Stressed? Anxious? Grieving?
Or…
Happy? Joyful? Victorious?
Whatever your situation, wanna talk about it? Or would you just like to send us a prayer request?
Contact us below, or reach out to us through Facebook. All correspondence goes straight to Pastor Leland Acker.
Facing death is an indescribable experience. We all know we are going to die, but we don’t know when, where, or how. There’s a moment of intensity you experience when all of those questions are answered.
Such was the case for the woman taken in the act of adultery in John 8. Here, she’s been thrown to the ground in front of Jesus, with a small mob of Pharisees accusing her of adultery and quoting Old Testament scripture in calling for her to be stoned to death.
The whole thing was a set-up to discredit Jesus and cause Him to lose followers. They intended on derailing His ministry altogether, but when you fight against the Lord, you lose every time.
John 8 records that Jesus wrote in the dirt, then told them that the one among them who had no sin could cast the first stone. Realizing their own hypocrisy, or maybe in an exercise in hypocrisy at its finest, they left.
Jesus then turned to the woman and said, “Where are your accusers, does no man condemn you?”
“None, my Lord,” she replied.
“Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”
As teachers of grace, we often harp on the first part of our Lord’s pardon of the woman, “Neither do I condemn you.” However, the latter part is just as important, “Go, and sin no more.”
However, is it possible to go through life without sinning? Romans 7 teaches us that it is not.
So, did Jesus tell the woman to do the impossible? He did not.
Going back to the original language, Jesus was telling her to leave the lifestyle of sin. And in that, He painted us a perfect picture of repentance.
Repentance does not mean you live the rest of your life perfectly. It does not mean that you go back and make everything right with everyone you’ve ever sinned against. Repentance is more than simple sorrow or regret over sin. The act of repentance carries with it the notion that we are leaving our sinful ways behind.
Jesus instructed the woman to leave her adulterous lifestyle behind. Likewise, scripture commands the drug addict to leave the dealer and the user-buddies behind. The porn-addict is to step away from his computer, and the prideful man is to step away from the spotlight.
In the late 1980s, there was a church in the Dallas area that ministered primarily to Hippies and Rock and Rollers. This church routinely went into the nightclub district to find those who were being swallowed up by the darkness of sin. When they found someone ready to turn their life around and trust the Lord for salvation, they not only congratulated them on their profession of faith with a church invite, they took concrete steps to help that sinner leave the lifestyle they were caught up in.
Drug addicts were found homes away from their influencers. Prostitutes were rescued from their pimps. Homeless people were given food and shelter. They were all given the tools and opportunities they needed to leave the sinful lifestyle. That church didn’t merely preach repentance, they led you to it.
So, with all this in mind, let’s do a little self-assessment. Have we left our sinful lifestyle, habits, choices, and the tools that fuel them behind? Or do we keep them in a side-pocket in case we need them? Have you truly repented?
As creation and Christianity are debated between believers and skeptics, two questions often arise. The first is why God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, and the second is why eating of that tree carried the death penalty.
In the below-posted video, Pastor Leland Acker makes the point that to fully give Adam and Eve life, they had to have the choice, the free-will to decide whether to follow God or reject Him.
When God formed man from the dust of the ground, and man became a living soul, man was gifted with the highest form of life. Far beyond existing, man was given self-awareness, consciousness, the ability to reason, to create, to problem-solve, to dream, and to cultivate. God, having created man in His image, bestowed upon man many of His own divine attributes.
Creating man to be a living soul, God wanted him to have the fulness of life. In order for man to be able to reason, create, solve and dream, man would also have to be given the choice of whether to trust and obey the Lord. God so wanted us to have the fulness of life, God gave us the choice.
So, to create the opportunity for that choice, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden of Eden. While one may wonder why knowledge would be a bad thing, keep in mind that this knowledge is an experiential knowledge. By eating the fruit, man would not be suddenly indwelt with endless information, rather he would come to learn good and evil by experiencing both. This knowledge would be gained apart from God, without His help and leadership.
Pursuing knowledge in this way would amount to a complete rejection of God.
So, man had a choice. Trust that God is good and live forever in His presence, or doubt God’s goodness, overthrow His presence in man’s life, and strike out on his own. The former carried with it the promise of eternal blessing. The latter carried a risk of death and eternal judgment.
