Maturing into a Man: A father's guide to growing up into a man who loves God and others well

By J. S. Charpie

In "Maturing into a Man," J. S. Charpie offers young men a roadmap for navigating the journey from boyhood to manhood with wisdom and grace. Through a series of insightful chapters spanning topics ranging from cultivating a deep relationship with God to tackling real-world issues, a father addresses the issues that will affect his son as he grow

• Language: English
• Publisher: El Olam Family LLC
• Release date: Mar 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869254054

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my wife Rebekah for helping edit this beast.

Thank you to my brother David for reading through this, sharing much needed edits, and sharing his thoughts.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I’m writing this book to provide a guide for my sons as they transition from boyhood, through their teen years, to become men who love God and love the people in the world around them.

My dear son,

I love you and I want God’s best for you. I pray that God would grant you His friendship and love beyond your wildest imagination.

This book is given as a gift on your thirteenth birthday to try to help you know God better through each step in your life and show you how to love God and love others rightly. The information in the book is only a crutch on the journey to learning to hear and know God better as you face each phase of life. Hopefully in these pages you will see how God is in every area of your life. Will you seek Him wherever you find yourself? If you truly seek with all your heart, you will find Him.

Note: some information is a restated in a couple different sections of the book. This is done to try to allow the book to be either consulted as a resource where you go to the chapters that speak to what you are interested in, or you can read straight through.

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. - Luke 11:9-10

SECTION 1 – LOVE GOD

1

CHOOSE WELL

But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. - Deuteronomy 4:29

Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him... - Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a

My amazing son, I love you. I remember holding you shortly after you were born. There was joy. Responsibility. Amazement. Tons of emotions. Lots of tiredness. As time has gone on, I’ve gotten to know you. I’ve gotten to know your sense of humor and sarcasm. Your smile. Your thoughtfulness. Your likes and dislikes. Your brains. But even though I think you’re an amazing person – I also understand that you have a great capacity for sin, that is for selfishness, greed, lust, arrogance, anger, and many other heart problems.

Know this, I will love you no matter what you do. I loved you from the moment I first got to hear your heartbeat, over five months before you were born. My first thought after hearing your heartbeat was to look at the medical technician operating the heartbeat tool and prepare to do them harm if they hurt you. No matter how devastatingly low you fall or how amazingly high you soar, or if you just have what you think of as a simple, normal, common life – you cannot stop my love for you. Through it all, I have but one dream for you. I dream that your best friend for life is God. You can have God as a best friend whether you are a homeless beachcomber on the trashiest beach in the world, a successful lawyer, doctor or CEO of a multi-national company, a pastor or missionary, a tradesman, or anything else God may have available for you. 

What I write here is merely my way to encourage you to know God better as you go through various life situations. Each section is intended to walk you through seeing how God has already given you instruction and guidance, how applying it may look in your life, and how to lean into God as you walk through your situations in life.

Understand please, this book is not inspired and shouldn’t be read as perfect or in any way error-proof. I am human and have been wrong and will be wrong on various things. If the Spirit leads you away from anything I have written, showing it to be contrary to the Word, then run with Him! Just remember the Spirit will NEVER stray from what He has already inspired in the Bible. Above all find God and know Him intimately.

You have a decision to make. Please read Deuteronomy 29-30, especially focusing on the decision point:

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them." - Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Yes, I know reading a couple chapters of the Old Testament may not be what you want to do right now, but please just bear with me and read both chapters, then go back and re-read 30:15-20 again. This is the challenge I put before you right now. Will you choose life? Will you seek after Him with all your being? Yes – I know that technically this promise was made to Israel, not you. Theirs was a law of works and ours a law of grace that produces right works. But the promise that seeking and loving God will prove worth it is written throughout the Bible and made universal in the New Testament. Hebrews 11:6 says, And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. and in Luke 11:9-13, Jesus Himself says And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Jesus made this offer not tied to your family, economic bracket, religion, denomination, race, city, state, or nation you were born into, but rather – are you going to aggressively seek Him or not? Regardless of your limits and abilities, will you seek Him with all your heart?

If you truly believe in him, will you not seek after Him? If you seek Him, will you not love Him? If you love Him, will you not obey Him?

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. - John 14:15

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. - John 15:10

2

KNOW OR KNOW ABOUT?

