Have You Lost Your First Love?

Revelation :2-4   -    I know how many good things you are doing. I have watched your hard work and your patience; I know you don’t tolerate sin among your members, and you have carefully examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but aren’t. You have found out how they lie.  You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.  “Yet there is one thing wrong; you don’t love me as at first!

John’s second chapter is written to four of the main churches of his time and day.  It addresses four attitudes that God saw were weakening the good that they were doing in the world. They had lost the enthusiasm of meeting Jesus for the first time….let false teachings justify compromising their faith….tolerating idol worship and sexual sin among the church members…..and failed to speak out against leaders like Jezebel….that supported all these practices.

Things haven’t changed. We could change the names of all those churches to a current one and find all of the same attitudes.  God can find good in all of them….but his concern is in how the wrong attitudes weaken our faith…weaken our power to help him love others...weaken the pure love we experienced when we first gave our heart to him.

The biggest problem with these attitudes is that they take our focus off of God and support the fleshes need to please our self. All the work God has done in our lives to create a humble attitude he can use to power the world with his love slowly is replaced by pride …. and self-centeredness. Just do one google search with the words bible and pride and you can read around 100 verses that describe the problem it creates when you let it have any foothold in your faith.

God’s call with John’s words were to change.  Change our attitudes …back to the pureness we felt in our first moments of knowing God in our heart….back to the enthusiasm we will need to face the future of unknowns. There was a consequence if we don’t…verse 5 says God will remove the candlestick from its place among the churches.  I’m no scholar….and have no clue exactly what that means…. But my heart tells me it won’t be something that is comfortable for anyone who doesn’t comply.

Father…thank you for the reminder that even though you see good in my life…the imperfections and attitudes of the world that you see in my heart weaken my ability to love you and the others around me.  Forgive me for allowing any attitude into my heart that takes my focus off of you.  Give me strength and discernment to identify them all….so you can help me remove them completely….and fill the space with more of your love.   Amen.