Treasured friend,
This evening as I was enjoying the gift of 30 minutes to relax quietly, I turned on a CD containing medleys of hymns and gospel songs. And I was transported to the church where I grew up and to the one I attended during college and grad school. Those were good days--marked by a sweet, sincere faith. Days of putting our hearts into our faith journeys. Both churches leaned toward the holiness traditions, and they were peopled by caring, compassionate believers who took seriously the idea of the family of faith.
I grew up with the hymnal beside the Bible in the pew pockets. And I was enriched by both--because both spoke of the true gospel--and how it works in real life every day.
I learned to harmonize by reading along in the hymnal--and became a strong, confident (and hopefully in-tune) alto in the process. My mind was sharp in those days (that sharpness may just be wasted on the young!)--sharp and absorbant, to mix my metaphors. Because in the repetition of the hymns Sunday after Sunday (certain of the elder folks asked to sing the same songs week after week--as my pre-teen eyes rolled) I not only internalized the truths, but the lyrics--all 4 or 5 verses of them.
My grandfather, in addition to being the preacher/pastor, also was the song leader. You could mark the calendar by the songs he chose. If it was Christmas it was "One Day" -- "One day when heaven was filled with His praises ... Jesus came down to be born of a virgin/lived among men my example to be ..." If it was Easter, it had to be "He Lives," and "Up From the Grave He Arose!" To this day, it isn't truly Easter until I've heard those two songs--even if Mom and I have to play them on organ and violin in our own living room. Will we be playing them next week? You bet!
I didn't realize it at the time, but those hymns along with gospel song lyrics popular in the 1970s, got under my skin--and pierced straight into my heart. And they echoed back to me in the most unlikely moments. Like one Sunday morning I recall at East Side Church of God in Anderson, IN, where I worshipped during college. Our pastor had given a passionate sermon. And, as always, the altars were open to anyone after he was finished. The instruments played quietly, while believers and seekers alike (although I don't think we called them seekers back then) were welcome to pray. There was no altar call or invitation, yet folks left their seats and knelt there for private moments with the Lord. The pastors would come alongside each one, pray for a moment, then move on.
Anyway, this particular Sunday, a buzz swept through the choir loft as the senior pastor whispered something to the choir director. When it made its way to the alto section, I got in on the act. A sinner had made the decision to follow Christ--right there at the altar on that ordinary Sunday morning. And the pastor wanted to celebrate by singing "A New Name in Glory." But no one knew the words.
Who knew all those years of brother or sister so-and-so calling that song number would come in handy? I tapped into my brain's computer and pulled out the words (first verse and chorus thank-you-very-much!). I started scribbling them on the back of an offering envelope--barely finishing as the organist struck up the intro. "I was once a sinner but I came, pardon to receive from my Lord ... There's a new name written down in glory/and it's mine! Oh, yes, it's mine!"
There was a party that morning at East Side's altar, accompanied by a joyfully sung rendition of C. Austin Miles' lyric that might even give the angels a run for their money. I can't remember ever finding that song as meaningful as that morning--because it was so timely--so relevant--so real. Someone I knew, who shopped in the same grocery and probably washed his clothes at the same Laundromat--was born again to new life, eternal life in Christ--that day, before my eyes.
It was one of the songs that played on my CD collection tonight. And it transported me back. To the sweetness of a sinner's name being written in glory while the angels (and the saints) sang joyfully to celebrate a soul coming home. And it put my tough day into a more productive perspective. So little of what I do--and what troubles me--will make it into eternity; precious little of the grousing I do ("No, Dad, you're diabetic so you can't have a chocolate cherry!" "No crackers with your soup, or I'll have to give you another insulin shot!" "Don't jerk your hand away when I'm trying to get a prick for your blood test!") has any significance, relatively speaking, when put alongside a sinner asking Jesus Christ to take her sins away through His shed blood on Calvary.
I'm glad Jesus gives us this glimpse into eternity, something to cling to in the everyday. Because He does open paradise for sinners (our pastor preached on that yesterday morning, in the second of Christ's statements from the cross, when Jesus said to the thief hanging at His side: "Truly, today you'll be with me in paradise" Luke 23:43). And the angels do rejoice when a lost sinner receives Christ's gift of salvation (Luke 15:10: "I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" NIV).
