Remaining strong in your first love
But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. Revelation 2:4-5
Christians are expected by God to live by what He tells them through His Word. The world pursues grand and noble purposes and goals to achieve. People have the tendency to seek out the greatest and most satisfying things in which they can invest their lives with. Institutions, public or private, establish goals and objectives and then organize themselves to achieve them. Not so with the people of God. They function in a completely different way. Christians arrange their lives based on the revelation of God affirmed by His Word through the leading of the Holy Spirit, regardless of whether it makes sense to them or not. This has been how the people of God been living their lives since they came to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. But something has changed. From the text, the Lord Jesus Christ was rebuking Christians at Ephesus. They used to be intimate with their relationship with God but because of worldly influence, they started to get cold in their love for God. God is not concern with what you could do for Him but on how much you have grown knowing Him. How close are you with God right now? Has you expression of worship still the same as when you first have known Him as your Lord and Savior? Or has it become mechanical that when you participate in singing songs of praise your mind wanders somewhere and focus is no longer to God? For the apostle Paul, nothing could derail him in his purpose to serve and to love God. His determined purpose is “to know Christ and the power that raised him from the dead. I want to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). The same should be the goal of your Christian life. Remember, intimacy with God is not natural, automatic, and quick to generate. It takes discipline and consistency to pursue a right relationship with God. By having discipline, you are able to correct your mindset that starts to consider worldly pleasures. Through discipline, you learn how to be more obedient to God and this prevents you to give in from pressures that will pull you away from the love of Christ. Do not lose sight of where God wants you to be: in a daily intimate fellowship with Him.
Blessings.
