Insider in your life. Don’t pretend to hide your thoughts and feelings from Him.
Christianity can be external without being internal (“a form of godliness”), but when it’s internal, it’s automatically external. How you are inside is the way you really are. Outer appearance can be faked. Internal contortions twist your outward behavior & even your physical appearance.
Hearing a sermon can never compare with direct, personal, insider conversations with Jesus. Church tells you about an outsider Jesus. The early Christians experienced the insider Jesus living in them. The outsider Jesus can be left in a church building, but there’s no hiding from the insider Jesus.
Perhaps church should help people interact with Jesus internally, not just tell them about Him externally. Experiencing Jesus living inside of you is much more powerful than hearing a talk about Jesus outside of you. “Christ in you the hope of glory.”
For powerful “insider trading,” once and for all, replace the concept of Christ as a distant outsider with Christ alive and active inside of you. Let Jesus be your internal adjusting engine, changing you to be like Him. You can know about Jesus externally, but it’s much more powerful to know Him internally.
Jesus on the outside often feels like a long chance, but Jesus living on the inside is an amazing spiritual dance. Follow “Christ in you.” Let the insider Jesus lead you.
If Christ change your thoughts, words, and lifestyle, perhaps He’s not inside you. The body of Christ isn’t a building, a meeting, or an organization. It’s the people of God. The Bible never says, “A church service (or sermon), the hope of glory.” It says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Evil in the world around us is dangerous. However, evil hidden inside us is even more so. Let the insider Jesus take the evil out. When you won’t confide what resides inside your heart, you’re relationships tend to stay stuck in superficial. When you begin to experience insider fading, let the light of the risen Jesus brightly shine within you.
If not careful, consumers can be consumed by they possessions and left internally empty. When the world around you is shut down, it can awaken you to the reality and importance of the world within you.
When you’re insulted, that’s an opportunity to “bless those who curse you.” There are so many missed opportunities! The world needs more words that benefit, to replace words that harm. If you’re unaware of what’s growing inside your heart, you may wake up one day to a harvest that you don’t want.
My hope is built, not on politics, but on the risen Jesus living inside of me. There’s no need to feel empty inside. Let the insider Jesus come in. Jesus doesn’t unfriend or unfollow people, but many people unfriend or unfollow Him. Outsiders around the world are invited to welcome the risen Jesus as the Insider who promises to reside and abide within them.
There’s no need to be quickly offended. You can always get offended later. Pride gets easily offended because it refuses to see its own faults. When you’ve been tripped up by truth, maybe it’s best not to jump up and runaway before some of it sinks in.
Hostile words create retaliation. Then on and on conflict grows. Profanity is used to try to hide fear and insecurity in the deficient disguise of disrespecting others. Cuss words proclaim that a conversation is closed to sincere communication, openness, and heart connection.
If an enemy returns your hostility with kindness, perhaps he’s not an enemy. Perhaps hostile people need help instead of retaliation.
Hostility hypes up hurts and overstates offenses, but sincere kindness can squeeze thru the defenses of hardest heart and bring hope to the darkest places. Instead of managing your anger, maybe you need to lay it off, then hire love to replace it.
Christians are called to give others the same kindness and forgiveness that Jesus gives us. Having a hostile attitude towards people, makes it almost impossible to reach out in love to those who don’t know Jesus.
Truth is often irritating and inconvenient, but it’s always reality. Even denial doesn’t dodge it. It just puts you in make-believe. When opinion is mixed with facts, it discolors the truth.
Lying is an act of fear. It is fear of truth and fear of the person you’re lying to! Truth cowards like to hide behind intentional lies. Secrets hide truth. Confession courageously reveals it.
People who are good at lying are truth-challenged. Silence can be as fearful of the truth as the boldest lie is.
Nobody is completely in line with truth, so we all need to be pursuing it beyond our own feelings and opinions. The closer people get to truth and honesty, the closer they get to each other. The reverse also applies.
If you hide the truth about yourself, you probably aren’t very good at telling it about anybody else. There is much truth that I haven’t seen — much maturing that I still need to do.
Believing a lie and refusing to believe the truth — both misconstrue the purpose of your life.
When truth is told to harm, that should be an alarm. Run. Differences and disagreements diminish when people connect heart to heart, with openness and honesty.
Facts can’t be changed, but they can be misreported, covered up, lied about and twisted, thus making it very hard to know the truth.
Ego, ego, go away.
I want to be open and honest
In the things I do and say.
Perhaps the most dangerous liar, lives within you. Lies to yourself distort everything. Self-told lies can recycle for a lifetime keeping people in a jail of their own making. Radical, self-honesty unlocks the cell.
It’s good not to be overconfident. Many lies are presented and believed as truth and much truth is considered to be a lie.
Love based on denial is a mirage. People like the idea of truth, but not so much, the reality.
Reading fiction is entertaining, but living it is straining. Maybe it would be easier to live a nonfiction life.
It’s not easy to separate the nonfiction from the fiction, in a history book. It’s almost impossible to see a truth if you believe it to be a lie.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 