I suppose there’s always a calm before the storm, or maybe I just didn’t recognize it. It can be so very subtle. 

It had been four, almost five years since my dads death. Though things had been really good in life, spiritually speaking I was a train wreck. 

When I left the walls of the church and met the real world, I was ill prepared for it and all it had to offer. 

Though I’m sure I accepted a relationship with Jesus, as I was a deacon in the church; I only had an understanding of who He is and what He did, but didn’t really know Him. 

There’s such a huge difference. 

1 John 2:3 says:

“We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.”

It doesn’t say we have come to understand him, it says we have come to know him.

I surely wasn’t following Him, nor keeping His commandments. 

Scripture also tells us in 1 John 4:8:

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Now let me be clear, I loved, but it was as the world loves, not as God loves. 

The difference between understanding and knowing God.