The apostle John wrote to the church of Ephesus to remind them of their first love experiences with God. He spoke these painful words to them, “…you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen…” (Rev. 2:4-5).

Ouch. Those words must have stung when the believers at Ephesus read them. Left. Fallen. No fault on God’s part obviously. The Ephesian believers had moved away from the place of first love.

How did it happen?

They were still involved in working for God. “I know your works, your labor…”

Their lives still bore evidence of the fruit of His Spirit. “I know you patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and found them liars, and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My names’ sake and have not become weary.”  Patience. Discernment. Steadfastness.

But John’s indictment (and God’s indictment) rips through all the works and good stuff to the area that God’s Spirit was lasering in on. “Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

What did your first love experiences with God look like? I remember mine.

Hours and days and weeks and months of sensing God’s presence, being full of love for Him and others, the ease of worship and fasting and witnessing.

I am not speaking of an experience that is only emotional. Most of us have had those. Perhaps we heard a message preached and we recommitted to pursing God’s heart. Maybe we were motivated by guilt. Although God does indeed use our emotions and stirs us in our emotions, as the old saying goes, “The proof is in the pudding.”

What were the lasting results of your experience(s)?  A life changed is the proof that we have encountered God.

A verse that has resonated in my heart as of late is Jesus reminding those who appeared religious that they should bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.

True love bears fruit.

Where are you today spiritually? Has there ever been a time when your life bore more fruit? Ever been a time when the fires of first love burned brighter than today?

How do we engage God fully in first love? John told the Ephesians that they should “Remember where you’ve fallen from; repent and do the first works…” (Rev. 2:5).

Remember… we need to remember what it was like to experience the first love experiences with God. Although painful, we must remember where we’ve fallen from. Remembering stokes the fires of desire.

Repent… let go of all the things that have separated you and God. Turn from them.

Return…to the first works. The works that you did for God from a heart filled with love. Not works of obligation but works of love. Ah, they are so different.  One is dry and lifeless. The other life-giving.

So as you remember, can you imagine what your life would look like today if you were madly in love…with God? What would your life look like in revival? What would your marriage look like in revival? What would your children’s lives look like if they were pursuing God wholly? What would your friendships look like if God’s love and presence invaded your conversations? What would your life look like if your heart were wholly abandoned to God?

Can you imagine it? Will you dare to let your heart dream of it?

Remember, repent, return. Your first love awaits.

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The unasked question that haunted this woman is the same one that every human asks, “Who will love me for me?”  The words of J.J. Heller expresses this longing in all our hearts:

We are made for love, both God’s love and the love of others; yet, we all at times, find ourselves feeling empty, feeling unloved.

There is no more powerful force than unconditional love. It has the power to transform the heart of the most hardened criminal and the hardest part of my heart and your heart for none of us are that different from each other. Our hearts all need healing, and we all long for the unconditional love of another.

If we all need this kind of love so desperately, why don’t we just freely give it to one another? It would seem such an easy answer to the problems of this world. Let’s just love. Love well. Love deeply. Love unconditionally.

Yet we are all caught in our own stories, seeking to be filled ourselves, too busy, too self-absorbed or too wounded or too defensive or a myriad of other things which keep us stuck, unable to move beyond our own insecurities and needs to offer others what they need and what we so desperately long for ourselves.

Meaningful relationships require that we move into the more true places of each other’s hearts. When we experience being vulnerable with another person or a small group of people and are rewarded by love and acceptance, our hearts dance with joy. We know, “I was made for this kind of love.” Yet it’s so much work, relationally, to keep the walls down from around our hearts.

We’ve all been hurt. We are born into a fallen-state of being and can’t make it through this life without experiencing pain and some measure of being failed by those we love. Conversely, we all fail others. We all fail to love well, at times.

God’s gift of love came to us through Christ who both loved and is now loving us well. He unconditionally loves us.

What does this unconditional love mean?

