Jared Baergen Interview

Okay, well I'm holding Walking in Christ, the Key to the Christian Life by Jared Bergen. Is that how I say your name? It's pronounced Bergen. Bergen, okay, Jared Bergen. And Jared is my old friend who I have not talked to in several years very much. But in about 2011 or 12, Jared and I were part of a group of men that were meeting online about every week.

And we were holding each other accountable and teaching the Bible to one another and praying together. And recently, Jared reached out to me to see if I wanted to review a book he wrote. And I'll give you a little background on this. Jared, how old are you now? 31. So Jared's 31.

So when I met Jared, he was probably about 23 or 24. and I remember joking with him that when he was an author one day, he would have to call himself A.W. Bergen, because so many famous Christian authors are A.W. something or other, and he kind of chuckled, and one of the reasons why I said it at the time was that Jared had such an obvious affinity for biblical doctrine, and he had an ability to communicate it well in writing and in speaking at what I thought of as a very young age, being a man who was saved at 30, knowing a guy who was 23, 24 who could talk like you did was great. But I also remember you were a little bit immature in my opinion at the time.

And I'm very glad to see that you have matured wonderfully and you are now authoring Christian books. So Jared, why don't you say hi here and tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, well, I remember those days back in the day. And when we first met, I'd only been a Christian for a couple years. And I was really like a bull in the china shop. There's no doubt about that.

I'd studied plenty of theology, but I was ready to hammer it into everybody. But I didn't know a lot about living the Christian life. I had a lot of growth to do. And it was during that time when I contracted Lyme disease. Yeah, I remember that. And I couldn't find a doctor.

I couldn't get any treatment. And I don't know how much I told you of this, but the Lyme disease got so bad that my liver was failing. My skin was turning yellow. My adrenal glands and my thyroid were failing. And I was bedridden for quite a long time, probably five or six months. I couldn't even get out of bed.

And it was actually during that time when I wrote this book. I wrote this book, honestly, expecting to die. Oh, wow. I started, when I started writing this book, I started with the intent to search the scriptures and see how to live the Christian life because, well, I wrongly, to some degree, assumed that God was punishing me with Lyme disease because there was some sin in my life.

And I kind of disregarded God's discipline and how he was growing me. And I just thought he was punishing me. So I needed to figure out where the sin was and what I'd done wrong. And so this book started as a search of the scriptures on how to live the Christian life. And, you know, honestly, I wrote the whole rough draft of the whole book in four or five days on my iPhone, you know, just kind of thinking through the scriptures.

And I never, ever, ever expected it to turn into a full manuscript or a book. And later, years down the road, I got married and my wife really encouraged me to do something with it. And that was kind of where things took off. We were like, all right, let's edit this thing. Let's turn it into a manuscript. Let's get it to an editor.

And it just, it took off from there. But the Lord really had to do a work in my life to humble me, to teach me how to live the Christian life. And even in writing a book like this, I mean, I still have a long way to go. You know, I'm just, I'm learning these things and putting them into practice myself. And it's easy to, it's easy to write about what the Bible says or preach a sermon about what the Bible says, but it's a whole new ball game to live it.

And, you know, so I want to continue living this as well, but I want to share that with others so that they learn how to put this into practice. And when I decided to put it into a manuscript form, my initial goal was to just produce a book that would be helpful for the people I teach at church. I've been a Bible teacher at Racine Bible Church for now, I think four or five years.

And I was just going to self-publish this thing and just get it in their hands to help them. And then it started to turn into so much more. And so really where it's at and what it's become is really all of the Lord. And I'm just thankful for any fruit that comes from it is all from Him. Amen. I appreciate in the book, there was a, so the book is really filled with a number of exhortations for one thing.

There more than that But a lot of it is just you explaining to any Christian hey here what the Bible is telling us we ought to you know see happening in our life as well as what we should do in our life So I think we call those what indicatives and imperatives. And I do appreciate there was so many times where you would say something in the book, and then it would be followed up with a personal, yeah, I'm still working on this too, or this is really difficult for me. And I think that creates a relatability with the author that you don't always get from Christian authors.

And I appreciated the sort of personal aspect of that. To me, it just made it seem far more real. This wasn't just, not that Bible teaching alone is bad, but this wasn't just you exegeting Colossians 2, 6, and 7. This was you also explaining some of what you've been through and what the Lord has taken you through so that you actually experienced the truths of Colossians 6 and 7 in your own life more.

