'crosspoinT'

10/18/2025

Transforming Difference in a Turbulent Time

• The desire to know the Lord is the beginning of transformation for the impacting a turbulent time. Again, knowing God is the best the Christian can do. Knowing God comes first. Coming to knowing the Lord should stir the heart of the Christian into making a positive change in a world opposed to God.

• Isaiah ‘man after the Lord’ was such a man who desired God and one who had a keen interest in the world. His world is Judah near 740 years before Jesus came into the world. God was calling Isaiah to speak to his world about coming back to the Lord God. It was a time when the world was so far from God.

• God had to appear to Isaiah. Isaiah must see the Lord. The world of his time needed reformed and a calling back to God; therefore, God appeared to Isaiah in the temple in Jerusalem 740 B.C. When he saw the Lord, the Lord was high and lifted. The Lord was attended by angelic beings who were calling out to the Lord’s holiness. This appearance enabled Isaiah to see himself. What he saw, he was not pleased with. The Lord’s presence brought reality to Isaiah. The angelic creatures came to Isaiah and touched his lips with a live hot coal from the altar; symbolically and truly atoning for his sins. Isaiah had fallen into the patterns of the world. He couldn’t see clearly in ministering to his world for God until God appeared to him. Once Isaiah experienced the transformation of God’s atoning Spirit, he now answered the call to go into a very difficult world and give them the Lord ultimatum to change back to following God or the future was very bleak.

• In appears that we have world just as difficult and opposed to the Lord in our present time. We want to make an impact, but perhaps, we have become like our world. Isaiah saw the Lord, His holiness, and then he saw himself. Present believers today need this experience. In Isaiah 6.7, there is the transforming experience of the coal from the altar touching Isaiah’s lips. This is the atonement for sin, and this experience would find its fulfillment in the cross event of Jesus Christ. With Jesus’ shed blood touching the lips of our soul, transformation takes place and positions us for God’s call to being a part of transforming the world we live in. God wants to change our hearts with His atonement in Jesus so that we can be a witness to the time of trouble. Only Jesus is the Transforming Difference in a Turbulent Time.

Jerry Casselman
Pine Hill, Alabama

09/09/2024

PERFECT STORMS

We do not want to take our slow time at doing what Jesus has asked us to do. From other biblical sources, we learn that Jesus had commanded the disciples to enter the boat and cross the sea. Jesus will never ask us to do that which is contrary to His nature. In fact, the very thing Jesus may ask us is the very test He allows to strengthen us. Any man who has ever done the will of God is a man who knows the heart and passion of Christ. Did the disciples know Jesus? Did they know the Son of God; Savior of the world? Still, they procrastinated at the shore. Eventually, their struggle would be difficult and their fear would be great. It seems fair to conclude the disciples were in an infant relationship with Jesus. Eventually, we must come to the place in our relationship with Christ that we know & trust Him; thus driving out our fears.
But, so often we don’t know Jesus. We’re wrapped up in human flesh, and without the filling of the Spirit of Jesus, we bring storms into our lives. The disciples found a storm, and they were afraid; however, their situation did not have to destroy them. Jesus was watching from a mountain side. He saw disciples straining at the oars in the middle of a Perfect Storm, and He came to them. We may have gotten into a Perfect Storm; however, peril is impossible when it meets the Perfect Savior. Let Christ come, and when He does we meet Who He is and His power and comfort over our storms.
It would be nice to believe that, upon our acceptance of Christ while in the storm, that we quickly and safely find ourselves at a beautiful destination. This is not true physically in this world and John 6:21 (The boat immediately reached the shore) isn’t suggesting that we do not have consequences in the physical realm. It is fair to say that “all things works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. So whether it be procrastination at the shore or peril of the sea the Lord Jesus has the time of prospering for you (Jeremiah 29:11 ... “ For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.) Another place (2 Peter 3:9) where it says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you; not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
So, we can be sure that the passage of John 6.6-21 ‘The Perfect Storm’ means that though we may experience the peril of the storm in our soul that when we accept Christ into our boat (heart, soul and mind), that He ‘Jesus’ assures us that we have a perfect arrival to other sides of any storms; away from the peril.

