Everybody Needs to Know That Comfort Zones Are Often Danger Zones

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Steve Simms

To “do everything the Lord has said,” requires that we abandon our comfort zone. Now that’s a challenge that requires great courage.

When things are done in God’s order, they are often beyond our human comfort zone. Break out of your zone of comfort by seeking to follow and obey the living Jesus instead of your own thoughts, feelings, and desires.

Discomfort is a powerful blessing if you let it motivate you to improve your life. To repent is to go vice versa from your comfort zone inertia and to begin to move beyond the thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, worries, and behaviors that are keeping you stuck in familiar routine far away from the Christ-led zone. When people say or do mean things, it often means that they’re afraid and are desperately clinging to their comfort zone.

When church settled into being a comfort zone, Christianity lost its Spirit-led zeal. Comfortable Christians fear the Christ-led zone. However, if you’ll follow the risen Jesus off the exit ramp of your comfort zone you’ll begin to experience “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Amazing spiritual awakening occurs when people are willing to step into the Christ-led zone by opening their heart to His presence and obeying His inner promptings.

Your comfort zone is the place where the weeds of passivity, complacency, and mental vacancy are grown. When a crisis zone disrupts your comfort zone don’t stay there. Greatness comes when you let crises zones lead you to live your life in the Christ-led zone. Discipleship is to abandon your comfort zone and begin to daily live in the Christ-led zone.

Comfy zones
Make us clones
Who live like drones
Staying lost
In our phones.

To experience full-blown
Spiritual awakening
Be a yielded living stone,
Built together in God’s love
With others who daily live
In the thrilling Christ-led zone.

If you keep your heart
As hard as stone
You’ll never find
The Christ-led zone.

You’re never alone
In the Christ-led zone.
The risen Jesus
Is always with you.

Since I abandoned
My comfort zone
I’ve gradually grown
To learn to love
The Christ-led zone.

The Christ-led zone
Trains me to
Always enthrone
The risen Jesus
As the living Lord
Of my daily life.

Let the pain that’s sown
When your peace is gone,
When you’ve been thrown
Into a crisis zone,
Lead and guide you to
The Christ-led zone.

If you’ve always flown
Like a mindless drone
Within your own
Comfort zone
You’ve never known
The joy of
Being shown
The Christ-led zone.

When you feel alone
And outside of
Your comfort zone
Open your heart
To the risen Jesus
And step into
The Christ-led zone.

When you’re thrown
Into the cyclone
Of a crisis zone
And begin to groan
What you’re being shown
Can lead you into
The Christ-led zone.

The Christ-led zone
Has to be found
Outside of
Your comfort zone.

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The Freedom to Spontaneously Delight in Wonder and Goodness

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Steve Simms
Daily writing prompt
What does it mean to be a kid at heart?
View all responses

Help is here! There’s a way out of the pressure of adulting that frees people up to be a kid at heart and gives them the freedom to spontaneously delight in wonder and goodness.

The body of Christ was designed by God to help (minister to) one another and to demonstrate the wonder of His reality, love, and joy to the world. However, the traditional church model hasn’t been very good at doing that because the work of the ministry isn’t designed to be done by one person in a congregation. Every member of the body of Christ is called to manifest, demonstrate, and spread His word, His love, and His presence.

When ministry is left in the hands (and mouth) of one person the Holy Spirit’s freedom to use and speak through various members of the body is quenched. Perhaps, like Jethro told Moses, “What you are doing is not good.” King David said: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” Maybe we need to obey the New Testament’s 50+ one another commands that tell us to encourage, exhort, and comfort one another.

When Christ-followers gather to all listen to and be directed by the risen Jesus as their Head, the awareness of His presence fills the place where they are and brightly radiates from their faces. When Christians meet as “ekklesia” (the name of the Greek town hall meeting where any citizen could speak, that Jesus used to describe what He is building) the Holy Spirit begins to prompt people to speak up, and those gathered become conscious of God’s supernatural presence and leading. Let promptings from Christ’s presence be the path maker and pacesetter of your life.

First century Christians were thrilled about Jesus. Contemporary Christians are sometimes so bored that they joke about sleeping in church. Let’s shut down the snooze alarm! It’s time for the body of Christ to wake up to the reality of the risen Jesus and to all begin to daily demonstrate His presence and power.

Let God embolden you to go:
Beyond pride to humility,
Beyond fear to vulnerability,
Beyond deception to honesty,
Beyond defensiveness to compassion,
Beyond self-righteousness to kindness,
Beyond religion to being led by Christ’s Spirit.
Beyond name-calling to “speaking the truth in love.”