Would you agree with that? Yeah. When I wrote the initial manuscript, it was very teaching, was very one-sided. And then later on, when I reviewed the manuscript, I was like, you know what, this needs to be more than just giving what the Bible says. It needs to be relating that to real people who are really reading the book. And so I went back through it and just made it more personal and made it, I don't know that I made that as clear as I could have, or could have included more examples of how God uses this in my life.

But yeah, I just wanted to make it as relatable as possible because this is where we all live. These are all the things we all go through, depending on Christ in times of need or in times of doubt or in times of persecution and times of prosperity and times of suffering. I mean, those hit us all where we're at at some point in life. And so just relating that to real people who are really reading the book and helping them to see, yeah, living the Christian life isn't easy, but it is possible by God's grace.

And that was the intent. Absolutely. And the other thing I want to say I appreciate here in the book is, so the Christian life isn't a formula to follow. I think we'd all agree with that. Your book is outlined in a very organized way for people who are trying to learn what you're talking about. So you have chapter part one, beginning of walking in Christ.

And then there's chapter two, walking in Christ. and you have these, that there's a command to walk in Christ, that Jesus Christ is your author and finisher of your faith, your foundation. You just build one step at a time up to the point where we actually start to see what are the specific ways we walk in Christ, and then ultimately you end with the results of walking in Christ. But I appreciate at the beginning you very humbly addressed the fact that a lot of people, the reason why they struggle to walk in Christ is they have not actually received Christ.

And that was part of your own testimony. So do you want to share a little bit about that? Yeah, that is definitely a big part of my testimony. And that is why I took the time to write a whole chapter on that assumption that Paul makes in Colossians 2, where he says, As you've received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and grounded and established in the faith.

And when he says, as you've received Christ Jesus the Lord, he's writing to people who have received Christ Jesus as their Lord. He's assuming that these people have received Christ Jesus. And Paul's doing that because he's writing to a church. But I didn't want to do that necessarily and assume that every single person who's reading the book is a Christian.

And that's because when I became a Christian, I was reading a Christian book, and I wasn't a Christian. I was reading the Freedom and Power of Forgiveness by John MacArthur, and I was raised in a Christian home. I would have claimed to be a Christian, no problem, either because my parents went to church and they were going to heaven, so I would, or because I was just generally a good person. but during that time in my life, I was just so far away from the Lord.

I wanted nothing to do with Christianity. And I was overwhelmed with the guilt of my sin. And that was around the age of 20. And then I picked up John MacArthur's book talking about forgiveness because I was, my conscience was loaded with guilt and I wanted forgiveness. And I opened up, not even to chapter one, I opened up to the introduction of John MacArthur's book, and he explains the bad news and the good news.

And the bad news brought me to my knees, and the good news led me to salvation in Christ, as he talked about the removal of our sin by expiation, the placing it on Christ, and he bore the wrath through propitiation, and the imputation, the transmission of Christ's righteousness to our account through faith in Him. And that was radical teaching for me because I'd been in Christian churches my whole life, but I'd never heard anything like that. And it immediately just brought me to my knees and led me to the mercy that in Christ And it was that early in my Christian life that I came to the conviction that if I'm ever going to write a book, the book needs to start with the gospel, because I cannot control who's ever going to pick up this book.

And it's very possible for people who don't know Christ to pick up this book. Just as an example, I work with co-workers who are Lutheran, probably not Christians, but because they know me and they know I wrote a book on Christianity in general, they both bought books and they're reading them right now. And I have no idea if the Lord's going to use this to draw them to Christ or not. but I made sure that at the very beginning, the gospels included, what is Christianity and what does it mean to be a Christian and receive Christ?

And so that was, that was the start of the book. Yeah, that's perfect. I, I appreciate that because I have found that when I deal with people in the Christian life, that that is one of the, the biggest difficulties we face. I would say maybe in the United States, is that people are convinced that they're Christian. And so they go out and they try to do the works that you would expect a Christian to do.

And when they struggle to enjoy it, they struggle to have affections for the right things, then they're stuck. and so then i just let's highlight let's go in here where there's a section called how do we commune with christ so there's a whole chapter chapter three about communing with christ and kind of a neat story about sugar gliders at the beginning but you you say that we have to commune with christ and you make an analogy with the sugar gliders that the a sugar gliders immune system is compromised without consistent companionship. And you say the Christian's immune system is compromised without consistent communion with Christ. And so you say the first step of walking in them is communing with them.

