The church in Ephesus was a “good church” – it was an orderly and a formal church, but God had something against it, that it has left its first love toward the Lord (Rev. 2:4-5).
We can be good Christians, church-going believers, and we may read the Bible regularly and claim we are Christians before men – but we may not love the Lord with our first love.
The Lord as our Husband betrothed us to Himself when we were regenerated, and He wants us to love Him with our first love. He doesn’t want us to “do a lot of things for Him”, but that rather we would love Him, and then whatever we do it will be so pleasant to Him. Lord, rekindle our love for You!
Loving the Lord Jesus with our first love
When we love someone, we want to hear his voice and spend time with him. The Lord Jesus is our first love, our only love, and we love Him – we want to hear His words, we want to spend time with Him, and we want to tell Him that we love Him! I love this quote from brother Lee in, The Overcomers,
When we wake up in the morning, the first thing we should do is say, “O Lord Jesus. O Lord Jesus.” It is better to add, “I love You.” We should say, “O Lord Jesus, I love You. O Lord Jesus, I love You.” How intimate, how sweet, and how affectionate this is! (The Overcomers, pp. 30-31)
In our Christian life and in our church life everything we do must be governed by our love for the Lord. We may not say certain things, do certain things, or go to certain places because we love the Lord. We just love Him, and out of love for Him, we cannot do or say some things. We need to recover such a love, our first love for Him, which is our best love for Him.
Loving the Lord with our first love is no only loving Him with the love we loved Him the first time, but with our best love. Our love for Him needs to grow and become better every day, until we just give Him the first place in everything.
Consider the Lord as the first in everything
First of all, we need to realize that we don’t have love in ourselves – only God is love (1 John 4:16), and we need to love God and love others by God as our love. The husbands are charged to love their wives – by God as their love. Only one Person is love and can love – it is Christ Himself.
Christ needs to become our love, fill our love, and love God and others through us as love. We need to learn to open to Him and allow Him to fill us with Himself as love. We need to give Him the first place, the preeminence, in all things – He is the first. Christ must have the first place in us – He must have the preeminence (Col. 1:18).
How can we recover our first love for the Lord? It is firstly by giving Christ the first place in us, the preeminence in our being. We need to consider the Lord Jesus as the first in everything, making Him everything in our life. To leave the first love is actually to leave Christ, not taking Him as the first in everything.
When we give Christ the preeminence, our Christian life will be full of joy, and everything will be pleasant! We enjoy the Lord as grace as we love Him (see Eph. 6:24) and we are happy, full of joy, when we give Him the first place in everything! We need to overcome the loss of the first love by giving Christ the preeminence in us.
Having morning revival every day
Another simple yet very practical way for us to love the Lord with our first love is to live a day-by-day life of morning revival. We need to wake up a little earlier in the morning to have personal, private, intimate, and spiritual time with the Lord to satisfy Christ by being His young men like the dew from the womb of the dawn (see Psa. 110:3).
This will make us those who have the tongue of an instructed one, and we will know how to sustain the weary with a word (Isa. 50:4-5), and it will bring us into a closer fellowship with God, seeking God’s will and His pleasure for His gospel service (see Mark. 1:35).
Living a daily life of consecration
In the morning, we need to be revived and enjoy the Lord for His satisfaction, and every day we need to live a daily life of consecration – becoming today’s Nazarites. We need to be those who are separated unto God from anything common, unclean, and defiling, and we need to be saturated with God in all that He is in His riches.
This will make us those who bless the children of God by dispensing God in His Divine Trinity into them (see Num. 6:1-9, 22-27). Every day we need to give the Lord our fresh consecration, allowing Him more ground in our being, and being separated and saturated with Him!
Living a life of prayer and musing on His Word
To love the Lord with our first love is to live a life of prayer (see 1 Sam. 12:23; Matt. 6:6; Dan. 6:10; 1 Tim. 2:1; 2 Tim. 1:3). In 1 Thes. 5:17 we have the charge to “pray unceasingly” – when we pray unceasingly when we breathe the Lord in and converse with Him continually, we spontaneously love Him and give Him the first place.
To love the Lord with our best love is to love, treasure, and muse on the word of God. The Psalms are filled with the Psalmists desire and yearning to muse on God’s word, ponder on His precepts, read and listen to His word, etc (especially Psalm 119). When we muse on God’s word and we treasure it, we love the Lord more!
Lord Jesus, we love You! Recover our first love for You. We give You the first place, Lord, by faith – have the preeminence in us. Every morning, Lord, draw us to spend time with you and be the young men like the dew of the morning. Lord, we consecrate ourselves to You to love You and give You the first place. Lord Jesus, we just love You. Increase our love for You, dear Lord Jesus!
References and Further Reading
- Sharing inspired from, The Overcomers (ch. 2), and the outline in the message for this week, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Lead as Elders and Responsible Ones, week 1.
- Hymns on this topic:
# I give You the first place in all things by faith. / Let nothing take Your place in all my heart.
# Lord, I love You, / I desire You; / No pleasure, prospects on this earth compare to You.
# Recover my heart, / Rekindle my love for You. - Picture source: the first love (for the Lord).
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