My Love For Jesus

On this final day of the week, the closing of a time of deep, heart-truths, we come a bit puzzled, yet most grateful for all that we are hearing and seeing. In our hearts and minds, we have loved Jesus and no other. We have been faithful to Him and have stayed with Him through thick and thin. Yet we are being told that we have forsaken our first Love, who is Jesus.

Indeed, I can hear you thinking that you still love Jesus and love Him dearly at that. I can hear you saying that you do not follow any other Lord and Master and have no desire to do so, for Jesus satisfies you fully. Yes, all this may be true, but you have lost something of the love you demonstrated in the beginning.

This truth is made very bold and clear in this example, which a preacher of the Gospel once shared with His congregation. He was speaking about how we separate ourselves from God without, at times, even knowing it. He spoke of a happily married couple, married for several years. One day, the wife said these words to her husband, as they went leisurely driving out in the beautiful, open countryside. She gently told her husband that they were growing apart and that he had grown away from her.

She reminisced about the days when they were first married and how he was always close to her in the vehicle, with his hands around her, so that anyone seeing them, saw one person, not two, as it were. She kept on saying how distant he had become and she was feeling the hurt and pain. The preacher then said that the husband, with his eyes still on the road, while manning the steering wheel, simply said words to this effect. My dear, when we were first married many years ago, I was the driver of this very vehicle, and now, many years on, I am still the driver of the same vehicle – No change on my part!  The position of the steering wheel then, is still the same position now, so that I have been sitting in the same position now, as then – No change on my part!  The question then is, who changed?  

I have used this to show that Jesus our Shepherd, our Bridegroom, truly loves His Church and is unchanged and unmoved in His desire, His will and His work that he might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.  Ephesians 5: 27 NKJ. His love for us, is untouched and unchanged, for He continues to love us with an ever sweet, fresh, vibrant and wooing love. But He has noted that we have changed. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Revelation 2: 4b – 5a.

You and I, the Church, have lost the love for our Lord that we first had. Jesus does not delight in having a relationship with us, where we are together in partnership, working in tandem, producing good fruit in the Name of Jesus, hating the very things He hates, examining and exposing imposters, having persistence, perseverance and patience in His work, and even enduring hardships for His Name’s sake, yet we have fallen.

Our Loving Head has brought us to this realisation of our fallen state, for one reason and one reason only. His love does not want us to be cold, old and distanced from His ever sweet, ever fresh, ever giving, and ever doing love for us. Even now, He is working in us by showing us the truth about ourselves and telling us what we ought to do. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

What are we to do and how are we to do it?

As we approach a most precious and spiritual time, next week, in God’s will and with His help we shall be lifted back to our first love and the things we did at first.