Numbers 29-31 | Mark 9:1-29

“God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:9

In my (Quincy Bergman’s) personal journey of faith, I did not grow up in the church. One of the biggest hindrances for me was the checkered, difficult and hard past in Church history. I could not rectify or justify in my mind so many awful things. Although some were good, I was focused on these awful things: the history of what the Church had done in the world and what the people who proclaimed to be speaking on behalf of God would choose to do to their fellow brothers and sisters.

I went on a path of discovery with one simple request: “God, if You exist or whatever You are, reveal truth to me.” I thought, if it was true then it was worth following. Hence, I spent time learning about Buddha and Mohammed and all these different religious figures, trying to understand their philosophies as well as their religions. But I kept finding myself back at the doorstep of Jesus again and again. Why? Because in Jesus’s life and in His teaching, I could not find a contradiction like I would in all the other places.

I was faced with a conundrum: I had problems with the Church but I caught myself falling in love with the Person of Jesus Christ and what He did for me—for all of us. I began to develop a disposition similar to what Ghandi was credited for saying: “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” As I started spending more time learning about Jesus, listening to sermons, reading Scripture and praying, I was falling in love with this perfect Man who is also perfectly God. Like many of us who take on attributes of the things that we surround ourselves with or invest our time in, something started to happen inside of me as I spent time with Jesus: I learned that Jesus loved the Church in all of its dysfunction, in all of its drama.

My journey led me to get more connected with a local church and understand what Church was all about. Then, my whole world was turned upside down—my life and my plans were completely destroyed in the most wonderful way possible. There were hallelujahs and heartbreaks, because it was in the church with God’s people where I experienced a level of acceptance, where I had been emotionally supported in some of the hardest and darkest places in my life and where I experienced some of the deepest disappointment and even betrayal. What I realized was that the Church is loved by Jesus in spite of all the mess.

PRAYER

Precious Jesus, thank You for the hallelujahs and heartbreaks that I have experienced in church. Help me to love Your Church despite all the hurts that I may have experienced in the past.