Transitions

Transitions

Timothy E Turner

Copyright Timothy E Turner 2012

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art by: Sherry C. Turner

ISBN: 9781476022185

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

(Hyperlinks are underlined in this document)

1. Introduction: Transitions Transitions

2. Is There a God? Is_There_a_God

3. The Garden of Eden The_Garden_of_Eden

4. What Is Truth What_Is_Truth

5. The Whole Bible The_Whole_Bible

6. Free Will Free_Will

7. Your Soul Your_Soul

8. Satan Satan

9. Faith Faith

10. Forgiveness Forgiveness

11. Healing Healing

12. Other Religions Healing

13. Spiritual maturity Spiritual_Maturity

Transitions

This is a time of transitions. You are transitioning between being a child and being an adult.

When you were a child, people told you what to do at nearly every moment of your life. Your parents were there to watch you. When they dropped you off at school there was always a teacher there to watch you. Every moment of every day you have been under the authority of a responsible adult. That is all about to change.

You accepted constant supervision in the past. Maybe didn’t even notice it. But now it bothers you. Soon, it will be difficult for you to tolerate. God made you that way.

When you were born, your brain was the brain of an infant. It was not just smaller than an adult brain; it was different in many ways. You were not able to make rational decisions concerning the impact of your actions. That is why you had constant supervision.

We (the other adults and I) did not expect you to remain an infant for your entire life. We did not think that you were born a baby and would always be a baby. We expected you to grow and change. We planned for that.

From the time you were born till now, you have been following a carefully prepared plan aimed at developing you into an adult. We understand the development of your brain and we have prepared instructions optimized for each stage of your development. Your parents and teachers have watched your development step by step and have corrected the program to maximize its effect on you individually. All aimed at making you a responsible adult able to give back to the community.

The transitions class marks one very important milestone on your march to adulthood: the Age of Accountability.

The Age of Accountability occurs when your brain develops to the point where God thinks it is time for you to hear the voice of the spirit of God. This is a dramatic change. At this point, you become no longer accountable to your parents, but accountable to God.

As a child, you must obey your parents. They decide when you go to bed, when you get up and when you eat. You cannot be arrested and sent to jail, your parents are responsible for your discipline. They can get in trouble, but you can’t. Once you pass the age of accountability, you become responsible for your own actions. You have the ability to do great things, and you have the ability to make great mistakes. God gives you both options. You get to choose.

When you were a child, you did not know enough to stay out of the road. Now that you are older, you kind of appreciate the dangers of a highway. Still, you won’t fully understand these dangers until you get to drive and begin to experience your limits as a driver on the control of your truck running at 70 miles per hour. You are not a full adult yet, but you are getting close.

When you were a toddler, you could hit your brother or sister as hard as you could and not really hurt them. Now you have the ability to do real damage. Your development progressed in stages. Mind, body and Spirit all develop in parallel. We are not going to turn you lose just yet, but we are going to let you try your wings.

If you are reading this book, most likely someone who gave it to you thinks that you have reached the age of accountability. That means that you can hear the voice of God. Do you know that for a fact? Do you recognize the voice of the spirit? Can you tell the voice of God from the lie of Satan?

If you can confidently say yes to all of the above, then you are either more advanced that 60% of the adults in the world, or you have not yet reached the age of accountability and don’t know what you are talking about. If you are not sure, then you are normal. If you have questions, then this is the book for you.

At this point questions are expected. You were not born with the ability to hear God, it is one that you just developed. You didn’t have it, now suddenly you do. It is like those hairs under your arms. You lived maybe 10 years without them, then suddenly they appeared. You couldn’t hear the voice of God, but now suddenly you can. You didn’t ask for it, it just showed up.

Unfortunately, it is not quite that easy. God gives you the ability to hear the voice of the spirit, but he also gives you the ability to decide you can’t. You have the choice. More than the choice, you have to want to hear. God will not force you to obey. You obey only if you want to. God will show you the truth. God will tell you how to live a life full of happiness, but he gives you the ability to choose what you want to do. You can hear God and always know how to enjoy life, or you can choose to believe that God does not talk to us and that we are left alone to find our own way. When you become an adult, you get the full power to decide.

