The Road Traveled
A Christian based podcast geared to men to be able to take the bible and make it applicable to each man's life on the road he travels.
The Road Traveled
Ep 8: How God’s Character Shapes Our Choices And Changes Our Lives
What if the clearest way to understand your character is to study God’s? We dig deep into the bedrock of God’s nature—mercy, justice, faithfulness, and agape love—and ask what it looks like for men to live those qualities when no one is watching. John 3:16 becomes more than a familiar verse; it’s the definitive window into a love that gives, forgives, and calls us forward even when we’ve fallen hard.
We talk honestly about trust and control: why we’ll speed across a narrow bridge believing a stranger will stay in their lane, yet hesitate to trust the God who never fails. That tension takes us into the practical heart of faithfulness—habits that hold when life shakes, the next right step when the path looks thin, and the quiet courage to keep choosing love over pride. Through stories, Scripture, and candid reflection, we name how storms shape durable character, how God sometimes allows a fall so the lesson sticks, and why hope matures into faith as we practice daily obedience.
If you’ve ever felt “too far gone,” you’ll hear a clear invitation: God’s unconditional love is not fragile, and you are not disqualified. We offer simple, actionable steps—pick one small change, anchor it to a daily rhythm, and keep company with Christ by picking up your cross. Expect progress over perfection, steady peace over quick fixes, and a growing hunger for the Word that reshapes how you love, forgive, and lead. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review to help more men find a road where real faith meets real life. What’s your one next step?
Welcome to The Road Travel, a Christian podcast for men, where real faith meets real life. Through honest conversations and personal stories, we help you apply God's word to your everyday journey by sharing the road we've traveled. Whether you're walking through challenge, change, or calling, this is your road. And you don't have to travel it alone. Now, let's take the next step with your hosts, Aaron Degler and Alan Hugator.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome back. Thanks for taking a little time to join us today. Today we're gonna oftentimes we hear so much about character, character of a man. What is a character of a man? And oftentimes we like to describe character as something that we do when no one's around. You know, that's our true character. It comes out when nobody's looking, there's no eyes on us, no ears on us. What is it that we do? And that is our character. And today we're gonna discuss a little bit about, you know, man has a character, and we're gonna talk about God's character and how that applies to man, and how do we take God's character, apply it to our lives in our character, and then how does the world see us act differently because of our character, because of God's character. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. Alan and I are here today, and we're just gonna just have a conversation about it. We're gonna read a verse, we're gonna talk about the character of God, the different things, how that applies to us, and what are some of those words and how do they define our lives? Um, how does God define them? And what kind of difference does it make in our lives? So, Alan and I are gonna talk a little bit about character, the character of God. The character of God.
SPEAKER_04:Well, in the character of God, that is what this whole Bible is about, is truly examples of describing the character of God. And that's one of the main reasons that Jesus came back, or Jesus came, excuse me, that he came was to describe God's character. Well, one of God's characters was he was willing, he had so much love for the human race that he gave up his son, sent his son to be crucified here on earth. That's describing God's character. And God's character can be described as merciful and loving, gracious, just, fair, righteousness, faithfulness. And his love is unmeasurable. It has no boundaries. You know, it's it's we call it agopi love, or maybe that's how the Greek word for it, and agape love means a selfless, unconditional love.
SPEAKER_01:Go ahead. And unconditional is you know if I do something bad to you, you're still gonna love me. If I don't love you, you're still gonna love me. Exactly. That's unconditional. There's no God has no conditions.
SPEAKER_04:Do you know many humans that don't have a condition with their love? But God does not. Of course, he is the example that we're trying to be more like. And let's just go into scripture and let me read. Again, you go back to this, and this is the most, my opinion, the most, one of the most known verses in this whole Bible. John 3.16. And everybody pretty well knows it by heart, but I am going to read here from the American Standard Version here. And in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Says that God gave his only begotten son. He's not only sent him here, but God knows everything. And he knew that his son would be crucified in a horrible death. And he sat and watched that. I'm a father. I I don't have that ability. That's the kind of God loves for us. You know, that is just unimaginable by me to have that kind of love for humans that don't even treat him right. That does not do his will, does not worship him like we should. And he sent his only only begotten son, knowing what he was going to have to go through. The agony and the pain, the the how they made fun of him and called him king of the Jews, and all of the things that they put him through. And he has that kind of love for us that God does. The only word is agape because I cannot imagine having that strong of love as he does. And I've got a son that I'd lay my life down for, but to watch him go through that.
