Daily life with Jesus by Grahame Howard: Your First Love

"(3) you have persevered and have patience, and have laboured for My name's sake and have not become weary. (4) Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. (5) Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place - unless you repent.
Revelation 2:3-5 NKJV

We can be busy for Jesus, but not obedient to Him. God created us for an intimate relationship with Him and working towards that relationship must be our priority. Serving Jesus must be out of obedience, not ritualistic or traditional. It must never replace loving Him. He is our first love.

The believers at the Church of Ephesus had laboured well, with patience and endurance. But it was not enough, they had left Jesus out of it all. In serving Jesus, they had left their first love and got on with the work in hand - working in their own strength, which achieves nothing.

We can be so busy going to this meeting and then another afterwards, followed by many telephone calls requesting prayer, that we leave Jesus out of it all. A few hurried prayers is all we give Him before we leap into the day, doing our own thing with little thought about Him, unless we get into trouble. It shouldn't be this way. The Ephesians were doing this and Jesus spoke very strongly to them and he does to us, too. Give Him first place in your life!

King David, left God out of his life. He sent his men out to battle, but he remained in Jerusalem and this led him into adultery with Bathsheba. (2 Samuel 11) She was a married woman and when she found out she was pregnant, David tried to rig it, that the baby was her husband's. When this didn't work, David sent her husband - Uriah, out onto the front line to have him killed. So adultery and murder. All because, he was not in the place where God had wanted him to be - at war, deciding to leave God out of things - his first love.

Later when the prophet Nathan confronted him with this, he repented and wrote this:

'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me'

Psalm 51:10

David was not just asking for God to clean up his heart but to create a new one for him. It was a miracle that only God could have done. He felt so crestfallen that he had let God down - that he had left his first love. God did forgive him and David accepted this forgiveness. But, at a cost. He had learned a strong lesson. Never leave God out of things, because they will always go wrong and you'll always be found out, and it could be painful.

Perhaps this is speaking to you. Perhaps you have left your first love, being busy working for God instead of loving and walking with Him. Change that today. Repent and ask God to create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you.

"Cultivate sincerity and uprightness of heart at all times and it will save you an abundance of sorrow'. Dwight L Moody