Don’t just sit and listen to religious talks. Daily splash around in Christ’s joyous living water!

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Posted in Christianity, Mere Christianity, normal Christianity, radical Christianity | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I’m Always Asking for a Closer Relationship with Jesus

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Steve Simms

“Lord, I love the house where you live, the place where your glory dwells.” –King David in Psalm 26:8.

In David’s day the house where God lived and the place where His glory dwelt was in the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Tabernacle. Later David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple with its Holy of Holies and God lived there. The temple was destroyed twice, the last time in 70 AD and has never been replaced.

The reason is because now Christ-followers are God’s temple. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19.) “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27.)

Let Christ in you be your Bible commentary. Let the Holy Spirit directly speak to your heart and teach you as you read the Holy Book.

I woke up this morning with this poem developing in my heart:

If you read the Bible
As a book of rules
You’ll miss its many jewels
And wonderful tools
That can guide you to
A beautiful life.
But if you read it
As a love letter
From God’s heart to yours
It points to Christ in you,
The hope that matures
As inexpressible
Joy and glory.

The Bible isn’t merely a book of religious history, rules, and information like a textbook or a handbook. It contains living words that help us hear the still small voice of God speaking directly to our heart. When we approach the Bible analytically, we unintentionally put our mind above our heart, but when we approach the Bible with humility, poverty of spirit, and spiritual hunger its words will ignite the fire of God within us.

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Posted in Christ in you, Christian spirituality, radical Christianity, spirituality | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Foreigners Who Became Like Family

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Steve Simms

It’s hard to be “a foreigner in a foreign land,” especially in a land where foreigners are sometimes treated “arrogantly.” (See Exodus 18:1-12.) About a year and a half ago two families from southern Mexico moved next door to my wife and me in the small side of the duplex in the house beside us. Nine people moved into a two-bedroom one bath unit. We share a common driveway with them.

Our first impression was fear and worry. We had thoughts that I don’t want to mention. But then my wife had the thought to bake some muffins and to take them to them as a welcome gift. We obeyed that prompting. The two adult couples and their 5 children were grateful and delightful. Their new home looked empty except for one small table. We learned that they were all sleeping on the floor.

One of them could speak a little English, the rest only Spanish. (However, nine months earlier I had felt prompted to learn Spanish, so I had been watching videos in Spanish for at least an hour each day and reading my Spanish Bible every day and I was beginning to be a bit conversant in it.)

My wife and I went to our garage and gathered some kitchen chairs, some foam mats for sleeping, some food, some towels, and anything else we thought they could use. They were thrilled and repeatedly thanked us and hugged us.

A couple of days later we shared about them in a Spirit-led group that meets at the Cul2vate ministry in Nashville and my wife told a small women’s prayer group about them. The next thing we knew, people began arriving with amazing things: clothes, toys, food, fresh produce, beds, couches, kindness, and on and on. One young woman even ordered bunk beds for them from Amazon. In a flash they had everything they physically needed, but best of all they had love and many new friends.

That family is now like family to us and their children like grandchildren. My Spanish has gotten much better and one of them can now communicate fairly well in English, so we are able to have wonderful and joyous interaction with them. They are incredibly loving people always being kind to us. They love Jesus like we do.

Some of them cry when they talk about missing their home in the beautiful state of Chiapas in Mexico near Guatemala. They want to go back. They had to flee because a gang was repeatedly threatening their lives. They are a true treasure of great courage, hope, and dreams.

I laid in bed this morning with two short poems developing in my spirit:

Trash or Treasure

People who flee their homes
Searching for a better life
Are not the world’s trash.
They carry the treasure
Of great courage,
Hope and dreams.

Jesus First

Make the choice
To hear Christ’s voice
And to rejoice
In being led
By Jesus as
Your living Head.

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Posted in acts of kindness, border crisis, Christian community, immigrants, immigration | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Freedom of Speech

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Steve Simms

America has a problem that an election won’t fix. One group insults and demonizes those who disagree with them. The other group calls the people who disagree with them “haters.” We need to respect people’s right to disagree with us and to stop trying to intimidate and coerce each other into silence. To say you believe in freedom of speech and then insult people or call them haters for disagreeing with you is inconsistent.