SPEAKER_01:From the moment knowing from the moment he was born that that was going to be his last days. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04:So I know everybody knows this verse, but you got to think in deep in there because again, it's showing God's character. And what did this do for us, of course, that whoever believed in him, in Jesus, as his son, shall not perish, but have eternal life with God in Jesus. You know, faith that he exists is one thing, but believing that he was a son of God, and that Jesus is the son of God. That's the difference.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, as you know, you know, as the Father, the characteristic of love, then the challenge for us is how do we how do we apply that to our lives? And there are a few other characteristics we'll go over, but how is that applicable? How do we apply that in an everyday I think we should strive for agopi love? Are we capable of it? I don't really know.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know either. I don't love that strong. You know, Jesus told us the two told the apostles the two most important commandments, right? The first was to love thy God with all our heart and our mind, and I'm not reading for the scripture, so I'm just paraphrasing. And the second one is to love thy neighbor as thyself. Both of those had to do with love, right? Of all the emotions that God give us as humans, love is the strongest. Some people talk about how strong hate is. Love can conquer hate. It has throughout history. There's a lot of evil and hate in the world. But the emotions within us, we let hate come out. But love can drown it. It will s it will override hate. It is the strongest emotion that we have. Why? Because if you put God in your life, then you've got love. I mean, I got off track from your question.
SPEAKER_01:No, and and and it's true, when when God's our lives and we offer love, we're showing the characteristic of God. We're really, you know, we like to put a name to who we love. You know, if uh our spouse has a name, we say we love that person, we love this person. We have friends, we name those friends that we love. But really, it's the human. It's the human that we're loving. And we we talked about earlier about the characteristic of God, and you know, God came, sent Jesus to earth to take manly form, take man's form, because that's how man could understand. He was like man. But isn't it really a soul? So our characteristic, can we see a soul? Can we like I mean, visibly see not with our human eyes with human eyes, right? We can't see a soul. So when we talk about character, and it's those things we do and say when nobody is watching, nobody sees it, nobody hears it, we can't see a soul, we can't hear a soul. But that's the characteristic, and so the soul, God is a soul in heaven. We all become souls and we go to Saved, go to heaven. Those are unseen with a visible eye. And so the same is true with our character. It it is unseen. So our faithfulness, what does faithfulness look like? Can you see, can say that was one of the characteristics of God with faithfulness? Can you can a human be faithful? But can it be seen? Can it be seen? Yes. By actions, but is is the word faithfulness?
SPEAKER_04:No, no, it can't be seen that way. Only by actions. By actions. We measure everything with our eyes and actions. Someone has to show us that they love us. We have conditional love. God has unconditional love.
SPEAKER_01:But we expect some kind of action in return. And so when we talk about faithfulness, what when God is faithful, we show him, we see him show up in things. Whether it's finances, whether it's in health, wellness, he shows up there in those, in fixing broken marriages. It's that faithfulness. But we see those their actions. There's things that are being getting better, financially getting better, broken marriages getting better, broken relationships getting better. But you know, when it comes to us, how do we participate? How as man do we practice faithfulness? What does that look like for man? If I'm faithful, what does that mean? What does that look like? What actions do I take to show that I'm my character is that of faithfulness?
SPEAKER_04:When you said God showed up, that means love showed up, right? You said in trying to heal a broken marriage or heal someone with a broken heart or with an illness of some kind, love has to be involved. That's when God shows up. And your other part was about how we get that in our lives.
SPEAKER_01:Is that what you're saying? Yeah, how do how do our actions, what does faithfulness look like? You know, it's easy to say if I'm on a stepping stone and there's just the next step is air, complete air. You know, I always think of Wiley Cody and the roadrunner. You know, I think it's Wiley Cody, he goes shooting off that cliff, then all of a sudden looks down and realize there's nothing there, and he goes falling down. But are we, does our faithfulness look like we go flying off that cliff knowing that there's gonna be another stepping stone right there to step on? And I think sometimes we go flying to the edge of that. Oh, there's not another stone there. I don't know about that. I don't know if I want to take that step. Knowing that God loves us unconditionally. But yet our faithfulness goes, uh I don't know if you want to take that step. May not be there. You may turn into Wiley Cody and go down to the ground.
