I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
I want the true Super Bowl. I want my heart to be the bowl that overflows with the presence, power, and love of the risen Jesus Christ. Let Jesus fill your bowl today and make you whole!
Too often Christianity is presented like a boring bowl of oatmeal instead of with the excitement of the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a party bowl, but Jesus is a hardy bowl (empowering you to endure and overcome difficult situations with hope and faith).
When you daily follow and obey the risen Jesus, you feel no need to spike life’s punch bowl.Life is rarely a bowl of cherries, but your life can be continually filled with the fruit and the gifts of God’s Spirit if you will always surrender to the risen Jesus.
Don’t put Jesus in a fishbowl so you can look at Him now and then. Keep Him in the center of your heart as your Lord and Master!
If you’ve never let the living Jesus bowl you over, you don’t know what you’re missing!Don’t sell out your invitation to a glorious relationship with Christ for a bowl of meaningless distractions.
My dream home is a place where people’s desires, feelings, and decisions don’t define or determine their attitude, words, and behaviors. Instead, they surrender to and are led by the supernatural love and presence of God.My dream home goes far beyond domesticated religion and embraces sacrificial love, heart-to-heart connection, and ongoing obedience to the risen Jesus.
I have a dream Of home as a place Where people replace Self-seeking focus With a face-to-face Relationship with The living Jesus.
Christ and religion Are not the same. One is powerful, The other tame. Human analysis With heart paralysis Leads people to neglect To behold and reflect, To daily ponder And surrender to, The life changing wonder Of the risen Jesus.
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:18.)
Jesus Christ is the most exciting reality in the world! It’s sad that church so often presents Him in a boring way. Just because an organization calls itself a church doesn’t mean that it obeys or represents Jesus. Come home to a daily personal relationship with Christ.
I love to hear good news. It thrills me and fills me with joy. The first thing I do when I get amazingly fantastic news is to say with great gratitude and electric enthusiasm; “Thank You, Jesus!”
My favorite source for good news is a collection of books called the New Testament. Accept no substitute! The only reliable series about Jesus Christ is The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament! The first 4 seasons are amazing. Choose Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read them over and over with an open, humble heart and their good news will fill you with glorious views of Christ. Soon you will be saying with great gratitude and electric enthusiasm; “Thank You, Jesus!”
God’s good news Will give you clear views Of the nature Of sin city And set you free From the demise Of its cruel traps. Evil tries With many lies To disguise It’s destruction. It gives us false highs And blinds our eyes So we don’t realize Its corruption. We need to hear The warning cries Of our conscience So we can arise And revise Our thinking, Feelings and desires To align with What truth requires. It’s unwise To surmise That you’re immune To sin city’s Evil lies. Now is the time To avoid the things That evil tries To emphasize And to fully embrace God’s good news With your heart and life!
Thank you, Jesus! I’m so grateful for God’s good news!
How we need Spirit-directed Christi-followers and Spirit-led gatherings! When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, He empowered Christ-seekers to live Spirit-directed lives and to participate in Spirit-led assemblies. Now the members of the body of Christ don’t have to stay stuck in our own thoughts, feelings, desires, opinions, traditions, and institutions. Now we are free to follow and obey the risen Jesus as He lives in and through us and seeks to direct us by His Spirit so that He can establish His Lordship, His mindset, His intentions, and His kingdom-government in our heart, mind, and daily life.
There’s no church as usual in the New Testament. When Christians gathered, they followed God’s Spirit, not a program! Enough church as usual! It’s time to make room for the risen Jesus to take control. (Religious institutions seem to have the tendency to push the living Jesus out and to rely on programs and organization instead.)
The idea that church attendance causes people to grow spiritually seems like a deception. Just look at the millions of immature believers who attend church regularly yet are still tossed about and held captive to the sin and influence of this world. Could spectator church be the millstone that’s hung around Christians’ necks and casts them into the sea of superficial religion?
However, wherever you are you’re not alone! Jesus is present and speaking to you. Listen to His still small voice in your conscience. Read the New Testament with an open heart (not a critical mind) and you will soon become aware of Christ’s presence with you and love for you.
I love experiencing the Spirit-led community of fellow Christ-seekers. I look for it everywhere I go.
If you want to have A beautiful day Let Jesus lead you In His way.
Faith’s not something To mentalize, Systematize, Or analyze. Open up your heart. Take off your disguise. Let Jesus arise Inside of you. Look into His eyes Until you realize His presence is Life’s greatest prize.
People have a right
To pretend to be
What they want to be
Or feel like they are,
But I have the right
To kindly disagree
With their subjectivity
And to agree
With their physiology.
There’s an inner longing in the human heart (an identity crises) that nothing in the physical world can fulfill. Candy (in all of its forms) appears to be dandy but it usually leaves us feeling empty and often guilty. Culture’s candy can’t create the life you crave.
Is there anything that can heal and satisfy hurting human hearts? Yes! True spirituality (an intimate, personal, self-surrendered relationship with the living God) is the key, and the risen Jesus is the way to that relationship.
If you say you believe in God, but ignore Him in your daily life, your belief may be superficial. It’s too easy to settle for and be satisfied with superficial Christianity.
