We may grow to be wise, do good deeds, and persevere through life’s hardships, but if we lose our first love, it can all be for naught.
“I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Revelation 2:2-4 NIV
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”
Let us never forget our first love in Jesus Christ. For He loved us first.
“We love because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19 NIV
And to love Him means we should love one another.
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
1 John 4:11 NIV
To have God as our first love is to sacrifice to him our time, our money, our feelings, our pride, our glory, and our wants by doing unto others what we hope to have done to us. To love God is to love others through sacrifice.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15:13 NIV
I’ll admit, this can be the hardest work for us to do in life, especially when we have been wronged or unjustly treated. God wants us to settle our differences, forgive one another, and get along. Like a father whose children are constantly bickering, He seeks to have us reconciled to one another and to Him.
“And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”
1 John 4:21 NIV
So let’s not neglect our first love, but let’s seek Him while He can still be found and love Him through obedience to His commands, while displaying His love for Him and one another through our actions.
“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
1 John 3:18 NIV
There are so many opportunities available to us to serve Him by serving others and securing our place at the table by our works in faith. When we start to look, act, and be like Jesus, others will smell His aroma from us. To love Him is to let His light shine through us to others.
The Lord gave us a heart able to love; He surely loved us first.