SPEAKER_04:No, so we have little faith. We have. It's been demonstrated time and again in this Bible. And that's what Jesus came to help build up faith in God.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, I always yeah, how I practice work, like you mentioned, we have little faith. And it's really hard, no matter and faithfulness is too when that stepping stone keeps showing up. You keep taking that scary step and it shows up and it shows up. And even though it keeps showing up, it gets hard sometimes to go ahead and take the step. Kim and I, my wife, we've done there's things that, you know, he showed up in our life and we're still scared to take a step because what if he doesn't show up this time? But sometimes in the not showing up doesn't mean he doesn't love us because he loves us unconditionally. Sometimes, what as we're both parents, how do we let our kids learn sometime? Let them fall. We let them fall. We let them learn the hard way. Does that mean that he didn't more memorable? It's more memorable. Absolutely. Because you go, wow, that kind of hurt. I didn't really like it.
SPEAKER_04:God lets us, we have choice. God give us the ability to make choices. And we have those choices, and he will not always stop us. He may put a warning out there, but he don't always stop us, and a lot of times it is for a learning experience. He's talking about faith of stepping out on open air. I was driving yesterday, about 70 miles an hour, and there was a narrow bridge coming up. Car coming the other way. I did not slow down. And we met right in the middle of this little narrow bridge. And I did. I asked the men with me, I said, guys, did y'all see how much faith I had in that other driver? I wasn't scared of my driving. But I have a lot of faith in that other driver, didn't I? Well, you sure did. Well, they was nervous because they seen it. And I said, Why don't we have that much faith in God? Where he'll protect us and he'll take us. And I, a stranger I didn't even know, running 70 miles an hour at me. And I knew he was gonna stay in his lane and I was gonna stay in mine. Any little bobble could have ended our lives.
SPEAKER_01:Was it a group of men that were in the three of us in there? Okay. So is it sometimes that they were were you scared?
SPEAKER_04:Not until I thought of it. But we've done it so many times repeatedly.
SPEAKER_01:But they were they were kind of nervous about it. Yes. Because I think as men, it's hard to be faithful in the one driving because we like to take control. Absolutely. That's a character that we have. We don't like to release control. You know, with that song uh by Carrie Underwood, God Jesus Take the Wheel. He had it yesterday.
SPEAKER_04:He had theirs and mine. But we do that every day going down the highway. May not be such a narrow spot as it was at that moment, but we do that every day. And I think of it often when I'm driving.
SPEAKER_01:We'll have faith in another human that they won't cross that line, but yet we'll doubt God's faithfulness that he'll show up. We've never met that other person. We don't know if they love us or not. We don't know them by anything, but we have faith in them. But a God we know and have a conversation.
SPEAKER_04:Clearly identify when God's ever let you down.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Oh, there's a lot of times that you go, I prayed and prayed. He didn't show up. I think there's a lot of people that say, Yeah, he hadn't shown up a lot of times for me.
SPEAKER_04:Again, sometimes back to children, he lets us go through that thing to strengthen our faith or for us to experience that and to return to him. Sir, that's another characteristic that he has. He can stop, start, change anything in this world at any moment. So the powers are he is high and mighty, he's powerful over all only one God that can do this. And yet we don't have the faith that we need to have in him.
SPEAKER_01:And part of those, you know, when we talked about character building, when as man, what are things that build character in us? Probably what are the things that build the most character in us? Probably the the storms in life that build the the most character because you know, you show up in a certain situation, go, man, such whatever characteristic you might have as a man, go, man, that's a great character he has. Well, chances are very high that it was built in a storm. Because there's things you have to rely on, you have to rely on God and his faithfulness and his love. But then you learn in those storms, then that it becomes your character. How do I exemplify that later in life? We probably don't know we learn those, we get those characteristics in our storm. I'm sure there's a lot of things that happened in your life that were tough times. There might have been even tough times in marriage, tough times in raising kids, tough times in business. But you have a different character now showing up in business because of those. You're more loving, you're more faithful, you're more caring, you're more just.
SPEAKER_04:This is messed up, and this is this. And I said, you know, putting God in your life don't mean that you won't have challenges. The change in you through God, through Jesus, will be how you handle those challenges of life. That's the way we are measured, in my opinion. That's the way a true man's character is measured, and it's developed and measured through trials and tribulations of life. That's what you described. But you've got to go through those, and now, yes, I can still get upset, but I don't get up maybe as quick. Maybe I handle a situation a little bit easier because of past experiences flying off the handle didn't get me nowhere. You know, knowing that tomorrow is going to bring another challenge of some kind on this earth. This earth's full of it. This is a broken earth. There's challenges every day. But how do you get through those? How you handle them is developing your character.
