In the Old and New Testament, the people who try to follow God and His ways have enemies. There are human enemies, and then there are spiritual ones. The great spiritual enemy of humanity is Satan, a being who makes appearances in the Bible on occasion, always antagonistic to God and to those who try to do His will. Whenever Satan’s actions are recorded, his goal is to disrupt God’s plan, to destroy His work, and ultimately, to supplant God.

Through the text, he is called many names, each of which reveal something about his goal, purposes, and character. Understanding them helps believers recognize the actions of the enemy, and can help them remember to put on the full armor of God in order to finish their race well.

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Every spring, Christians celebrate the most important date in their calendar. Easter is a celebration of life, rebirth, joy, and promises for the future - but these themes of Easter are not the purpose of Easter, but merely tied up into the messaging.

Thousands of years ago, Jesus Christ was arrested and crucified on a cross for no crime. His family and followers began to mourn. Three days later, however, He was not in His tomb. He spoke with His disciples, with women who followed Him, with two men along the road, and to a crowd of people before He ascended into the clouds. This was not an apparition, but the flesh and blood man Jesus, resurrected bodily. And with Him arose the hope of humanity.

The Son of God paid for the sins of the world on the cross at Calvary, but on Easter He conquered death and the grave.

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One of the most special relationships between people is between a mother and her child, and there is one mother in all of history whose first-born was truly unique.

Mary was a peasant girl whom God favored, and as a virgin she gave birth to the Messiah. In the two thousand years since this world-changing event, some Christians have elevated Mary. For those denominations, they believe that people should pray to Mary as an intercessor, bringing prayers and supplications to her. While it is a sincerely held belief, it is not supported by Scripture, rather, it is upheld by centuries of complicated theology and doctrine.

The Bible clarifies Jesus Christ serves as the intercessor for those who put their faith and trust in Him, and the Holy Spirit translates our prayers, which are to God alone.

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Most of the books that make up the New Testament are epistles, another word for letters. All of these letters were written by people who met Jesus, and were eyewitnesses to His resurrected self. They are full of practical wisdom, sound warnings, and godly encouragement.

While many of these books have the format of a letter, not all of them are considered part of the epistles. Instead, they are considered personal historical correspondence, the pastoral letters, or prophecy. While the epistles are full of a great deal of theological depth, the introductions are where the writers are greeting the churches. These short greetings contain interesting insight into the Christian life, the mindset of the writer, and the goings on at the time.

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Part of the uniqueness of the human experience is the wide range of emotions that God enabled us to feel. When there are small delights, we have pleasant responses. In great moments, we rejoice. When something goes wrong, we feel disappointment, but when tragedy strikes we grieve deeply. God even gave humanity empathy, the ability to feel with others and come alongside them in times of joy and times of pain.

Due to the influence of sin, sometimes people also feel rage, jealousy, or bitterness. Because of the instinctive nature of feelings and their power, it can be easy to give over to them and act on them. Many times this leads people to dishonor God through sin and by behaving in a manner unbecoming to someone who has been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Through the influence of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom of other believers, and through discipline paired with discernment, Christians can express their feelings in a way that is healthy and Christ-like.

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Trying to navigate those waters in a way that is Christ-like, God-honoring, and personally healing can be difficult, but God has given believers the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and one another to find peace and healing when another Christian behaves in a way that is not God-honoring.

Deconstructionism does not offer a path to reconstruction or new understanding, leading to people looking at their religion – torn to pieces through hyper-critical analysis – and left with nothing to replace it. Often, they assume that nothingness is the truth.

This complicated moment speaks to the lasting impact of the presence and power of God, a foretelling of the resurrecting power of the Lord, and it was a unique reminder to the nation of Israel to remember God’s promises.

David was a shepherd and a king, but he was also a prophet. There were prophecies the Messiah would fulfill throughout the Book of Psalms. They were highly specific, and the Lord Jesus would explain how He fulfilled them.

Knowing Jesus and receiving His righteousness means suffering like He did, but it also means being glorified like Him, even being physically resurrected one day.

An altar call is a time of prayer and response after a sermon. They are sometimes called invitations, since it is a time when people in the congregation are invited to respond to the sermon at the altar of God.

As people have tracked history, they created their own ways of keeping dates. Only a few hundred years after the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, faith in Him had spread into northern Africa, across the Roman empire, and the Middle East. For those who had experienced hundreds of years of persecution, they did not enjoy tracking time by the calendar of their oppressors, and saw the coming of Christ as the most important moment in history.

In the sixth century, a monk developed a system of tracking the years based on the life of the Lord. This system became shortened over time to be BC and AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini respectively. Even as non-believers have tried to come up with alternatives, they are all centered around the life of Jesus Christ, which continues to be the most important moment in the history of humanity.

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There are many churches, most of which agree on some of the basics of Christianity, but as people begin to explore them, they realize there are things on which they disagree. Is the first part of Genesis figurative or literal? Should children be baptized? Does the Holy Spirit indwell a believer before or after baptism? Calvinism or arminism or something else? Is speaking in tongues a signifier of salvation or not?

These questions begin to pile up and can be overwhelming, to the point where some people decide these differences indicate that Christianity is not true. Others develop anxiety about their salvation, and their relationship with God becomes complicated.

Fortunately, the perfect and infallible Bible is clear about salvation, and it is just the fallible logic of human reasoning and interpretation that makes it complicated. The Bible is clear that salvation is made available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, submitting to Him as both Lord and Savior, and is proven through sanctification and a deepening relationship with God.

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Part of having a correct understanding of who Jesus is, why He needed to come, and why His death and resurrection are significant, is tied to having a right understanding of the nature of God. Because God is the Most High, He is holy and perfect. There is no evil in Him.