You have grown up hearing about Jesus, talking about the Bible, going to church, and hearing what we believe. I can’t know your heart, but it is almost always good when we are starting out to go through the basics again and make sure we know the foundation for the rest of the discussion. Revel in what God has done for you as this chapter will hopefully entirely be review. The Gospel is summarized by Paul: 

"That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures

That he was buried 

That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 

And that he appeared … to more than five hundred brothers." - 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 

The Bible set up the original story of good vs. evil. In our hearts we choose between good and evil. Evil in church/Bible language is called sin. What is good and what is sin? Jesus accepted and taught this definition as moral good: loving God with all of our being and loving others as ourselves (Luke 10:27). Sin, therefore, is any failure to love God or others or when we act unlovingly toward God or others. 

The Bible tells us that we have all sinned (Ecclesiastes 7:20; Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:9,23, 11:32; 1 John 1:8-10) and that the cost required to be paid for sin is death (Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 6:23). Jesus came to pay that price for us by dying the death we deserved (Isaiah 53:6; Romans 5:8-10). 

You can go through each and every sin mentioned in the Bible and the action will always be a failure of loving either God and/or fellow humans or both in either the action you do or the action you fail to do. For example, lying is bad because it is unloving to say untrue things – unloving to God who is Truth and unloving to people because it leads them to belief that is contrary to the reality God created or it creates or supports false accusations. Murder is bad because it’s unloving to destroy a person’s life and unloving to God to destroy His image in that person.

Here’s how Jesus Himself explained the good news in John 3:16-18 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 

Our ultimately damning sin is to fail to believe in Jesus. How impossible it is to love God if we refuse to even believe in the existence and activity of the creator of the universe (John 1)? 

The decision every person needs to make is whether they will remain in their sin - that is will they refuse to believe in Jesus, or will they decide to turn to Him and believe that He, Jesus is the Son of God. He is God who came in human flesh and bone (John 1:1-3,14). Will you choose to love Him? Every moment, is your heart headed toward Him in love or have you turned from Him in some way? 

After someone asked Paul & Silas how to be saved, they give the simplest explanation in Acts 16:31: "And they said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ " 

Belief is the thread of salvation throughout the Bible. From Abraham in Genesis 15:6 to Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus in John 3, and on through the rest of the New Testament. The Bible is consistent that your belief will determine your relationship with God and by extension your eternal destiny. 

One author and pastor (David Platt) summarizes the human situation and condition like this: God is the holy, just, and gracious Creator of all things (Isaiah 43:15; Proverbs 17:15; Titus 2:11). We are each created by God, but we are all corrupted by sin (John 1:3; Romans 3:12,23; Romans 6:23). Jesus alone can remove our sin and restore us to God (1 John 3:5; 1 Peter 2:24, Revelation 1:18). We can be restored to God only through faith in Jesus (John 14:6; Romans 10:9-10). Our eternal destiny hinges on our response to Jesus (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Philippians 3:20; John 3:16-18). 

For any who read this, whether my child or not, if you have not yet believed in Jesus - I urge you to speak to God right now and admit to Him that you're a sinner and ask Him to forgive you for your sin based on Jesus’ death on the cross as payment for your sin. The exact words aren’t important. The words and the prayer are not what save you from the eternal punishment in hell you and I deserve, but it is Jesus that saves, upon seeing your belief in Him.

If you are unsure about all this, pray and ask God to make Himself known to you, then chase after Him. Read the Bible and seek Him there. Attend a church that believes the Bible and seek Him there. And if you trust in Jesus, God has a plan for you! So, keep seeking Him wherever you find yourself. Eph 2:8-10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." 

Please turn your heart from doing your life for you and instead live for and to Him. Spend the rest of your life seeking Him in the pages of the Bible, prayer, in your daily life and thoughts and through the fellowship of other believers - the church. 

You will still sin. When you fall short and sin, then remember, no matter what you’ve done, all you need to do is turn back to God. 

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - John 1:6-10

Trusting in Jesus is the beginning of knowing God. From there, by His grace, He works in us, through us and for us to make us whole and complete in Him. He removes sin’s hold in our lives over time. That is sanctification. 

Here’s where we need to recognize the major distinction between knowing about someone and knowing someone. Just like you don’t necessarily know someone just because you met them once, the Bible tells us in many places that trusting in Jesus is the beginning of a lifelong relationship, not some transaction where we pay in trust and get a get out of hell free pass. Some have been deceived into thinking salvation is simply about a future destination or changing behavior or actions. Some think that simply because they think they met Jesus, they know Him and are known by Him. 

