Overcome the Loss of the First Love for the Lord by Giving Him the First Place in All Things

As believers in Christ, we need to love the Lord Jesus with the first love, the best love; we need to overcome the loss of the first love and simply give the Lord Jesus the preeminence in all things, giving Him the first place in both big and small things. Amen!

When we love the Lord Jesus and are open to Him, we can freely eat the tree of life, and our living will express Him.

When we eat the tree of life, we express the tree of life. The more we eat Christ, the more we are constituted with Him, and we will simply express Him, for we are what we eat.

Our being becomes a new constitution in the process of God’s organic salvation as we eat the Lord as the tree of life and love Him with the first love.

The result is that we will have another kind of living; we will not live like the ones around us, in the vanity of our mind, but we will have a God-man living.

Our living will be an overflow of the life within us, for the tree of life grows in us and is expressed through us.

What we do will be unto the glory of God to consummate in the New Jerusalem, the city full of God’s glory.

How can we become the New Jerusalem, bearing the glory of God corporately? It is by eating Christ as the tree of life to be reconstituted with Him as life and be filled with Him until we express God in His glory.

Amen, the more we eat Christ, love Christ, and partake of Him as the tree of life, the more we express Him, and the more we become part of the reproduction of Christ, the enlargement of the processed and consummated Triune God.

Eating the tree of life is a very significant matter.

We need to take the way of enjoying Christ as the tree of life; without taking Him as the tree of life and eating Him day by day, we have no way to advance in our Christian life and church life. In the church life, we need to take the way of enjoying Christ as the tree of life.

May we set aside any old concepts and any religious thoughts, and just give ourselves to love the Lord with the first love and eat Him as the tree of life.

We should not think that there’s no way for us to slip or backslide to eating the tree of knowledge; we should not trust in ourselves and our previous knowledge and experience of Christ.

May we daily stretch forward to enjoy Christ, partake of Him, and enjoy Him, and may we take the way of enjoying Christ as the tree of life in all the details of our daily life.

May we not repeat the mistake of living merely by spiritual knowledge, good knowledge, and the standard of right and wrong.

May we simply apply the blood of Christ to the past and go forward with the Lord to enjoy Him as the tree of life, loving Him with the first love and doing the first works.

We need to Overcome the Loss of the First Love by Loving the Lord with Him as our Love

Paul laboured much in Ephesus; he spent there three years and exhorted, encouraged, taught, and admonished the saints there with many tears, even day and night.

Then, he later sent them an epistle in which “in love” is repeatedly mentioned; he wanted to remind them to love the Lord and love His interest, the church.

But in Rev. 2:4 we see that the Lord had one thing against the church in Ephesus: they lost their first love.

They were such a good church, having many works, but they lost their first love.

They were still the church in Ephesus, but they lost their first love for the Lord.

This failure became the main reason for the failure of the church throughout the ages.

We may consider that loving the Lord is not very important, for we think that having a solid knowledge of the Bible, working for the Lord, and attending the meetings of the church may be more important than loving the Lord.

But in God’s eyes, losing the first love for the Lord is the cause of all degradation.

We may have been saved for many years, we may know so much about the Lord and about the Bible, and we may be regularly attending the meetings of the church, but do we love the Lord Jesus with the first love? Oh, Lord Jesus!

Is the Lord Jesus intimate to us? Do we love to call on His name and tell Him that we love Him?

We need to daily practice turning our hearts to the Lord and tell Him, Lord Jesus, I love You.

When we wake up in the morning, we should not merely try to feel the Lord or maybe read a verse; we should first call on the name of the Lord.

We need to simply call, O, Lord Jesus! Lord Jesus! In this way, we open our being to Him.

Then, we can simply tell Him, Lord Jesus, I love You. I just love You, Lord Jesus.

It doesn’t matter whether we feel that we love the Lord or not; in the depths of our being, we love the Lord Jesus, but there are many veils, many layers of things that cover our heart, so we need to open up to Him.

The more we tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him – not only in our mind and heart but even audibly, with our voice, so that both we and the Lord hear it, the more we love the Lord.

How intimate and sweet it is for us to call on the name of the Lord and tell Him that we love Him! How affectionate it is to simply tell Him, Lord Jesus, I love You!

The more we open to the Lord in this way, the more He infuses Himself as love into us.

Love for the Lord is not in us – it is of Him, for He is the source of love; God is love, and He pours His love into our heart through the Holy Spirit who indwells us.

May we overcome the loss of the first love by just coming to the Lord again and again to love Him.

We may love the Lord, but we may not love Him with the first love.

The first love is actually the best love; the same word for “first” in Rev. 2:4 is translated as “best” robe in Luke 15:22.

Yes, we do love the Lord, but we need to love Him with the first love, the best love.

We all have to admit, however, that even though we love the Lord, we do not love Him with the first love, the best love.

We need to overcome the loss of the first love. We need to come to Him, for He is the source of love, and exercise our heart to love Him and receive Him as love.

We can love the Lord with Him as our love. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16); without God as our love, we cannot love Him nor can we love others.

