Our lives are challenging whether they are short or long. Regardless of our circumstances, there are always obstacles to overcome. People can have everything, yet have nothing. They may have endless riches, yet be spiritually blind to what is most important—life itself. Some worship what is anti-life—death. These people are evil because they have given their lives to the devil.

The devil had everything possible, and yet he gave it all up to war against God and wreak havoc upon the world. Instead of satisfaction in being the highest angel, the devil wanted to be God Himself. Still today, the devil lures as many of God’s children as he can into his darkness. Too many are victims of his snares because they lack spiritual wisdom and refuse God’s guidance.

Many people are oblivious to this war of good against evil that is all around them. They fail to see evil for what it is—everything that counters God. Some believe that people who worship and obey God are unsophisticated and dependent on a non-existent power. But they have their heads in the sand and will ultimately be proven wrong.

While worldly people are consumed with the latest gadgets and unessential information, the wise relate with God, appreciating the deep meaning of life while they serve Him and assist others in their quests for meaning and wholeness of life. While the lost become ever more lost in alcohol, drugs, pornography and other addictions, God’s children shine His light of hope on their families, neighbors, and enemies so that they too may see with spiritually open eyes.

Christians, who love God and practise His ways, as established in the Bible, are not caught up in gossip, lies, and deception. If God is their first love whom they trust more than anything else, their sin will decrease as their knowledge of and love of God’s ways increase. Faithful Christians obey God’s commandments and are strengthened through the Holy Spirit to stand firmly with God on His goodness. This is what they have purposefully chosen.

Followers of Jesus do not want to hurt other people, because they love them as brothers and sisters. They know that true love involves giving of oneself for goodness and truth. They know that goodness and truth persevere and win. In the end, they too will win, because they are on the winning side. Heaven rejoices every time new believers relinquish their love for the world and accept Christ. They are saved and become more Christ-like every day.

God sacrificed Jesus, who willingly accepted His yoke so that humanity would be saved. There was no other way. Only a perfect sinless sacrifice could loosen the devil’s binding and set sinners free. People, created in God’s image to love Him, need saving because they succumb to ungodly desires which, without repentance and forgiveness, will overcome them.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the great culmination of Jewish sacrifice. Jesus’s sacrifice was the only way to save humanity. The Jewish sacrificial system was broken when Jesus resurrected from the dead in 30 A.D. and it was rendered impossible in 70 A.D. when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple. No further sacrifice is required: Jesus died once for the salvation of everyone. Some believe that a temple will be rebuilt and Jewish sacrifice reinstated to usher in Christ’s return, but faith in the blood of Jesus is what sets people free from the bonds of death.

Only Jesus could help and deliver the lost from their waywardness and propensity to fall into temptation. Only Jesus saves the broken, the despairing, the blind, and the deaf. The lost must want to spiritually hear and see. They must ask God to open their ears and eyes so that they may know and understand. Only the most evil of events, Christ’s persecution and death, could bring the most good, the salvation of all who love God and want to be His children.

God will not force Himself on anyone. People must come to the end of themselves in humility to understand that they need God. When people realize they are lost and are headed for destruction without God, some are ready to accept Him. Then Jesus is revealed and is welcomed into their lives. Their countenance changes as they behold the love and hope that is theirs in Christ.

Jesus is beheld in all His glory only when the heart is softened, the spirit is open, and the mind is ready and willing to be stretched and challenged. God’s design for salvation is easy for those who love Him, but is challenged by the shadowy world as being too simple, because the world hates God. The promise of the cross is simple and sacred by those who love Jesus, but it is viewed as too simple and as fantasy by those who do not love Him.

Jesus is the Holy Lamb of God who sets free all of those who love God, goodness, and life and who hate evil and death. Jesus sets very high expectations, but He gives us the freedom to be ourselves within the boundaries of God’s mercy as described in the Bible. God is patient and kind as we allow the Holy Spirit to transform us into the people that He created us to be.

Through Jesus, God used what is most evil to provide humanity with the freedom to choose what is good: God, life, and everything necessary to live a full and godly life in the sure anticipation of eternity with Him.