By remembering this fact that's more real and more substantial than anything I can touch or do on this earth, I am reenergized and refocused to take on another day.
I hope and pray you are, as well.
By the way ... in case you'd like to hear this song played or read its lyric, I found a site online that plays a simple arrangement of it and includes all the lyrics--and they're not even scribbled on the back of an offering envelope!: http://my.homewithgod.com/heavenlymidis2/newname.html
Enjoy!
Blessings and prayers,
Julie
© 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
Author Julie-Allyson Ieron offers devotional thoughts and Bible-based encouragement to overwhelmed caregivers of aging parents and other relatives. Julie is the author of more than two dozen books, including The Overwhelmed Woman's Guide to ... Caring for Aging Parents. (www.womencareforagingparents.com)
Monday, April 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Rattling Pans
Treasured friend,
A while back I sat through a friend’s wedding – another friend’s wedding. The second in as many weeks. This is not an easy feat for an over-40 solo woman whose marital status has outlived the rise and fall of four church single adult groups (due to the pairing up of all the singles into couples).
As I say, such was my circumstance that weekend. Sitting in the third row watching with tears of joy (and a not little melancholy) as another single friend gave herself away to her new mate. Reading the program, I was not surprised that she had chosen to have the infamous 1 Corinthians 13 read during her ceremony. Why does every bride choose that Scripture? I asked myself. I suppose it’s safer than the 1 Timothy section on submission; but still …
I put my brain on cruise control as the words rolled off the reader’s tongue. “Love is patient. Love is kind. …” Yada, yada, yada. Heard it before. Memorized it. Nothing new there. I may have even stifled a yawn.
Six days later I found myself in my music room, scrubbing away at my new cello (I was teaching myself to play--a task I've more recently classified as hopeless!) accompanied by my patient mother on the electric keyboard. We’d found that playing old favorites out of the hymnal (only those in appropriate keys) was about all the challenge I could handle on that instrument, so we were playing hymn 664, “Sweeter as the Years Go By.”
My scrubbing arm grew tired, so I dropped out as mom continued on to another song, on another page. Since my arm was too tired to lift itself and turn the page I allowed my eye to traverse 665. Six sixty-five, it turned out, was a reading. The title caught my eye and grabbed my attention. “The Character of a Christian.” Hmm. I’ve written a few things about character—namely a book titled Staying True in a World of Lies.
As I wrote that book several years ago and revised it last year, I searched the Scriptures for appropriate passages that addressed the subject of character or integrity. And I found many – mostly in the wise old book of Proverbs. So, as I considered 665, I found myself more than a little anxious to see what Scripture the editors had chosen to fit that intriguing title.
Just then I saw the reference at the bottom of the page. It read simply, “From 1 Corinthians 13.” Ugh. Lemme alone. Go away. Don’t they know the Apostle Paul most certainly penned those words just to be read at wedding ceremonies in the 21st century? What does love have to do with character?
But then, I read the list. It was written in a different translation than any I’d encountered before – and it was most certainly abridged – but it contained all the key ingredients of the chapter. Perhaps it was the late hour. Perhaps the newness of a different translation. Whatever it was, I suddenly realized that alongside our integrity, our truth, our unity of thought, word and deed that I wrote about in Staying True, there is another principle that is just as crucial in all our interactions with the secular world – whether at work, in the marketplace of ideas, in our churches, or (yes) in our homes and while we're busy about our caregiving duties.
And that principle is one that cannot fail without devastating consequences. Without it I am, according to the hymnal’s editors, a “rattling pan.”
That principle is love. Not the mushy stuff of wedding day kisses and for-the-camera smiles. But love. Like God’s love. Pure, unselfish, patient, and holy.
Here, in The Message paraphrase, is a repackaging of the key principles found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-7:
In those moments, as mom’s melodious notes played on, I knew--I don't want to be a rusty gate or a rattling pan--especially not in God's eyes and ears. So, my continuing lesson was to be love. Not necessarily a marriage kind of love (although I certainly wouldn’t rule that out), but more likely a lovingness that pervades everything else I do and say – and everything I think.
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you have love one for another” (John 13:35). This loving action – or interaction – with each other inside the faith, as well as those not yet in the faith – is the mark of a true believer. But it isn't easy and certainly doesn't come naturally--not by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm taking this new-old challenge to heart this week--and I pray in it you'll hear God's voice prompting you, as well. May my life, no matter how frustrating, challenging, angering, or debilitating--be best summed up in the word love.
