Our First Love

Revelation 2:2-5
I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.


It is so easy to get caught up in the "doing" and the "being" and the "thinking" and the "learning" of Christianity, isn’t it? Even in this devotional we spend a lot of time talking about obedience, prayer, time spent in the Word and so on. And all of those things are very important, vitally important. However, this verse reminds us that if we lose our "first love" we have lost everything.

In 1 Corinthians 13 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20corinthians%2013;&version=31) we are told that without love we are and have nothing. In the same way, we can be doing all the right things - testing false prophets, persevering through hardships in the name of Jesus, not tolerating wickedness and sin, yet if we have fallen away from our first Love, our Jesus, our greatest desire, then all of those other things are for nought.

The thing that I find amazing, is that when we seek after Christ, when we are passionately, head-over-heels in love with Him, then everything else falls into place. Just as we would want to please a lover, so we will do all that we can to please Jesus. Obedience will be second nature, because He smiles upon us when we obey. We will naturally hate what He hates, and love what He loves - just as we find that we like or dislike certain music or sporting teams when we discover our new love-interest feels one way or the other. Love is very powerful, and God knows it.

We know it too. Our society places so much emphasis on falling in love (as they define it). And when we turn from Jesus, our first love, we feel it don’t we? We know something is missing, and we go in search for it. We know that we have fallen from a great height - it resonates in our bones, in our soul, and it hurts. So Christ tells us to "repent and do the things we did at first." In other words, we need to turn tail away from whatever it is we are using to try and fill the void, even if it could be seen as something good, and go back to where the passion began. Perhaps it was a book that sparked the fire, or you were in a certain place, or with someone special. Certainly there is something to which we can turn to remind us of our first love, even perhaps Christ Himself - oh how He would love for us to come running into His arms for no other reason than just to be held! To be reminded of His great love for us, and to reciprocate that love.

When we do - when we go back and re-discover that passionate love that we once knew and kindled, we will discover that the light that has been dampened, or perhaps nearly distinguished within us, will blaze ever higher, ever hotter, ever brighter and everyone around us will wonder at the light in our eyes and the bounce in our step.