First Love
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Words from my heart:
As March roars in and February fades, I am reeling at the speed time is traveling. I’m thinking of what I was like at the beginning of my spiritual journey. My story is one of a radical nature. It was dramatic and life-altering. On the day of my salvation, I began a completely new life. In the years after that day, I experienced many physical losses. I’ve started over several times, but the day I began my spiritual journey was completely different. I changed. The life I knew before was gone (dead and gone), and the life I have lived since that day has been the best life ever!
I have realized of late that I have grown cold to the first love I had in that new beginning. Don’t get me wrong; I’m walking with the Lord. I’m not in rebellion or not serving according to where God has placed me. I’m doing more than ever what my Abba has called me. I might be in some compassion fatigue as the world around me has increasingly become more vicious in the past two years. One of the hardest things about this journey is seeing us as believers be so wicked toward one another.
Recently, I’ve been listening to my husband preach a series of messages on “first love” and spirit-filled living. In the fall, I completed a “Spiritual Formation” class needed for a degree plan I am finally completing. As I worked through the material, the Spirit of the Lord began to remind and revive me. And since this time and of late listening to my Pastor husband, I did not want to write another devotional that didn’t communicate what most in the “religion business” need. That need being one of revival. Returning, refreshing, and realigning to the first things our God called us.
I have needed revival. The kind of revival that’s happening at Asbury. The type of revival that helps me remember the beginning. The revival of my heart that takes me back to my first love, where I found the answers to this life I had been looking to other people and things to give. Where God moves in and revives our hearts, supernaturally, altering our thoughts and causing us to confess sin, we have excused.
The Church at Ephesus had only one judgment from the Lord.
2 ‘I know your deeds and your labor and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people, and you have put those who call themselves apostles to the test, and they are not, and you found them to be false; 3 and you have perseverance and have endured on account of My name, and have not become weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Revelation 2:2-4.
Do you see it? “LEFT YOUR FIRST LOVE.” This phrase has hounded me for weeks. Are you that gal?Are you the ministry leader who once was passionate and the journey has taken its toll? Where do you find yourself today? The following are questions I’ve been asking myself and I share the first three this week with more to come.
- Are you more concerned with talking about things, events, and people rather than Christ? Is the latest trend in fashion, food, etc., Facebook, Instagram, or the fight/gossip on your Twitter feed among evangelicals more important than your relationship with Christ?
- Are you more likely to talk about others and to others than talk to God? You won’t miss your social media time, but you miss your devotional time with Him, or is it to check off your list. It’s not profoundly intimate, and God has no space to speak.
- Have you lost your heart for worship? Are you more concerned with how you worship and the songs selected or if it’s “show” quality versus entering and worshiping the One who has called us to worship Him in spirit and truth?
These are just a few questions I have had to answer.
During this season of Lent, will you join me in asking God to renew your spiritual life? Will you ask Him to revive you and help you to return to the first love of your spiritual journey? Will Easter be different for us? I pray it will – more questions to come. I am praying for you.