Blessings and prayers,
Julie
© 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
A while back I sat through a friend’s wedding – another friend’s wedding. The second in as many weeks. This is not an easy feat for an over-40 solo woman whose marital status has outlived the rise and fall of four church single adult groups (due to the pairing up of all the singles into couples).
As I say, such was my circumstance that weekend. Sitting in the third row watching with tears of joy (and a not little melancholy) as another single friend gave herself away to her new mate. Reading the program, I was not surprised that she had chosen to have the infamous 1 Corinthians 13 read during her ceremony. Why does every bride choose that Scripture? I asked myself. I suppose it’s safer than the 1 Timothy section on submission; but still …
I put my brain on cruise control as the words rolled off the reader’s tongue. “Love is patient. Love is kind. …” Yada, yada, yada. Heard it before. Memorized it. Nothing new there. I may have even stifled a yawn.
Six days later I found myself in my music room, scrubbing away at my new cello (I was teaching myself to play--a task I've more recently classified as hopeless!) accompanied by my patient mother on the electric keyboard. We’d found that playing old favorites out of the hymnal (only those in appropriate keys) was about all the challenge I could handle on that instrument, so we were playing hymn 664, “Sweeter as the Years Go By.”
My scrubbing arm grew tired, so I dropped out as mom continued on to another song, on another page. Since my arm was too tired to lift itself and turn the page I allowed my eye to traverse 665. Six sixty-five, it turned out, was a reading. The title caught my eye and grabbed my attention. “The Character of a Christian.” Hmm. I’ve written a few things about character—namely a book titled Staying True in a World of Lies.
As I wrote that book several years ago and revised it last year, I searched the Scriptures for appropriate passages that addressed the subject of character or integrity. And I found many – mostly in the wise old book of Proverbs. So, as I considered 665, I found myself more than a little anxious to see what Scripture the editors had chosen to fit that intriguing title.
Just then I saw the reference at the bottom of the page. It read simply, “From 1 Corinthians 13.” Ugh. Lemme alone. Go away. Don’t they know the Apostle Paul most certainly penned those words just to be read at wedding ceremonies in the 21st century? What does love have to do with character?
But then, I read the list. It was written in a different translation than any I’d encountered before – and it was most certainly abridged – but it contained all the key ingredients of the chapter. Perhaps it was the late hour. Perhaps the newness of a different translation. Whatever it was, I suddenly realized that alongside our integrity, our truth, our unity of thought, word and deed that I wrote about in Staying True, there is another principle that is just as crucial in all our interactions with the secular world – whether at work, in the marketplace of ideas, in our churches, or (yes) in our homes and while we're busy about our caregiving duties.
And that principle is one that cannot fail without devastating consequences. Without it I am, according to the hymnal’s editors, a “rattling pan.”
That principle is love. Not the mushy stuff of wedding day kisses and for-the-camera smiles. But love. Like God’s love. Pure, unselfish, patient, and holy.
Here, in The Message paraphrase, is a repackaging of the key principles found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-7:
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
In those moments, as mom’s melodious notes played on, I knew--I don't want to be a rusty gate or a rattling pan--especially not in God's eyes and ears. So, my continuing lesson was to be love. Not necessarily a marriage kind of love (although I certainly wouldn’t rule that out), but more likely a lovingness that pervades everything else I do and say – and everything I think.
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you have love one for another” (John 13:35). This loving action – or interaction – with each other inside the faith, as well as those not yet in the faith – is the mark of a true believer. But it isn't easy and certainly doesn't come naturally--not by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm taking this new-old challenge to heart this week--and I pray in it you'll hear God's voice prompting you, as well. May my life, no matter how frustrating, challenging, angering, or debilitating--be best summed up in the word love.
Blessings and prayers,
Julie
© 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
Monday, March 21, 2011
You're Famous! Okay, not famous, but notable ...
Okay -- this is royally cool! Anderson University alumni magazine, Signatures, did a cover feature on blogging -- and featured this devotional blog and its author (namely, me!). Here's a link, you might enjoy following http://www.anderson.edu/signatures/winter11/article.html. I've already begun hearing from old college friends (who're you callin' old?) about it.
