Remember, Repent, Renew: Recover Your First Love

I'll just say this to you, that if God is in your life but not first in your life, you'll never experience everything that he promised you could. If he's in your life but not first in your life. If you're one of those people who say, but, you know, I go to church a pretty good bit. I mean, I go, I don't know, maybe third three quarters of the time. I I mean, I believe in God. I believe the Bible is true, but you're living your life that he's not first. You won't experience the best that he said that you could. [00:05:48] (21 seconds)  #ExperienceGodFirst

He said, you've not lost your love. Please notice this. You haven't lost your love. Because if they didn't love him, they wouldn't be committed to purity. If they didn't love him, they wouldn't be committed to being protective of the gospel or to be purpose driven. It wasn't that they lost their love. Please hear me. It's that they lost their first love. It wasn't that God wasn't in their life. It was that he was no longer first in their life. [00:41:51] (24 seconds)  #LostFirstLove

And ladies and gentlemen, this is the true danger for you and I. This is the true danger that we face as believers. The greatest danger for the follower of Christ is not that we would abandon our faith altogether and walk away from God altogether. That's probably not gonna happen. The real silver bullet for the believer is that we would slip and slide and drift into a casual and a cavalier relationship with our heavenly father and settle for a mediocre version of what our relationship used to be. [00:42:15] (30 seconds)  #DangerOfDrift

Pride is a spirit of independence where we falsely tend to believe that we can be who we are without God, that we can do what we can do without God, and that life should actually be all about me. So it's a sure sign that we are losing our first love when we start trusting in God less and we actually start trusting in ourselves more. [00:47:06] (23 seconds)  #PrideEqualsIndependence

``I've learned in my own life that when my relationship with God starts to grow a little cold, when I start to just get a little distant from God, I'm far more quick to reject his correction and his conviction and excuse away any claims that I may have an issue that needs to be addressed. But true transformation in our lives rides on the rails of repentance. Please hear this. True transformation in our lives rides on the rails of repentance. Confession and ownership of our behavior creates the environment for miracles in our hearts to take place. [00:51:53] (32 seconds)  #RepentanceRidesRails

Don't be like that. Listen. Accept that God loves you and that he brings a word like this to try his best to bring you back to a right relationship with him because he cares about you. He loves you. The greatest sermons that I have ever preached in my life had nothing to do with the depth of the revelation or the ability in which I was able to articulate it on that particular day. The greatest sermons in thirty two years that I have ever preached are the ones that break me first. [01:00:53] (39 seconds)  #BrokenBeforePreaching

How do we rediscover our first love again? Well, let's go back to Revelation two. Because after Christ identifies the church at Ephesus that they have lost their first love, he then gives them three things to find it again. Here's what he says. He said, okay, Ephesus. I love you. And I want you to remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent, and then do the first works that you did in the beginning again. Number one, he says remember. He calls them to remember how intimate their relationship used to be. [01:02:16] (31 seconds)  #RememberRepentReturn

But when I could finally run no longer, and I could no longer escape the hound of heaven. And the whisper in the grip of the holy spirit. And I fell on my face and wept before the lord and turned my life over to Christ. I felt the embrace of a father who loved me. Not because I was so good, but because he was, not because I was worthy, but because he's worthy, that it wasn't anything to do with my goodness because I had none. It was all his grace. And I felt accepted and brought into the family of God. [01:06:40] (48 seconds)  #EmbracedByGrace