THIS IS OUR GOD
- Kaloma Smith
- Jul 6
- 8 min read
The God We Worship: Exodus 34:6-7 and the 9 Things God Says About Himself
5-Day Devotional · Just Ask · July 2026
Amazing family,
One of the most heartbreaking reality I've seen happened this Fourth of July. A young Black woman on the D.C. Metro was surrounded by masked men protesting for what they wanted "a more white America." We live in a world where we can trust nothing. Not the government, not even the institutions that used to promise us a whole career. But there is one thing that we can trust, and it is the same God who met our ancestors enslaved in the brush harbors of South Carolina and told them He was going to free them.
Family, I encourage you to ask the question "Who is God?" Exodus 34:6-7 answers it in His own voice. I want you to sit with that for five days, because most of us have never actually heard God describe Himself. We've only heard what others told us to expect from Him.
This week we're walking through the 9 things God says about Himself. Merciful. Gracious. Slow to anger. Steadfast in love. Faithful. Forgiving. And the one that finally gets answered on a hill called Calvary.
Five days, one attribute at a time.
This is our God
WATCH THE FULL MESSAGE
DAY 1 - Who Told You God Was Like That?
Exodus 34:6 · NRSVUE
"The Lord passed before Him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."
Many of us carry a picture of God that was painted by someone else. A Father who left. A parent whose love came with conditions. A caregiver who was physically present but emotionally miles away. Without even realizing it, we handed God the resume of a broken human being and called it our theology.
But here is the good news. God does not accept that resume. In Exodus 34, He speaks for Himself. He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The Hebrew word for merciful is rooted in the image of a womb, a deep, nurturing, protective care that does not waver based on your performance.
This is not the God shaped by your worst experiences. This is the God who shows up and says, "let Me tell you who I actually am."
You may have grown up with a distorted picture of fatherhood. That picture does not have to define your relationship with God. He is not withholding. He is not waiting for you to earn it. He is not emotionally checked out. He is present, He is near, and He is for you.
Today is an invitation to set down the old picture and pick up a truer one.
"A lot of us aren't actually afraid of God. We're afraid that God is exactly like the person who first taught us the word Father." — Pastor Kaloma Smith
Reflection
What picture of God have you been carrying, and where did that picture actually come from?
Prayer
Father, forgive me for the ways I have confused You with broken people. Help me to see You clearly, as You truly are, and to trust the God who speaks for Himself. Amen.
DAY 2 - What Are You Melting Down?
Exodus 34:6 · NRSVUE
"The Lord passed before Him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."
Israel did not build a golden calf because they wanted a different God. They built it because God felt too slow. Moses had been on the mountain for forty days, and the waiting became unbearable. So they took the gold from Egypt, the very place God had just rescued them from, and shaped it into something they could see and control.
It is easy to read that story and shake your head. But most of us have done the same thing. Not with gold and fire, but with our careers, our reputations, our need to be seen as capable and put-together. We take good things and, under the pressure of anxiety and impatience, we melt them down into something we bow to.
The problem with a manageable God is that it cannot actually help you. Something you created cannot tell you who you are. Something you control cannot carry you through what you cannot control.
God is not slow because He is absent. He is faithful even when His timing does not match your anxiety. The invitation today is to notice what you have been bowing to and to bring it back to the One who does not need to be managed.
You were not made to carry that weight. You were made for something better.
"A golden calf is what you build when God is slower than your anxiety." — Pastor Kaloma Smith
Reflection
What good thing in your life has slowly become something you depend on more than God?
Prayer
Lord, show me the places where my impatience has led me to build something I was never meant to bow to. Teach me to trust Your timing more than my anxiety. Amen.
DAY 3 - The Ledger Is Closed
Exodus 34:6 · NRSVUE
"The Lord passed before Him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."
There is a phrase tucked inside Exodus 34 that can change the way you see yourself. God is described as gracious. Not just kind, but gracious. And grace, by its very nature, means the ledger is not balanced. It is closed.
Many of us live as though we are still paying off a debt. We replay old mistakes. We rehearse our failures. We quietly wonder if we have done enough to deserve God's goodness. But grace does not work on a point system. You do not earn it, and you cannot lose it through a bad week.
