Restoring Our First Love Series

"Restoring Our First Love

Series: Reboot: Fresh Start for a New Year

Brad Bailey - Feb. 19, 2023

Intro

Today …we are concluding our new year focus on rebooting our lives. Restore our life functioning … from the malaise… changes …pandemic. We may be doing this…but without the same sense of vitality.

We may not be able to know exactly how the various changes have led to a state that is slower… but we sense we need to reboot,,, updates… some reconnections.

We saw the significance of the power of purpose and priority.

We want to be the like this Belgian Malinois…but we are more like this Golden Retriever.

FOUND AT: Belgian Malinois vs Golden Retriever - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXQHPabOys

Look at Jesus… his earthly life… came at a time of deep darkness for God’s people… the people whom God had called out to make Himself known.

They had proven to be unfaithful … God had stopped raising up any prophets… it had been 400 years since the last prophet…and now the people had come under the rule of Rome…under oppression.

A lot was “shut down” so to speak.

And then …just as the prophecies had declared… a people living in darkness would see a great light…for a child would be born… who would be called mighty God.

And this child…lived as one who was not defined or deterred all the circumstances at hand.

He spoke as one who carried the very authority of God… and lived out of a relationship with the heavens unlike any merely human life.

And this drew the common people… and threatened the religious leaders. And it led them to ask questions…

Was asked…

Mark 12:28-31

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no

commandment greater than these.”

And as Matthew recorded… he explained…

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”- Matthew 22:40

Everything hangs on these two great commandments… everything flows from them. And the first is this…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. - Mark 12:30

These words may sound so familiar… and perhaps so general…that they may be easy to simply hear and go on.

But Jesus is describing what is to be the very core of our being.

This is the first and highest calling …that is upon us.

Because our very existence comes from Him…our very nature is that which was created as a reflection of Him.

Acts 17:27-28

He is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.

Our very existence …emanated from God’s will…and God’s love.

Our love of God is our first love.

He is our first love in that He is the source and center of life itself.

We tend to think God is demanding that we make him first…because He deserves it. He isn’t asking us to make Him first because He deserves it… but because He is first… He is the source and center of our lives.

Perhaps it is hard because we tend to see God as some potential secondary type of love.

We live to be loved… It is at the oxygen of the soul….but we tend to give ourselves almost entirely to the

love of fellow creatures…or at least some form of what we call love.

But we are endowed as spiritual in nature.

And God who is spirit sees more than we see…and

Only God loves us for who we truly are…and truly will be.

It’s time to grasp this… particularly having just had the Valentine’s holiday. Valentines Day can serve as a fine nod to love…and particularly romantic love. And God affirms earthly love.

> But we are not merely bodies… but spiritual beings

Valentines Day is but a confused echo of an eternal reality… at its best it may echo the divine

drama… at its worst it roots us as mere bodies… that no longer points us to ultimate love in which we exist.

…As we noted earlier in this series… one of the most valuable ways we can reorient our lives…is to

stop trying to be something we aren’t.

The problem is not with healthy pride and aspiration …or healthy self-expression… but with the underlying false role of being our own source of glory.

It’s been said, that

“Man is the star in our contemporary drama…for which an idea of God may be given a place on the stage … but only as a kind of co-star or supporting actor to serve our lead role.”