Walk in Love

DEVOTION 2 JOHN WALK IN LOVE 2 John 4-6 4 It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6 And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. NIV It would appear that it is not good enough to tell others do as we say, unless we are doing it too. Apparently this lady may well of had children who were walking in love but she may not have been doing the same, for what other reason was she being admonished to walk in love. It may be easy enough to see the faults in others and to tell them about them, preach to them, teach them, admonish them to live a life pleasing to God, loving one another, but it is entirely a different thing about our own life. Admittedly we all fall short, so no pretenses about that. But we all need more of God in the area of loving one another, walking in love. When we consider that God loves everyone so intently and so perfectly that he sent his Son to die for them, just as he did for us, who are we not to love them like God does? Do we think we are better than God that we can judge their actions and based on those actions or how they treat us, or others, that we will not love them? Do we think that they do not deserve our love because they refuse to live as we do? Maybe we are so self-centered we simply do not have any room for love for them. We have already looked at what love is, and we already know that we should be walking in the love, but God has to keep reminding us of that fact. The other issue here is if we say we love God, and do not walk in obedience to his commands are we really walking in love? It should be clear to us that being obedient to his commands is not just a list of things not to do, but also a list of things we should be doing, and one of them, perhaps the greatest of them is walking in love. It is fine to say that we do not murder, we do not steal, we do not lie, we do not smoke, drink, swear, use course language, or any of those other things we think we should not be doing, but how easy it is to do what God has called us to do? There are a whole host of actions he has called us to, especially as in here, to walk in love. Can we stand up at church in front of all other believers and declare we walk in love? Will any one of them challenge us? Do we tell people, “love ya” and leave it at that? Can we actually look them in the eye and declare the words, “I love you” and mean it? Maybe we need to read this every day when we get up, His command is that we walk in love.