“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” Revelation 2:4-5
 
Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus was the only one that didn’t contain any reproval or correction; yet in the end, Jesus judges them for forgetting to love Him more than their good works. They were focused on their deeds and projects – things they could be proud of – things you would boast about at the end of year congregational meeting However, these things didn’t please The Lord, because our number one responsibility, according to Matthew 22:37, is to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
 
Serving soup in a homeless shelter is good, unless we’re consumed with good works and forget our love and worship of the Lord. In Matthew chapter 6, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray; in this passage, Jesus said two things that stand out to me regarding our first love. First, Jesus taught them to say, “Our Father”; we’re to pray together as a church. Yes, you can absolutely say, “My Father,” when praying alone, but Jesus instructed us to pray “Our” Father together as a church. Then, He taught them to ask The Lord, “Lead us not into temptation.” I believe this shows that we enter temptations we wouldn’t have encountered had we prayed and asked The Lord to help us. What if some of our failures could have been avoided if we had only asked The Lord to keep us from temptation – the temptation of letting other things become more important than Him, most importantly. Through prayer we know God’s love for us, and through that communion of the soul and spirit we learn to love Him back.
 
As with any disobedience, when we realize we have failed to keep a commandment or to please The Lord, the way back is always exactly the same – it is through repentance. If we have forgotten to make The Lord our first love, all we have to do is turn around and go the other way, change the way we think, pour out our hearts to our gracious and merciful heavenly Father, and receive the love and restoration He faithfully gives.
 
Revelation 2:5 says, “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”
 
Repentance precedes restoration. The Lord is making sure we don’t forget that, though He is exposing their failures, there is a path back to God’s favor. The following verse says, “But you have this in your favor; You hate the practices of the Nicolaitians, which I also hate.” The Lord is so good; even when He is chastising and pruning us, He lets us know He sees it all, not just the disappointments. He’s a good Father, and easy to love. We need to be careful not to get distracted by things that will make us forget our number one job: to make Him our first love.