Your First Love
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.Revelation 2:3- 5 (NIV)
First-time lovers are exciting sight to behold. From their look, passion, closeness, naughtiness, innocence and laughing-out-loud (lol) expression you can easily identify them. It is arguably quite difficult to forget the first person you dated or gave your love to or gave love to you although the kind of memories that people have about this is another thing entirely as it ranges from regret, hate, bitterness, cheat or even ‘good-old-days’ kind of memories.
Since, I don’t intend to cause a heart-break or hurting of partly healed sores, let me go straight to my thoughts about “YOUR FIRST LOVE”. But before I do, let me echo these three quotes of Oprah Winfrey into your ears,
"Turn your wounds into wisdom"
"We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are"
“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure”
Please let go of your past because you cannot unscramble eggs!- Faith Oyedepo
Let me quickly take you briefly through the journey of when you first accepted Christ. You were the first to go to church, you were in all the church units from choir to ushering. You assisted in the children and youth section and even had time to clean the church premises and all these you did with utmost excitement because of your newly found love. Your best song then was ‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound!
You were fresh and energetic, you read your bible for longer hours and you were proud to share your newly found truth with everyone who cared to listen, in fact when there was no one to listen, you had an imaginary pew at home were you preached to an imaginary crowd in your head.Like first lovers who share everything with each other even the meaningless things, you told God everything through prayers. You prayed so hard about every and anything to God from money to buy jeans to passing your common entrance or university matriculation exams. All these you did because you were simply in love.
But what has happened to you over the years? What has your seemingly ‘big need’ for job, partner, admission, or child turned you into? Now it doesn’t even freak you to read your bible, quiet time is no longer fashionable because you have a couple of job interviews here and there and you go from one seminar or meeting to the other. You’ve forgotten the lyrics of the hymn you once loved so much. Like someone who felt cheated in a relationship so badly that (s)he doesn’t even want to see the ex-lover, you have simply forsaken your first love for Christ.
That’s why He is sending these words of caution to you;
REMEMBER AND REPENT
In Christ’s warning to the Ephesian Church, He warned “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. Revelation 2: 5 (NIV)
REMEMBER
Before you can re-trace your steps from where you’ve fallen, you need to remember where you have fallen from. Not to fall to the same circumstances again, what were the good things you were doing in the kingdom before now that you have stopped? What service do you render to humanity that you don’t even know why you stopped. But let me say that the kind of memories here is not to cause hurt but not avoid going back to your vomit. Remember!
REPENT
Repentance means taking a U-turn, a detour or simply change of ways. After the appraisal of the height from which you have fallen and a determination to make a change, like the prodigal son, take a definite action to go back to your heavenly father whose arms are always wide open to receive you if you genuinely confess and forsake your sins. But true repentance is not just forsaking the sins but not going back to it again after being forgiven. He says you should repent by doing the things you did at first. Go back to your quiet time, go back to your church unit to serve, start attending mid-week service and rededicate yourself to God. Please don’t let God remove your lampstand- your source of light, your shinning, your fame, your job, your joy. Repent, He is a merciful and loving God!
Shall we pray;
Lord, help us to re-kindle the light of our first love for you. Amen.
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