This is Our God

by Brian Kim, Parent and Family Support Coordinator

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

Exodus 34:6-7

This Sunday, our church began a series focused on exploring the unchanging character of God. We’d love to have our children do something similar, so we’re going to focus on Exodus 34 to explore each of the 5 characteristics of God identified here.

For more in depth guidance, we encourage you to check out the Bible Project’s series on the Character of God that also focuses on Exodus 34.

Devotion: God is…

Gather your family and start with an activity: have each person in your family describe another person’s physical appearance in a few sentences. Have fun with it and encourage each person’s perspective. Next, see if you can describe the same person but only talking about the person’s character, the parts of the person you can’t see on the outside, but you have to experience in relationship with that person. Try and model this way of describing someone’s character to your children or give them a list of attributes to pick from (if you need a list to refer to, you can search for one easily or use this one we found). Again, have fun and model how to receive and give these insights well.

Next, do the same with God: first, how does He appear physically to you? Let each person think and contribute an idea. What about how you experience God? How would you describe Him to someone who has never heard about God? Again, allow everyone to offer a thought and collaborate as a family.

God is so big and more than our human brains can understand, that it can be really hard to explain what He is like. We did a really good job, though, so let’s do some high fives or fist pounds.

It’s also really good that we have the Bible to help us know God, since it’s a book that tells us all about God and how He loves His people through years and years of history. Today, we’re going to look at the first time the character of God is described it the Bible. As we read, maybe listen for just one or two parts of God that you hear and we’ll share those at the end.

Read Exodus 34:6-7 together, the NIV is provided above. If you have younger children, it may be helpful to read from the Easy to Read version as well as the NIV to help them understand. Spend a few minutes letting each person share what descriptions of God they heard. Write these down on a piece of paper so everyone can see them. At the end, you should have at least these five: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, love and faithfulness.

Great job today! We’re going to stop here for today, because over the next weeks, we are going to explore each of those 5 attributes some more to learn why these are important and also how God is still all those things to us today and forever! Let’s close in a short prayer: Thank you God that you are all these things and more. Thank you that you are loving, faithful, patient, gracious and compassionate to us. Help us to learn to be like you more and more each day. Amen.