redemption

The Trauma Behind “Runaway Train”

The Soul Asylum hit, “Runaway Train,” is synonymous with 90s music, and is best known for its music video featuring photos of kids who had been reported missing or who had turned homeless.

While the stories of the kids featured in the video defined the video and raised awareness of the plight of runaway/homeless kids, the true story of the song stems from a major bout with mental illness suffered by Davd Pirner, lead singer of Soul Asylum.

Pirner began suffering hearing loss, and upon learning that his music career may soon be ending, suffered an emotional and mental breakdown. Pirner discussed his mental illness as being on a runaway train, and would go on to refer to his condition as his “runaway train.”

Pirner captured the essence of the song in the lyrics:

It seems no one can help me now
I’m in too deep
There’s no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I’m neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life’s mystery seems so faded

Essentially, Pirner described his battle as being on a train that was speeding down a track to a location that he didn’t want to go.

As anyone who has ever ridden a train can attest, once you’re on the train and it’s moving, it’s near impossible to get off the train.

With that imagery, we see that Pirner found himself in a hopeless place, facing a crisis for which there was no solution.

Perhaps you can relate. Maybe you feel that your life is spinning out of control, headed to an inevitable conclusion that you would have never wanted.

We can relate, and most of us have been there. Mental illness, depression, and trauma response are complex issues. We are here to tell you that not only is there hope, but you can stop the train and get off, finding a path to a destination that you want.

And we can help. Please contact us via the contact tab on this site, visit our services, or reach out via social media (facebook.com/pointtolife). While we are not mental health professionals, we can connect you with community resources, licensed therapists, and we can assist with Spiritual coping mechanisms including prayer and active listening.

Most of all, we can introduce you to Jesus, who can heal your pain as powerfully as He healed the blind and the deaf in the Bible.

Please reach out. There’s no shame in getting help. God heals the broken, and makes us strong when we are weak. May God bless you.

National suicide hotline is 988.

Have We Forgotten?

Ancient Israel was falling apart. Their kingdom had split into two kingdoms, the economy and military strength were declining, and the culture was rotting from the inside out.

As Israel addressed their problems, they looked to everything but God for the solutions. In Isaiah 40, God asked, “Have you forgotten Who I am?”

All too often, we look to everything but God for the answers to the problems in our lives. Have we forgotten Him too?

Asking for a Sign

In Isaish 7, the Lord promised Ahaz, an unGodly king, that He would protect the him and his kingdom from a pending invasion. The Lord then invited Ahaz to ask Him for a sign. In essence, God extended His grace and provision to Ahaz, who rejected it out of his own pride.

In this message, Pastor Leland Acker shows how this fits into Isaiah’s theme of reasoning with God, and how we can align ourselves with God in our lives so we can experience the peace He offers.

Reasoning with God

In Isaiah 1:18, God says, “Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

As we discussed last week, to reason with God means to come to the Lord, allow Him to convict you of your sin and correct your sin, and then God will cleanse you and forgive you of your sin.

In Isaiah 6, we see what this looks like, as Isaiah has his reasoning moment with God.

The Road to Redemption: The First Step…

When you find yourself beset by fear, anxiety, regret, sadness or anger, you may feel overwhelmed. In this message, Pastor Leland Acker points out that to overcome the anguish in your life, you need to find peace in your heart. This message, taken from Isaiah 1:18, shows us how to do that.

What Child is This? (Luke 2:22-40)

Simeon was a man who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would live to see the day that Christ would arrive. Think about how amazing that must have been?

How would you feel if you knew that scripture would be fulfilled in your lifetime? How would you feel knowing that you would live to see the second coming of Christ, and the establishment of His Kingdom on Earth?

How would you be impacted if that which you believed in your entire life was suddenly real, tangible, and right in front of you?