The serpent (a.k.a. Satan) tempted Adam and Eve with just that. In his speech to Eve in Genesis 3, Satan said, “You will not die. For God knows that in the day that you eat thereof, you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:6 records the logic Adam and Eve used when deciding to eat the fruit. It says, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
The logic was, “It’s good to eat, it looks good, and it will make us wise (as gods.)” They ate so they could experience the pleasures of everything, take power over their own lives, and eject God from the life that He gave them.
This was not a simple mistake or a poor food choice. It was an all-out rebellion against God. They cut themselves off from God, Who gave them life.
And when you cut yourself off from the source of life, you die.
This would be a good time to pause and reflect. God said, “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.”
Satan said, “In the day that you eat this fruit, you will be as gods.”
The question arises, “Where are Adam and Eve today?” Based on the answer to that question, who was telling the truth, God? Or Satan?
If you’ve ever attended a funeral, you know the answer to that question. There is good news, however. In the same chapter, God offered a way of redemption. By promising that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, while suffering a death-blow Himself, God promised a savior, a redeemer, who would come and save His people from the death that comes as a result of sin.
That Savior was Jesus Christ, who both defeated Satan and suffered death upon the cross, and obtained final victory through the resurrection. Belief in this brings salvation and eternal life, and wins God’s favor.
The result of that salvation is being welcomed into His eternal Kingdom, where God will have restored life to what He intended on it being in the Garden.
So, with all that in mind, trust that God is good. Trust in Him, and place your faith in the death Jesus died on the cross for your forgiveness of sin. Then leave that sinful lifestyle behind and follow Him.
Do we truly realize what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us?
Our Lord gave us life. Scripture teaches that Christ was the Word which was in the beginning with God, and was God. That all things (ourselves included) were created by Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The Lord created man and gave him life, so that he became a living soul. Our consciousness, creativity, dreams, and problem-solving ability are all effects of this life that the Lord gave us.
And when man rebelled against God, not only through disobedience, but through an attempt to overthrow God’s power and authority through that disobedience, the Lord redeemed us from the death and condemnation that came as a result.
To do that, He became man, lived the life of a man, endured the same trials and tribulations we do on a daily basis, yet He did so without sin (Hebrews 4:15-16).
Scripture says He came into His own, and we didn’t receive Him, nor did we recognize Him. In fact, we rejected and betrayed Him, turned Him over to the Romans and had Him crucified.
That is the greatest sin ever perpetrated in the history of the world, the sin of rejecting Christ and nailing Him to the cross.
Yet, even in that, He endured the wrath of God on our behalf, so that we could be cleared of all guilt and could stand faultless before God. He even prayed, “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Having paid for our sins on the cross, the Lord resurrected on the third day, conquering death and the grave, and later ascended to the right hand of the throne of God where He ever lives to make intercession for us. He maintains our salvation by continually putting our cause before the Father in Heaven.
So, in John 17:9-10, it makes perfect sense that Jesus would clarify to the Father that He is praying for us. He said, “ I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”
In that statement, Jesus said that He prays for us, that we are securely His, and that He finds glory in us.
Jesus prays for us. He earnestly pleads before the Father on our behalf, and He advocates for us. He stated that He prayed for “them,” and not the world. “Them” are His disciples, and not only His disciples, but all those who would believe based on their words. Therefore, since we have all become believers based on their words, then this prayer is for us as well.
And we know that Christ prays for us, because Hebrews 7:25 says that He “ever liveth to make intercession” for us. He intercedes, advocates for us. Advocacy… we don’t often associate that word with Christ, but it is truly what He does for us.
1 John 2:1-2 says “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
John told us to sin not. That means to leave sin behind, to leave the sinful lifestyle behind, to leave “the life.”
However, if anyone sins, “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He truly is our advocate.
His advocacy is one reason we are secure in our salvation, if we know Him as Savior.
Jesus said in John 17:9-10, “all mine are thine and thine are mine.” We belong to God, and in John 10, Jesus said, “no man is able to pluck them from my hand.” We have been passed from death to life, from condemnation to salvation, from guilt to innocence.
Then Jesus concludes this verse by saying, “and I am glorified in them.”