Husbands are charged to love their wives; unless they take God as their love, they cannot love their wives.

Only one person is love – God Himself.

We need to be infused with God, filled with Him as love, and we will recover the loss of the first love by loving God with Him as our love. May we bring this before the Lord and tell Him,

Lord Jesus, we love You. We just love You. We want to overcome the loss of the first love by coming to You, again and again, to be infused with You as our love. We do not have love in ourselves, Lord; we come to You to be filled with You as love. We give ourselves to love You and to be filled with You as real love. Amen, Lord, rekindle our love for You. Cause us to love You with the first love, the best love. Save us from not loving You with the best love. Save us from just having works and labor for You without loving You with the first love. Dear Lord Jesus, make us those who overcome the loss of the first love day by day!

Overcoming the Loss of the First Love for the Lord by Giving Him the First Place in All Things

God is not only the best; He is also the first. He is the beginning (Gen. 1:1), and Christ is to have the first place in all things (Col. 1:18). He must have the preeminence in all things.

To overcome the loss of the first love for the Lord, we need to give the Lord the first place in all things.

When we love someone, we want to spend time with them, we consider them first, and we put them before us in all things; we may even put aside our needs to take care of their needs first, for we love them.

Similarly, when we love the Lord, we put ourselves aside and we give Him the first place.

To God, Christ is first; He has preeminence in all things in God’s economy.

But to us, Christ may not be first; we may still be first, and we may not check with Him in all things.

In all things of our daily life, both big and small things, we need to check with the Lord and open to Him.

We should not think that we need to give Him the first place in the big things, in the big decisions of our life, but in the small things, we can manage on our own.

We need to give Him the first place in the way we comb our hair and in the way we dress.

As we dress with a particular T-shirt or put on a shirt, we need to simply ask the Lord, How do You feel about this, Lord? Do You like this T-shirt? Is this shirt OK to You?

As we open to Him intimately concerning these things, we love Him and our love for Him is rekindled.

We overcome the loss of the first love for the Lord by giving Him the first place in all things.

As we put on our shoes, we can simply tell Him, Dear Lord, I love You; how do You feel about these shoes? I love You, Lord, and I don’t want to lose Your smile; keep me one spirit with You even in getting dressed and putting on my shoes.

We need to check with the Lord in all things, including the things we watch online or do on the internet.

We can simply tell Him that we love Him, and even though some things we do or watch waste our time, we can return to Him and ask Him to draw us to Himself. In the family life, we need to give Him the first place in everything.

The husbands need to give Christ preeminence in the way they talk to their wives.

We need to ask the Lord to forgive us for all the things we did and said in which we didn’t give Him the first place.

To overcome the loss of the first love for the Lord, we need to give Him preeminence in all things, both small and big things.

If we give the Lord the first place in all things, our Christian life will be different, for we will be happy with the Lord and in the Lord.

Throughout the day we will speak with Him, check with Him, love Him, and give Him the first place, and He fills us with Himself; the result is that we are joyful in and with the Lord.

As we are joyful in and with the Lord, everything is pleasant, and He as grace is our bountiful supply.

An indication that we don’t give the Lord the first place in all things is that everything is unpleasant; we need to return to Him, give Him the first place, and love Him with the best love.

The enjoyment of the Lord as grace is with those who love Him (Eph. 6:24).

May we overcome the loss of the first love and never leave the best love for the Lord.

The way of life is the way of loving the Lord Jesus; the more we love the Lord Jesus, the more we give Him the first place in all things.

Lord Jesus, we want to overcome the leaving of the first love by giving You preeminence in all things. Amen, Lord, we give You the first place in all things by faith. We open to You in both big and small things, and we want to check with You about everything. Save us from forgetting to check with You and open things up to You. May there be a sweet communication between us and You about all things. Amen, Lord, may we maintain an intimate talk with you throughout the day. We take You as our Lord, our Master, and the First One in everything. We put ourselves aside and take Your interest as our interest. We take Your desire as our desire. We love You, Lord, and we want to overcome the loss of the first love by giving You the first place in all things!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The Overcomers,” chs. 2-3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life (2022 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 3, entitled, Loving the Lord with the First Love, Enjoying the Lord as the Tree of Life, and Being the Golden Lampstand as the Testimony of Jesus for the Building up of the New Jerusalem as the Goal of God’s Eternal Economy.
  Hymns on this topic:
  – I love my Lord, but with no love of mine, / For I have none to give; / I love Thee, Lord, but all the love is Thine, / For by Thy love I live. / I am as nothing, and rejoice to be / Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in Thee. (Hymns #546)
  – To Ephesus, the word is clear: / “To your first love you’re not so near; / You’ve left to work so far away; / Repent, return to Him today.” / Thus, we must all turn back to Him, / Leave other loves, for these are sin. / Oh, let us hearken to His call— / If we miss this, we’ve missed it all! (Hymns #1274)
  – Overcomers Christ will take, / Those who all for Him forsake, / Those who of first love partake— / Win in time! / All the deadness overcome, / With the living Christ be one, / Toward the goal now swiftly run— / Win in time! (Hymns #1304)