But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

Most of what we have talked about in our study of leaving our first love is how to identify that we already have left it. As Jesus’ words to the Ephesian church points out, they were unaware that there was even a problem. From their perspective, things were going great. Jesus commends them for several things before he drops the bomb: “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

I’ve looked through various lists of “signs” that we have left our first love and found that they usually fall into one of seven categories. I’ve tried to touch on those during this study:

Time:
Somehow time with Jesus is compromise either by ministry, other busy-ness/distractions.

Performance:
Christianity has become more of a checklist than a relationship with Jesus.

Appetite:
We lack a hunger for more of Jesus or are trying to fill that hunger with the wrong things.

Priorities:
The ‘deceitfulness’ of entertainment, popularity, wealth and stuff take first place (Mk 4:19).

Bitterness:
Attitudes like resentment, self-pity, pride and cynicism consume our focus and our joy.

Love issues:
Critical/harsh to others whose beliefs are different or who are sinning.

Un-dealt-with sin:
Habits, justifying “little” sins, more concern for other people’s sins than our own.

I think we understand the symptoms of leaving our first love. I want to turn the corner and look more directly at the cure. Because just fixing the symptoms mentioned above won’t return us to our first love. Returning to our first love, however, will fix the symptoms.

We’ll look at that next time.