When Jesus said He was glorified in His disciples, it means His disciples bring him honor, renown, and cause Him to be well-known in a good day. This was something Jesus said had already happened. Simply by following Him, remaining faithful to Him even when all others walked away, and preaching His Kingdom, the disciples had already glorified Jesus.
When we remain faithful to the Lord, we glorify Him as well.
So, in light of this passage, knowing that Jesus prays for us, has secured our salvation, and is glorified in us, let us spend time in prayer, trusting in His forgiveness and redemption, and promoting His Gospel.
Continuing the tradition of bringing the community together in the Gospel, Life Point Baptist Church has announced that the annual Community Easter Sunrise Service will be held at 7 a.m. Easter Sunday, April 9, at the Early Visitors and Events Center in Early, TX.
“The Community Easter Sunrise Service is one of my favorite events all year,” Pastor Leland Acker said. “This is where we get to gather with friends and neighbors, worship together, and truly feel the Lord’s presence as the sun rises on Resurrection Sunday.”
This year’s service will include a few minor changes to the program.
“At Life Point, we’ve come to believe that true worship is participatory, so we’ll be incorporating more group participation into this year’s service. We’ll be adding responsive readings, focusing on congregational hymns, and we will pray together as well.”
As has been the case since 2019, the Community Sunrise Service will be held at the Early Visitors and Events Center at 419 Garmon Drive.
“It’s truly an amazing venue,” Acker said. “We gather at the outdoor stage, and the sun rises to our left as we worship. There are comfortable restrooms inside, and if bad weather breaks out, we can retreat indoors.”
Acker added there is plenty of parking, and the outdoor stage area can be quickly and easily accessed from the parking lot.
For more information on the Community Easter Sunrise Service, visitors can follow the event page on Facebook, or contact Pastor Acker at (325) 200-8531.
“All are welcome,” Acker said. “This event is for the entire community.”
Is God good?
For decades, if not centuries, the assumption has been that God is good. He is the creator of all things, the redeemer of sinful man, and the good force in the universe that battles the evil forces of Satan and his demons.
However, an increasingly skeptical generation is rising up. While this increased skepticism may alarm some Christians, a sincere search for the truth will not only quench the thirst of the skeptics, but will also deepen their faith, as knowing why you believe something endows you with a faith strong enough to endure the hardest temptations.
The skeptic looks at a broken world full of suffering and questions whether a truly good God could allow such. However, if we only evaluate God by the current conditions of this world, a work that is still very much in progress, then our perception will be skewed.
The fact is that while God created the world, not everything in the world is of God’s doing. God created a perfect world, a perfect environment, and a life for man with no suffering.
And God’s gift to man was the gift of life. To fully understand the gift of life, let’s take a look at Genesis 2:7, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
This concept of life includes a certain consciousness, a sense of self-awareness, a certain creativity, a problem solving ability, and the desire and ability to create beauty.
This concept of life includes a certain freedom, the freedom to choose one’s destiny and will.
To lock in that freedom, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Man was warned that eating of that tree would amount to rebellion against God and death. More on that in a moment.
The life God gave was one of freedom, creativity, consciousness, intellect, problem solving, engineering, art, beauty, music and progress. All of this is birthed from the life God gave, and the life God breathed into man’s nostrils.
Man is capable of all of this because God made him a living soul.
So, everything good we enjoy about life, whether it be music, art, sports, or entertainment, springs forth from the life God gave us. Everything good we accomplish, from building things, business, to medical advancements, comes from the life God gave us.
And God intended on us doing these good things with the life He gave us, which is why He told Adam to keep and dress the Garden, meaning that God’s intention for man was to make his perfect creation even better.
As Genesis 2:15 says, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”
So, everything good you enjoy in life comes from the life God gave, thus everything good in life comes from God, because He is good.
As James 1:17 says, “Every very good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
So, seeing that God’s creation is good, and seeing that the gifts He gives is good, then we can conclude that God is good. Jesus Christ said that there is none good but God.
So what about the suffering? We did that on our own. God created the perfect world and gave us a perfect life, but in sinning against Him, we broke it. Not only that, but we continually perpetuate the suffering by sinning against each other.
So God is not the source of what’s bad in the world, we are. God is good, but we are not. But praise be to God, He can take all of our badness and turn it into good, and He does that continually (Romans 8:28)
So, God is good. The life He gave is good. The gifts He gives through that life is good. Therefore He is worthy of our faith – we should trust Him all the more.
