Pip: GRATEFUL JOURNEYS! — where the questions are ancient, the stakes are eternal, and apparently five parts is the minimum viable unit for tackling who God is.
Mara: William Hotz has published a five-part Bible study series here, and this episode walks through all of it — from God’s character and nature, to what it means to know Him personally, to how sin and restoration fit together.
Pip: Big territory. Let’s start with the foundation — who God actually is, and whether the version most of us carry around matches what Scripture says.
God’s Character and Nature — What Scripture Reveals
Mara: The series opens with a real tension: most people form their picture of God from culture, family, personal experience, or social media — not from Scripture itself. The first post in this series frames the whole project around that gap.
Pip: And the author is candid that he lived inside that gap for decades — believing God existed without actually knowing Him. There’s a line that cuts right to it.
Mara: The post puts it plainly: “I believed in God without truly knowing Him.” And it goes further — drawing on James 2:19 to note that even demons believe God exists, which means intellectual agreement is not the same as saving faith.
Pip: So belief, as a category, turns out to be a much lower bar than most people assume.
Mara: Right. And that’s what makes the foundation passage so central. Exodus 34:6-7 is where God speaks for Himself — and the post quotes it directly: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty.”
Pip: That last phrase tends to get quietly skipped in casual theology.
Mara: The series doesn’t skip it. Both the first post and the follow-up, “What Is God Really Like?”, treat the justice clause as essential — not a footnote. The argument is that a God who simply overlooked sin wouldn’t actually be good. The cross is where justice and mercy resolve.
Pip: And the second post makes the point that misreading God’s character has real consequences — people either fear a God they don’t know or walk away from one they’ve misunderstood.
Mara: Exactly. “What Is God Really Like?” frames it this way: our view of God affects how we pray, how we respond to suffering, whether we trust Him, and whether we pursue a relationship at all. Getting the character right isn’t abstract — it shapes everything downstream.
Pip: Which is a natural lead into the question the series keeps circling back to — not just who God is, but whether anyone can actually know Him.
Knowing God Personally — From Evidence to Relationship
Mara: “Does God Exist and Can We Know Him?” opens with creation as evidence — Romans 1:20 — but then makes a harder claim: evidence alone isn’t enough. The post anchors on Jeremiah 29:13: “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Pip: A promise, not a maybe.
Mara: That’s exactly how the post reads it — God doesn’t say “perhaps,” He says “you will find Me.” And the series closer, “Can I Know God Personally?”, takes that promise to its logical conclusion. John 17:3 defines eternal life not as duration but as relationship — knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.
Pip: So the series ends where it began — with the difference between knowing about God and actually knowing Him.
Sin, Brokenness, and God’s Rescue Plan
Mara: “If God Is Good, Why Is the World Broken?” takes the question seriously rather than deflecting it. Romans 3:23 is the anchor: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The post’s argument is that the brokenness outside us reflects something true about the brokenness inside us.
Pip: Which is a harder diagnosis than most people want to sit with.
Mara: And “What Has God Done to Restore Us?” is the direct answer to that diagnosis. Romans 5:8 carries the weight there — Christ dying for sinners who could offer nothing in return. The post’s framing is that the Gospel isn’t self-improvement advice; it’s rescue from outside ourselves.
Pip: The series builds to that — you can’t fully appreciate the solution until you’ve taken the problem seriously.
Mara: Five questions, one series, and every answer pointing the same direction — toward Jesus as the clearest picture of who God is and what He’s done.
Pip: Big claims, carefully walked through. Worth following wherever the next part of this journey leads.
GRATEFUL JOURNEYS! 
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