Tuesday, February 3, 2015

The Attributes of God

In January, at The Rescue Church, we started to investigate a book of the Bible-Luke. I can relate to Luke and how the book was written. Luke does all his fact checking, detective work only after Jesus has left the earth. He has already died, resurrected, and ascended back into heaven. And so Luke has his work cut out for him. To write his book he needed to sit down with eye witnesses, read previous accounts of Jesus' life and simply listen to people's stories. One of the stories that has stuck out to me has been the story of Mary. Luke lays out an amazing beginning as an angel, Gabriel, comes to Mary to tell her that she will be with child. The challenge? She's a virgin. She's betrothed, or engaged, to this great guy Joseph. And so let the tension begin! Gabriel tells Mary that 'nothing is impossible with God', and I'm sure Mary was thinking-YEAH! No kidding Gabriel because this is impossible! But she simply says, 'I am the Lord's servant.'
God takes a middle school aged young woman from a small, insignificant town and says the savior of the world will come from your womb. I'm not sure about you, but that encourages me. Every time I feel insignificant, or useless, under qualified, I realize that this is only a chance for God to show HIS mighty strength through me. I just need to say yes.
At this time in Mary's story something impossible has already happened-her relative Elizabeth, who was barren, is now with child at a very old age! So Mary makes the journey to see her and talk to her. While on her journey Mary does something amazing that I've missed many times-she simply worships. In some Bible translations, they've coined this passage as 'Mary's Song.'
It turns out what I had missed from this passage was exactly what I needed. I needed God. I needed to realize what my God is capable of doing. Mary, the middle school girl, about to be disgraced by her family, her religious community and fearing that Joseph might walk out on her, starts worshipping. In my eyes this would have been a great time to worry, right? How is all of this going to work out?? Yes, God I know you said all that stuff awhile ago, but I need to be practical, I need to figure out a plan, I need to find an escape route so they don't tie me up in the town square, abuse me, spit on me, make me out to be the town prostitute...
But Mary worships. And what we find is that Mary lays out some attributes of God. I studied 12 that she laid out, there's probably more, but I just focused on 12. God is: Lord, Savior, Omniscient, Mighty, Personal, Holy, Merciful, Powerful, Sovereign, Gracious, Generous, and Faithful.
No doubt out of those 12 there's 1 or 2 that you hang onto continuously because you need them. Or maybe you're like me sometimes and you need all 12 at once!! I think that's where Mary was at this point. She simply reminded herself that God was God. He would protect her, guide her, and bless her.

What do you need to be reminded of today? One of these 12 or maybe another attribute of God? Whatever it may be, instead of worrying-worship. Give God the glory-don't give it to your circumstance. Rest in knowing that He holds your future in His hands and that He loves you.

-PC
pastorcory@rescuesumner.org
www.rescuesumner.org

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