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ - Matthew 7:21-23

How can someone be so deceived? How can someone think they know Jesus and be wrong? These are those who are so religious as to be seeming to do all the best religious things, just like what Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament did. Yet still, they are stuck in their sin, not known by God. Jesus tells us the test is not do you do all the right religious actions, but are you known by God? Is there a relationship between you and the creator of the entire universe? The will of the Father is not merely religious actions. John 6:40 states "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Do you look on Jesus and believe in Him? Are you living out now the beginning of eternal life by walking out belief in Christ daily? Or are you just doing good stuff and hoping that’s enough? 

Let’s think through the difference between knowing someone and knowing about them in a little imaginary story. 

Imagine there’s a new famous author in the world – we'll call him Bob. One day, you go to an event on Bob’s book tour, meet Bob and talk to him for a few minutes – shaking hands, taking selfies, and telling him how he’s influenced you, while he signs your copy of his book. You have read everything he has written and even taken so much of his wisdom to heart that you have done all the things recommended in his books. Anyone who knows you would call you a Bob Superfan! Now, let me ask you – do you and Bob know each other? In case you’re wondering, the answer is NO! You know a lot about Bob. You’ve bought what Bob is selling. But, at the end of Bob’s tour, if you are lucky, Bob, at best knows you exist, but he wouldn’t say he knows you. Any relationship you have is superficial – just a few minutes of passing conversation. Too superficial to claim you know each other. 

According to Jesus, there are many christians who don’t really know Him and aren’t known by Him. So, please, as you go throughout your life, keep focusing on your relationship with God, not religious activities for God. In ten years, you may wake up and realize you’ve lost sight of a relationship with God and slipped into doing religious things that are likely good things. When that happens, run back to God as Father and friend. Repent and rest in Him again. Reading the Bible is great, but please don’t read the Bible to learn about God, rather read the Bible to come to know God. The Bible isn’t the destination or goal, God is the destination and goal. The Bible and your heart’s prayer are the path you walk to get to Him. 

Back to our Bob example – imagine now instead, you moved into a new neighborhood and a neighbor came over one day and handed you a book, saying Hey I’m Bob and here’s a book I wrote about myself, some things I’ve done and some of the friends and enemies I’ve had over time, along with my values and standards of morality. Feel free to stop over anytime and we can chat. If you’re interested, I think we could be great friends. Do you know Bob yet? Does Bob know you? Probably not quite yet. You’ve met, but you aren’t friends who know each other. 

So, you read the book and start going over to Bob’s house and hanging out. You invite Bob over. Sometimes you ask Bob to clarify challenging parts of the book, and you talk together about life – the boring stuff, the exciting stuff, the scary stuff, the embarrassing stuff and the shameful stuff. You ask Bob for help here and there and Bob asks if you want to help with various things he is doing in the neighborhood. Bob references various passages in his book to encourage and guide you. When you ruin Bob’s yard and use his property in the wrong way and break it, you fess up and restore your relationship, remembering somewhere in his book where he said how he felt about people that did such things and how he wanted to be approached when people did such things. When you do hurt or do wrong by Bob’s children, you acknowledge your failure. You make amends and restore your relationship with Bob. You fix what you broke in your relationships with his kids. You take these steps because you remember what his book had to say about such situations. Some days you look at your life and see Bob in everything, because your life has been so incredibly impacted by Bob, the book and the relationship. At some point in that relationship, you have come to know and be known by Bob. It started very early on and becomes more and more obvious over time. 

This is the true Christian life – walking with God as friend. It is not just doing the bare minimum so you can claim that you know God. You can’t fake it until you make it. You must be authentic and lean into a true relationship with God. 

Imagine another scenario- you heard that Bob lived in a specific neighborhood and in one of Bob’s books, it says that Bob gives out a million dollars to all his friends and he invites everyone to be his friend. That seems tempting, so you move in to Bob’s neighborhood, get the welcome speech, read the book, hang out at Bob’s place when he has gatherings so that you feel like you and Bob will be classified as friends any day now, and you’re confident that your million dollars is just around the corner. You can almost taste it. 

Are you and Bob ever going to be friends who know each other in this latest scenario? Well, maybe. You might be reading the book or over at one of Bob’s gatherings one day and realize you’ve gone from wanting to be friends with Bob for a million dollars to realizing you know Bob, like Bob and are friends with Bob. When you get to that point, the million dollars isn’t the goal anymore. Or you may just live a lie, every day pretending to be friends, hoping for a million bucks and maybe even deceiving yourself, all the while you don’t really care much for Bob and are just putting in your time to get the million bucks. Keys to this scenario are authenticity, vulnerability, openness, and just plain being real. Do you talk to God from your heart, or do you say what you think He wants to hear? If you struggle here, read the Psalms and see how often the writer’s heart cries out to God and blames or accuses Him or in some other way clearly isn’t paying lip service to God. 

