Losing the First Love

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:…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. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent, and do the things you did at first.” -Revelation 2:1, 4-5. (NIV)

How tragic when love is lost. Losing love can happen in many ways. In the physical realm of marital love, “losing the first love” one had for spouse, and failure to live up to the commitments of the marriage vows can cause love to fly out the window. To keep the sparkle, glow and growth of “first love” takes some working-at. But, with constant renewal and finding ways to stay close, to have fellowship, that “first love” can live on and on. Pardon me for my personal testimony here. Grover and I were married 60 years on December 23, 2009. Sixty years is a long time to love, cherish and stand by the same person! We committed to do just that, and God has enriched our love beyond measure. “Does he know you?” people ask me, knowing Grover has been afflicted with Alzheimer’s for fourteen years now. “He does not call my name, and has not in a long time,” I respond. “I think he knows me. But the important thing is that I know him!” I still love, honor and cherish him, and seek in all the ways I know to make his days comfortable and to let him know my love for him has grown, even in adversity. “’Till death do us part” meant a sacred bond to each of us. And, as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to her beloved husband, poet Robert Browning: “If God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death.”

Yes, by way of aside: I know the Bible teaches there is “no marriage or giving in marriage in Heaven,” but somehow I have in my mind that we’ll know each other there, “know as even also we are known,” be together as we explore our God-as-the-Architect mansion, praise Him throughout eternity, and be unshackled from earthly limitations as we dance throughout Paradise! And all of us there will have fulfilled our ultimate purposes: To praise and glorify God, to have perfect fellowship with Him!

But what about losing “the first love” in the spiritual realm, as Jesus Christ through the Apostle John pointed out in Revelation 2 in the letter to the church at Ephesus? Can we learn what is meant by this warning to get back on track spiritually, individually and as a church here in the 21st century? Look to Jeremiah 2:2 for an answer: “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.” And again, look at Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:12: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.”

Herin lie clues to interpreting what is meant by “losing the first love.” I am saved, first and foremost, to have my broken fellowship with God restored. When Jesus Christ entered my heart, I wanted to learn of Him, be with Him, study the Bible to find out all I can about Him, grow in Christ-likeness. When I was a new Christian, even at the young age I was when He came into my heart, I wanted to have daily fellowship with Him! This should be my primary aim now: Not “service in the church,” although that is very important and something I really want to do! But if I have lost my desire to have fellowship with Jesus Christ and God the Father through the Holy Spirit, I have lost my first love! Woe am I if this is my condition!

“Losing our first love,” spiritually is also to lose the enthusiasm and zeal we had to tell others of Christ. And if we have lost the desire for fellowship, we will also lose the desire to witness and serve Him. I can remember, the very day I made known my commitment to Christ in a revival meeting at Choestoe Church in 1939. I went afterward to my cousin, Dennis, and told him how happy and thrilled I was that Jesus was my Saviour. “And He can be your Saviour, too,” I told Dennis. I didn’t know “how” to witness except to ask Dennis to accept Christ, too. Even my feeble, unpracticed efforts caused Dennis to listen and heed. In that same revival, he, too, accepted Christ as Savior and has remained faithful to him throughout these years. And so did 21 others, besides Dennis and me. It was one of the most soul-reaching revivals in the church’s records in a long time. How cold was Nottely River that second Sunday in August, 1939 as 23 of us lined up to be baptized by immersion! But that experience was a bit of Heaven on earth!

But have we allowed time, other pursuits and interests, and temptations to quell our zealousness to have fellowship with the Lord and to work gladly for the Lord? If so, there is a remedy. It’s simple. “Repent!” said the one who holds the seven golden candlesticks representing the seven early churches. To repent is an about-face, going in one direction and realizing it is the wrong way to go, turning around, and going back in the right direction. God will restore your “first love” for Him, your desire to have fellowship with Him! But the turning around, the decision to return to seeking God, to have enthusiasm (Greek: en-theos—in God) and direction and purpose—the decision-- is mine personally to make. I don’t have to quit! God can flood my heart again with that “first love” I had for fellowship with Jesus Christ and the desire to serve Him! The Apostle John, the writer of The Revelation, an old man, about 90, persecuted, and exiled to the Island of Patmos, had his “first love” restored seven-fold as evidenced by his writing of The Revelation. Again, a little “personal testifying,” as we said in my country church: The return is wonderful. And more times than not, the restored love is even greater than “the first love” temporarily lost!

If I only turn to God, no matter what time of the day or night, no matter my personal circumstances, He is immediately ready to restore in my spiritual life my “first love,” for Him!

Prayer: Lord, every morning and all during each day, I will lift my heart to You in repentance, and then seek Your face. Then, then, Lord, can I know my first love for You! And I can rejoice as I see Your working, Your will and Your way, even in this “latter stage” of my life! Selah!

[A note to those who receive my e-mail (or regular mail) of this daily devotional: I got a bit “carried away” today! Just a little (maybe) like John on the Island of Patmos which he describes in Revelation 1:10: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.” Today isn’t Sunday, which we normally call “The Lord’s Day,” but any day we are given is and should be the Lord’s Day. And a day to seek Him and to find Him!
So I wrote, and wrote!

I do know the difference between devotional, Bible study, sermon. But today, I seemed to experience an outpouring that just wouldn’t stop with two paragraphs or two pages! If you’ve patiently read to this point, thank you. My prayer is that God will use these words for His glory. If they draw you closer into fellowship with Him, as they have me as I’ve written them, then their sincere purpose will have been fulfilled! And to my beloved pastor, Rev. Jerry Bradley, I either was not at church the Sunday you preached on the First Letter to the Churches, or else I did not take notes as usual. I pray I have not erred from what I know would have been your excellent exegesis of the passage I’ve cited for today’s devotional. I send this with my love and prayers to God for all of you! Ethelene]

c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Tuesday, February 9, 2010