SPEAKER_01:And when we look at the characteristics of God and we go, you know, how do we rely on those? How do we how do we work on those and challenge? And I don't think, you know, we definitely have to look back to see how those work. Because probably, you know, it's probably one of the most irritating things as a young person when somebody older goes, they're character building. And just like you said, well, I need money, I need a place to live, I need a job, I don't need character building. I need, and it's probably one of the most irritating things, probably an older we could probably say to somebody in their 20s, probably to our kids. They'd go, like, you don't care.
SPEAKER_04:And we expect a lot of character in a lot of people that's 20 years old. Think of the athletes and the pressure they get under it. 20 years old. We just went through an NFL draft, okay? Those guys getting paid big money in the spotlights, the whole works. And but we expect them to act like mature men. Believe me, at 20 years old, I sure didn't act mature. My wife says I still hadn't act mature. But we expect those athletes to act like mature men. Well, they're getting paid. Well, that ain't got nothing to do with it in a way. And a lot of them do act mature, a lot of them have been schooled, a lot of them are in the word of God that will help mature them in the way they should walk. And yet we let our young people look up to them as idols. I hate the word idol, but we look up to them as sports figures. And they're young. They hadn't developed enough character. We expect their character to be strong. It's a a weakness that we have in our society.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I got off beat, but no, it's and it's it does take time to build character. It takes, you know, and and some are go through a lot of trials and tribulations at young ages and have those challenges. And you know, everybody is unique, and so we all build character at a different rate at different times. Some may build it later in life because of different things that happen, different struggles. But even in those, God is still showing up because of his agape love. It's unconditional. No matter what we do, and in the in the scripture, it talks about no matter how far away we get from God, he's always there. He doesn't move. He has agape love. He does he loves us unconditionally. So no matter how far we go off the beaten path, the track, and and and you listening might be one of these. Go, I'm I'm so far gone that there's no way I could have a relationship with God at this point. He knows everything I've done. And if you just knew the things that I've done, my character, because we all have a character, good or bad, right or wrong, we all have a character. And there's somebody who might be saying that if you only knew, there is no way he would still love me. And we would say it's agape love.
SPEAKER_04:We describe that in everyday terms as he loves us all, but he hates our sins. God don't hate anything, but he's disappointed in our sins. But I've heard it said a lot of times how he still loves every one of his children, no matter how bad they are. But he don't like our sins. But his love is still there. So if there's You can never be too far, too deep, too dark, that you can't turn back and look for what? The light, and God is the light.
SPEAKER_01:How does somebody do that? If somebody's listening and goes, How do I turn back? I'm too far gone. How do they do that?
SPEAKER_04:How are you too far gone? I really don't understand. I understand. I've got skeletons, most of us do of some kind, right? Behavior somewhere along the way. Tucked way back in the closet. Yeah. But, and we don't need to dig. That's right. But God says you're never too far. You're never too far gone. He's never give up on anybody that I'm aware of that could not have turned and changed their life. The only way you'll know is by reading this Bible and understand more about what we've talked about, his character. And the merciful mercy that he has. It's and it will be slow. Mine, and I didn't think I was that bad a character, but it's slow in developing for me. Some people might be able to turn a key faster than others. But God is available. No matter how bad you are, if you turn and you truly mean it and you open up your heart and you get on your knees and you ask him, you will see a faint light, I'm sure, but you will see in time his mercy will be coming around. He will give you a chance.
SPEAKER_01:However, it comes out, he's right there. The moment, the second you have that conversation, he is waiting to have that conversation with you.
SPEAKER_04:There's been atheists, unbelievers in God, that have changed and turned over and are believers in the Lord. And they may have told others there's no way there's a God. But he still accepted them when they changed. And they're strong believers, and they do believe that he says accepted them, and they believe in salvation. And they didn't even believe in the God at all. So how much further could you be than not believing at all?
SPEAKER_01:And in in that moment, when you have that conversation, like you mentioned earlier, it doesn't your life doesn't go there's not, you know, lights and rainbows and sunshine, like it the whole world, you know, the clouds don't part and everything gets better. It's not an instant fix. You still go, Well, I prayed, I talked to God, and I'm still in the dark. But you now have hope. And that and it and in those trials and tribulations, you'll see signs of his faithfulness, of his love.