Every day you choose how you will live out your heart here and now. Are you going to be a Jesus Superfan, a real friend, a fake friend or are you going to walk away and leave Jesus alone entirely? In the Bob examples, let me be clear. Think of Bob as the author of life – Jesus. The book is the Bible. The million dollars is eternity in heaven (whereas not having the million dollars is an eternity destined for hell). And all those examples of your true friendship with Bob parallel aspects of a true Christian life. Showing up at the gatherings and just being there for the million dollars is living a lie. 

From the outside, you may not be able to point at one of Bob’s neighbors and know for sure whether they are authentically Bob’s friend or just in it for the coming financial windfall. It is not your job to judge others. God sees their heart. More importantly to you, God sees your heart. Check your heart and motives. Are you just trying to skate by, doing the least work possible, with all this God, Jesus, and church stuff? 

Please, check yourself now. Are you following Jesus to get to know all the information about Jesus you can, get the selfie, and worship this hero of yours? Are you a superfan, in it for the hype and good vibes? Are you following Jesus to get out of Hell and really don’t want a relationship with Him, kind of turned off to the God of the Bible, doing just the bare minimum to try to ensure you go to heaven? Are you a fake friend – talking to the air and calling it prayer, reading the Bible and going to church and doing the right things because its expected? Are you learning facts about God without ever meeting Him? Or do you really want to be friends with the Creator of the universe? Do you read the book He wrote? Do you talk to Him and hear from Him? Is the Spirit bringing Bible passages, God centered truth, and urges to love God and others to mind through your spirit as you go through life? Do you ever hang out with other friends of Jesus so you can grow deeper together in your friendship with Jesus? 

I want to make something very clear. I first came to Jesus to be saved and avoid hell. In John 3, Jesus gives that as a major benefit and drive for believing in Him. It was part of His presentation of truth to Nicodemus to call him to believe in Him. It’s not necessarily bad to start there. Typically, I think it would be like moving into Bob’s neighborhood because Bob sounds like a great guy you want to get to know, you need a million dollars, and he’s invited everyone to be his friend. You rarely start out just trying to use Bob to get the money, at least not consciously. The issue comes down to your heart, motivation, how your heart is today, and how it changes over time from the past and into the future. Are you doing the bare minimum only to get out of hell or to be accepted by the religious crowd? Deep down do you find all this Jesus stuff distasteful? Do you believe it with your heart? 

If you find yourself using Jesus for the benefits He offers, talk to Him about it. Tell Him how lonely you are and how you want a friend that still loves you and hangs out with you after they know all your most shameful secrets. Ask Him to be that friend to you and to teach you to be His friend rightly. Moving from fake friend to real friend is very doable and I believe common – just keep working on continuing in the true friendship and repent of anything the Spirit brings to light in your heart. Thousands and thousands of people came to Jesus two thousand years ago for free food, free healing, or great sounding wisdom. At the end a few hundred stayed for Him. Are you staying for Him? 

Don’t get discouraged by how daunting this may seem. Look at the thief on the cross. His belief was all there was, and Jesus accepted Him. The depth of our relationship with God typically becomes clearer over time. For those who are newly saved or accepted Christ just before death, there isn’t time to build that relationship in a way that we see the quality clearly. They, like everyone else, simply must believe. Don’t trust in your relationship with God and rely on it. Jesus is always the focus of saving trust and belief. He saves. Not our belief, relationship, prayer, or faith. Jesus saves. Depth of relationship with God is merely a gauge of how your belief has worked itself out in your life. Just as the thief on the cross believed and was instantly saved, so also, right belief/faith in Christ is instant salvation to us. Is your faith genuine belief in Jesus or a counterfeit deception? In many ways you haven’t lived long enough to see much fruit in your life. But you can still check your heart and examine your thoughts, desires, and beliefs. You can learn to hear the Spirit of God bear witness to your spirit whether or not you are a child of God. (Romans 8:16) 

Let’s not take the Bob example too far. God is so much more than a nice next-door neighbor author. He’s the author of life and all creation. He is Spirit and transcendent, far above us. Jesus did more than make a book. He made all things, then entered creation to pay the penalty for our offenses against God. We are born spiritually dead and deaf, unable to clearly hear and understand the voice of the Spirit of God without His intervention. And Jesus doesn’t offer to be a good neighbor. Instead, He says "abide in Me (John 6:56, 15:4-9) - that’s closer than next door to Him. Jesus doesn’t offer you a million dollars. Instead, He says whoever believes in [me] should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16b) and I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10b) 