This does not mean your choices do not matter. It means your standing before God is not determined by your performance. He sees you exactly as you are, in your mess and your struggle, and He meets you right there.
That is the God of Exodus 34. Abounding in steadfast love. Faithful to a thousand generations. Not a God who tallies your shortcomings but a God who has already decided you are worth showing up for.
You do not have to keep paying for what grace has already covered. The ledger is not balanced. It is closed.
"The ledger is not balanced. It's closed." — Pastor Kaloma Smith
Reflection
In what area of your life are you still trying to earn something that God has already freely given you?
Prayer
God, help me to stop performing for Your approval and to simply receive Your grace. Remind me today that the ledger is closed, and that Your love is not something I have to earn. Amen.
DAY 4 - The Hill That Answered Everything
Exodus 34:7 · NRSVUE
"keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
Exodus 34 holds a tension that the Old Testament could never fully resolve. God says He forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. And then, in the very next breath, He says He will by no means clear the guilty. How can both be true at the same time?
For centuries, Israel wrestled with that question. The priests offered sacrifices. The prophets spoke words of hope. But the tension remained. How can a holy God forgive without ignoring sin?
The answer came on a hill. At Calvary, God did not clear the guilty by looking away. He cleared the guilty by carrying it Himself. The cross is where the God who forgives and the God who will not ignore sin stopped being a contradiction.
He is holy enough that He will not lie about your sin. But He loves you too much to make you carry it alone. That is not a contradiction. That is a cross.
Whatever you have been carrying, whatever shame or guilt has followed you into this week, it was not meant to stay on your shoulders. It was carried up a hill so that you would not have to.
That hill answered the question the Old Testament could not. And it answered it for you.
"On that hill, justice got satisfied and mercy got set loose." — Pastor Kaloma Smith
Reflection
Is there something you have been carrying that you have not yet allowed the cross to cover?
Prayer
Jesus, thank You for carrying what I could not. Help me to stop picking back up what You already carried to the cross, and to live in the freedom You purchased for me. Amen.
DAY 5 - You Can Rewrite the Script
Exodus 34:7 · NRSVUE
"keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
One of the most powerful truths woven through Exodus 34 is that God's steadfast love reaches to a thousand generations. That is not just a poetic number. It is a declaration that your future is not capped by your past, and your children's future is not capped by yours.
Many of us grew up in homes shaped by patterns we never chose. Broken relationships. Cycles of silence or anger or absence. And somewhere along the way, we started to believe that those patterns were just the way things are in our family.
But the God of a thousand generations says otherwise. You are not locked into the script that was handed to you. You can rewrite it. Not through sheer willpower, but through a relationship with a God who is faithful even when faithfulness was never modeled for you.
The same God who met Israel in the wilderness, after they had failed spectacularly, is the God who meets you today. He does not write you off because of where you came from. He is already working in your story, and He is faithful enough to finish what He started.
Your past does not get the final word. Your bloodline does not cap your future. The God who is faithful to a thousand generations is faithful to you, right now, in this generation.
"Your past and your bloodline does not cap your future." — Pastor Kaloma Smith
Reflection
What is one pattern from your past that you sense God is inviting you to break in your own life or family?
Prayer
Lord, thank You that my story is not finished and that Your faithfulness reaches further than my failures. Give me the courage to trust You with the generations that come after me. Amen.
A Prayer for the Week Ahead
Lord,
This week we heard You describe Yourself in Your own words, mercy first, grace with no ledger, patience with a long fuse, and a faithfulness that has outlasted slavery, bus boycotts, and every system that claimed to be permanent. We admitted we had been measuring You by people, and by headlines, that never had the right to define You.
Send us out carrying that same declaration into a valley that trusts almost nothing else. Let this church keep telling the truth about who You actually are, unshiftable, unbought, unwilling to look away from what has hurt Your people.
Let every generation after us inherit a family, and a faith, that already knows the answer to the only question that matters. Amen.
The Conversation Continues
Sunday mornings are where this conversation keeps going in person, with people who are also tired of managing their own anxiety and are still figuring out who God actually is.
Nobody here has it all together, not even the preachers.
Come as you are, sit with the questions, and let's keep asking them together.
3549 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto · Sundays at 10:00 AM
Grace and peace,
Pastor Kaloma
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