Blessings and prayers, Julie © 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
Blessings and prayers, Julie © 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
Monday, March 7, 2011
Hold Fast in Love
Treasured Friend,
I’ve been AWOL for a couple of weeks – perhaps you noticed (I hope you noticed!). But it was for a good cause. If you’ve read my caregiving book or even these devotional posts for very long, you know I preach, “Caregiver care for yourself.” I preach it, but I seldom apply its wisdom to my life. This time, I did—sent along by my wonderful parents, who insisted on it. They saw how stressed I had been, even if I was trying to ignore it.
My colleague and friend Lin Johnson offered to share her timeshare condo on Kauai. I wasn’t going to accept. Dad hadn’t been doing well, but then during one of his hospitalizations, he grabbed my arm, pulled me down to bed-level, and said, “You’re going to Hawaii. You deserve it. We’re sending you!” Month by month, Dad improved, and by the time the trip came around, he was doing well and it was safe for me to go.
It was a refreshing time in oh so many ways. For one, since it was such an extreme change of scenery, I came back, shall we say, far more patient, far less on-edge. That alone made it worthwhile.
Lin and I have traveled together before – and while we spend a good deal of time sightseeing together, back at the condo we take to neutral corners and read quietly. In my corner (looking out over our beach in the town of Lihue--I've included a link if you want to see a few pictures!), I had my netbook computer loaded with the WORDsearch program. A good chunk of my time, then, I spent in prayer and fellowship with the Lord. It’s hard not to feel Him near in the midst of all that created beauty—the Creator’s handiwork at perhaps His most creative and vibrant.
I felt His prompting to study Psalm 91. I don’t do deep studies of the Psalms often. Perhaps it’s because their poems so often are a believer’s conversation toward God, rather than God’s conversation toward us. I gravitate toward those places in Scripture where God speaks. “I know the plans I have for you,” He tells Jeremiah. “I will never leave you,” the writer of Hebrews quotes. I long to hear His voice—and I hear it best when He’s quoted. That’s just the way I am.
But this time, I dug into Psalm 91, as I said. I was humming along, reading as if I knew what was coming next. Then I stopped short on verse 14, which is placed in quotes (God is speaking. Listen up, Jul.) “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name” (ESV). And somehow, I didn’t feel the need to focus on the deliverance or protection part—but I felt a pained prick on that first phrase. How does one hold fast to God in love? I spent my devotional time over the next eleven days examining that phrase.
My first hopscotch led me to Revelation 2:4, where Jesus is speaking to the church in Ephesus. He’s telling them that they’ve done everything right. They’ve proved the spirits of false teachers, hated what He hates. They’re in good stead. Except for one thing. And it’s the biggie. They’ve failed at the loving God thing. “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” Or, as the older translations put it, left your first love.
What does that look like? What does it mean? My commentaries weren’t too particular in explaining it, as if we all know what leaving our first love looks like. But obviously the Ephesian believers weren’t aware of it, so it couldn’t be that obvious.
I checked my Greek and Hebrew resources and found that in the Psalm, the verb used meant being attached to and delighting in. It’s a binding love. It’s the way God attached Himself to His people; and it’s the way He attaches us back to Him.
In the Greek I consulted Strong’s and a few other dictionaries and found that the term Jesus used in Revelation talked about not just our growing a little cool in our feelings toward Him. Rather it means we’ve sent Him away, omitted Him and replaced Him with something else. What could that be? Did we replace Him with duty? Resentment? Apathy? Disappointment? Selfishness? Wrong motives? Could be any number of those things.
And it became painfully personal for me at this point. Because I realized the Spirit of Christ was nailing what was wrong with me. It wasn’t just exhaustion from the caregiving and my own personal health issues. It was that I’d removed Him from first place of love in my heart and replaced Him with the duties of caregiving. Worse yet, I’d replaced loving Him with resentment of all the things I was giving up to serve Him. My motives were wrong. Selfishness was taking root. And I was in danger of being removed from His good graces. It obviously happened to the once-thriving church in Ephesus. There’s now on that formerly-thriving site in modern-day Turkey a series of ruins visited by tourists. Christianity is almost non-existent in that region. It’s downright frightening.
So if the lack of first love is that ugly picture, who will paint for us the beautiful picture of placing Christ in that first-love place in our lives—and show us the path to get there? My next stop was probably your obvious first choice, too—1 Corinthians 13. Love always trusts, always believes, always endures. It relinquishes rights and controls to the beloved. It bears burdens without grudges, keeps itself from grumbling. It is full of hope.
