God Never Changes His Plans (End)

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Can you see now why walking in love is so important to God? It’s the reason He created us!

You may never have thought about it in just that way before but, the truth is, you already knew that. Every born-again believer does. I could stop a Christian on the street anywhere in the world and ask him if we, as believers, are supposed to love one another, and I’d get the right answer every time. Everyone knows Christians are called to live by the law of love.

Are we all doing it? No, we’re not. So, clearly there must be a problem. II Peter 3:1-2 tells us what it is. There the Apostle Peter wrote to people just like us—people who knew full well they were called by Jesus Himself to live by the law of love—and said: “This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour.”

If Christians in Peter’s day needed to be reminded to keep the commandment of love, we do too. Just like those first-century believers, sometimes we just plain forget to walk in love toward one another. We forget to make compassion our priority because we don’t keep it in the forefront of our thinking. We get our lives out of line with love because mentally we neglect to put first things first.

But, according to the Bible, we can correct that problem. We can stir up our pure minds by way of remembrance. We can build love into our memory so that we think of it before we get dressed in the morning. We can so renew our minds to it that we think of it when we leave the house every day, or sit down at the table to eat, and even before we go to bed at night.

When we keep love on our minds like that, it changes how we interact with people. No matter what they say or do to us, our first thought is to respond in love. If we disregard that thought by yielding to the flesh and acting in a way that’s unloving, we’ll immediately be aware that we’ve been disobedient, and we’ll repent. Then we’ll get right back on track.

by Kenneth Copeland