What does it say, when Jesus Christ was preparing to go to the cross, where He would bear the wrath of God for the sins of the world, that He was praying for us? As Jesus prepared to go to the cross, He was thinking about us.
Thus, as He prepared to sacrifice Himself to redeem us from sin and death, He prayed for us. He prayed for our protection and well-being. He prayed for our unity, that we would be empowered to carry the Gospel throughout the entire world, and that we would bring Him glory.
In this, we see the love that the Lord has for us. Love can be verified by action, and when the Lord went to the cross, He expressed the highest, and deepest level of love for us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God’s will is for us to be redeemed. God’s will for us is for us to be saved. He wants us to enter Heaven, and to live with Him in His Kingdom.
His desire for us is strong, and His desire for us is Heaven.
Seeing that God’s desire for us is Heaven, anything less is menial. We need not be concerned whether God intends for us to have certain jobs, cars, houses, or financial blessings. Knowing that His desire for us is Heaven, we should know that God intends the best for us on the highest levels. Thus, we can trust Him, even when the tangible things of this world do not materialize.
Knowing that God’s will for us is to receive us into Heaven, how do we respond to His will?
In John 17:7-8, “Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. 8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
These verses demonstrate a few things about Christ. First, they demonstrate the deity of Christ, that He is God in the flesh. Secondly, they demonstrate that Christ was sent from God to complete the plan of salvation. And finally, the words Christ spoke were the very words of God.
Check out Pastor Leland Acker’s message, posted via YouTube above, and let us know what you think.
It’s not you, this world really is fallen, broken, and condemned.
The fallen nature of this world began when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By doing so, they sought to expel God from the lives that He gave them. Thus, man not only began the process of dying, but the impact of sin entering the world affected everything. Suddenly, animals turned carnivorous and began hunting each other. Disease entered the world. The first murder happened, and Cain set out to establish a completely Godless society.
This sin led to brokenness, from Lamech marrying two wives in Genesis 4, to the world being full of violence in Genesis 6. Today, we see this brokenness in the form of a broken society, broken homes, and broken people. And this broken, fallen world stands condemned before God. Consider the words of Romans 3:10-19:
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17 And the way of peace have they not known: 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes. 19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
The entire world has fallen, is guilty before God, and will be condemned, unless they find His salvation through Jesus Christ His Son. Romans 3:23-26 goes on to say:
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”
Sure, the world may be fallen, broken and condemned, but it doesn’t have to be. Redemption, healing and salvation are found through faith in Jesus Christ.
So, in His prayer in John 17, when Jesus said, “I have manifested thy name to the men which thou gavest me out of the world,” He was indicating that He was not only the manifestation of God on this earth, but through His Gospel God’s people were rescued from this world. Check out the above-posted video of Pastor Leland Acker bringing a powerful message of redemption and grace.
The Greek language has a beautiful aspect to it… it puts the central thought of the message at the beginning of the sentence. So, when Jesus said in John 17:5, “ And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was,” the central thought was “And now…” meaning “This moment.”
Christ was asking God to glorify Him in that moment, not the same way an impatient child wants their birthday present “right now,” or the way I wish my download would complete “right now,” but rather, Jesus was saying, “In this moment, glorify Me.”
The moment Jesus was talking about was the Gospel, His death, burial and resurrection for our sins, according to the scriptures. It is in the Gospel that Christ is truly glorified, because in the Gospel, His mission is completed. In the Gospel, His claims of Messiahship are validated. In the Gospel, He has His complete victory.
The Gospel is the culmination of all the promises God made in the Old Testament. It is the fulfillment of the Law, and it was the subject of the prophets. It was the inspiration of the Psalms. When Jesus Christ died for our sins, redeeming us from condemnation and shame, completing that redemption with the resurrection, the disciples saw their faith become tangible. From that moment, they could keep silent no more.
Because of the Gospel, Jesus Christ is the central figure in human history. Secular history can neither deny the existence of Christ, nor can it deny His impact on the world. While secular history ingores the divinity of Christ and His redemptive work through the Gospel, secular history records how the teachings of Jesus have influenced the greatest philosophers ever since. The teachings of Jesus have also influenced Western literature, and if we are to be honest, the ministry of Jesus is the foundation for Western civilization.
