Do you need a particular date to tell those you care about that you love them? Do you go about your business the rest of the days of the year doing your own thing? If you truly love someone, it flows out of your heart, and you express it with words and gifts. Somehow, people think it is natural and okay to tell Jesus they love Him once or twice a year. John asks us in Revelation, “Have you abandoned the love?”
Revelation 2:4
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Hearts Grown Cold
In the book of Revelation, John writes seven letters to seven different churches. They were all in Asia, which we know as modern-day Turkey. Ephesus was the central city, and the other six formed a postal route around it. The first letter in the series is to the church in Ephesus. They are a busy church fighting wrong doctrine and doing good deeds, but their hearts have grown cold for Jesus, and they have left their first love. From the outside, it looked like a thriving church, but on the inside, it was slowly dying.
Cultivate Your Relationship
You run the risk of being like the Ephesians when your life is full of Christian activity, but your devotional life is non-existent. If you aren’t cultivating your personal relationship with Jesus through the reading of Scripture and prayer, your heart will eventually grow cold. Your service to the church should be out of the overflow of the Spirit working in your life. It is a rare occasion where we kickstart our devotional life by serving.
Have You Abandoned the Love?
You are reading this devotional because you want your spiritual life to grow, so to a certain extent, I am preaching to the choir, but it is easy to slip into a state of malaise. Keep the fire burning in your heart. Make your devotional time the time you look most forward to. Get a reading plan, set aside a specific time of day, and do it consistently. Over time you will see that it will become the bedrock of your faith.