And so why do you think the first step is communing with Christ? Is that what you think most people are missing that they're just trying to work, and they're not actually just enjoying that fellowship with Christ? Yeah, I think to answer that question, if we were to ask the average Christian, how do you grow in the Christian life? Most people would typically respond, well, you grow by reading your Bible.

You grow by praying. You grow by going to church and listening to preaching, right? Well, there's a question behind that, isn't there? why does reading the Bible and praying and listening to preaching at church grow us? Excellent. If we don't answer that question, then we don't actually know where to start in growing in the Christian life. But as soon as we answer that question, we realize that it's not reading the Bible in and of itself that is what grows us or praying.

And what I mean by that is reading the Bible shows us the glory of Christ. Praying leads us to fellowship with Christ. It's all about communing with Christ. And so when we practice what's called typically the means of grace, they are means of grace because they lead us to the throne of grace in Christ. So people can do all these things, praying, reading the Bible, going to church, and they can do them in a Christless way.

Yeah. And you're exhorting us, let's be intentional here. We're trying to actually pray to the Father through Christ, and we're trying to glorify him. We're trying to read the scripture and see Christ revealed. We're trying to go to a church that exalts Christ. Christ.

And that's really the distinction then that you're trying to make. Church fellowship is one of the means that you give. If our church fellowship is nothing more than watching the ball game together, and we're not talking about Christ, then we're not actually receiving the communion with Christ that church fellowship can even offer. Is that kind of what you mean?

Yeah. I mean, if, you know, we can do these things with zero intent to grow in Christ or see Christ, you know, I can read my Bible, for example. And what's the difference between reading my Bible, which is black letters on white pages, versus reading another book with black letters and white pages. The difference is whether I'm seeing the glory of Christ or not, and that necessitates faith in the Christian life.

And so as we look to the scriptures with faith to see the glory of Christ, we're transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to the next, 2 Corinthians 3.18. Yeah, I think that's a good outline for people. I really, I feel like people are just going to think I'm some kind of fanboy or something here, because I'll admit, I was a little hesitant to read the book.

I tried to get somebody else to read it instead. And we haven't been in touch enough in the last few years where I felt obligated as a buddy to read it. And I finally just said, well, I'm going to check it out. It a basic new Christian book so maybe I can just fly through it and I started reading it and I like this is really deep And these are the foundational truths that are required for not only a new Christian but for any Christian to continue to persevere in Christ and I think that I think that you did a great job developing that out talking about how we can persevere in Christ because of what God has done for us but that there's still the effort that we're to put in to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling you went through the section in Pilgrim's Progress talking about that and so a couple more points I'll ask you about but yeah i i gotta admit i hope people buy this book how much is the book how do they order it uh right now it's available on amazon uh for 16.99 as the paperback okay that's walking in christ the key to the christian life and the ebook is pretty much available anywhere you can get it on kindle you can get it on apple itunes you can get it on barnes and noble you can get on Kobo if you're from Canada.

It's available everywhere. What about if somebody wanted to order a box of them for a group study? Is there any kind of discounts going? Not at the moment. Not at the moment, but I'm thinking of an option that might work, but not yet. Yeah, so here, how are we to persevere in Christ?

I'm on page 100. We'll just go through these real quick. I'll just read the bold heading and you just give me about a 30-second comment on it, okay? All right. And then we'll leave enough left over for people to have to buy the book. All right, so how do we persevere in Christ?

Watch against the flesh. Yeah, so watching against the flesh is one of the main enemies in the Christian life. and that when we become a Christian, our old man is crucified, and we are dead to the reign and dominion of sin. But the principle of sin still resides in our mortal body, Romans 6. And so it still corrupts our physical and our immaterial nature as human beings.

And so the flesh is always, always, always fighting against us, and we have to fight back against it and be persevering against the flesh. It's like John Owen said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. Good quote. All right, number two, the second way we persevere in Christ, watch against the devil. Yeah, watching against the devil is also important. because scripture says he's seeking to devour Christians.

He's hindering the work of Christians. He's the author of false teaching, and he's seeking someone to destroy and devour, and he's shooting flaming darts at us. And so we've got to be watchful against him, but sometimes we're not really sure how he's working or what that looks like or how to fight him. So this is just a short section on spiritual warfare in the Christian life.

I thought it was very – this one section I very much enjoyed. You had a bullet list of – it starts with, aside from tempting us, what else does Satan do? And you actually referenced scriptures that talk about the things that Satan does that we can watch out for. And I think, I don't know how to put this, man. Again, I sound like a fanboy, but I felt like you just kept saying things over and over in the book that were like, oh, yeah, man, that's exactly what people get wrong on a regular basis.

