Have You Left? Then It's Time To Return . . .

Revelation 2:4 “Nevertheless I have this against you,
that you have left your first love.”

The Lord spoke to my heart saying: We must return to our first love. It’s so easy to be pulled in too many directions, and it’s so easy to be distracted.

The passage above follows a pretty impressive list of good works for which the Church was complimented. However, it appears that even in the midst of doing good, it is possible to become distracted and wander off course. Every time we sin or fall short, it is the result of one thing above any other . . . it is because we have left our “first love” and have gone our own way.

We must routinely return to Christ, experience His love, and be filled with it in order to express that same great love to others.

I believe we should take this opportunity to beseech the Lord and turn towards Him in a fresh way. Would you join with me as we ask the Lord to baptize us anew with His love? I have no hope of being a demonstration of the love of God to a sin-sick world if I have wandered from my first love, Jesus Christ.

Come back to your first love and love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your strength, and all of your soul, for therein lies the issue. When we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, we find it’s an easy thing to love our neighbors.

I’m going to assume that we are all Christians. Jesus said that they will know that we are His disciples by the love that we have for one another. That’s the sure sign. They’ll know us by our fruit and that fruit is love, and then comes the peace, joy, and the other fruit as well. It’s all the product of God’s love in our hearts.

If you’ll take a moment, pray the following with me: Father, we come to You today, and we find ourselves in need of grace and forgiveness. At times we have fallen from our first love, and we have turned our own direction, followed our own choices, and have done what we thought was important.

We ask you in the name of Jesus to forgive us, cleanse us, and remove all of our unrighteousness . . . to just blot it out. May we experience a fresh baptism of divine love. Cause us to be plunged under the flood of Your love. May we be held under that water long enough for our hearts to grow soft as a sponge so that we may absorb the very love that You have for us. May we love others with that same love.

Fill our hearts anew, God, with Your divine love, and let our lives be a demonstration of it. It’s all for Your kingdom and Your glory, in Jesus’ name.

Grace & Peace,
PG