Happy Mother's Day! Today we take a look at two of the most obscure by influential women in the New Testament and see how their ordinary faithfulness made all the difference in the history of the Church.

What is the wrath of God and why should Christians be grateful for it? The wrath of God assures us that God is not blind or unmoved by the trouble of the world. Instead, we can know that God has a plan to end evil once and for all.

Behind the scenes of the material world, a war is raging, but it is a war against a defeated enemy. No matter how strong evil may appear, we can be assured that Jesus has already won.

How does the Church overcome the violence of the world? Not with weapons of war, but by the word of their testimony.

The strange gets stranger in Revelation as the Lamb of God begins to open the seals on the scroll that God was holding. Human history is a long cycle of conflict and struggle, but followers of Jesus can hope in the one who will finally bring justice and peace to a war-torn world.

Psalm 22 is an ancient hymn of lament in which God’s people cry out for deliverance from suffering. On the cross, Jesus cried the first line of this psalm, connecting his suffering in crucifixion to the historic suffering of God’s people. But Psalm 22 doesn’t end with the suffering of God’s people, and as resurrection morning approached, those who heard Jesus’ cry must have remembered the glorious end of this dark psalm.

Jesus comes as a king not on a war horse, but a donkey, proclaiming peace even to his own death. Christianity is the most counter-intuitive way of life, but the way of Jesus is the only path to victory.

With the throneroom scene set by chapter 4, Revelation 5 begins the action of the book, centered on the throne of God and an unlikely hero at the center of it all.

The throne room of God is the centerpiece of the book of Revelation. The rest of the book, and our lives, are incomprehensible without this vision of God.

No one loves to be corrected, but correction from someone who loves us deeply is a gift. To the church in Laodicea Jesus offers correction, not because he dislikes the Christians there, but because he wants them to become holy like God is holy.