Returning to your first love

First Love

Do you remember your first love of Jesus? You know – that love and zeal you had for Him when you first got saved? Do you remember wanting to tell everyone that you had met the Lord? Do you remember wanting to ‘save the world’ – especially your friends, family, and neighbours? Do you remember the hunger you had for the things of God then? Everything about God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit excited you didn’t it?

It was like that in the early church you know. They expected everyone who confessed the Lord and received salvation to be baptised. They expected that everyone who was baptised in water would rise up out of the water a new being – prophesying and speaking in other tongues ‘as the Spirit gave utterance’.  Imagine that happening nowadays. That would shake a few people and change a few attitudes.

This is the message I get this morning – for all Christians to ‘return to their first love’. To once again hunger for the things of God. To once again want to set the world aflame with revival. To once again take the good news of the Gospel to every one we meet – to our family, friends, and neighbours – to our work place and to the supermarket. Only one small difference from the original church and that is, instead of preaching to the market places we should simply carry the presence of the Lord with us in such a way that people notice. There is coming a day when, as happened to Peter, our shadow passing over people will heal them. Our handkerchiefs will be passed from person to person and healing will just happen as the presence of God is ‘passed around’.

I remember even recently, in the late 90’s, going into meetings and experiencing the presence of God even as I walked in. There was an excited expectancy in the air. That expectation for God to move seemed to wane slightly in the early 2000’s only to rekindle around 2008. Since then it has grown steadily until now, my expectation level is growing through the roof. I am excited and hungry all at the same time. Our Pastor recently came back from a trip where he described the presence of God as more powerful than he had ever known and the peoples hunger to be verging on desperation.

As far as the world is concerned, we are in desperate times and people are desperate for answers. As for the church, we must by now have realised that we are in the ‘end times’ – those times prophesied in scripture as immediately preceding the return of our Lord. Our hunger for God and His presence has risen along with that of our not-yet-saved neighbours, family, and friends. They may not realise what their hunger is but we can tell them. Personally, I am so very excited at the moment. I am so very hungry for God. I am desperate for more of Him so I can carry His presence with me wherever I go. I would like people to notice something ‘different’ about me.

How about you? How about your family, friends, neighbours, and church?  It’s time for a little more desperation for all of us I would say?