All of these were realities to Simeon, who in Luke 2:22-40, was overcome with his excitement and lifted up his praises toward God. In his and Anna’s praise, three observations are made:

  1. Jesus is the Christ.
  2. Jesus is Salvation.
  3. Jesus is Redemption.

The Christ is the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Messiah. In scripture, God made multiple promises to Israel, and He made many promises to us. Each and everyone of those promises would be fulfilled by the Christ. Simeon identifies the Christ as Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is Salvation. It’s His very nature, and it’s even in His name. The name “Jesus” literally means “The Lord is Salvation.” Jesus gave His life on the cross to save us from our sins, from darkness, from hopelessness, and to bring in everlasting life, and eternal reward.

Jesus is redemption. Redemption means to be liberated from bondage by the payment of an outstanding debt. We were in bondage to sin and condemnation, but Jesus liberated us by paying our sin-debt, that we may go free.

Simeon’s words are deep and profound. Check out Life Point’s worship service, posted above, and learn more through Pastor Leland Acker’s message on “What Child is This?”

Seeing God pt. 1

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Job both had it all, and lived a life that honored God. The Bible tells us that he was immensely wealthy, had thousands of livestock, hundreds of servants, and a good family. More important than his material wealth, Job was described by scripture as a man who was “perfect and just, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”

If anyone deserved the continued blessings of God, it was Job. Yet, God allowed Job to lose everything. Why?

In Job 42:5, after having gone through so much suffering, Job said to God, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now I have seen you with my eyes.”

That was the goal God set forth from the beginning. God used everything Job endured to transform his faith to where God was more tangible to him.

In Job 19:25, Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and will stand upon the earth at the latter day.”

Job’s use of the word “redeemer” is interesting, because it usually referred to the process of being purchased out of a debtors prison, or debt-driven servitude. Job, until chapter 1, had been a rich man. He wasn’t a man sold into a debtors prison. Yet, here, he refers to his “redeemer.”

Job used that word because he understood that life was not about the wealth and experiences he had in this world. Life is about what happens in the next. He was looking forward to the Lord coming, and redeeming him from this life to the next. He had this faith prior to losing everything, and losing everything refined this faith as the book progresses.

Everything God does, He does to bring us into His presence. Once we understand and trust that concept, our life’s experiences take on new meaning.

The first step in this is to understand our redemption. Listen below as Pastor Leland Acker discusses what a redeemer is, Who our Redeemer is, and what we’ve been redeemed from.

Liberated (Mark 5:1-20)

In Mark 5, Jesus travels to the land of the Gadarenes, where He meets a man that was possessed, not by one, not by two, but by a legion of demons.

This man was in as bad a shape as anyone can get. Scripture tells us that he cried out night and day, that he cut himself with the rocks, and he lived among the tombs. Safe to say, the man was in total agony.

We don’t know how the man came to be possessed with a legion of demons. Demonic possession is not something you catch like a virus. You can randomly catch a cold, or pink-eye. However, you don’t randomly catch a demon.

Demonic possession is something that happens when you give Satan space to work in your life, and we have at least one example in scripture where a man was specifically possessed by Satan. It was Judas Iscariot in John 13:27, who had Satan enter into him after he decided to betray Jesus for a payoff. Multiple demonic possession often comes by trying to battle demons without the Lord’s power.

The lesson we learn is the dangers of sin and rejecting Christ. Sin promises endless pleasure and freedom. What it actually delivers is agony and bondage.

So, here we are in Mark 5, and this man is completely degraded and destroyed by the demons in his life. Perhaps you understand what that’s like. Perhaps you don’t.

Either way, we know that this man was powerless to help himself, and he was powerless to deliver himself from the demons. In fact, when Christ showed up, all he could do was throw himself to the feet of Jesus in hopes of receiving the mercy of Christ.

Likewise, when we are beset by sin, all we can really do is throw ourselves at the feet of the Lord and trust His mercy and grace.

At that point, Christ commanded the demon to come out of him. This man could only trust in the grace and mercy of Christ, and Christ rewarded that by liberating him from the demons.

You see, when we come to Christ, He does not demand that we do certain things to obtain His grace. He simply rewards that faith by giving His grace.

Once this man was liberated from his demons, he wanted to go with Jesus wherever He went. He wished to follow Jesus, learn from Jesus and serve Jesus. This should be the response of every redeemed child of God.