It’s easy to say you believe in God, but seeking the Lord is costly. It requires that we set aside our personal desires to follow His will — that we replace our ways and our thoughts with His ways and His thoughts.
Our identity isn’t found in own thoughts, feelings, and desires. It’s found in God. When our desire for God distracts us from our personal desires, we begin to seek God and we discover His forgiveness, restoration, mercy, grace, and redeeming embrace through the sacrifice of the risen Jesus Christ. Then by God’s Spirit working within us (and within His Spirit-led community of fellow Christ-seekers), He begins to empower us and align us day-by-day with who He created us to be.
To be unaware that God is calling you closer to Him is to be spiritually blind. Open our spiritual eyes Lord so we can see You, surrender to You, and respond to You day and night.
Look beyond the darkness and the distractions! Truly, deeply, humbly, completely, continually: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Who doesn’t need a break from the misery, anger, and hopelessness we see all around us? Too often our attempts to ignore it only show us the emptiness within us. What can we do?
Here’s how I break with sadness and despair and leave it behind. I go to the proven source of hope that has worked to empower people and fill them with inner peace for two thousand years. Yes. I turn to the risen Jesus Christ.
Feeling empty? Your heart is designed for God’s presence. Substitutes will never fully fulfill it.
Endowed With Splendor
Stir up your awareness Of Christ in you. Focus your attentiveness On His living presence. Keep Him always In your consciousness So that all that you Think, say, and do Will be led by His Spirit Overflowing from within you As rivers of rushing water Empowered by His liveliness.
Don’t encase Christ In a legal case Or a religious place. Behold His face Everyplace.
You can daily experience the wonderful presence of the risen Jesus. Let Him keep your heart always overflowing with the splendor of His presence! See more of Jesus. “We look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are unseen.” Enjoy Jesus! Let Him fill you with His glorious presence. Celebrate Christ! Praise, worship, and adore Him.
The internet gives people instant access to more information (and misinformation) than they have ever been able to access in human history. For better or for worse, the internet accumulates all that the Bible calls “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” at a person’s fingertips. A human lifetime wouldn’t be long enough to list all the ways that the internet is being used for evil and for good.
I do everything I can to avoid and wholeheartedly reject online confusion, hatred, deception, bullying, lies, rebellion, meaningless distraction, and all other destructive forms of information and temptation. I refuse to be seduced, possessed, and controlled by the evil on the internet.
I chose to go online to search for, represent, and proclaim “the tree of life.” Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I have found many things online that help me love Jesus more. My google records would show you the pages where I have discovered hope, peace, faith, and encouragement that lead to life in and through Christ. As I search, I’m quick to avoid the traps of evil and deception that abound.
I also love to proclaim the reality and presence of the risen Jesus. The internet is a powerful platform for doing that. It’s one way I “shout it from the housetops” that Jesus is real, alive, present, and working to set people free in the world today. Thank you for reading my blog. Also, look me up on xtwitter @CSteveSimms, on my Facebook page, and on my “Steve Simms” amazon author page.
From beginning to end, I’ve found that the ideal alignment for a wonderful day is (moment-by-moment) to focus on the presence of the risen Jesus, continually listen to and obey His voice, and fully surrender to His will. I’ve yet to live such an ideal day, but day-by-day throughout the years I inch a bit closer to such alignment. The more I lay down my will and embrace the will of the risen Jesus, the more His joy and peace flow from my heart.
My most significant life events over the passage of time have been moments of surprise insight. Frequently words come to me unexpectedly and suddenly I see things differently.
Because I was a church attendee, I thought I was a Christian. Then one day these words came to my mind: “If you were born a Hindu, what would you be today?” In an instant my perspective on life changed and I knew I was a Christian in name only, but not in reality.
A couple of years later I heard heart-felt words from two strangers about how the risen Jesus had revealed Himself to them, set them free, and filled them with peace and joy. As they were speaking, the same thing happened inside of me, and I’ve been rejoicing with and celebrating the living Jesus ever since.
Once when I was reading the book of Acts in the Bible, I was amazed how many times it said that God spoke to people. I said to God: “You spoke to people in the Bible, why aren’t you speaking to people today?” Immediately these words came to me: “The problem isn’t that I’m not speaking. It’s that you’re not listening.” So, I began to regularly notice the thoughts that come to my mind, and I discovered that many of them are from God and when I humbly receive and accept them, they powerfully change my perspective on life.
In the early hours of this very morning as I lay on my bed, I searched my heart and was silent. Then words began to come to me about the Light of God and once again they aligned with the next morning’s Wake-Up Call blog post. I love to let God shine the Light of His face in my heart.
“Until Christ-followers begin to daily delight in God’s Light we’ll stay stuck in routine religion. Overcomers overcome through ongoing revelation of ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ Behold Jesus and overcome!”
“The Light to look unto Jesus doesn’t come from religious lectures or ceremonies. It’s a gift of supernatural insight from God. Jesus is building His body on the solid rock of direct divine revelation not on the shifting sand of religiosity.”
“Jesus isn’t about building religious-lecture buildings. He’s about building people’s hearts together as the family of God. Jesus builds people’s hearts together when they open their eyes to see Him spiritually. When you see the risen Christ who I see, we become spiritual family.”
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 