First love

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‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ (Matthew 4:10 NRSV)

Remember the bygone days of falling in love with your partner? Nothing else mattered as much as being together. There was a great hunger to enjoy one another’s company and when separated, we longed for the time of being together again. Yet sometimes that first love can fade as the years pass.

Just as God has placed within us the desire to enjoy a lifelong partner, He has also given us a desire to love Him and enjoy His presence forever. And yet the passion of worshipping and enjoying God loses its intensity as time goes on.

In the midst of the myriad of tasks that occupy our days, we have substituted worship for work. Worshipping God is not something we tack onto a busy schedule. Have we forgotten that work comes from worship? Any work we undertake must be born from a heart that is intent on worship and places worship of the Father above all. However, any work that does not flow from worship is not pleasing to Him. After all, it is God we seek to please, not others.

The invitation here is to reach towards cultivating a spirit of worship every day: a lifestyle of worship that dominates our life. Just as two lovers long to be in the company of each other, we look forward to the opportunity of quietly being with the Father and gazing into the face of our Beloved again and again.

Let’s heed the warning the Spirit of God gives to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4 by repenting and returning to Jesus, our first love.

Jennifer Woodley
South-East Queensland, Australia - info@grace-lines.net​