Senior Year

    
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own understanding;
think about Him in all your ways,and He will guide you on the right paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (HCSB)


     This is the biggest change and yet the most stressful time of your high school career. I am in the midst of it. Everyone has either been through it or will be going through it at one point in your year. The main battle is senioritis. Senioritis is defined as a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance. At this point in high school, you are tired and exhausted of school, teachers, and rules. Senioritis usually hits the hardest in the second semester because you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Procrastination sets in as well.
     "What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Where do you want to go to college?"You will hear these questions all throughout your last two years of college. I have become annoyed with these repeating questions. You hear these questions from everyone who knows you are a junior or senior in high school. For college, I will be taking the cheap route. I will be attending Chattahoochee Technical College for my first two years of school to spend less money on the core classes you are required to take before you get into your major and/or minor. After the core classes are completed, I will transfer to either Kennesaw State University or the University of Georgia to being my major. My plan is to double major in Business and Meteorology. Also, I will attempt to minor in Marketing/Advertising and Sports Broadcasting.
     Many high school seniors want to go to college FAR away. However, I would prefer not to. To me, the reason why many college students leave the Christian faith is because they think they can do it on their own and lose that community of faith they grew up in. Also, many people who grew up in church do not have a REAL and AUTHENTIC faith of their own. They have been living off of their parent's faith and not of their own. My community of faith has been found within Passion City Church in the doorholder community. I have met some of the most amazing people as being a doorholder. The beauty of this community is that we have a common goal: to bring people in and show them the beauty of Christ through our service.
      Senior year may seem stressful, but it is one of the best times of your life. My challenge for my fellow classmates and those who are about to experience this is that at the end of the day God's will is sovereign over what we may seem is right, only He knows what the future will hold all we have to do is be patient and be still.



Proverbs 18:10, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe."

Isaiah 41:10, "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

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.

How Can We Tell We Have An Accurate Copy of the Bible?

     This is a question many Christians have to face today when defending the faith. People do not question the copying process of books unless it is the Bible. The copying process of the Bible is very accurate. Let's take a look at the reliability of the Bible starting with the New Testament.
    The New Testament has 25,000 ancient (predates 500 AD) manuscripts available today. Each copy says the same thing meaning they come from a single source, the only difference is regional spelling differences. The closest book that is after the Bible is Homer's Iliad with 643 ancient manuscripts. However, there are four different versions with major differences.
     The New Testament is the closest in time of copy to the original. The significance is that 1) the closer a copy is to the time of the original, the more likely it is to be an accurate copy, and 2) a copy that is within a generation of the original is unheard of. The oldest partial manuscript is the John Ryland Manuscript (copy of part of the book of John) which dares 50 years after the original. This manuscript proves that John was not written in 220 to 250 AD. The oldest complete New Testament is within 250 years of the date of the original is the Codex Vaticanus from the 300s AD. Homer's Iliad is 400 years after the original. New Testament has more ancient copies, and closer in time to the original.
     The New Testament has various versions and translations. Bible is the only book that was translated. The earliest missionaries began translating the New Testament as they went out to evangelize to the world. The early versions included Syriac (sometimes called the Christian Aramaic, Antioch became leading center of Christianity in the early church, and dates 400s AD), Coptic (version for Egyptian believers, Alexandria became another leading center of Christianity in the early church, and dates 200s AD), and the Latin (a version for European believers, Rome became another leading center of Christianity in the early church, version dates from 200s AD). The other versions we have today, serve as a way to check the contents of the earliest copies.
     Tatian's Diatessaron harmonized the four gospels. Tatian was an early church father from Assyria. This harmonization was completed around 160 AD. This tells us that John was already written and that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the gospels.
     Lectionaries also show the reliability of the New Testament. A lectionary was a lesson from the Scriptures. Church elders would copy a passage of Scripture onto a piece of papyrus or parchment and then add a lesson based on that Scripture; certain passages were always read on certain Sundays.
Thousands of lectionaries exist today providing many copies of the same passage. They are useful for comparison purposes by finding about 90%  of the New Testament so far. They were helpful for our understanding of some passages (John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20). Lectionaries were copied repeatedly by Byzantine Monks. On the contrary, lectionaries provide no copies of Revelation and parts of Acts and they date from 500s to 700s AD, making them not as early as other sources.
    Patristic Citations are the final way we know we have an accurate copy of the New Testament. The early church fathers quoted the New Testament extensively. How extensive were they? Even if there were no copies of the New Testament available, we could produce the entire New Testament from quotes found in the writings of the early church fathers. Clement, for example, was bishop of Rome, disciple of Peter, walked around with Mark, quoted from Mark and I Peter. Sir David Dalrymple was curious enough that he reconstructed the New Testament from writings of the early church fathers. He found all but 11 verses (Mark 16:9-20) before he died.


