Do you remember the love you had for Jesus when you were first born again. Jesus is calling you back to that love. First love, is experiencing - actually feeling the love God has for you. First love is God’s love for you that will manifest in your lives as love for yourself and others. This video gives you action steps to return to your "first love."
Revelation 2:2-6 NIV
2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far 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. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
This is an extraordinary passage of scripture.
Jesus said saw their deeds, their hard work.
The Church at Ephesus had persevered.
They clung to correct doctrine and rejected false teachers and leaders.
They hated wickedness and wouldn’t tolerate it in the church.
They endured hardship for Jesus’s name. They didn’t get worn out and quit.
Many Christians today would consider a Biblically sound church that carefully guarded scripture, persevered through persecution and hardship, and had good leadership a good church.
But truth is not enough. Right doctrine (right believing) is not enough. Righteousness (Right living) is not enough.
Jesus next words to us are a wake up call:
Revelation 2:4-6 NIV
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far 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.
1 Corinthians 13 is the core of Jesus' message to the righteous Ephesians. Without love, even truth, even righteousness is not enough.
1 Corinthians 13:13 AMP
And now there remain: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three; but the greatest of these is love.
God has always required us to pursue truth and love. Faith and hope are based on the truth of Jesus and the Word of God. “But the greatest of these is love.”
Without love, Jesus would return to this church and remove its lampstand – it’s light, it’s influence to the dark, demon worshiping city of Ephesus. Love and truth make us the light of the world. Without love, we lose our light. Without love we cannot represent Jesus well.
Come Back to Your First Love
Do you remember the love you had for Jesus and for God when you were first born again. I do! The first six weeks I was a Christian were like a honeymoon. I heard God so clearly and I felt so loved. I felt so free after I repented of my sins.
What is First love?
1 John 4:10 NIV
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:19 NIV
We love, because He first loved us.
First love, is experiencing, feeling the love God has for you. First love is God’s love for you that will manifest in your lives as love for yourself and others.
Jesus told the Ephesian Christians to repent and return to their first love. Then He said, “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” Revelation 2:5.
Activation: Return to The Works You Did at First
When I was first born again, I felt closest to God when helping others. I volunteered at a homeless shelter and just loved people there any way I could. As I encountered people whose need for love far exceeded my ability to love, God poured His love through me.
Then I joined a prison ministry at the county jail. I had been a criminal defense lawyer for several years and felt comfortable talking to people in jail. I experienced God's love for them in a new, indescribable way as I tried to love and help those behind bars.
Scripture tells us that in loving others the love of God will be made complete in us.
1 John 4:12 NIV
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Different translations say God’s love is “made perfect/perfected in us”, “made complete in us”, or “comes to full expression in us.”
What were the works of your first love? What did you do that most connected your heart to God when you experienced the “first love” of God. Now, go do some of those things today and every day.
It really is in loving others that God's love is made complete in us.