Christian Devotional – May 1, 2025

Who is God? Day 1

Who is God and what is He like? Read Nahum chapter 1, focusing on verses 1-3.

Some of the questions that I hear from people is “Who is God?” “What is God like?” “What is his character?” “What is the nature of God?” These are deep questions and it can be challenging to understand the answers. God is bigger than we can comprehend, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t give us clues to help us understand who he is. He wants a relationship with us.

The book of Nahum gives us insight into the character of God. As you read chapter one, we need to understand the background. The city of Nineveh was the capital of the country of Assyria, outside of Israel. These were people that were not the children of God. They had been evil and destructive to so many nations around them. The Assyrians had made enemies of every nation around them. They were brutal, cruel, and ruthless. When they captured neighboring countries, they were merciless.

The Assyrians had been tormenting the Israelite people for centuries. The book of Jonah, who was sent to preach to Nineveh, actually takes place a few hundred years before the book of Nahum. Nineveh’s repentance, during the time of Jonah, has long since been forgotten. They have gone back to all their evil ways, and now God has decided it’s time for that to end.

Part of the character of God as we read these first three verses, is to understand that God is holy. While God is also patient, he does get angry, and the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. Sure, the punishment didn’t happen along the time frame that many of other countries and even the Israelites would have liked, but God’s timelines and time frames are different than ours.

God was going to punish the people of Nineveh for their sins. And in this book, Nahum, the prophet is going to explain and detail that. The first thing we can understand about God is that he is holy, and he is just. He does not act spontaneously, but everything he does is planned and purposed. We can rest and take comfort in the fact that God knows what’s coming. And he has planned for it. Are we worshiping God for his holiness and his justice today?

Here is the link for the video devotional from these verses: https://youtu.be/xFUxK7lyPN8