Seeking Back The Initial Love For God

For those of us who been through a journey of faith, we would have had a period where we really thirst after the Lord or we felt His love strongly in our lives. However, life is not always a smooth ride and the most common lamentations we hear from believers is that God is not helping them, they feel that God is silent in their troubles and that they have lost that initial thirst or love because of some undesirable circumstances that they are met with. However, as I thought back on my own season of coldness towards God and my faith, it really brought me nothing but bitterness and spiritual blindness. I mean, we have to ask ourselves again. Are we only worshipping the Lord because we receive some help or blessings we want? If we truly reflect, has our lives not seen some transformation, working hands of the Lord in some situations or grace in the ruts? It seems that there is a phenomenon among many believers that as we know the Lord longer, we may also gradually grow cold in our love for the Lord and leading a life by faith.

Why does our hearts turn cold towards God?

Now, why do our hearts so easily turn cold? It could be two scenarios. One is where our lives may be too ordinary and stagnant. When our lives are all ordinary and everything seems okay and smooth, we will tend to take God’s grace for granted. While another way is where as we follow the Lord, we seem to be going through a series of struggles or problems, and it seems like it is only increasing. Like stress from workload, tension from relationships at home, financial difficulties, and such. Then that is where they may try to find answers or help from other sources, like in men’s comfort, in leisure activities of sorts or even turning towards interest in idol worshipping. Of course, there are also those that are temporarily deceived and turn away from God, just like how Peter denied the Lord Jesus 3 times. Some may really experience something where they lose heart and deny the Lord, avoid coming to the Lord. But the truth is, the Lord has never left or forsaken us.  He is just like the father in the story of the prodigal son, always waiting and ever ready to embrace us. However, what is more critical to see than this temporal weakness, is that we may be unconsciously losing our initial love for God.

Losing the initial love for God

Revelations 2: 2-4 says “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. From this verse, we can see that what the Ephesus church has done is pleasing to the Lord. They did not steer away in faith, actions or servings. However, the Lord still said “You have forsaken the love you had at first.” What does this mean? It means that even though are still doing what they ought to, it does not come from their love for the Lord. They could be doing it our of habit, responsibility or very mechanically just following through their servings. So when we enter a spiritual coldness, it does not mean we are not attending church, not praying or serving anymore. We may well be cold in spirit, while on the outside, we are still doing a lot. But as we are doing all these, are we really experiencing and enjoying the intimacy with God?That initial anticipation, joy and liberation when we first receive Jesus into our hearts, do we still enjoy it? If those have all been diluted over time, we need to really restore back this initial love and thirst for the Lord.

Restoring That Initial Love For God

But how do we do so now? The answer is in Revelations 2: 5. It says “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.” In other words, we have to first recall when we have started growing distant from the Lord. Is it the time when we are immersed in our work, being concerned over family matters, fatigue from serving, or being too stagnant in our living, causing us to go into numbness? This means, we are no longer bringing God into the equation of how we manage our work, we are no longer enjoying the Lord’s presence with our family or we are only serving and doing other things in life with our own strength and will. The verse tells us that if so, we have to repent, that means, to turn back before the Lord because the Lord would not want us to struggle and strive through in the world on our own. Also, God does not want us to just serve or give some offerings, but what He truly desires is our love for Him. Just like what Jesus said in Matthew 22: 37-38, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” Next, we also have to test and affirm, are there areas that we are loving the world more? Because 1 John 2: 15 says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” We should also be reminded in 1 John 2:17 that “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” Therefore, since we are only living once in this world, let us use our time well, to do what could, in exchange, give us eternal life and the crowns of the Lord’s kingdom.

Brothers and sisters, hoping that all of us, from this moment on, can turn back before the Lord, restoring that initial love and intimacy with Him. God bless.