Have You Left Your First Love?

Christian Working Woman Transcript

Friday, November 17, 2006

Have you left your first love for Jesus? I think we need to have a checkup once in a while to see if, like the church in Ephesus that we read about in Revelations 2, we might be forsaking our first love. When we allow that to happen, we lose our joy, and our service for Christ becomes a duty rather than a privilege.


Ask yourself, are you still in first love with Christ? Does your heart skip beats when you think about His love for you? Can you sing

And when I think that God His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross my burdens gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sins. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art!

…without choking up? Do you find tears running down your cheeks when all by yourself you're reading Psalm 40 where it says, He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.


Do you find obedience a drudgery, or is it your delight to please the Lord? Does it break your heart to know that your sin has broken His heart, or do you take sin lightly? Have you left your first love?

To keep our love fresh, we are told to remember and do the things we did at first. Jesus knew how important it was for us to remember. He instituted the Lord's Supper as a way to help us remember. We partake of the elements in communion in order to remember what Jesus did for us on Calvary. If we are constantly reminded of these things, our first love will stay in full bloom.

If a couple in first love will continue throughout their relationship to practice the good things they did at first, they can keep that first love alive. If we would continue to do the things that foster first love–the things we probably did when first we accepted Christ–our love would not grow cold. Reading and meditating on Scripture, spending time in prayer, fellowshipping with believers, keeping our thoughts and minds focused on Jesus–those are the things we have to keep doing.

If you're no longer in first love with Je­sus, it's because you've left Him–you've forgotten to remember to do the things that keep first love alive. I encourage you to go back to that first love and keep it alive.