“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent”  (Revelation 2:2-5). 

In Jesus’ letter to the Ephesian church of Revelation, He is speaking to a people who are doing all the right actions.  They refuse to follow evil.  They are enduring patiently.  They have not grown tired of standing up for God, but even so, Jesus tells them to repent and threatens to remove their lampstand.  Why make such a threat of separation?  They are not in love with Him anymore.  They are operating out of habit or duty, but they are not acting out of love.  This letter gives us an important insight into how much God wants our love.  He wants to relate to us as a husband, not an employer, yet too often we make choices in our Christian life out of worry about being fired by God or from fear of not measuring up to His requirements.  Instead, Jesus wants us to think of Him with love as we carry out our daily responsibilities.

I recently had a conversation with an enthusiastic young man who is in the honeymoon stage of Bible study.  He is loving every minute of His time with God and has a smile on his face anytime he talks about tithing or daily devotions or living a Christian life.  His enthusiasm is contagious, and I enjoy being around him as he soaks up more and more knowledge, yet I fear that the day will come when his enthusiasm will wane, and his love for God will dim.  All too often, the honeymoon stage of our spiritual life is followed by the indifference stage.  The unwary Christian does not realize what beauty he or she has lost until it is gone.  I experienced this loss of my first love personally, and it led to stupid decisions that took me farther and farther away from my Savior.  I was in an emotional desert away from God for thirty years, yet today I am more in love with Jesus than ever because I made a decision to recommit myself to Him seven years ago.  However, that desert experience should never have happened.  How can my young friend avoid my mistakes and keep his first love glowing with life?  I think there are a couple of important steps that He and the rest of us have to take in order to maintain a healthy relationship with Jesus.

Step 1:  We must daily choose to love Jesus and remind ourselves of how much He loves us.  Too often, we choose to obey only, but as Jesus warned the Ephesian church, that is not enough.  He wants our hearts.  On the other hand, the devil wants us to take our relationship with God for granted.  In fact, our wily enemy gets us to thinking about God in abstract terms that seem far away and hard to touch.  This was why Jesus became a baby in Bethlehem.  He wanted us to see Him up close and personal.  That is why I recommend that you focus on recommitting to your love for Jesus daily.  If we love Jesus, we will love the Father and Spirit also, but the Son is the One who we can relate to as humans.  Jesus told Nicodemus that we needed to look to Jesus to live in the same way the ancient Israelites had to look at Moses’ serpent on a pole for life.  Daily, we need to focus on who Jesus is and the mutual love that began when we accepted Him as our Savior.  We must remind ourselves to love Him.

Step 2:  We must spend time with God in prayer and Bible study.  This world is full of hurt and anger bombarding our senses constantly.  For most people, the only defense is to shut down part of their emotional receptors to survive.  God tells us that we have to keep our hearts wide open to love, so how do we handle the crippling negative emotions being thrown at us?  The only way is to keep our eyes focused on God.  This happens as we read His word and speak with Him.  Only time focused on Jesus and interacting with Him can keep us from closing off our emotional responses to the point where we no longer feel the strong burning love for Him in our deepest being.

Step 3:  Do not follow the example of most older Christians who have learned to compartmentalize God into certain parts of their lives while excluding Him from other areas.  Most people that I interact with who have been Christians for more than five years seem to have settled down into a routine relationship with God that has no burning passion and little enthusiasm.  They speak of God as a distant relative rather than their most intimate Friend.  They perform their round of duties in church with smiles but in the rest of their lives, Jesus’ name is rarely mentioned.  They are entertained by the social events and music of church, but somehow the life has gone out of their relationship with God.  Christianity has become a culture rather than a loving bond with Jesus.  I say “most” because I know some mature Christians who glow with their love for God.  However, the other perfunctory followers of Christ can dim a new Christian’s enthusiasm quickly.  Thus, we must always make a conscious decision to not let the lukewarm relationship of other Christians weaken the flame of our love.  We must choose to include Jesus in our whole life, not just church activities.  Do not compartmentalize so that you forget Jesus when you are not in church.  Think of Him at home, on the job, and when you are socializing. His name should be on your lips and in your thoughts.  This will not happen without you choosing to make it happen.  As the shine of newness wears off in your relationship with God, you must choose to keep Him in the middle of your whole life, and then keep speaking glowingly of Him even when those around you have lost their first love.  Ignore their blasé attitudes and choose to maintain the childlike simplicity of a loving relationship with Jesus.  Your enthusiasm for your Savior may be the spark that rekindles other Christians’ love.

Thus, the three steps for maintaining our first love, are to daily recommit to loving Jesus while reminding ourselves of how much He loves us.  We must spend quality time with our Savior through Bible study and prayer in order to keep our emotions from closing down.  We must not let other people’s lack of love for Jesus contaminate our own relationship.  We must lead out in voicing our joy and appreciation of God even when others’ stale relationships seem overpowering.

This second time around, I have been constantly aware of the need to protect my relationship with God.  I knew even in my first throes of joy as I recommitted my life to Jesus that the time would come when the emotions would start to try to sputter out.  When any sign of a diminishment of my love has appeared, I have been vigilant in stoking the fires again.  In this way, I have been able to keep my first love alive.  I will continue this watch care as long as I live because there is only one important focus in my life—my relationship with Jesus.  Everything else is secondary.

I worry about my young friend losing his first love, but I also worry about my older brothers and sisters in the church whose love for God has weakened.  I want them all to have a lifelong loving relationship with Jesus.  I pray that those who have lost their fervent love for God, will remember and return to the place where they last had it.  I pray that those who are like my young friend will never lose their enthusiastic love.  Most of all, I pray that I will always love Jesus with all my heart, soul, and body.