Remember the Best of All
Friends, this is my last devotion of 2022. And again, a huge thank you to you all for your support this year. It's been very special.
As we remember the year, I want to close by remembering the best of all. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists and all the Wesleyan denominations that have come since the Methodists, such as my own denomination the Church of Nazarene, is held in high regard as someone we can look up to as a man of God. And famously, when he died, his final words were these: “Best of all, God is with us.”
God With Us
Best of all, God is with us. As we look back on 2022, friends, let's remember best of all. Best of all, God was with us! God was with us through everything this year, through the ups, through the downs. He was with us through every joyful moment. He was with us through every struggle, every valley. Jesus fulfilled his promise. When he left the earth, he said, “I'm with you always to the end of the age”, and he has fulfilled that this year.
Can I invite you to spend some time in prayer today or tomorrow and look back on your year, remembering the best of all, remembering how God was with you?
You see, so often when we are in difficult moments, we don't recognize his presence, we don't feel it. And yet when we look back, we see the truth. We recognize he was there. We see his footprints walking alongside us in our lives. A friend of mine has always said he doesn't really like that footprints poem where the one set of footprints disappears in the sand because God was carrying his child at that time - my friend always says “not so! God doesn't just carry me. God always strengthens me to do the walking, and he sits down with me in the sand and says, ‘Come my child, I'll take your hand and we'll walk on together.’”
Blessings of Presence
In his view, and I agree with it, there's always 2 footprints in the sand. There's ours and there's God's. He's always there to walk alongside us and to strengthen us as we go, no matter how weak we feel. Some of the times we're limping, but he's there like a strong right hand, giving us strength as we limp along.
Best of all, this year, through everything, God was with us. Praise him for that and recognize that 2022 was a good year because he was there.
I pray God's blessing over you, friends. May it be that 2023 is a year of great closeness with God, drawing nearer to him, falling deeper in love with him, becoming more and more like him as we live as his people.
Lots of love to you all, God bless, and we'll talk again next year.
