“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!" Revelation 2:4
When I was in fifth grade I experienced my first love. She was a very cute blond with a great smile, good sense of humor, and a kind heart. I thought the world of her and was in love. This first love carried over to the sixth grade, when people were starting to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I could never muster the nerve to ask her out. What if she said no! So my first love was never fully realized since we moved after my sixth grade year. I remember the feeling of my first love. It changed the way I understood my relationship to girls.
I remember my first love for Christ. The feeling I felt when I knew for certain that Jesus died and rose from the dead for me. I remember the overwhelming sense of Christ's great love for me, a sinner. I also remember vividly feeling that Christ loved me as I am. The type of love that showed me that I was fearfully and wonderfully made; a treasure. I was in love with Christ and everything was changed.
In the Scripture passage above, Christ is wanting his followers, at a certain church, to know they have forgotten their first love. At the beginning Christ was everything to them. Now they were an established church. There were people bringing different ideas into their community. They were drifting and falling away. They drifted so far away that the word Jesus says to send to them is that they don't love him, or others, like they first did. Their relationship with the One who changed everything is changing.
Jesus' reminder to the church is a reminder to us today as well. One of the precursors to revival in our life, and our community of faith, is to ask ourselves if we love Jesus the way we first did. Does our heart beat a little faster when we think of Jesus? Does our life reflect our love for Jesus? Are we following Jesus? Is our life radically different and does it reflect our passion for Christ? Have we lost our first love?
I hope you will join me this Sunday as we discuss the precursors to revival in our life and in our church. Come and worship your first love. See you in church.