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Returning to Your First Love
By Watchman | September 23, 2008
“Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Jeremiah 3:22
“Nevertheless I have something against you, because you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you are fallen, and repent…” Revelation 2:4,5
Are you a backslidden Christian? Have you lost that first love of Jesus that came naturally to you when you first accepted Him as your Lord? Do you still go to church, but it has become more of a social obligation than a chance to worship the God of all creation? Do you now turn a blind eye to the sin in your life and to the sin in the world around you? If so, you’re not alone. We live in a society in which true love and worship of our Saviour is a solecism. Testifying that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life is mocked as closed-mindedness and offensive to the feelings of unbelievers. We believe that God should play no role in our choice of friends, in our choice of government officials, even in our choice of a spouse. Yet God is the God of our entire existance. He remains the same God–yesterday, today and forever. He is the same God that gave Moses the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai; the same God that originally chose the ancient Hebrew people to be His wife and then gave them a bill of divorcement because of their sinful disregard of His statutes but promised to take them back in the latter days; the same God that grafted in the Gentiles (i.e: all the rest of us who believe in Him) to His family through the blood atonement of His Son, the Messiah. And He is the same God Who is calling you back to His side.
Repentance is not just for the unbeliever. No matter how long we’ve been saved, no matter what wonderful deeds we try to do in His name, we still are sinners living in a fallen world. There is not a one of us that doesn’t need to go to God on a regular basis to ask His forgiveness and to receive His grace. Scripture tells us that the Blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin–the original Greek words signified an on-going, continual process. What a wonderful gift from the God who loves us! He loves us so much that no matter how many times we stray or how far off the paths of righteousness we go, He always calls us back to Him.
“Come back to me, my people!” The Voice of God is calling to His church, even now. “Come back to Me, you who have forsaken Me in order to live your lives for the approval of this Godless world! Come back to Me, you who have been seduced by sin and the false teachers of these evil days! How I long to hold you in My sheltering arms and to comfort you in your distress! Come back to me, and I will receive and redeem you!”
Children of God, if you have strayed from the path you began on when you first entered God’s kingdom, it is time NOW to return to your first love. He is waiting with open arms to receive you back into His divine presence. Time is growing short; the enemy prowls like a ravening lion “seeking whom he may devour.” The birth-pangs of judgment on the earth are beginning, and times will be hard for all. Remember that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. But no matter what is in store for the world in the near future–the collapse of the world system as we know it, the rise of antichrist or the persecution of the righteous–we need not fear, because we love the Lord.
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
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