Short Challenge: Remembering Our First Love Series

Short Challenge: Remembering our first love.

Rev.2:2-4 – “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”

Christianity isn’t about our to-do list. Those are important but heart is the issue.

Have you lost your first love?

1 Jn.2:15-17 – “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

What worldly things are stealing my attention from my first love?

God’s desire is for my heart.

James 4:4 – “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

What things do I desire above God?

Selfishness draws me away from Him.

Mt.16:24-25 – Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

The harder I look for my identity away from Him I loose it. When He becomes my first love I find it.

The result: Jn.10:10 – “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Rom.12:1-2 – “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

As I surrender to Him, I find the life He intends, loosing myself in Him. That’s when He becomes my first love.

James 4:8 – “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”

Challenge for the week: Remember your first love, draw near to Him.