Romans 5:8 offers this glimpse into unconditional love. “But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

When we had done nothing for God, when we were still a sinner and had not opened our hearts to receive God’s love, God gave Christ for us.

Isn’t that our hearts cry, “Who will love me for me, not what I’ve done or what I will become?”

This kind of love transforms us. A love that gives all in order to know us, free us, heal us, and fill us.

Our hearts all cry, “Who will love me for me?” yet we are often unwilling to allow others to really know who we are. Many times, we are unwilling to take the risk to share the deepest parts of our hearts with another. Maybe we tried that before and got our hearts broken. We learned our lesson well and responded by building a fortress around our hearts to protect ourselves. While that fortress may keep us from being hurt, it also isolates us from being loved and from truly loving others.

My hope and my prayer today is that we all will experience deeper levels of unconditional love in our relationships, that we will choose to love well in spite of the risk of being hurt, and that most of all, we will choose the unconditional love of Christ which has the power to change and heal us.

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I could paint with a broad stroke and speak of His love for  all humanity. I could talk about the affection of God as it relates to the Church. Those aspects of God’s love form an important framework, but what we all long to know – or perhaps to know increasingly -is the love of God for each of us individually.

And lest you think that is selfish, let me assure you that that is precisely what God wants for you! God has moved from the beginning of time to insure that any who wanted, could have a very personal relationship with Him and receive the affections of His heart.

As a child, when I first committed my life to God through Christ, I was looking to escape judgment. I came to the foot of the cross in fear. I was motivated more by the fear of God than the love of God. Yet the longer I walk with God, the more my understanding of Him becomes relational. The more I have come to know Him, the more I understand that our relationship is anchored in love and the less I am motivated in immature ways by my fear of God.

As the disciples of Jesus grew in their understanding of God, Jesus challenged their thinking. “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing; but I call you friends…” John 15:15 Jesus gave us picture of a friendship that flows from love in John 15:13. “Greater love has no one than this, than one lay down his life for his friends.” On the cross, Jesus became a literal offering for us, laying down his life so that we could be personally related to God. He took care of everything that could separate us from God. This sacrificial unconditional giving is at the heart of understanding the love of God. Truly, no one loves us like God loves us.

The Love of God Motive

Although fear can bring us to God, God wants us to move so far beyond that! He passionately desires that we know His love.

If I am afraid of you, I won’t feel safe in your presence. I won’t be able to share my heart with you freely. It is the same with God. Yes, we are to reverence Him but when our obedience and worship flow from a place of love instead of a place of fear, we are free to truly offer all we are to God. The safety we find in this unconditional love of God transforms our hearts, purifies our motives of service.

1 John 4: 17-19 tells us that the love of God will bring us to completion, maturity, and we will be able to be confident in the day of judgment. There is NO fear in love; but perfect, mature love casts out fear. Fear involves torment and judgment. Understanding God’s love will remove fear from our hearts as we are made mature in His love. The reason we love Him is because He loved us first! His unending passionate and patient compassion for us is amazing.

Relating from the Love of God

I’ve heard it said that fear and love are opposites and that they are the two primary emotions from which all other emotions flow. If we can operate from that thought for a moment and evaluate your relationship with God in terms of how much you relate to God from a basis of love or how much you relate to God through fear, where would you find yourself on such a continuum?

LOVE——————————————————————- FEAR

Of course, our relationships aren’t linear but using this illustration as a point of examination, can you ask yourself the following?

Do I understand my relationship with God more from a view of His love or my fear of Him?
Do I approach God intimately or through a system of rules?
Do I know more of God’s love than I did a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago?
Do I feel secure in God’s love for me or am I afraid He is just waiting to judge me?

I think of the words from an old hymn, The Love of God, that Lehman wrote in 1917:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

The love of God! It frees us from fear and leads us into deeper levels of intimacy with God. May we all live experientially in the love of God today and in all the days to come.

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