Please, do not read life here as just a life that does not end in hell. Instead, understand that this life is abundant life full of vibrant vitality. When Jesus healed people, he saved them and gave them life. When He raised Lazarus from the dead, he gave him life. When he fed the crowds, he gave them life. When he preached, he gave them life. When he died, he gave all who would believe life. Life is full, vibrant, healthy, multi-dimensional, spiritual, mental, psychological, and physical. Jesus wanted you to have abundant life. Are you more alive now than you were when you first believed? Are you seeing His version of vitality invade your spirit and heart? He doesn’t promise instant full vitality in every area, but some do receive that in some areas. Instead, we grow in vitality while on this earth, ultimately knowing that full vitality is ours in eternity with Him. 

We were born spiritually dead, but God makes believers alive in Him. The life He offers isn’t merely a future reality for after you die. Rather, being made alive is meant to be a present growing reality as you invite Him into your life to invade and transform it, piece by piece, sin by sin, stage by stage. It’s abundant fullness of vitality. It’s growing freedom from the death of sin now, not just freedom from the future hell of eternal death. It is His kingdom invading your life. 

Think of Genesis 1. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Hovering gives me the idea of eagerness. The Spirit of God being eager to be part of bringing forth life on an empty planet that had just been created. God spoke and things got divided – day from night, sea from sky, and sea from land. Three days of separation so that God could fill this planet with life. Where did God put the life? Right where the Spirit had been hovering – on the planet where God had created space. Where the Spirit hovered, God created space and brought forth life. 

So also, may it be in your life. Invite the Spirit of God to hover over every area of your life— your heart, emotions, thoughts, plans, dreams, school, work, church, friends, hobbies, desires, hopes, fears, and anxieties. Invite Him to divide and separate out the areas that have no God granted potential for true life in them and then ask Him to open space for robust godly life. Ask Him to invade your life and fill it, making you truly alive in Him - knowing Him and living with Him in every single last area of your life.

This life which God bursts forth is sourced in vibrant relationship with Jesus, who said in John 14:6 "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Relationship is bound up in living the life He offers alongside Him. The destination we’re headed to is Him, our loving Father. 

Jesus isn’t a neighbor that you can move away from after you get close enough to get your million dollars. He’s a friend for life. Day after day. Decade after decade. He is the source of Life and fullness. Abide in Him for life. 

3

LEARN TO RECOGNIZE HIM

Our society frequently indulges in a logical fallacy, which is a belief, practice, or set of statements that make no sense. When people talk about God, they often make statements like: 

I could never believe in a God that…

If God were truly loving then He would…

How could an all-powerful and loving God create a world with suffering? I can’t believe in that kind of God because… 

My concern is not asking questions when things don’t make sense. It is good and to be encouraged for people to want to have logical beliefs. However, a major problem I see here is that many people aren’t pursuing truth regardless of what it is, but rather standing as judge over truth and deciding what they will believe to be true and what they will accept. Truth doesn’t care what we think. Truth is what it is. If there were a god that was supreme, yet their virtue was questionable to us, would we not still be at their mercy? 

If God exists, He is who He is, regardless of how you or I feel about Him or what He’s done and regardless of whether He makes sense to us or transcends us beyond our comprehension. If you are going to truly know Him, you must resign yourself to the possibility that the Truth may not be what you want it to be. The Truth may not make complete sense, not because it is contradictory, but because it goes beyond your understanding. Life is full of paradoxes that are confounding and confusing yet true. Especially to those with a smaller knowledge base of pertinent facts. 

The moment you turn from what God has revealed about Himself and try to redefine terms or tweak how you choose to understand the facts He’s revealed, you are no longer believing in God. Instead, you are making up a god to believe in and your heart has gone astray. You are twisting the meaning of the Bible to match the theology you want to be true. This is why the Jews didn’t recognize Jesus, because He didn’t match their idea of who God is and how He works. You and I are at risk of making the same mistakes. Our society and sometimes our churches push us to think this same way – as if God is who we understand Him to be and not who He is within Himself alone. 

There are things in the Bible I don’t like. I don’t like the harsh punishments in the Old Testament, or at the Cross, or in Revelation. I’m not a fan of the violence in the Old Testament and the punishment of everyone in certain cities – including women and children. The flood