The Bible lists many different names and titles for God, each illustrating something different about God’s nature. Among them are Yahweh Yireh (“the Lord will provideâ€�), El Shaddai (“God Almightyâ€�), Yahweh Sabbaoth (“Lord of hostsâ€�) and many more.

If you’re not familiar with the different names for God used in the Bible, you’ll be amazed at their depth and variety. How Excellent Are Thy Names at Christianity Today is a good primer on the subject, and there’s a good list of Biblical names for God at GotQuestions.

Do you have a favorite name of God—a title or name that holds special significance for you?

Share your thoughts!

What does the classic Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life have to do with Lent and Easter? The movie (which ends happily) illustrates the despair that sets in when dreams are lost—when the harsh reality of life dashes our hopes for the future. According to this Slice of Infinity devotional, the journey toward Easter presents Christians with a similar dose of cold, hard reality:

“It’s a Wonderful Life� offers all who enter into its narrative a chance to look into the chasm between many cherished ideals and the often sober reality of our lives. This glimpse into what is often a gaping chasm of lost hopes and abandoned dreams offers a frightening opportunity to let go. Indeed, facing the death of ones’ dreams head on forces a moment of decision. Will we become bitter by fixating on what has been lost, or will we walk forward in hope on a path of yet unseen possibility?

For Christians, the journey through Lent offers a visible and living reminder of the fact that life entails death; it cannot be circumnavigated or avoided. Those who follow the path of Lent are presented with a similar decision: will the giving up of aspects we believe essential to our vision of a wonderful life lead us to bitterness or to hope? The discipline of Lent often reveals hands grasped tightly and tenaciously around ideals that must give way to new realities. Author M. Craig Barnes suggests that the journey away from our own sense of what makes for a wonderful life is actually the process of conversion. “It is impossible to follow Jesus and not be led away from something. That journey away from the former places and toward the new place is what converts us. Conversion is not simply the acceptance of a theological formula for eternal salvation. Of course it is that, but it is so much more. It is the discovery of God’s painful, beautiful, ongoing creativity along the way in our lives.�

Read the full devotional at Slice of Infinity.

What should we do when we’re confronted by the hard truth of sin and its terrible consequences? Easter offers us a choice: we can wallow in despair, or we can put our hope and trust in the message of Jesus Christ. Which of those two roads are you traveling along this Easter season?

We were never promised that life in Christ would be easy. In Acts 14:22, Paul and Barnabas tell the disciples of Christ that “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” They delivered this message shortly after Paul had been stoned and left for dead!

Spurgeon writes in Morning and Evening that God’s people are predestined for trials. It’s an inescapable part of our life, but we must remember that trials develop our character:

God’s people have their trials. It was never designed by God, when he chose his people, that they should be an untried people. They were chosen in the furnace of affliction; they were never chosen to worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised them; but when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, he included chastisements amongst the things to which they should inevitably be heirs. Trials are a part of our lot; they were predestinated for us in Christ’s last legacy. So surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands, and their orbits fixed by him, so surely are our trials allotted to us: he has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to escape troubles; if they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them. Mark the patience of Job; remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith under them, he became the “Father of the faithful.�

Read the rest of the devotional at Christians Classics Ethereal Library.

What trials have you experienced? How has God shaped you through them?