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My Favorite Form of Exercise is Beyond Physical

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Steve Simms

My favorite form of exercise is beyond physical. It is the exercise of my heart where I continually train my heart to surrender to the presence and reality of the living Jesus as I seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Christians have access to a supernatural altar, the altar of an altered and surrendered heart. Two men walking along the road to Emmaus had more than a physical altar. They had the presence of Jesus, Himself, walking along and talking with them, but they didn’t recognize Him. Yet as He spoke their hearts burned within them. When they remembered Him (recognized His presence with them) in the breaking of the bread, He suddenly vanished from their physical view.

Once those two men knew that Jesus was with them, they no longer needed to depend on their physical senses to be aware of Him. His invisible presence was so strong to them that they began to praise God and boldly and openly profess His name. They rushed back to Jerusalem to celebrate Christ’s presence and reality with the other disciples.

The book of Hebrews says that “We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.” We who have surrendered our life and our will to follow and obey the risen Jesus have so much more than a physical altar. We have the altar of the heart, the inner altar of a heart that is ever being altered (sanctified) by the ongoing presence of Jesus — “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

(I’m not aware of any Scripture that indicates that Jesus or the early Christ-followers worshipped at a physical altar. I’ve searched numerous Bible resources and can’t find anyplace that they did that.)

Because Jesus now lives within each one of His followers, Hebrews goes on to say: “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess His name.” I love that word “continually.” Christ doesn’t come and go. His presence isn’t tied to physical objects, to physical places, or to our feelings. He comes to stay with us continually and He calls each one of us to abide in Him continually. “And lo, I am with you always.” Lord Jesus, help me stay continually aware of Your presence in and through my life!

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Moon Idioms Remind Me of a Priceless Gift

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Steve Simms
Daily writing prompt
How much would you pay to go to the moon?
View all responses

A great price was paid to give me (and all humans) the moon. All we need to do is to rely on that incredible payment.

I love Jesus to the moon and back. He has paid the price for me to have a relationship with Him that is over the moon! I’m moonstruck by His love for me and all humanity.

Too many Christians only get visibly excited about the risen Jesus once in a blue moon. Many moons ago the living Jesus changed my life and I’ve been thrilled by His presence and reality ever since. I know He hung the moon, so I love to hang out with Him day and night.

Jesus continually encourages me to shoot for the moon and not to settle for passive, causal, lukewarm Christianity. My life used to be like the dark side of the moon, but now it is like the full moon — basking in and reflecting the glorious light of the risen Son of God.

The Blood Moon reminds me of the blood of Jesus that washes away my sin, guilt, and shame and sets me free from bondage. The Harvest Moon reminds me of the fruit of the Spirit that the risen Jesus produces in my heart and in my life.

Don’t just passively ask for the moon. Actively reach for the moon. Continually focus your attention on the living Jesus and do what He prompts you to.

If you would like to be inspired by the glory of God, watch the movie “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” Search for it on YouTube.

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Clergy Dependency

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Steve Simms

Instead of being coached to directly hear from God many Christians have been trained to rely on second-hand spirituality. They have been taught to depend on religious resources like sermons, pastors, and daily devotional books rather than on the direct leading and inner teaching of the Holy Spirit. They have been taught to believe that they can’t understand the Bible by reading it for themselves.

Religious professionalism and pastor dependency have caused too many Christians to believe that they aren’t able or qualified to personally hear from God. Jesus taught the opposite. He said: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

When Christians meet for worship and actively practice humbly opening their heart to God and testifying to one another as they are led by the Spirit during the gathering, they see Christ in each other. Then they begin to develop such confidence in the power and presence of risen Jesus that they start to eagerly listen to and obey “Christ in you” in their daily lives. (I’ve seen this happen many times.)

When Christians are passive and clergy dependent as they meet for worship, they will often leave the meeting satisfied with a preacher’s message. Rather than being desperately eager to follow and obey Jesus day by day they will tend to feel like they have done their weekly duty by attending church.

Shift your dependency. Begin to rely on Christ in you, not on religious resources.

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Being A Witness

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Steve Simms

Witnesses are people who testify about what they have seen and heard. They help other people discover the truth about various situations.

The last thing that Jesus is recorded as saying to his disciples is “You shall be my witnesses.” He also told them, “Go and make disciples.” Those two statements describe the role, (the vocation and responsibility) of a Christ-follower on earth. Jesus wants His disciples to be “in the world but not of the world.”

Jesus said His followers are to be “the salt of the earth.” When salt is added to food it changes its flavor, but it doesn’t become the food. Salt is in the food but not of the food. In the same way Christians should influence the world, but not think, speak, and behave with the world’s attitude.