And here you are, you know, tactfully and boldly correcting all this wrong thinking that you hear people carry around. like so you you kind of you kind of address the fact that it seems like for christians they either give satan no credit whatsoever for anything or they they practically make them sovereign yeah and you address you address that really well and and again i told you eight ten years ago man i knew you were going to be a writer one day i just hope that uh i hope that your your maturity caught up with your brain because you had the brain for it all for sure and this is just excellent i'm so i'm so glad you wrote this for people watch against the world you said yeah that would be the the third way um we're to persevere in christ watching against the flesh the devil and the world the world is the other enemy um against the christians and are against christians and it's everywhere and it's pervasive. And even my pastor was just saying yesterday that we're at church for 45 minutes or hearing the preaching of God's word for like 45 minutes on a Sunday. But all the other minutes of every single week is just these constant attacks from the world.

And everything's trying to convince us to think worldly, behave worldly, and the world is definitely something we need to be cautious of for sure. Yeah, I like how you laid that out with the world, the devil, and the flesh, and then you go into putting on the armor of Christ and what that means, and you break down the armor. And then number five, and it's something I've been meaning to send you a text about, You said to keep a clear conscience.

So along with the armor and I want to, I'll make sure to send you a text because I recently listened to a podcast. I don't know if you listen to the Theology on the Go podcast with James Dolezal at masters i think no i haven't yeah well i was going to text it to you because the title of it was ministering with a guilty conscience it was a really neat discussion on the conscience and and i thought that was uh something that you'd enjoy and then and then the most exciting part of the book for me uh was page 112 when you got to number six on how we walk in christ you said Set your mind on things above. And, of course, people that listen to this podcast probably know I write for a website called Things Above Us.

And we constantly use that phrase as kind of a fun thing. So I felt like you were plugging my website for me, buddy. But so who do you think would benefit from this book? Are you really looking to hit pastors, new Christians, just anybody? What is your thoughts on how this is going to affect people in Christianity? Yeah, well, I tried to hit a pretty broad audience.

As I said, Chapter 1 is geared mostly towards unbelievers. Chapter 2 through Chapter 8 is geared towards believers. But the idea is that a young Christian who just came to Christ six months ago could benefit from this book. but for somebody who's been a Christian for 20 or 30 years, I also wrote this so that at least the text would be good reminders, but I also have included footnotes that go into more detail on some points so that even the pastor who's been doing ministry for a long time can be helped and can be encouraged and can be strengthened in their ministry.

So the goal was to reach just really a broad audience of Christians. I think you nailed it because I know for me, there were parts of it that I'll just say were kind of basic. These are very foundational truths in this book. This isn't a book for seminary professors to read for a class. This is a very practical guide for anybody that wants to follow Christ.

And what I found is you had your chapters, and the chapters were usually broken down into different subheadings, and then the subheadings had numeric points outlined within, which personally I love. I don't know if other people like that style, but for me that was perfect because that sets it up for a few things. One, the bold print helps it stand out what are the main points here.

And then two when I think about this book what I think about is I going to sit down with my teenage kids and we going to read this book And long chapters that don have clear points Those just don work well for a family devotional but this is perfect. We can read 200 or 300 words in a section. We can talk about it. We know what it was for, and then we can just move on to the next section or we can wait until the next day.

So I found this to be a helpful format, but what I wanted to say about it is that there were so many times where let's say you had five points and maybe a couple of them were just really obvious to me. But then a couple of them was like, oh, wow, I need to be doing that better for my own communion with Christ, for my own walk with Christ. And then when I read in the details, sometimes it was, oh, wow, I didn't realize how many scriptures supported this idea.

I knew it was biblical, but then you have, you know, maybe 10, maybe 20 scriptures in some sections that are supporting it. And for a Christian like I am, an author who relies on the scripture to do his teaching is what I need. I don't need your opinion. Yeah. You know, it might be nice to read your story, this and that, but I need you to tell me, hey, here's a dozen scriptures that support that this is what you ought to be doing.

And then you did an excellent job of following it up with, but the grace is there. And so it seems like you must have been taken through the ringer with your Lyme disease. And this really, God really brought you through in a faithful way. And I can sense your excitement for the Lord Jesus just reading through this book that you wrote. yeah well thanks for your kindness brother i mean it just it it came together and it's honestly it's all the lord's grace that it even happened um but yeah my hope is that um like you there might be some points that are kind of basic and then there's one point in there that that is either convicting or challenging or helpful that's what matters because you know maybe somebody else besides you reads it, and the points that were kind of basic to you were the points that helped them, but the points that helped you were maybe kind of basic.

