Student Life - April 2024
This school semester, pastor Bryan and I desired to teach the students apologetics for the Christian faith and to equip them with a foundation of practical understanding of Christianity. We sought after asking the students: “why do you believe what you believe?” This could look like: why do you believe in creation, or evolution, or Jesus, or God, or even the Bible? We wanted to challenge them to shape their own thoughts and ideas about what they believed, while following closely with facts, truth, and most importantly, biblical truth. I’m pleased to report that during the many weeks of Bryan and I preaching these messages to the students, we could really see some gears turning in some heads.
So, as I said, we covered a lot of ground to help the students form their own foundations for the Christian faith based off of this apologetics series we’ve been going through. Bryan and I have been using a book called The 10 Most Common Objections To Christianity by Alex McFarland. One of our early chapters we preached on was understanding if the Bible is an authentic book or source to study and/or believe. And this is a good question. If you are a Christian, you have to ask yourself: “Do I believe that the Bible is true? That we can believe what is said in it?” Or, if some don’t believe the Bible is true, why would they think that? Would they think because the Bible has been translated so many times, surely there have been errors in the translations? Or the Bible has been written by men, and powerful men got their hands on it to change the message of the Bible or its stories; surely we cannot believe the bible to be authentic and accurate to its original texts. What we were able to teach the students was not only has the Bible been handled and cared for very well, but we have COUNTLESS proof that there are no changes/errors in it. If we were to question any Old Testament writings, we can run to the Dead Sea Scrolls as proof for accurate and faithful translations of the texts and faithful reproductions of the message of the texts. It was amazing to test the students and see how they felt about the very old and dusty Old Testament books, to then build up their confidence in the texts because we can prove the historicity of the texts, the faithful translation of the texts, and the faithful transmission of the texts message. What a joy it was to walk through this sermon with them.
Amongst other chapters and sermons this semester, we also talked about Jesus. That’s probably a good thing and sounds like such a Sunday School thing to say. But, it’s important to ask people who they think Jesus was or is! So we asked the students this! And one of the chapters in our book was a common objection to Christianity is the belief that Jesus was just a man. So, we asked the question: if Jesus was just a man, what does that mean for us? Because, you have to think about it. To prove that Jesus was just a man, find His body. Go to the tomb, see that He is still there. Thus would prove this Man was just human and led a strange ministry. However, the problem is, that tomb was empty!! Praise God! Jesus made a bunch of claims about Himself and about God during His earthly ministry, but it all wouldn’t have mattered if He died and stayed dead. But, since He did rise from the dead, that means we have some serious thinking to do. And it was awesome to walk the students through this thinking! Because it’s so easy to prove that there was a historical man named Jesus around 2,000 years ago and was also crucified, we had to ask them the hard questions! If Jesus really is God and rose from the dead, then what does that mean for them? Does that mean He is an expert con man, or is He the Messiah that was prophesied? What a gift it was to teach them this truth as well.
So, our students have been asking the hard questions these past couple Sunday nights. We want them to form their own opinions and truths about the Bible, Christ, and Christianity. We want them to work through these hard questions as well, not just accepting what others have told them. And I truly believe the Lord has been working in them this semester. Like I said, I’ve seen the gears turning, and what a joy it was to witness. So there’s a little glimpse of what has been going on in our student ministry. It’s been awesome so far, and we are looking forward to the few remaining weeks we have left!
To God be the Glory!