Did you ever bring home your school report thinking you would get praise? You looked at your parents face to see whether a smile would form. Instead there comes a rather quizzical look. Remarkably they pick out the one subject, the one teacher’s comment which is just slightly askew. It seems, as if by some stroke of perversity, that they choose to home in on this and want to know just how we came to slip up.
There was one time when a New Testament church might just have felt the same way. What follows is part of a letter that God, through the aged apostle John, writes to them:
“I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, 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. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” Revelation 2:2-4
I do not mean to liken God to an overbearing or perfectionistic parent, for God here gives us a most vital lesson which we all too easily loose sight of. God is not willing for anything or anyone to take a higher place in our affections than him. For God to take second place or lower is not right, it shows that idolatry is at work and in residence in our hearts.
He tells the church to remember the height from which they have fallen and to repent. Perhaps some of us are in the same boat, if so, let’s lose no time, let’s repent and rejuvenate our first love.