Beautiful, just like the Lihue sunrise. But how do I get there? I’m patiently enduring, trying to keep from growing weary. Trying, but, by and large failing.
The first step Jesus offers in Revelation 2:5, and it echoes a phrase in Jeremiah 2:2. It’s all about remembering. Remember how it was when we were placing love for Christ above all else. God remembers, as He told Jeremiah: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown” (ESV). So, the prescription has to do with remembering my former devotion, with remembering how safe it was to follow Him without fear into the unknown.
Next, Christ commands: repent. That’s all about agreeing with Him about the fact that my motives are wrong. They are sinful, selfish, unbefitting a lover of God.
Finally, He prescribes: do. Do what I did before. Do my service toward Him out of the overflow of love.
It occurred to me that this was a concern of the Apostle Paul for the Ephesian believers in his letter to them decades before Revelation was written. Paul wrote out part of his prayer for them: “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-19). Perhaps the remembering and returning to my first love isn’t all about my feelings toward God, but in coming to know and recall His unfathomable love toward me.
The Apostle John reaffirms that thought when he writes, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Here first is foremost in time, place, order and importance. We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. So, then, our love is a response back to Him. The first and primary action is His. And in coming to know Him in a deeper way, we will have a deeper appreciation of the depth and breadth of His first love for us.
Perhaps, then, returning to our first love is returning to the open arms of the One Who loved us first.
As I reached the end of my trip and the end of my study on this topic, I came to the conclusion that returning to my first love has little to do with any feeling I could conjure toward Him or anyone else. Rather, it’s all about coming to bask, once again, as I did at first, in the amazing, abiding, perfect, fearless, self-abandoning love my Triune God has for me. Only then can I hold fast to Christ in love—and can I meet the expectation He states clearly in Mark 12:30: “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (NKJV).
My prayer for you is that you, too, will gain a new understanding of just how much God loves you—and that you will find yourself running into the waiting arms of your first love, no matter what challenges or unknown circumstances you face together with Him today.
Blessings and prayers,
Julie
© 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
I’ve been AWOL for a couple of weeks – perhaps you noticed (I hope you noticed!). But it was for a good cause. If you’ve read my caregiving book or even these devotional posts for very long, you know I preach, “Caregiver care for yourself.” I preach it, but I seldom apply its wisdom to my life. This time, I did—sent along by my wonderful parents, who insisted on it. They saw how stressed I had been, even if I was trying to ignore it.
My colleague and friend Lin Johnson offered to share her timeshare condo on Kauai. I wasn’t going to accept. Dad hadn’t been doing well, but then during one of his hospitalizations, he grabbed my arm, pulled me down to bed-level, and said, “You’re going to Hawaii. You deserve it. We’re sending you!” Month by month, Dad improved, and by the time the trip came around, he was doing well and it was safe for me to go.
It was a refreshing time in oh so many ways. For one, since it was such an extreme change of scenery, I came back, shall we say, far more patient, far less on-edge. That alone made it worthwhile.
Lin and I have traveled together before – and while we spend a good deal of time sightseeing together, back at the condo we take to neutral corners and read quietly. In my corner (looking out over our beach in the town of Lihue--I've included a link if you want to see a few pictures!), I had my netbook computer loaded with the WORDsearch program. A good chunk of my time, then, I spent in prayer and fellowship with the Lord. It’s hard not to feel Him near in the midst of all that created beauty—the Creator’s handiwork at perhaps His most creative and vibrant.
I felt His prompting to study Psalm 91. I don’t do deep studies of the Psalms often. Perhaps it’s because their poems so often are a believer’s conversation toward God, rather than God’s conversation toward us. I gravitate toward those places in Scripture where God speaks. “I know the plans I have for you,” He tells Jeremiah. “I will never leave you,” the writer of Hebrews quotes. I long to hear His voice—and I hear it best when He’s quoted. That’s just the way I am.
But this time, I dug into Psalm 91, as I said. I was humming along, reading as if I knew what was coming next. Then I stopped short on verse 14, which is placed in quotes (God is speaking. Listen up, Jul.) “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name” (ESV). And somehow, I didn’t feel the need to focus on the deliverance or protection part—but I felt a pained prick on that first phrase. How does one hold fast to God in love? I spent my devotional time over the next eleven days examining that phrase.