Instead of welcoming him to the team, Jesus commanded the man to go and tell everyone back home what the Lord did for him. Likewise, Christ wants us to lead others to faith by sharing our testimony.

The message of liberation in Mark 5:1-20 is one of blessing and encouragement. Take a listen, and then share Christ with others.

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God Doesn’t Ride Shotgun

action adult blur car

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Does God seem distant? There may be a valid reason for that, and we might be the cause.

Manasseh, king of Judah, probably committed one of the biggest acts of blasphemy in the history of mankind. He commissioned a carved statue of the heathen idol Asherah, and placed it in the Temple of the Lord (2 Kings 21:7). It was this statue that the Lord referred to as the image of jealousy in Ezekiel 8.

Asherah was a goddess whom the people worshipped through sexual immorality. To make room for the placement of this statue, the altar of the Temple had to be moved aside.

In Manasseh’s mind, there was probably a valid reason for doing this. Many historical scholars believed that Manasseh helped spark an economic boom in Israel by obtaining a “most favored nation” status from the Assyrians. In order to attract Assyria’s favor, he led Israel to worship multiple false gods, including Asherah, who was regarded as the wife of Baal. However, economic gain is never an excuse to rebel against God, and God always deals with this behavior severely.

Manasseh was later arrested by the Assyrians, was treated severely by them, and was only reinstated after he repented and called out to God.

Yet, the damage of his behavior was done. The image of jealousy remained in the Lord’s Temple, and the altar had been moved aside.

Think about how this act violated the Lord’s presence, and the purpose for His Temple. The Temple was a place for people to go to pray, to seek God’s deliverance and guidance, and to be reconciled to Him.

It was a place of repentance, and a place where worshippers sought atonement for sin. The altar was the place where the lambs were sacrificed for sin. Every act of that sacrifice symbolized what God would do for His people through Jesus Christ.

The lamb was tied to one of the four horns of the altar. Those horns represented God’s judgment. So, that lamb was tied to God’s judgment upon us. He took our place there. That lamb was then slain, and its blood was the price paid for our sin. That blood would be collected and sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant on the day of atonement to show God’s redemption of us from sin. That blood was also placed upon the horn of the alter, showing that the Blood of the Lamb covered God’s judgment for our sin.

Likewise, the blood of Jesus Christ atoned for the sins of the world once and for all. Furthermore, the blood of Christ also covered God’s judgment for our sin. It was with this in mind that John the Baptist proclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” as he introduced Christ in John 1.

Once the lamb had been slain, the body of the lamb was placed on the altar, where it was cooked, and then eaten by the worshipper, and the priest. The fat was left on the altar to be burnt up, symbolizing God eating His portion. That step in the sacrifice showed restored fellowship between man and God, a friendship and a family relationship that bonded man with God.

The Temple, and more specifically, the altar, was where man went to repent and be reconciled to God. It was where man went for assurance that His sin had been paid for.

Yet, Manasseh had moved that altar to make room for the statue of Asherah, a goddess worshipped through sin and immorality. It was such a betrayal to God, that He later told Ezekiel in Ezekiel 8 that He had been driven from the sanctuary of the Temple. God’s presence was no longer there.

Had the altar been moved for any reason, it would have been a sacrilege. God’s redemption of man would have been de-emphasized for the flavor of the month. However, to move the altar for the image of Asherah, was to move redemption out of the way in favor of licentious sin. This is an all out rebellion against God, and was the closest man could have come to spitting in His face.

Therefore, God’s presence was no longer in His Temple, leading the elders to say in Ezekiel 8 that the Lord had forsaken the earth. (That’s Old Testament for, “God seems distant.”)

So, if God seems distant, maybe it’s because we moved Him out of the way of our desires. Maybe we moved His altar from the temple of our heart to the back recesses of our heart in order to make room for something more pleasing to us… whether it is merely something of the world, or whether it is all-out sin.

However, God does not move to the back. He does not ride shotgun. He is either front and center, in the driver’s seat, or He is gone altogether.

So, if God seems distant to you, examine your heart, and see where your priorities are, and what your spiritual condition is. Then, repent, pray to God for restoration, and welcome Him back to your life.