Has Your Love Become Stale?

"I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for my Name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless ...I have this against you... that you have left your first love." Revelation 2:2-4 How could the Lord take note of all these wonderful and true works that the church at Ephesus was known for, yet find fault with them? A danger to someone who has walked with the Lord for a long time is the tendency to focus on one's call and ministry and forget the One he's laboring for. More than all the works that we do, more than all the passion and perseverance one puts into his work for the Lord, it just doesn't matter if our focus gets onto those things at the expense of our love for the Lord himself. He has created us to have relationship with us, not to watch us work. When the Lord himself is left out of the picture, even our work becomes stale. How much TIME do you spend with the Lord you once loved? I heard a statistic that said only ten percent of believers have read the Word of God from cover to cover. I find that astonishing! I honestly don't know how a believer can survive without daily abiding in the Word of God. How often he speaks to us through his Word! Every day something new is gleaned no matter how many times it has been read, because the Word of God is ALIVE, and it is from immersing ourselves daily in the Word that we have life within us. We eat food for nourishment and we don't worry how the vitamins and minerals nourish us, we just eat. Just as one cannot live long without food, one's relationship with God cannot be sustained if he isn't taking in the daily nourishment God has provided in the living Word of God. If your life as a believer has become stale, ask yourself what kind of nourishment your spirit is missing. Are you starving to death spiritually? It is amazing that the Creator of the universe would care to have a relationship with a human being, but that's how amazing he is! He cares! Very much! He wants you to spend TIME with him, every day, because he loves you, and above all, he wants your love for him. Such an amazing thought, indeed as even the psalmist questioned: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man ...that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him?" Psalm 8:3-4 There are some things beyond the ability of mortal man to understand; how could the most high God care whether I spend time with him or not? Yet he says emphatically that he does. Pray with me: Father, my life gets so busy that I know I neglect spending time with you. My human mind wonders how you could care about that, yet in your Word you have criticized a people who were laboring with all their hearts for you, but neglected spending TIME with you. Help me to set my priorities correctly before you. Help me to understand that there is nothing in my life as important as beginning my day spending TIME with you. If it means having to get up a half hour earlier, please HELP me to do that. Don't leave me to myself, I do not trust myself, I need your tug on my heart to draw me to yourself as you have said you SO desire. Forgive me for taking you for granted, Lord, I am truly sorry I've done that. Please impress upon me the degree to which you desire my time, time with you, even if I have to rearrange my life to do it. I love you, Lord. I truly do. I need to come back into daily fellowship with you. Please help me with that. I truly want to.