Jerry Casselman

Send a message to learn more

11/16/2022

Revelation Door.. Revelation 3.14-22.. Pease read multiple times in preparation for Sunday's Message..

08/01/2022

Just watching out for deer in our yard!

07/01/2017

Heart of Freedom / Exodus 12:31-42

I would not call myself a history buff, but I am a student enough to know that America was in a bo***ge type to England. I know that America had to fight for her freedom as a nation. I know the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere ran through announcing the “Red Coats are Coming, the Red coats are Coming.” However, this was not the only bo***ge of one nation over another to ever take place; nor was it ever the only time the call came at midnight to “go and be free”. This was the same with Egypt’s bo***ge over Israel. For 430 years, Israel had been in Egypt. What began with one man’s journey of being sold by his brothers into slavery (Joseph / Genesis 37), took 430 years into a harshness of bo***ge that only God could deliver. By careful observation and admittance, we must realize that it took the Lord God to free America too. As Israel was in bo***ge, so America was in a bo***ge. As the Paul Revere announced at midnight, so Pharaoh of Egypt announced in the night to Israel that they were free to go (Exodus 12:31-42).

It’s a terrible story of darkness and bo***ge whenever nations oppress others nations; or when an evil selfish nation harms her own people or another world nation. One’s own soul is held in bo***ge by another evil; that is the soul bonded to death, hell and Satan until freedom is announced to one who, previously rebelled against the living God, but now readily repents and accepts the wonderful grace of God by the act of Jesus Christ giving His life for the sin of the world. Bo***ge is bo***ge. Whether it is a nation over a nation, a spouse over a spouse, a government over her people or road rage on the streets of our country, it, never-the-less, always a dark moment in the history of mankind brought on by the evils of hell.

The answer, should we take receive it, is for freedom from any type of evil oppression. The remedy is possible within our own hearts. By a good study and repetitious reading of Exodus 12:31-42, we may concur in unity that

Freedom Can Come In Our Darkest of Times.

After 430 years, and in the night, God released Israel from bo***ge to Egypt. Working in the mud pits of life, making bricks without straw in unreasonable conditions, brick after brick, watching children suffer in mud and hunger, finally God released them for freedom to worship the one true living God of the world. There is never too long or too deep in which God cannot release us from any bo***ge. The call may come at night or in the day, but it does come. As our nation celebrates national freedom with lights in the sky, may our hearts rejoice with the enlightenment of God’s freedom from the previous darkness we have known.

Also notice, Freedom Comes With a Request.

As the echo of the American message ripples across the ocean waves to the other shore, or as God’s request to Pharaoh through the man ‘Moses’ saying “Let my people go’, so shall God speak to the powers and spirits of hell to “let us go from this darkness.” Freedom, at this level from God, takes on an even deeper ‘request truth’ when the Lord commands His man, woman or nation to depart out of the situation bringing darkness. Even in the night, when the release comes, we must act in haste to get going. Israel had to exodus in haste. This meant that they would leave with quick and little provision; although God did allow Israel to plunder Egypt for their needs. As we are free in the night, we are requested in the night. Freedom comes unexpected in the night as it comes with requests/requirements in the night.

Now notice also, Freedom requires that we remember what God has done for us forever.

Exodus 12:42 … “ Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the LORD for the generations to come.”

If we could think back, or even at this moment, of any bo***ge, trouble or crisis, we will hopefully discover that our faith in God rescued us from the darkness of the night. He is God and the living God alone who rescues from darkness. God hasn’t rescued us by an angel or a freak of nature; He has, rather, rescued us from the darkness of our own doing and into His Light ‘Jesus Christ’; Savior of the World.
J. Casselman, Pastor, Shepherd's Heart Church Fellowship, Osceola, In

12/03/2016