And so the idea was to include enough of a discussion of the broad perspective of how to live the Christian life and how that works and the mechanics of it, that it would help everyone regardless of where they're at. Now, I think you did great. Darian Bowers, is he one of your pastors? Yeah, so Darren Bowers, he's a graduate of the Master's Seminary. He actually, after the manuscript was done and it was turned into the editor who was Grace Rankin she did a really good job on the editing Darren Bowers did a full theological edit on this book And then he willingly wrote the foreword to the book as well And so for both of those two people, Grace Rankin and Darren Bowers, this book depended on much, that they really helped a lot with this work.

And then the cover design, My wife did that because she's an interior designer. So it was really kind of a cool team. I did the writing. My editor did the editing. Darren did the theological editing, and my wife did the cover. Yeah, it's not a one-person team at all.

I was going to read Darren's – sorry, I pronounced it Darian because of the spelling. But Darren's little blurb on the back, he said, But Jared's book requires and deserves careful study and thought. And then here he echoes what I just said from my heart. To apply what he has written in these pages is to apply the wisdom of Scripture itself. For the content and instruction of this book is gleaned from the pages of Scripture, or pages of the Bible.

So just like when we say when we preach, we're preaching God's Word, well we don't actually mean that we're we're adding to the bible or we're infallibly uh you know producing prophecy for people like when the bible was written but we do believe when we faithfully preach a text that we're giving the people god's word and i think your book accomplished that and and i'll add i'm glad you brought up grace because i'll add that that I was utterly impressed with, with what I considered to be the lack of a typo. I'm the kind of person who I catch those things. Just, I don't, I don't try to, it's just, they catch my eye.

I catch places where grammar isn't quite right. And so, and I just thought this is so clear. And so give grace, give grace a high five for me because that it was, it was really well done in that sense. And I, I, I do hope people, I do hope people buy it. I think it's, I think it's worth it. Like I said, I'm going to recommend it to people at church too.

I think in particular, this book would make a nice gift to, you know, maybe, maybe buy 10 of them. And then as you make converts in your daily life, when you're, when you're evangelizing people and meeting people, it would be a nice gift for a new convert to help them in their own study of the Bible, you know, you get a new convert and you tell them that they should go to church, they should read the Bible and pray. And then, and then they're, sometimes they're kind of left on their own.

Right. Yep. And so hopefully things like this will help. So you're married. What's your wife name So my wife Sarah Sarah And then you got a son Oliver Yep Just one son right now Yep He about 15 months old Awesome and when did you and Sarah get married We got married in April 8th 2017 so we coming up on three years All right and you live in Racine? Sort of we're in Union Grove which is 10 minutes from Racine in Wisconsin.

But that's where you go to church then. All right. You're not a Badgers fan though, are you? I mean, I'm okay with the Badgers. I don't really have a college team, so I'm okay with the Badgers. But I am more of a Chicago fan.

So I know I live in Wisconsin. I should cheer for the Packers and the Brewers, but I don't. I cheer for the Bears and the Cubs. So if I lose book sales on that, I'm okay with it. Go Cubs. There's nothing wrong with that.

Well, good for you. Well, hey, man, it was really good to talk to you again. Is there anything else you want to say about the book for anybody listening? No, I mean, I'm just hopeful that it's helpful and challenging for everyone and that they are able to find something in it to help them grow and mature in Christ and just be blessed by it. Um, so, but yeah, just otherwise just thankful, um, for your kindness and your, your, uh, generosity, brother.

Appreciate it. Oh, I'm happy to recommend this book, Walking in Christ, the Key to the Christian Life by Jared Bergen. But I almost remember back now, years ago, calling you Bayergen, but, uh, because it's spelled B-A-E-R-G-E-N. And so bookmark his author page on Amazon because I'm telling you what, if he wants to write more books, I think they're going to be good ones.

I've always liked you, buddy. I've always appreciated your joy in the Lord and your intelligence about it all. And now that we're – people listening don't realize, like, I haven't talked to you in, like, seven years. You know, it's, like, really cool just to reconnect, But I appreciate what I see to be a real humble spirit in a young man, and that's the kind of man that God uses.

So we hope that he'll continue to use you through the future. All right, buddy? Well, thanks, man, for your kindness. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us. and I also have a personal website, michaelcoghlan.net.

You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.