CHECK YOUR LOVE METER. . .(REPOST) Jesus stinging rebuke to the church which was at Ephesus should serve as a dire warning to those of us in this present day church age to CHECK OUR LOVE METER! The Ephesus Christians, according to Jesus the righteous judge, were guilty of having left thy first love. (Revelation 2:4). Their love meter, if you will, was running dangerously low! And of course the very first love produced in fallen man, as a result of Gods love being shed abroad in his heart, is a reciprocal or returning love for God. We love him, scripture says, because he first loved us! (1 John 4:19) Somehow, the church of Ephesus had allowed their zeal and fervency for God to diminish considerably. Rather than Christ their Savior remaining in the midst of them, as he was seen to be in the beginning (Revelation 1:13) and thus the object of their love and the center of every bit of their religious life, they instead diverted their love to and their focus upon Self, relegating Christ to the outside knocking on the door to be let back in. (Revelation 3:20). Beloved, when the love of God no longer burns with the fervency it should and once did in our hearts and in our lives, the very first casualty of course is our love for one another. By this we know that we love the children of God, declares John, WHEN WE LOVE GOD, and keep his commandments. (1 John 5:2) When we therefore cool in our love for God, we love less one another. And this tragic end becomes two-fold. We will love less those of our brothers and sisters within our own fellowship walls, as seen in the increased instances of infighting which currently exist in many of our churches today, and very sadly, we will love even less, and sometimes not at all, our brothers and sister who exist beyond our particular fellowship walls. And this can be clearly seen in the fierce competition and lack of spiritual camaraderie that exist between neighboring churches who often times barely and rarely speak let alone fellowship. No longer focused with fervor upon our first love which is the Christ of God, our love now becomes selective rather than supernatural; a kind of who matches my perception of who I think I am and where I think myself to be kind of love. Consequently, our purpose for loving becomes selfish; a kind of whats in it for me or what can my loving you garner for me in return? kind of love. Now how serious is this charge of leaving our first love or chilling in our love for God which leads to the love of many waxing cold (Matthew 24:12)? I think extremely serious when one considers what will be the result of such actions should not repentance and a return to our first love take place. Jesus said that he will REMOVE THE CANDLESTICK! (Revelation 2:5).This means that this church which is guilty of this will no longer be his! Although that church will still go through the motion of being his; singing and shouting; praising and preaching, teaching and tithing, it will not be his, for he will remove out of that church his own thus leaving it in the hands of those who act like they belong to him, look like they beyond to him and even talk like they beyond to him but in actuality they do not belong to him but are instead disguised ministers of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). Beloved, check your love meter!! Are you loving the brethren; those both inside and outside your own fellowship? If you are not or have slacked in this area, clearly then you have left your first love which is love of God! As incredible as your not loving God may sound to you, it is nonetheless a sound indictment, as Scripture clearly points out; If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1 John 4:20) Be blessed!Again, CHECK YOUR LOVE METER!
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:19:41 +0000
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