You read that right.
Without Jesus, there would be no Western civilization, at least not as we know it. Northern and Western European peoples were barbarians before the conquest of the Roman Empire. Secular history records that fact. Furthermore, the Roman Empire was heavily influenced by Christianity. With the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire (much of it in that first generation after Jesus rose to be at the right hand of the Father,) Roman culture was heavily influenced by the faith. And when Constantine had his conversion a couple hundred years later, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The conquered barbarians were now civilized, living by Christian values, even if those values were forced upon them. The influence of Christianity then gave rise to literature, architecture, education, the Sistine Chapel, art, and culture.
It was Christianity which motivated the pilgrims to seek a new life in the new world, and serious historians cannot deny the influence of Christianity on the American colonies and the new nations emerging in the Americas. They may deny or disagree with the faith, but they cannot deny its influence.
With this influence apparent, it becomes evident that without Jesus, there would have been no Western Civilization. What more glory could the Lord ask for than to be the bedrock of our culture’s history? I tell you, it is to be the foundation of our faith, which He is. Hebrews 12 says He is the author and finisher of our faith.
Christ was truly glorified in the Gospel, in the moment that He asked God for the glory. Next, Christ will be glorified when He returns. When Christ returns, there will be no debate about Who He is or What He is. There will only be the decision to surrender to Him, or to fight against Him. And many, unfortunately, will choose the latter.
So, with that, the glory of Christ is truly that He is the turning point of human history, the beginning of Western Civilization, but more importantly, the foundation of our faith, a faith which looks to God for forgiveness and righteousness, and trusts Him for redemption when He returns to this world and establishes His Kingdom on Earth. That truly is epic.
One of the most frustrating characters of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was Edmund, the younger brother who suffered the stereotypical middle-child syndrome. Lured into Narnia to play with his younger sister, he denied its existence to avoid being associated with her immaturity when confronted by their older siblings.
Eager to obtain special treatment, he quickly abandons his siblings in a new, mystical world to seek the favor of the witch, who had previously fed him Turkish Delight. By the time Edmund reaches the following scene, a full-on war has erupted in his heart.
Edmund realizes that, at the witch’s side, he is on the wrong side of the coming battle, but his desire for self-preservation and the hope for possible future favors prevents him from undertaking his own escape. Ultimately, he has to be rescued.
Most characters who frustrate us onscreen do so because we see a little of ourselves in them. Edmund frustrates us because we see his struggle as our struggle. Trying to fulfill our own desires, we find ourselves trapped on the wrong side of the spiritual battle front. Our desire to be on Aslan’s side while simultaneously receiving Turkish Delight from the witch has rendered us captive, needing the Lord to rescue us by His divine grace.
This battle inflicts needless pain and anxiety upon us, as the struggle could easily be avoided simply by following the words of Christ in Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Just as Edmund could have avoided the whole struggle by choosing loyalty to his siblings, the creatures helping them along, and pursuing the presence of the obviously good Aslan, Edmund tried to have it both ways. Such is the same mistake we make.
Most Christians want to serve God, but to a degree, we also want to enjoy the pleasures of this world. We envision a world where we can somehow live for ourselves while at the same time living for God. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 that this is impossible. We will either serve God, or we will serve our own self-interests, seeking only to enrich ourselves with the pleasures of this world (serving mammon).
Any choice to try to accomplish both is actually a choice to serve the latter, with the added consequence of self-deception.
Therefore it is important to heed the words of Joshua as he closed out his service to the nation of Israel, “Choose this day whom you will serve… as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” This decision will lead to a powerful commitment, one Moses made which was chronicled in Hebrews 11:24-26, “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.”
What sinks most Christians is the desire to enjoy the things of the world while having God in their corner. The way of the narrow road that Jesus described is the commitment to serve God first in all things, and trust Him to bless you as a result. To commit to serve God first, and to live for Him and not self, we must constantly ask ourselves two questions. (1) To what have I committed myself today? and (2) Why?
As we continually ask ourselves those questions, while continuously committing ourselves to serving God, we will notice a shift in our priorities, and a shift in our motivations, to the point where we become the people God intended on us being, and we will see the blessings thereof.
So, whom will you serve today. God? Or Mammon?
The Point... 