The Transistions book is designed to help you trust that voice you hear. Our culture is filled with lies specifically designed to convince you that there is no God and that you are left alone to decide the truth. Many of these lies have been taught you in church. When you were a child, you were given childish answers to you questions about God. Many adults have not taken the time to answer your questions fully. The truth when you were a child was that you did not need to understand, you just needed to obey your parents and the adults they set over you. Now you need to understand the truth. Many people in the past have reached this point, found no truth in the answers they had received when they were a child, and dropped out of church convinced there was no truth in it. This class is intended to give you the adult answers to some of these questions.

This class cannot give you all the answers. We are not good enough to explain everything you will need to know in the detail you need to understand it. That is why God has given you a full lifetime. Don’t waste a minute of the short time you have on this earth. This class will try to give you a foundation, but it is only a foundation. Your time is limited and you have a lot to learn.

Ask questions. If you know the questions, you are ahead of most of the people on the earth. Your teacher may or may not know the answer. Your parents may or may not know the answer. Even if they do know the answer, they may or may not be able to answer so that you can understand. Keep asking. Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you. This is the promise of God. It is not the promise of this book. All the answers are not in this book, a few answers to common questions are in here. God himself is your guide and teacher. Look to him for the advanced class.

[Table_of_Contents]

Is there a God?

When we are small, our parents tell us there is a God and we believe them. Our parents seem to know everything: how to talk, how to walk… We emulate them and learn the basics from them. At that time in our lives, we are wired to believe everything our parents tell us. As we become teenagers, our wiring changes, and we begin to question some of the things our parents tell us. As we develop differences in priorities with our parents and begin to develop differences in how we interpret the world, we have a tendency to concentrate on the differences and we begin to wonder if our parents know anything.

During this time in your development, you may also ask yourself the question: Is there a God? This is a good thing. This is not heresy. This is the foundation for your faith. If you never ask this question, you can never really believe. You may think you believe, but it may be that you believe not because you understand, but because you respect your parents or other elders. Respect is not a bad thing, but you do need to really understand this question if you are to grow into an adult. Thus, you must ask yourself this question, and you must ask with an open mind. Maybe there is no God. How do we know?

This question is a little different from all other ones you might find in church. We cannot use the bible as a reference for this one. If we decide that there is a God, then we can use the bible to answer all other questions. We can look to the bible as the word of God. However, if we don’t believe in God, then we don’t believe that the bible is the word of God. We can still use the bible, but only as the word of man. Without that basic step of faith, we must try every piece of evidence ourselves and decide for ourselves if we think it is reasonable.

Without a God, we are the highest life form and the only ones who can decide if there is a god or not. Did God make man, or did man invent God?

Let’s start with a definition of God. Before we can decide if we believe in something, we have to know what that thing is.

The communists that ruled Russia up until recently were officially atheists. That means they did not believe in God. The first Russian cosmonaut that orbited the earth was reported to have said I looked and looked for God, but did not see him anywhere. Now, if we define God as a sort of Giant Human floating around the earth, then I am also an atheist. If we define god as someone who lives in a heaven that floats on clouds, I think the invention of airplanes pretty much proved that this god does not exist.

The Greeks said that the god’s lived on top of Mt. Olympus. I have read testimony from several people who have been up there. No immortal gods were found up on Mount Olympus. Thus, we have proved that these gods do not exist. Of course, we don’t find huge followings for this kind of god anymore. Not many people are praying to the Sun god or the Moon Goddess anymore... We teach too much science in school now.

So let’s look at the more main stream religions for a definition of God. The Christians, Jews and Muslims basically believe in one God (the same God, the God of Abraham), the creator of all things. The Buddhists don’t like to call it God, but they believe in truth and search for truth in the same way as Christians search for God’s will. If I had been born a Buddhist and had been told that Christians believed in this giant human sort of God floating around earth, I might prefer the description of God as truth. Even we Christians sometimes say that God is truth or God is Love. So, you can see that we are really not so different. The Hindus still have a whole set of gods, but they also have a sort of unifying truth idea. So it seems that all religions with a reasonable following believe that God" is truth. The truth of this world. The Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that God created the world. The Buddhists see the truth as the world and the path of the world, so maybe again we have just a difference in the way we express this basic truth.

For now, let’s agree to move towards