I AM WITH YOU .....in 2011

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. Mat 28:20.

What encouragement and comfort this promise from the Lord gives to us as we face the unknown path of a New Year. Whatever happens in 2011 He will be there!

In the upper room just hours before the Cross, the Lord took time to comfort His disciples with the news that when He went to heaven another Comforter would come and abide with them for ever (John 14:16), and that in this way He would not leave them but would come to them (John 14:18). In the days after His resurrection, the Lord reassured the disciples of His continuing presence and extended it to all who would follow Him, to the end of the age.

The Lord does not promise to deliver us from trials that might arise, but He has promised to be with us in them. Daniel's friends were not delivered from the fiery furnace, but when the king looked in he saw, not three men, but a fourth. "like unto the Son of God."

David the Psalmist wrote, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Why? "For Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." As we cross the threshold of another year, may it be with renewed confidence in the never failing promise of His presence.