Author Archives: Alan Simmons

2013 – My desire to be a better servant for Christ

Posted on January 4, 2013 | Comments Off on 2013 – My desire to be a better servant for Christ

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Each year, many of us around the world willfully make resolutions on how we are planning to improve ourselves.  We talk about how much weight we want to lose by next Christmas, or maybe how we plan to do more for the Lord in our home, church, or community, or maybe even how we plan to develop a closer and more meaningful relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  While these resolutions start off with the noblest of intentions, there are some things that both psychology and sociology can tell us about ourselves – if we dare to listen.

There have been numerous studies conducted to find out what drives us to make resolutions and why many of us fail to achieve them.  According to these studies, the average person will make between five to seven resolutions; the first of the resolutions never makes it past the middle of February and the last one usually ends by mid-March.  A little less than 13% of the 1,500 polled in one study actually kept their resolutions long enough to become life-changing habits.

For me, 2012 was a year that not only was full of spiritual battles but of personal challenges and changes as well.  I made my resolutions without putting much thought into how I planned to accomplish them.  Not once did I ask God to lay on my heart the areas where He wanted to see me grow nor did I ever ask God to give me the strength needed to follow through on the areas I had chosen for my resolutions.  The end result was that two of my resolutions never made it past February while the third continued to limp along.  Sure, my intentions were noble; I planned to lose 25 pounds, to finish a book I have been working on, and to expand the printing ministry we operate out of our church.  Needless to say, on New Year’s eve as we were participating in the watch-night service, I began thinking about my failures and shortcomings in 2012.

The next morning, my family and I had breakfast and went on a day-trip to celebrate New Year’s Day with my daughter’s godparents as we have done each year for the past five years.  As we were on our trip back I decided that this year, instead of making resolutions just to see them broken within a few months, I would spend time in prayer and ask God to help me to become the man, the husband, and the father He wants me to be.  Instead of making this a New Year’s resolution, I decided to make this a “new day resolution” each morning as I do my daily devotions; I ask God to mold and shape me .  After all, it’s recorded in Lamentations: This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness (Lamentations 3:21-23).  Instead of focusing on trying to make broad changes over an entire year, I will simply take things the way that God intended – one day at a time.

There is one thing that I now grasp that’s taken me nearly 25 years as a Christian to learn – I cannot do anything outside of God and that I must seek and totally rely on His will for my life; I must learn to wait for the Lord instead of taking things into my own hands. The book of Lamentations comes into mind as I began thinking about how I am approaching this new year day by day:  The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD (Lamentations 3:24-26).

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Posted in My Walk

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Rooted, growing, and established in the faith

Posted on October 2, 2012 | Comments Off on Rooted, growing, and established in the faith

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ (Colossians 2:6-8).

Ask anyone around where our apartment is, where my wife or I work, or even our church:  I love plants.  Each spring, I enjoy the thrill of re-potting the houseplants before bringing them outside for the season.  I enjoy picking out new plants for the window boxes and pots that I keep in front of our apartment.  In the early spring and in the last few weeks of fall, I even give away cuttings to friends and neighbors.  There are a few things that this hobby has taught me that not only apply to plant care, but also about life and my walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Before I give any plants away, the cuttings must be prepared.  They must be trimmed, potted, take root, and have new growth before I give them to anyone.  Nothing would hurt my reputation more than to give someone a small plant than to have that plant die a few days after I gave it to them.  Right now, we have a few cuttings that we are preparing to give away – but the sure-sign they are well rooted is new growth.  I believe that this concept of being “well rooted and growing” is very similar to Paul’s rooted and built up in him instructions he wrote for the church at Colossus and Christians everywhere.

As the cuttings take root they begin to sprout new growth.  Depending on the type of plant, this can be new leaves, new stems, or even blooms – each is an indication that the cutting has taken root in the soil and is now, in the words of Paul, building up – becoming bigger and stronger than what it was when it was originally planted.  As Christians, we are supposed to do the same thing – we are supposed to allow our faith to take root and grow.  Just as a cutting needs sunlight, potting soil, dirt, and a container to grow in, Christians need to read and study their Bible (II Timothy 2:15), attend church services (Hebrews 10:25), prayer for ourselves, our families, and friends (Philippians 4:6, James 5:15-16), and to learn from elder Christians (Titus 4:2-10).  Too many Christians, once they have accepted Jesus as their savior, think that their commitment to their Lord and Savior does not extend beyond that.  This is why there are many Christians that are weak in their spiritual walk; instead of growing in their faith, they return to living like they did before they accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.

