I spent years searching for that personal all encompassing relationship with God that I would hear so many people praise of having in their lives. I couldn't seem to find it and I was frustrated. I felt abandoned and discarded. Why wouldn't God let me in, why wouldn't he speak to me, through me, with me? For goodness sake, I WAS a Christian. Wasn't that all I needed to me. I attended church fairly regularly, prayed everyday, tried hard to do the right thing and make the right choices. So why was I so alone, abandoned and forgotten? What more did He want from me?
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Matthew 27:46In my searching, I sought out many different churches. I attended churches that were of different denominations and sat in the pew every Sunday being taught the word. Most of these churches were well established and had a large congregation, so that meant they had to be good. But Sunday after Sunday, as I sat in the pew, sang the hymns, listened intently to the Pastor preach the Word, I left just as alone and empty as I had come to church that morning. The congregation was courteous, but often , after months or even at one point a year of attending a church, I still didn't know very many names and virtually nobody, aside from the Sunday school teacher's, who taught my child, knew mine. I was getting really frustrated and I was starving for more, but I wasn't getting it and didn't know where to turn. My prayer life was very basic and child-like, for I had been taught nothing new since I was a child.
When my oldest daughter was 3, my mother took a job as the secretary for a newer, up and coming church and she pushed and encouraged me to attend a service. As soon as I walked in, I knew this church was different, maybe this was the answer. I remember sitting there that first service amazed, they weren't singing old hymns to boring organ music, they had a band onstage and were rocking it out! I loved it! The Pastor engaged me for the first time in my life with a sermon that I could understand and grasp, they had these things called small groups that sounded really cool and I couldn't wait to get into and I knew that here, I would find that personal relationship with God that I had so been searching for. This church was alive and busy and filled with smiling people, it invited new comer's into small groups and wanted us all to be part of the larger picture.
While this church definitely increased my attendance, invigorated my mind and got me a little more involved than I had been before, it still wasn't helping me find the relationship I was so craving. I was gaining knowledge and more important, understanding of God's Word, but I was still lacking sufficiently in my personal walk with God. My prayer life was still childlike and basic and nobody seemed to help me or steer me in the right direction.
Over the next several years, I was still yearning for that personal relationship with God and I was just as, if not more, thirsty for Him than I had ever been. I understood the sermons in a way I didn't before, enjoyed worshiping for the first time ever and tried very hard to attend a small bible study and gain more knowledge, I continued to pray daily, childlike and stuck. I was becoming stagnant and I still wasn't growing despite my increased activity in church. What was going on? God where are you, I would cry out daily!
After a few more years at this church the atmosphere suddenly turned and it wasn't the warm, friendly and inviting place it used to be. It became very tense and going to church was an emotional drain, so we stopped going as the Pastor left and started up his new church.
I joined my previous Pastor at his new and very small church and again, it was enjoyable, I learned more about God's Word, but I was still so lost, still searching for that close personal relationship with my Father that just kept alluding me and left me in the dark.
After about a year, that church also closed down and it was okay with me. I had already learned that I couldn't secure my relationship in a big church, small church or an itty-bitty church and I was ready to stop searching. I attended Church regularly, worshiped on Sunday's, prayed daily, read devotionals, attended small group and tried to be active, yet God was a distant desire, not real or tangible and I was beginning to think I was crazy. I was trying to convince myself that others were over exaggerating the relationship they relished with our Creator and that such a thing was truly not possible. I mean, if I couldn't get it doing all the things I was supposed to do, then it didn't exist, right?
A little over two years ago, at the adamant prompting of my mother, I decided to give another new church a try. By new, I mean a plant less than 6 months old. I was not excited, I didn't want to join a another church and just sit there week after week, increasing my biblical knowledge, while remaining stagnant in my spiritual one. If all the other churches couldn't help me grow spiritually, why would this one. But my mother can be persistent, annoyingly so, so I finally caved in, just to quiet her down and attended my first service at Jericho Road.
It was a HOT, August day, this service was outside for baptism's and a potluck afterward, I was overdressed and the kids were restless. This was a recipe for disaster and I believed going there that day it would be a complete and utter disaster. Upon walking down the hill to join the small congregation with my mother, I knew sensed immediately there was something different about this church and there was.
The difference was felt and seen immediately in the people. They illuminated love and acceptance. The worship band leader, lead with passion, the pastor preached with passion, the congregation loved with passion. It was amazing and surreal.
That was the one major difference in this church from any other church I had attended. The people were the big difference. The people in this church, were not just courteous and friendly, they were warm and inviting. The lived the Christian life and the light of God illuminated out of each one of them. They believed in God, Jesus and more importantly in living the Word. They were committed to making sure that everyone that walked through those doors or down that hill, who was open to a personal relationship with God and living his Word, attained it and under their love and guidance and support, this one person finally attained the one thing that was missing from her life. Her personal relationship with her Father.
In my two years at Jericho Road, I have grown so much as a Christian it, at times, is mind blowing, even to me. As I look back over those two years, I wonder how I did it, how it happened. The two years I spent growing and learning and living the Christian life, were to date, the two most painful years of my life. Those two years were filled with so much pain, loss, fear, heartache and torment, that it is truly a God blessed miracle that I sit where I am today. I am so incredibly grateful and humbled that I have attained and am flourishing in my personal relationship with God. As for my life, despite those two years being the most difficult, painful, trying and fearful of my life, I am sitting in such a good place physically, emotionally and spiritually.
I don't want it to sound as if suddenly now that I have this incredible relationship with my Father and my life is all sunshine and rainbows, because it isn't, there are still times of fear, moments of heartache, episodes of pain, darkness that creeps in, but there are manageable. For as it says in Phillipians 4:13
I can do all things through Him who strengthens me
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