     The Old Testament also has a very accurate copying process. Let's take a look at this process for the Old Testament.
     The Old Testament has thousands of manuscript copies, but it is scarce. The reason for the scarcity was 1) new was preferred to old, and 2) written on perishable materials. We have more pieces today than 300 years ago because of the rise in the popularity of archaeology in the late 1800s. We tens of thousands of pieces of the Old Testament. The earliest complete copy is the Codex Bablyonicus.
     The Jewish people were very careful in the preservation of the manuscripts. The Sopherim (Scribes) were the custodians of the Old Testament from 400 to 200 BC, and Ezra was one of these men. The Zugoth (means pairs) were custodians from 200 BC to 1 AD. The Tannaim (means repeaters) were custodians from 1 to 200 AD. The Talmudist were teachers of law and lawyers were custodians from 100 to 500 AD, and they were very strict about the copying process (found here). The Masoretes were custodians from 500 to 900 AD, they did not accept Jesus as their Messiah, standardized the Hebrew text, and counted everything.
     The Dead Sea Scrolls proved that we are "good" copiers of the Old Testament. They were found in 1947 by a boy looking for a lost goat ( the story found here). They were
purchased and photographed being sent all over the world, many use the photos because the Israel government has the scrolls in a safe place. The scrolls date from second century BC to the 1st century AD.
      The Septuagint is the Greek Translation of the Old Testament. They were designed for worship services of the Greek-speaking Jews of the Hellenistic Age. This was not meant to supplant the Hebrew Old Testament which is still preferred by rabbis and scholars.
     The Samaritan Pentateuch confirms the accuracy of the first five books of the Bible. The Samaritans had their own version using and older form of Hebrew which predates 200 BC.
      The Hexpla confirms the reliability of the Old Testament. Origen compiled a six column parallel of the Old Testament. Each column said the same thing.


The copying process of the Bible is huge for the Christian faith. My goal of this was to help people of the faith defend the copying process of the Bible. This was a major builder of my faith in Jesus, and I hope the same for you.

Are you ready?

     2013 is winding down. It seems like yesterday we were saying, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" With October ending in a couple days, it has been deemed that it starts to become the most busiest time of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas. "Black Friday" kicks off late Thursday night with many steals and deals at many establishments, and Christmas trees all around the world are being lit. This also signals the most depressing time of the year as well. Many people during this time of year begin to worry that they will not be able to give gifts to their family and friends because of money situations or because of the loss of loved ones.
     I fall into the loss of loved ones category. On November 5, 2010, I lost my best friend, my grandmother. Christmas was always her favorite time of the year. She would always start planning her annual Christmas party in August, until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Her life was lost to that disease. In honor of her, we continue the family tradition of a Christmas Day breakfast, filled with bacon and sausage casseroles and the infamous Cinnabon's.
     Christmas is also the busiest time of the year for many people. People lose sight of why we celebrate Christmas because they are caught up in the motions of business to satisfy the needs of others. Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus Christ. Christ was born in a stinky, dirty manger in Bethlehem. He could have chose to be born in a "Ritz Carlton" of that day. He chose not to because he had humility. Christ came to this earth to seek and save the lost. He died for our sins on the cross at Calvary. Death did not hold him down because He arose after the third day,
    What does Christ's birth, death, and resurrection mean to us? This means that we now have direct access to the throne of God. We no longer have to go to the temple, to a priest to pardon our sins. We are no longer bound by a thou shalt not but a that we may enter the throne of God. This is why I love Jesus because He chose to come to this earth in the form of man, leaving his "luxury" in heaven, to seek and save the lost. Jesus is coming back, are you ready?

A New Perspective

       If you have grown up in church or not, you have probably heard of the story about the feeding of the 5,000 found in Matthew 14:31-21. Jesus was going out on a boat to probably mourn the loss of John the Baptist, who was beheaded by King Herod. Jesus returns to land to see a large crowd has arrived. Jesus begins teaching until late in the evening. The disciples wanted Jesus to "get rid" of the people so they can go eat, but Jesus responded telling them that they should give the people food. Honestly, the disciples probably had a moment of panic when Jesus said this. The disciples began to complain that it would take more than half a years wages. Jesus then asked them to go and find out what they have. The disciples found five loaves and two fish from a boy's lunch. All the people were fed and were left satisfied.
       The Disciples were doubtful-- The disciples have been with Jesus for much time seeing him to many miraculous things. They were probably doubtful because they were tired and hungry. They began to forget the miracles that Jesus had previously done. Majority of the time, we doubt the work Jesus can and will do. We see all that He has done in the past, but in the moment of adversity, we doubt what He can do.
      The boy was available-- The little boy was there. The loaves and fish were just for him. The Bible doesn't mention this, but I'm reading "in between the lines" that many of the people probably had food with them. The boy's thought process was probably like this, "This man who is teaching sent his disciples maybe because he is hungry. I can go without a meal." Many times, we are too involved in our own needs that we are not available to the needs of others. Our society tells us that it is all about us. When you are available to what God wants, you can be used to do immeasurably more things to further His kingdom/
      The boy gave it all-- This boy who gave the meal, it is mentioned that he gave all he had. We are in a society where we just keep things to ourselves. In sports, you are told to give it 110%. When you do not give it all you have, you tend to regret decision you made during the game. The boy in the story could have only gave 2 loaves and 1 fish, but he did not. God does not want only 40% of our lives, but He wants it all. We tend to give Him only a 40% effort. God sent His son, Jesus, with 100% to save the world. What if Jesus only gave a 30% effort when dying for you on the cross? God is constantly pursuing you with all He has. Are you pursuing Him with all YOU have?

Should the Redskins Change Their Name?

     Over the recent weeks, the rising controversy of the Washington Redskins name has been in the news. You may ask why? The reason why is because it is not considered "politically correct". Daniel Snyder, team owner, believes that the name should not be changed. President Obama, Bob Costas, and many others prefer the name change. My question is this, why are we complaining about it now? I applaud Daniel Snyder's firmness on not changing the name. If he does, then political groups will probably get the Atlanta Braves or Kansas City Chiefs. To name a few, to change their name. If it has been that name for many years, why change it?