Silas
Beloved of All
Your desire to return to your first love is precious to the Lord and He hears this prayer. The Scripture teaches that we love because He first loved us. His love came first, poured out for us while we were still far from Him, and when we truly see and understand that love it awakens a response in our hearts. We do not work ourselves into love for God. We respond to the love and grace He has already shown us in Jesus Christ.
The Lord spoke to the church in Ephesus with both tenderness and seriousness when He said He had this against them, that they had left their first love. He called them to remember from where they had fallen, to repent, and to do the first works again. That is the path for you as well. Remember the early days of your walk when your heart was tender toward Him, when you delighted to be with Him, to hear His voice, to speak with Him in prayer and to learn His Word. The call is not simply to feel differently but to return and to do again those simple, devoted things you did at first.
That first love is marked by a humble posture before Jesus, like Mary who chose the better part by sitting and listening to His teaching. It is a love that abides. Jesus said if we keep His commandments we abide in His love, just as He kept His Father's commandments and abides in His love. Abiding is pictured as a branch remaining in the vine. Apart from Him we can do nothing, but as we remain in Him, His life flows through us and bears fruit.
One of the surest evidences that His Spirit is at work in us is love. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and that love is a giving, self sacrificing love, not a selfish or merely reciprocal affection. It is the love with which God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. That love cannot be bought or manufactured. It is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It shows itself first in love for God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, and then in love for one another. John writes that we know we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers and sisters in Christ, and that if someone says he loves God but hates his brother he is not walking in truth, for how can we love God whom we have not seen if we do not love our brother whom we have seen. The world will know we are His disciples by this kind of love.
Prayer is not a way to force God to do our will. It is opening the door and consenting for God to do what He already desires to do in us and through us. As you ask for extra grace to pray in the Spirit and to study the Scriptures, ask Him to teach you to pray to the Father in Jesus name and to build yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Ask for grace to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, to walk in kindness, patience, humility, and in a love that does not seek its own way. Those qualities described in First Corinthians thirteen are the character of His love being formed in us.
Part of returning is putting away distractions and other loves that compete for your heart. God is jealous for your love in the right and holy sense. He desires your supreme devotion and will have no other gods before Him. When Israel turned away to other gods, the Lord spoke of it as forsaking their first love and espousal. Anything we love more than Him, whether the things of the world or even good things that take His place, can draw us away. The world does not love this kind of devotion and will not love you for walking in it, but do not love the world or the things in the world. Choose to yield to one another in love and to give yourself in service, as Christ gave Himself.
Ask the Lord for protection from sin and from the evil one, and for discipline to dig deeply into His Word and to share the truth in the power of the Holy Spirit, with His fruit and gifts and in holiness, making disciples and teaching obedience to all that Christ commanded, dying to self and living for Him. He is able to keep you and to rekindle what has grown dim.
Father, thank You for first loving us and for drawing us to Yourself through Jesus. We remember Your great love shown at the cross and we ask You to stir our hearts to respond with wholehearted love. Grant repentance where we have left our first love and grace to do the first works again, to pray, to hear Your Word, to worship, and to walk in obedience. Teach us to abide in Christ as branches in the vine, to choose the better part of listening to You in humility, and to love one another as You have loved us. Keep us from distractions and from the love of the world, deliver us from evil, and fill us with Your Spirit that we may bear fruit and share the gospel with power and purity. Restore the joy of our first love and let it remain and abound, in Jesus name, amen.
The Lord spoke to the church in Ephesus with both tenderness and seriousness when He said He had this against them, that they had left their first love. He called them to remember from where they had fallen, to repent, and to do the first works again. That is the path for you as well. Remember the early days of your walk when your heart was tender toward Him, when you delighted to be with Him, to hear His voice, to speak with Him in prayer and to learn His Word. The call is not simply to feel differently but to return and to do again those simple, devoted things you did at first.
That first love is marked by a humble posture before Jesus, like Mary who chose the better part by sitting and listening to His teaching. It is a love that abides. Jesus said if we keep His commandments we abide in His love, just as He kept His Father's commandments and abides in His love. Abiding is pictured as a branch remaining in the vine. Apart from Him we can do nothing, but as we remain in Him, His life flows through us and bears fruit.
One of the surest evidences that His Spirit is at work in us is love. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and that love is a giving, self sacrificing love, not a selfish or merely reciprocal affection. It is the love with which God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. That love cannot be bought or manufactured. It is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It shows itself first in love for God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, and then in love for one another. John writes that we know we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers and sisters in Christ, and that if someone says he loves God but hates his brother he is not walking in truth, for how can we love God whom we have not seen if we do not love our brother whom we have seen. The world will know we are His disciples by this kind of love.
Prayer is not a way to force God to do our will. It is opening the door and consenting for God to do what He already desires to do in us and through us. As you ask for extra grace to pray in the Spirit and to study the Scriptures, ask Him to teach you to pray to the Father in Jesus name and to build yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Ask for grace to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, to walk in kindness, patience, humility, and in a love that does not seek its own way. Those qualities described in First Corinthians thirteen are the character of His love being formed in us.
Part of returning is putting away distractions and other loves that compete for your heart. God is jealous for your love in the right and holy sense. He desires your supreme devotion and will have no other gods before Him. When Israel turned away to other gods, the Lord spoke of it as forsaking their first love and espousal. Anything we love more than Him, whether the things of the world or even good things that take His place, can draw us away. The world does not love this kind of devotion and will not love you for walking in it, but do not love the world or the things in the world. Choose to yield to one another in love and to give yourself in service, as Christ gave Himself.
Ask the Lord for protection from sin and from the evil one, and for discipline to dig deeply into His Word and to share the truth in the power of the Holy Spirit, with His fruit and gifts and in holiness, making disciples and teaching obedience to all that Christ commanded, dying to self and living for Him. He is able to keep you and to rekindle what has grown dim.
Father, thank You for first loving us and for drawing us to Yourself through Jesus. We remember Your great love shown at the cross and we ask You to stir our hearts to respond with wholehearted love. Grant repentance where we have left our first love and grace to do the first works again, to pray, to hear Your Word, to worship, and to walk in obedience. Teach us to abide in Christ as branches in the vine, to choose the better part of listening to You in humility, and to love one another as You have loved us. Keep us from distractions and from the love of the world, deliver us from evil, and fill us with Your Spirit that we may bear fruit and share the gospel with power and purity. Restore the joy of our first love and let it remain and abound, in Jesus name, amen.
