The Journey

     From the time we are born to the time we die, we are on a journey. This journey is full of struggles. Our struggles and scars turn into our testimony. Each and every one of us go through things in our journey at different points of life. If our faith and trust is in Jesus, He will never leave nor forsake us. This is true of the decision of moving churches, which is recorded below::

      My journey of experiencing Jesus came in 2002. I started out in a Pentecostal Charismatic church. The misconception is that they handle snakes, which is not true. The Pentecostal church believes that you know you are saved when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I ended my tenure as a Pentecostal church member in October 2012. The pastor of the local church would always express his political views. Honestly, I have no problem with it, but if you spend some of your sermon talking about how corrupt our government is and not about the Word of God, many people will leave. Over the last year of being in the church, I have been hearing more and more people talking about this church in Atlanta called Passion City Church. So in July of 2012, I asked my mother if we could go to a gathering at Passion City.
       She said yes. I went to the home church in the morning, then went down to Atlanta to attend Passion City. At lunch, my mom asked me to look up the gathering times and more information about this Passion City Church. I looked at gathering times and she looked at more information. I told her the gathering times, and she spitted off information about the church. A comment was made, "Oh, Louie Giglio is the pastor." My response, "Cool!" Inside the thoughts were, "Louie who?," and "This preacher guy, whose last name I can not pronounce, will probably be a typical three-point sermon, and 'beat the Baptist' to dinner type of preacher."
        My thoughts were totally wrong. I fell in love with the atmosphere and the people of this church. Since we arrived about 15 minutes early to the time the doors opened, we were able to talk to the couple of door holders who were waiting for the call to let the doors open. First impressions were great. Worship was led by Matt Redman. Before this time, I have heard the music the worship leaders put out into the world, but did not really know what they looked like. Louie then came up to speak. My first impressions of the three point sermon and "beat the Baptists" to dinner were totally wrong. Louie was able to present the Gospel in a way that I have never heard before. As we walked out of the building, the door holders were wishing us a great week and a see you next week type of response.
        Matthew 6:24 (NIV) states, ""No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other." October 2012 rolled around and I realized that I was serving two "masters".  I was still attending the home church and Passion City. I was involved in youth choir, praise team, and student leader at the home church, but I was also part of the student ministry at PCC. The decision came, and I chose Passion City.
        People ask me all the time, "Why Passion City?" The answer is plain and simple, JESUS. Yes, that sounds like the "churchy" answer, but it is the truth. On the surface level, Passion City may seem like a regular church, but what you see behind the scenes will  blow you away. Before each and every gathering, every team will meet in the environment they serve in, and have a time of prayer and sharing stories of what God is doing in people's lives. Jesus is the center of everything the church does.
      I put my faith and trust in Jesus back in 2011. Life has not been easy. I have yet to be baptized. Why? I have yet to be baptized because it is not the right time. I have in mind of who I would like to be baptized by because he is a great friend and follower of Jesus who is like a brother to me. I serve with some of the most amazing people on this planet. Community is a huge thing for me, and I have found the community at PCC. Because God is sovereign over all, I believe he wants me to be baptized at PCC, because it is home, and the people in the church are like my extended family.



Genesis 12:1-2 (ESV), "Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing."

Psalm 25:5-9 (ESV), "Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way."

The Trilemma

     Lord, Lunatic, or Liar? That is the question we are going to answer today. This spurs from the following quote from CS Lewis: "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
     Jesus did exist and claimed to be God. Either His claim is false or it is true. Let's look at if Jesus' claim was false. We first must break this down into two categories: he knew or he did not know. IF Jesus knew his claim was false then he deliberately misinterprets the truth making him a liar. This also makes Jesus a fool because He died for it. This claim would also make him a demon, resulting in us relying in our own work. If Jesus did not know his claim was false, then He would be sincerely deluded or lunatic. We know that Jesus was not a lunatic because children came up to Jesus (see Luke 18:15-17).
      If Jesus' statement of being God is true, then He is LORD. We can either accept or reject this. When we reject Jesus as being Lord, we are in a state of rebellion, but if we accept that Jesus is Lord then we are in submission.