My first hopscotch led me to Revelation 2:4, where Jesus is speaking to the church in Ephesus. He’s telling them that they’ve done everything right. They’ve proved the spirits of false teachers, hated what He hates. They’re in good stead. Except for one thing. And it’s the biggie. They’ve failed at the loving God thing. “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” Or, as the older translations put it, left your first love.
What does that look like? What does it mean? My commentaries weren’t too particular in explaining it, as if we all know what leaving our first love looks like. But obviously the Ephesian believers weren’t aware of it, so it couldn’t be that obvious.
I checked my Greek and Hebrew resources and found that in the Psalm, the verb used meant being attached to and delighting in. It’s a binding love. It’s the way God attached Himself to His people; and it’s the way He attaches us back to Him.
In the Greek I consulted Strong’s and a few other dictionaries and found that the term Jesus used in Revelation talked about not just our growing a little cool in our feelings toward Him. Rather it means we’ve sent Him away, omitted Him and replaced Him with something else. What could that be? Did we replace Him with duty? Resentment? Apathy? Disappointment? Selfishness? Wrong motives? Could be any number of those things.
And it became painfully personal for me at this point. Because I realized the Spirit of Christ was nailing what was wrong with me. It wasn’t just exhaustion from the caregiving and my own personal health issues. It was that I’d removed Him from first place of love in my heart and replaced Him with the duties of caregiving. Worse yet, I’d replaced loving Him with resentment of all the things I was giving up to serve Him. My motives were wrong. Selfishness was taking root. And I was in danger of being removed from His good graces. It obviously happened to the once-thriving church in Ephesus. There’s now on that formerly-thriving site in modern-day Turkey a series of ruins visited by tourists. Christianity is almost non-existent in that region. It’s downright frightening.
So if the lack of first love is that ugly picture, who will paint for us the beautiful picture of placing Christ in that first-love place in our lives—and show us the path to get there? My next stop was probably your obvious first choice, too—1 Corinthians 13. Love always trusts, always believes, always endures. It relinquishes rights and controls to the beloved. It bears burdens without grudges, keeps itself from grumbling. It is full of hope.
Beautiful, just like the Lihue sunrise. But how do I get there? I’m patiently enduring, trying to keep from growing weary. Trying, but, by and large failing.
The first step Jesus offers in Revelation 2:5, and it echoes a phrase in Jeremiah 2:2. It’s all about remembering. Remember how it was when we were placing love for Christ above all else. God remembers, as He told Jeremiah: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown” (ESV). So, the prescription has to do with remembering my former devotion, with remembering how safe it was to follow Him without fear into the unknown.
Next, Christ commands: repent. That’s all about agreeing with Him about the fact that my motives are wrong. They are sinful, selfish, unbefitting a lover of God.
Finally, He prescribes: do. Do what I did before. Do my service toward Him out of the overflow of love.
It occurred to me that this was a concern of the Apostle Paul for the Ephesian believers in his letter to them decades before Revelation was written. Paul wrote out part of his prayer for them: “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-19). Perhaps the remembering and returning to my first love isn’t all about my feelings toward God, but in coming to know and recall His unfathomable love toward me.
The Apostle John reaffirms that thought when he writes, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Here first is foremost in time, place, order and importance. We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. So, then, our love is a response back to Him. The first and primary action is His. And in coming to know Him in a deeper way, we will have a deeper appreciation of the depth and breadth of His first love for us.
Perhaps, then, returning to our first love is returning to the open arms of the One Who loved us first.
As I reached the end of my trip and the end of my study on this topic, I came to the conclusion that returning to my first love has little to do with any feeling I could conjure toward Him or anyone else. Rather, it’s all about coming to bask, once again, as I did at first, in the amazing, abiding, perfect, fearless, self-abandoning love my Triune God has for me. Only then can I hold fast to Christ in love—and can I meet the expectation He states clearly in Mark 12:30: “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (NKJV).
My prayer for you is that you, too, will gain a new understanding of just how much God loves you—and that you will find yourself running into the waiting arms of your first love, no matter what challenges or unknown circumstances you face together with Him today.
Blessings and prayers,
Julie
© 2011, Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, email: orders@joymediaservices.com
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