Returning to the 1st love

Have you ever found yourself going through the motions in your walk with God? In this episode of Running Our Race, we dive into Revelation 2:2–5, focusing on Jesus' powerful words in Revelation 2:4: "You have left your first love." Together, we'll talk about what it means to return to the joy, passion, and intimacy we once had with Christ. This episode is an invitation to reflect, repent, and rekindle your relationship with Him, remembering that it's never too late to return to your first love and continue running the race with renewed purpose.

Transcript

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Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Running Our Race. Today I'm gonna be talking about returning slash the first love. Now when I think about a race, obviously uh if we're talking about a racetrack, uh we know that it's in a circle, right? And I had discussed this in another episode um about circles. And I tied it into friendships and what circles we're running in, right? But today I wanted to tie it more into okay, when we go around, we normally end up at the same point, right? At the end, which is where we started. However, I was remembering Revelations 2 4. I was going over it to prepare for this episode. I just kind of was left pondering why would someone leave their first love. As I was reading it, I scrolled up a little more, just a few verses, and I went to Revelations 2.2. And I'm gonna read all the way to verse 5. So I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and b and bearing up my name's sake, for you have not grown weary, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Any endurance, you know, persevering, it can tie into that as well. Still here, you have not grown weary. Now, here I see someone who is doing a lot of good things, but they have forgotten to put God first. When I think about this Bible verse, a lot of times I've seen it connected to almost really like a religiosity standpoint. So where it's like almost you're too religious, like where it's it's no longer also a relationship things because you're supposed to, not because you're doing it with love. So if today's my day to serve, you're doing it because okay, I have to serve, you know. You're not doing it with okay, I want to go serve, I want to make sure God is glorified, and I want to do my best, and you know, I just want to do everything good for God. Not so that uh the pastors can see me or my leader can see me or uh my crush can see me serving and they're like, oh my gosh, this this uh woman of God or this man of God, right? I also think about the point of today's episode is where I want to go with my second thought when I thought about this verse. And it is So what did they do to fall away or abandon the love that they had at first? Because I think right there is where Um We could tie it into when you're running a race, sometimes you get sidetracked, right? So there's you know, the little tortoise in the hare video right now, just thinking about it. The hare thought he was gonna win the race, right? But he ends up taking a nap on the side, thinking, oh, the tortoise is so slow that I could take a nap and I'll still win. But they end up, you know, taking that rest, taking the nap, and the tortoise ends up winning. The mentality of oh I'm gonna win, or oh I can leave these things to later, or I can push aside my devotional time, I can push aside my my my prayer time, I can push aside this, that um, but still expecting to get fed at church is kind of ironic in a way, you know? So that could be one way. And I also went in and I clicked on the part that says Thou hast left is the phrase on G863, and it was just telling me, okay, so it's to send forth in various applications, cry, forgive, forsake, lay aside, leave, let alone, be, go, have, omit, put, send away, remit, suffer, yield up. One of the ones that caught my eye the most was the lay aside one, because like I said, what things that we used to do, you know, for God, and just that we stopped doing. And honestly, I'm gonna start off with myself preaching to myself, and I did yesterday. I was getting ready to go to sleep, and I was just thinking. I was thinking about something that God had told me uh in the middle of service on Sunday, and well not in the middle of service, but like it was like this uh I guess prophetic time, right? Or well it was in between the worship and the prophetic time, and in that moment I saw myself in my room in church. God just reminded me things from maybe a few months ago at home yesterday. God was reminded me about my childhood and things that I used to do, it um it hit me really hard because I was like, bro, like how how do you go from that, grow up, like fall away from God, like kinda like this verse, right? You know, um, even though I was maybe serving during parts of those years, I I don't know if I really had that love. And that brought me to the New Living Translation, uh, Revelation 2.4, because of the wording. And it says, But I have this complaint against you. You don't love me or each other as you did at first. That hit me really hard because I was like, man, what do you mean you don't love each other as you did at first? And I know that there's a saying, I don't know if it's biblical or not, I have a feeling it's not, but or if it has biblical foundation. I think it may have biblical foundation, but it's not from the Bible. And it's like, how are you gonna love someone else if you don't even love yourself? I think a lot of people tie it into the Bible with how are you gonna love others properly if you don't love God first? That that's really all I want to touch on is reflecting, you know, on where our love is and how our love is, you know, evaluating ourselves, um what are things that we used to do when we were on fire for God that we don't do anymore. And I even read uh I even heard some preachings over the weekend, and all of this was tying in together, and maybe I didn't understand at the time, but now I do. You know, and and I feel like if God is telling me this, I think that it's something that other people are also needing because I've heard it in quite a few preachings over this past few days, like literally like maybe four days total. I've heard like it in five different preachings or ten, I don't know. But um, I have a feeling that God really just wants us to return to him uh completely. Um not just surrendering, but like actually living it, like not putting aside what is important, but making place for him, you know, giving him the adequate time, the adequate space, and the place to move. And so with that being said, uh thank you for tuning in to this episode. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And I pray that this episode impacted you in a great way. I'll catch y'all in the next one. Peace out.