A New Chapter

2 John 1:4
How happy I was to meet some of your children and find them living according to the truth, just as the Father commanded. (NLT)

Over the years we have met many families. Not all have had children that showed God's love in all we saw them doing. Most have been children of this world in their dress, their speech, and their actions. Perhaps this is how others felt when they came into my family when I was growing up. And how do others see me in my current life?

To those who knew us in our past, they may see us differently than those who have just gotten to know us. Our life is an open book, but it is the newer chapters that are the most open. They are the visible portions of our lives others get to see.

God has taken away the old and sometimes worn chapters of our life. He ripped them out of the book when we gave our life to Jesus. He forgave us of all our sin. He wrote a new chapter into our book of life and what is written there depends on how we follow His word.

People of the past still have the old chapters in their "book of us" and they have not ripped them out. As a matter of fact, they often refer back to them as they hold back their love from us. As we make mistakes, as we will always do, in this walk we walk they are the first to point back to those old chapters. They are anxious to find fault in who we have become.

And then he goes on in the next couple of verses to say: "I am writing to remind you, dear friends, that we should love one another. This is not a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning. Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning."

It is up to us to remember these verses and love one another. We are all in various places in our new chapter of life. Our pasts were different, so there are things we have to get over and through that others may never have experienced. So we must love all our Christian brothers and sisters as they push through their walk, as we work on loving them through their walk.