Maturing in the Spirit of Truth: Truths That Some Ministers Will Not Preach or Teach

By Keith Barber

This book exposes some of the lies that have been told to us from across God's pulpit for centuries by some pastors, ministers, and parents. The book also focuses on some truths that they won't preach because they think it will blow the financial doors off the church and put them out of business. Its just like the Pharisees thought about what Jesus was preaching. Although the teachings seemed to be light, it has kept a lot of us in darkness for a long time. It's time now for us to stop drinking milk and to eat some meat. Most of us professed Christians have no clue of who we really are in God or have no real idea of how to be the person that Gods says in His word that we can be. So let's grow and mature together into the perfection that God has said we can be and are called to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512714289

Keith Barber

This book might answer some of the questions Christians have had in their minds, but have been afraid to ask their ministers because they thought or think they would be questioning God or His Word. This book may help guide Christians toward true, individual spiritual power. At the age of twenty-three, I went to prison for an armed robbery I had committed when I was about eighteen years old. While I was there, I was focused enough to get my GED and finish one year of college. But at the age of fifty-something, I went back to college and got my BA in theology with plans to continue my education and get a Masters. I’d been quite active at my last church, as my wife and I were marriage counselors. I also lead one of several home bible study groups and had preached there for a number of years.

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Copyright © 2015 Keith Barber.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-1429-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1428-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916140

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/5/2015

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

1. Truth

2. Some Truth About Prayer

3. The Spirit of Truth

4. Practicing Lies

5. Comforted By a Lie

6. About Drinking Alcohol

7. I’m Not Perfect

8. Image and Likeness

9. Jesus Did Not Die For My Sins

10. Forgiveness

11. Some Truth about Tithing

12. Robbing God

13. Closing Thoughts and Comments

ALL PRAISE, HONOR AND THANKS

BE TO GOD

WHO GIVES INSPIRATION AND

REVELATIONS TO MEN, EVEN TODAY

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife, Carol, who was my sounding board. She’s endured listening to just about every concept and thought that’s gone into this book. I Love her sooooo much.

Preface

What’s up, my name is Keith Barber. I was born in High Point, North Carolina. I went to a Catholic school called ‘Christ the King ‘. This is where my experience of not listening to adults who wanted to talk (rather lie) to me about God, started.

You see, what had happened was, they taught me one thing in the class room, and they practiced things that were contrary to what they’d just taught me.

The issue I most remember was in the sixth or seventh grade. On mostly every Catholic school ground they have a school and a church. In school they’d taught me from the bible that I should call no other father except God and that I shouldn’t pray to statues or graven images. OK, I understood that.

So after class they lined us up to go over to the church and the person standing at the door was father Dominick. And we’d been taught to address him by that title. But as I approached him I was a little confused as to what to say, because we’d just learned not to call any other father except God, I don’t exactly remember what I said, but I didn’t call him father Dominick. After that we went to confessional, and as a practice, afterwards you go to the alter to pray. But I noticed that there were statues all over the place. So I didn’t get in front of any statue as I kneeled to pray to God the Father.

Once I got home I told my mother that I‘d passed the great test and that nobody else in the whole school passed because they continued to call father Dominick by his title and they prayed to the statues. And I told her that meant I didn’t have to go back to school because I was the only one to pass the great test. But surely she told me I had to go back, and I did.

But when I told the nuns about the issue, they told me I had to call father Dominick by his title and pray to the statues. I didn’t and I realized that they couldn’t make me.

Man, I find this so amazing. As I grew older the more I found out how even my parents had been lying to me about things like Christmas, Easter and such. How even within the public school system how I had been lied to about history. And now I see more and more that not too many people are concerned with the truth not even Christians. It seems that lying is the norm of the day. The news lies to us (and yes I know that not all news people lie to us, but anyway). The government lies to us (again not all). Is there any wonder why there’s very little trust in me when people want to try to teach and preach to me about God. So once I ran across the following scripture it became the focal and grounding point of my life.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Timothy