Thankfully This Is NOT An Arranged Marriage

These past few weeks, I’ve reflected a lot on my marriage.

My husband, Tim, and I just celebrated our 10 year anniversary and it feels unbelievable in some ways. We’ve certainly grown a TON from the days of our very short courtship; but mostly, I think about how thankful I am that I knew and chose Tim before we headed to the altar. Our relationship is undeniably stronger because of the fact that we intentionally chose each other AND worked on laying a foundation of familiarity before our marriage began.

Have you ever seen those shows or heard about cultures who have arranged marriages woven into their way of doing life? On one hand it’s fascinating, but if I’m being totally honest, it’s terrifying. Marriage - with communication and empathizing with your spouse probably being the most difficult parts to hone - can be challenging enough having gotten to know your spouse beforehand.

Why add an uninformed and unknown layer of unfamiliarity to the mix?

(NOTE: If you had an arranged marriage and it’s worked out well, absolute kudos to you! But I’m going to need you to stay quiet for my analogy to work, haha…)

More on marriage in a minute.

Something we’re doing in our devotionals for the majority of February is learning about, and exploring, different attributes of God. When our devotional writing team told me this, I have to admit, it gave me a little pause.

Like, um, am I supposed to know allllllll of the attributes of God?! Is there a specific list somewhere? How many are there? Am I a terrible disciple of Jesus because I’m not immediately able to identify this list???

Then I took a deep breath and refocused.

Google. That’s the answer! It’s always the answer, right?!

I Googled it. Don’t ask me why I didn’t simply consult the multitude of pastors on staff here at church and instead trusted Google. But you know, Google has never led me astray… ha!

Regardless of where I went initially as I began digging into God’s attributes, or inherent characteristics, I wanted to take a few minutes to explain what’s to come as we journey through 17 unique and transformative attributes of God. And don’t worry, I definitely consulted the best resource as I began navigating His divine attributes - the Bible.

From now until the beginning of Lent on February 22nd, also known as Ash Wednesday, our staff will be hyper-focusing on specific and distinct qualities of who God is.

And just so we’re on the same page as we dive deeper in coming weeks, here’s the simplest way of looking at what an attribute is:

An attribute of God is something true about Him. It is NOT something we think on our own, feel at a given time, or hear from someone else.

And knowing, exploring, and learning these characteristics matter. For many reasons. These attributes are how we:

• Familiarize ourselves with our Creator
• Learn to guide our thoughts and behavior towards Biblical alignment
• Embody the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives

Some of the attributes we’ll dig into will be only applicable to God, which will undoubtedly help us worship and stand in awe of who He is alone.

And some of His attributes are applicable to us and able to be developed within us as we grow in His likeness.

I’m getting excited just thinking about what we’re going to learn!!!

But, back to those arranged marriages.

For a minute, I want you to imagine what it would be like to show up on your wedding day knowing nothing about your future spouse. Would you feel prepared to enter into a marriage? Would you understand how to communicate with your new partner? Would you be excited about what lies ahead or would you be nervous, guarded, and distant from this person you don’t know?

In the same way most of us would not enter into a marriage without first learning who our husband or wife is, without taking time to investigate who God is, walking alongside Him will be unnecessarily difficult.

Over the next few weeks as we explore God’s holiness, His infinite ways, His faithfulness, and so much more, I want you to think about this quote from Arthur Pink who wrote the book titled, Attributes of God. In it he says,

“An unknown God can neither be trusted, served, nor worshiped. Without understanding God's attributes, we have a skewed perception of him - often one cast in our own image.”

It’s easy to allow what we think of God to distract us away from who He really is. In the coming weeks I pray you’re able to tune your ear to what the Bible actually says about God’s nature.

And as it says in the Bible,

“There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change — yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.”

- Hebrews 13:8 (MSG)

So, as we take the time to navigate certain attributes of God over the next few weeks, may we - one divine characteristic and one devotional at a time - learn to grow in the likeness of who God actually is.

Happy exploring! Love you!!!

Kyle Moss

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