Everyone has enemies. Right?

I’ve shared my love for superhero movies. There are evil enemies in all of those flicks. Every literary character worth anything seems to have a foil. I teach my seventh graders about conflict in the narratives they read and while not every text in the curriculum has a clear “bad guy,” they can still find that sometimes a character’s own worst enemy is themselves. Right and wrong. Light and dark. Good guy and bad guy.

As Christians, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you in Matthew 5. As a first-born, people pleaser, I will go out of my way to avoid creating an enemy. These two thoughts have shaped how I have felt about enemies for as along as I can remember.

In college, I memorized Psalm 139 – except for the four verses (19-22) where David literally declares his hatred of his enemies. This seemed so out of place to me at the end of this beautiful song about God’s character and His care for His creation. Over the years I just shrugged and chalked it up to its location in the Old Testament. Jesus came to fulfill the law, judge the motive of our hearts and, somehow, in my brain, a New Testament David would pray for the salvation of his enemies instead of their destruction.

Since then, I have started to think a little different about exactly who MY enemies are. While I don’t have crazy kings and foreign Philistines hunting me like David did, I have realized that I do face some very real, very scary enemies of my own.

Yes, I read in the Bible of spiritual enemies. Evil spirits, demons and even Satan are easily identified enemies I know exist. There are principalities out there that should be respected, but I refuse to give them valuable real estate in my brain as I know there are other enemies whose attacks are just as detrimental.

I wrestle with my own thoughts and insecurities. I doubt. Like Paul, I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I do want to do. I long for a deeper faith and fall short as the teacher, the parent, the spouse I want to be. I can be my own enemy.

I live in a fallen world where even the weather can seem to work against my desired plans and best intentions. While I don’t doubt God’s sovereignty, it is easy to see that the world we are living in is a far cry from the Eden He created for us. The results of sin are everywhere – even in , or maybe especially seen in the consequences of other people’s failures and faults that impact our lives and the lives of the people we love the most.

I have a dear friend that challenged my thoughts about enemies as I watched her fight one of the strongest enemies mankind faces – cancer. I had never considered an illness as an enemy until I walked with her in her battles. Her personification of cancer led me to consider other diseases and conditions as enemies as well. Birth defects and disabilities? Why not? In God’s sovereignty and omnipotence I have seen Him allow and use and subject all of these “enemies” to His will, incorporating them into His plans to bring about His glory and renown.

Just this week, this same friend – who fought alongside God and defeated her enemy of cancer, has faced another ruthless enemy – death. Not her own mortality this time, but the real pain and emptiness death inflicts when we lose those we love. This week is the first anniversary of her father’s death. Not only that, this week she is also walking along side one of our students who has now buried both of his parents at the tender age of 13. To say she has faced a hard week fighting with the consequences of death would be an understatement. The enemy, death, has been very real to her.

But this week isn’t just any week.

As Christians call it, it is “Holy Week.” We gather. We pray. We remember and commemorate Jesus’ death. We celebrate His resurrection – His defeat of death that solidifies and successfully secures the victory over ALL enemies and establishes forever our relationship with Him.

Even if cancer seems to win a battle, for the believer, the war ended when Christ walked out of His borrowed tomb. To be with Christ, not in this world but in the next is, as Paul simply said, “gain.” Another mind boggling spoil of His victory is the knowledge that in the death of our earthly bodies we are no longer battling lesser enemies of this fallen world.

Right now, in my Bible reading plan, I am reading some other songs of David where he calls for the death and utter destruction of his enemies. And while I embrace Jesus’ command to love my human opposition, I don’t have an issue uttering some of David’s harshest, most judgmental prayers as my own if I count among my enemies sin, cancer, and death. I pray those prayers confidently that Jesus has already won the war and God will answer all of those prayers with resounding “yes-es.”

Because of Easter, the days of my enemies are literally numbered and I will pray to hasten their end.