SPEAKER_04:Every day that you stay with him. I cannot quote the verse, but it says, To pick up your cross daily, which means die to this world and the things of this world. To pick up your cross daily and follow Jesus, his example that he set for us, his love is the same. It's God's Son, it's all the same. But to pick up that cross daily and die to this world, to your old ways and the ways of this world and follow him and his world. And if you do that every day, every day, faithfully, and surrender this old habit, all these old ways, pick up the new, it'll change pretty fast. If you just about, it's about like anything else in life, if you just kind of play with it a little bit, pray a little small prayer, change very little. But if you pick up that cross and die to the old ways and pick up the new, it will change quicker than you might expect. And he's there waiting for every one of us. I can tell you the days that I don't pick my cross up and die to the worldly things, and I put the worldly things first. I can see the difference in my life that day, or at the end of that day, or in the way I feel inside, might be a little stirred up, might be a little nervous because I don't have all my stuff prepared. But whenever I do, and I put his world first, and you'll read a piece, and that's what it gives you. But that was we're just describing his character. Forgiving. You know. He's all knowing, he knows all these things anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Beginning and end.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What we've already happened and what we haven't done yet, but we're gonna do. And he still loves us, still forgives us.
SPEAKER_04:Without it, we have no hope. I used to wonder how is there hope and when you're talking about God? Why why are you hoping? We would have zero hope that we can change. We would have zero hope that he will accept us. But because of his mercy. Then we have that hope. Which turns into faith, in my opinion. And hope's described a little different than what me and you might hope, but that hope turns into faith, and I have faith. Then I have confidence. On those days when I am living right like I should, I have confidence. Feel God's present with me. I'm on the path. Get off the path a little bit, which we all do from time to time. Didn't say it was okay. That's when you have to pick up that cross daily.
SPEAKER_01:And it's it's a and it's a challenge. It's a daily challenge to work on those little things. Just like working out.
SPEAKER_04:You're a fitness guy. Okay. You hadn't worked out six months, year, your whole life, you start trying. Oh, geez, that's hard. Oh, that's rough. I mean, I've been a little exercise routine I do and all. But when I hadn't done it for a while, man, that's tough. Hard to get back in the groove, right? But the more you do it, the easier that workout becomes. And the and then you start craving it. You can tell when you hadn't, oh well, this makes me feel better. I'm feeling better because I've got this little workout I'm doing. And it's the same way getting in the word of God. It's kind of hard to get started. But once you get into it and you start studying more and more and you get closer to God, the closer then you become hungry for Him, hungry to be with Him, hungry to have that feeling.
SPEAKER_01:And when we get closer to another human, what do we do? We understand them a little better. Sure. And it's the same thing is true. We have to have that relationship, just like we do other humans to better know what they're thinking, to know, understand what they want for us, what they want us to do, and understand their thoughts and their actions. But requires relationship. Right.
SPEAKER_04:And that's why we started this Bible study. It's to where each podcast we can bring a different topic and maybe bring someone some understanding as they study and get and talk to the Lord and get closer to Him. Maybe they can understand this a little bit better through our podcast.
SPEAKER_01:And, you know, it's just one little thing. We just had one little verse today talked about character and agape love and faithfulness and mercifulness and all the things we talked about. Maybe it's maybe it's you take one thing that we talked about today and apply that. How do you want to change your character? Maybe it's not loving the way it should. Maybe it's not forgiving the way it should. Maybe it's not faithful the way it should. What's one little thing that maybe we could work on that you could apply to your life and work on? Maybe it's you think you're too far away. God's not there. Maybe it's just a short prayer to begin that relationship with Him again. Any final thoughts before we finish up in prayer?
SPEAKER_04:The toughest one for me is forgiveness. For me to forgive others. That's one of the toughest ones that I have ever had. To pray for my enemies. Hate to call them enemies. But pray for someone that might have said something I didn't like or something. That's always very hard for me. Maybe your challenge is something different, and that's okay. Take one and work on it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Join me as I go to our Lord in prayer. My dear gracious Heavenly Father, we pause at this time and Lord, we just lift up this challenge that each and every one of us has in our lives, Lord. And we come to you as true believers in you, and we know that we are seeking to be close to you and learn more about your love. And as we get closer, Lord, we know that it will shed down upon us and we'll be able to show it in our lives and show others how you are love, your agape love. Lord, now we come to you, just asking you to bless this podcast and our Bible study. We come to you in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ's name. Amen.
SPEAKER_01:Amen. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you right here next time.
SPEAKER_00:You've been listening to The Road Travel, where real faith meets real life. Remember, every step matters, even the hard ones. So keep walking your road with courage, conviction, and Christ leading the way. Until next time, your hosts, Aaron and Allen, say we'll see you down the road.