Christians should make disciples by being living examples of a Spirit-led lifestyle — directed from within by “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” They are called to be “the light of the world” by continually radiating the character, presence, and power of the risen Jesus. Every single Christian should be a godly content creator and holy influencer directing people to the glorious beauty of Christ — not a sponge that soaks up the hostile, vain, negative, dishonest, sexually obsessed, competitive, carnal, and cruel content of their culture.

When Christians think, talk, and act like the proud and self-focused society around them they lose their witness. Instead of shinning Christ’s light they merely reflect the culture around them. Rather than being a missionary to bring light to the world, they become the world’s mission field and absorb its darkness.

Instead of blessing those who curse them, too many Christians are the ones doing the cursing. Instead of loving their enemies, too many Christians are spewing angry accusations. Instead of considering others better than themselves, too many Christians think they are better than others. Instead of praying for people who despitefully use them, Christians are praying that God judge those people. Instead of making disciples of Christ, too many Christians are letting their mean attitude drive people away from Jesus.

To be a witness for Christ requires living beyond your own opinions, desires, and feelings. It requires laying down your pride and humbly speaking the truth in love. Until Christians are willing to daily obey the living Jesus as their Lord (absolute Ruler and Master) their witness will be about themselves and their desires, not about Christ.

I remember when Christians were much more focused on, excited about, and passionate about Jesus than about politics. I miss those days!

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Specializing in Simplicity

Posted on October 22, 2024 by Steve Simms

I don’t need a lot of spices, a lot of recipes, a lot of fancy equipment, or never-ending instructions. I love simplicity and spontaneity. I guess that’s why I’ve never been a fan of organized religion. I prefer to simply “taste and see that the Lord is good” moment by moment.

Spiritual awakening occurs when people go beyond highly structured nominal religion into the blazing faith of simple Christianity. A deep “hunger and thirst for righteousness” can’t be satisfied by merely listening to religious words. It longs for an ongoing heart-to-heart relationship with the risen Jesus.

Simple Christianity is about continually experiencing the presence and reality of the living Jesus. There’s nothing complicated about it. Simply stay focused on Jesus and do what He prompts you to.

Simple Christianity doesn’t require a building, sermon-hearing, a religious professional, a written creed, an institution, ritual, music, or money. It just requires a heart open to continually listen to and talk with Jesus and to do what He says. The Bible calls that being led by the Spirit. Simple Christianity requires only one thing, a personal relationship with the living Jesus as Lord (Master and Ruler).

Religious professionals can’t put the fire of God in your heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. “Be filled with the Spirit.”

“Peace that passes understanding” doesn’t come from nominal religion. It comes from “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Simply your faith. Make room for the risen Jesus to be your all in all. “Quench not the Spirit.” Let the Spirit’s inner rivers of living water continually flood you with “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

The further Christianity gets away from the risen Jesus the more complicated it becomes. I love the simple definition that Paul gives in Romans 8:14: “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” When Christianity is controlled and defined by religious professionals, they make it difficult for people to be led by the Spirit.

When the living Jesus is your Lord (absolute Master and Ruler) Christianity is very simple–just listen to His Spirit and do what He tells you to. However, when Jesus is just one aspect of your faith, Christianity becomes complicated and loaded down with requirements, formalism, and traditions.

The only Christian faith that can survive extreme persecution is simple Christianity. That’s because it doesn’t require meetings controlled and run by a religious leader.

Throughout history Christians have been persecuted, put in prison, and forced to live stripped bare of the complexities of institutional Christianity. Some of the most powerful Christian writings throughout history (including several books of the Bible) have been written by believers who were forced by incarceration to live their faith without the formalities of organized religion. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Religious organization obscures the glorious reality of simple Christianity. It causes people to believe that they have to depend on a religious professional and/or a religious organization to make them right with God, when all they need to do is to continually surrender their heart and life to the risen Jesus.

“Joy unspeakable and full of glory” doesn’t come from passive religion. It comes from continual surrender to the living Jesus.

Religious professionals can’t forgive your sins, heal your hurting heart, and set you free. You need the risen Jesus to do that for you.

Religious professionals can’t produce the fruit of the Spirit in your life. You have to let the Holy Spirit do that.

Tired of jumping through religious hoops? Connect heart to heart with Jesus and experience simple Christianity.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” Don’t leave your faith in the hands of a religious professional.

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