WhileI was attending graduate school at Southern Illinois University, I had a neighbor in graduate housing that claimed to be a Christian.  In several conversations we had discussing the role of faith, religion, and academic study, he told me that he had come to the realization that there was no way that most of the Bible was accurate.  He said that from a scholarly point of view, the Judeo-Christian view of marriage, homosexuality, origins of life, and stories of Noah’s ark were all tools designed to control the minds and fears of crowds.  He further stated that he believed in what he referred to as “liberation Christianity” where there were no absolutes and all that mattered was not your relationship with God but how you treated your fellow man.  This thinking is what the apostle Paul warned about in his letter to the church at Colossus Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ (Colossians 2:8).  Unfortunately, this man had not known enough of the basics of the teachings of Christ to withstand the false teaching prevalent in the academic world.

Right now in the windowsill of our family’s kitchen, I have two glasses that contains cuttings from plants.  My daughter, who just had her second birthday, loves for me to lift her up so she can look at the plants and the cuttings.  This morning, she noticed the roots that are beginning to appear on the stems of the cuttings of Swedish Ivy, exclaiming “whoa, that?” and then repeating “woots!” after I told her what they were.  As long as I remember this morning’s lesson, of the importance of teaching her about the things of God now while she is young, when she does make the decision to trust in Jesus Christ as her savior, she will not only have a strong foundation to build upon, but will have the ability to look back at the simple lessons taught through our shared enjoyment of caring for houseplants.

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Posted in Chrisitian Philosophy, Discipleship

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The lesson of waiting and faith

Posted on October 1, 2012 | Comments Off on The lesson of waiting and faith

Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me (Micah 7:7).

During our pastor’s sermon last night, my wife and I shared a laugh as Pastor Ramsey talked about his own impatience.  What we found funny was not that my pastor was talking about his impatience, but he actually described my impatience perfectly!  As he began his sermon, he mentioned waiting at busy intersections, waiting in line at Walmart, and other common situations where we are forced to abandon our own self-imposed time lines and just wait.  One of the most difficult things to do is just to wait; it can be made even more difficult when we are faced with a situation where we see no visible way out!

Yesterday’s services, from Sunday school to the evening service, were filled with references and reminders that at times, it is important for us to wait and to do so in a spirit of thankfulness and  continued prayer.  Through the prophet Isaiah, God reminds both Jew and Christian alike that they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Isaiah 40:31). When we wait and accept what God has planned for us we will be rewarded by an overjoyed heart and will not be filled with dread or fear, but instead will excel in what God has put before us.  Have you   ever have a job or project that you enjoyed doing so much that it didn’t seem like work?  Did you ever get excited the more you became involved in it?  Did you notice that even when things didn’t go exactly as planned that they were never as bad as they could have been?  Then you totally understand what Isaiah is speaking about in this verse.

Our adult Sunday school class teacher, Eddy Owens, shared with our class how in his life that there are times he has felt that God has shut all the doors and windows and left him in a hallway to just wait.  What an accurate description of what God will do to get our attention; the prophet Isaiah must have also felt the same way when he wrote And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him (Isaiah 30:18). David, whom God called a man after his own heart, wrote He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalms 23:2-3).  There’s an important lesson we can apply here – there will come times in our lives where God puts us in a situation where all we can do is to wait upon him and we are to rest ourselves – spiritually, physically, and mentally – while we wait.

There are times in our lives that we simply do need the opportunity for rest.  The psalmist and king, David, understood this quite well when he wrote Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass(Psalms 37:7). Right now, my wife and I am in the middle of one of these “rest, wait, and fret not…” times in our lives.  There are times where it’s easy, at least for me, to take my eyes off the Lord and begin to worry about everything else that’s going on around me.  Bills, finances, car repairs, and a whole host of things begin to preoccupy my mind.  Instead, what God wants for us is not to worry but to use the time waiting to rest.  There are times when we look back at things that have happened in our lives and we have what I refer to as a “Job moment,” For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest (Job 3:13).  Too many times when we should have rested, we worry instead.  We find ourselves spiritually tired to the point that it can delay or keep us from enjoying God’s rich blessings that he has planned for us.

Additionally, while we are waiting on God’s direction we should not be ashamed.  David, a man that found himself waiting a lot for God’s timing, wrote O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause (Psalms 25:2-3). We are not to be ashamed for our faith in God nor are we to be ashamed when we are placed in a position when all we can do is wait upon God’s timing. It is amazing how when Christians find themselves in situations where waiting is the only thing we can do Satan begins to taunt us with the ever so effective  “so where is your God now?”  It is important that we remember what God gently reminds us through the writing of the psalmist, David: Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth (Psalms 46:10).  I have learned that there are blessings for obedience.  When God tells us to wait on him, and we do, not only do we demonstrate our faith in him, but we also exercise and strengthen our faith in him.

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Posted in Increasing Faith, Our relationship with God

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