Remembering Our First Love

Remembering our first love

Revelation 2:1-7

Good Morning everyone, Please turn in your bibles to Revelation chapter 2

Prayer-

“Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things that you did at first.” Book of Revelation chapter 2

How many remember their first love (first infatuation) in your life?

Remember how exciting it was to have someone in your life?

Ivy in 6th grade in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

Lasted about two weeks but I never forgot.

Someone that was not a family member who cared for you.

Even if your first love was at 10 years old, it was something special.

It was a moment of time that will never be forgotten…or is it.

If you think back, you remember, but with other things happening, you often forget about it being an important part of your life, it was something that was in the past.

So how can the Lord have been speaking to the mega church of Ephesus in the past tense when He says that they have forgotten their first love?

As we walk with the Lord, there is always a danger that as we grow older in our spiritual walk and we become more structured, polished, and doctrinally developed to move from our first love to have it replaced with something or someone else.

Let’s look at what John writes in Revelation 2:1-7 Read from Bible

What once was precious and valuable becomes routine and secondary in our life.

We sometimes loss our way-

WE have people doing the same thing every day. And say they want change.

We drive to church the same way every week.

We come to church the same time- Even if some other things are available to us.

We sit in the same seats and never move and even some who are offended if someone sat in their seats.

We talk to the same people and never reach out to new people or new environments to come in contact with other people. (These are my peeps)

We park in the same space and area of the parking lot- And we say we want something different. We say that we are willing to change.

We do not realize when things are lost or never gotten because we are so set in our ways that we do not allow God to change us or expand our horizons in life.

I don’t know of any Christian that has been a Christian for any length of time that has not had a moment in time that they have lost priority or they have lost what once was valuable and had to fight to get it back.

Our text this morning is an example of a renown church in modern day Turkey founded by Apostle Paul in the first century.

Believers have come to Christ in numbers and had seen God do some amazing and super natural things to show the extreme power of God.

They saw people delivered from demon possession, idol worship, healed in miraculous ways.

They burnt in the town square all their cult books

ZEALOUS FOR GOD- REPENTING WITH A DEEP DESIRE TO COMPLETELY SEVER THEIR NEW LIVES FROM THEIR PAGAN PAST.

The early church had a zeal for God and their lives blazed like an inferno. Their zeal and excitement was inspiring and brought others to faith…but as the years passed, the passion and excitement for the things of God ebbed away.

Knowledge increased and passion diminished

Sometimes you can be so involved in serving Jesus that you lose intimacy with Him.

It is likely that some lost their joy in their service.

They lost their joy because they lost their connection to the savior.

This verse says that they had lost their first love- They had lost their simplicity and passion that once was associated with their love for the Lord.

This unintentional drift is what I want to talk a minute about- Jesus tells them to stop what they are doing and remember the precious relationship that they had with the savior.

He says in verse 5 “Remember the height from which you have fallen!

He tells them and he is telling us to dig through the clutter of our schedules, routines and activities so that we can remember where we came from in serving the Lord.

Renner says that “like dirt on a grave, the business of ministry had buried what was once precious to them.”

To go back to when their faith was tender and new so that they could see how far that they have drifted from Him!

In verse 4 Jesus told the church that “Nevertheless I have somewhat against you.”

Despite all the commendations he gave them, there was one thing that was not commendable- they had left their first love.

Jesus was deeply disturbed about them leaving their love for God and their relationship with him severing.