Keeping our First Love

John the Apostle, spent near the end of his life exiled on the Island of Patmos for preaching the gospel. Because of this, God turned his captivity around for our good today. We know that he had visions and a word of encouragement and a strong word of disapproval to seven churches. Some say, it was for the churches of his day. I believe the word to those churches is the same word we need to consider for ourselves today.

In Rev.2:2-6, John writes a prophetic word to the Church at Ephesus and says, “I know your works and your strenuous and tiring mental and physical exertion and trouble, and your patient endurance, and how you can not tolerate wicked (men) and have tested and critically appraised those who call themselves apostles (special messengers) of Christ and yet are not, and have found them to be impostors and liars. I know you are enduring patiently and are bearing up for my namesake, and you have not fainted or become exhausted or grown weary. However, I have this one charge to make against you, that you have (abandoned) the love that you had at (first) and have deserted Me your (first) love. Remember then from what heights you have fallen. Repent, (change your inner man to meet My will) and do the first works you did previously (when you first met Me.) Or else I will visit you and remove your lamp stand from its place, unless you change your mind and repent. Yet you have this in your favor and to your credit. You hate the works of the Nicolaitanes and what they are doing as corrupters of the people which I myself also detest.”

I ask myself as I ask you. How could people so studious and devoted to all these activities for God, have lost their first love for Christ? Let’s explore and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what we are up against as God’s kids and how we must guard ourselves against this happening to us.

These people as you can see were not all wicked and of no use to God. They had a desire to walk in holiness before God and were intending to live the Christian life. I have heard over the years some of the most damaging preaching from pulpits on this text of scripture that makes me grieve inside, with a moaning in my spirit. This being that, people who have lost their first love are back slidden and if they don’t repent, they are going to hell. This type of teaching is nothing but, heresy and doctrines of devils.

We see here that they had their eyes open for false apostles with false teachings. Eph.2:20 tells us that, “we should be built up upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets with Christ Himself being the chief Cornerstone.” God used and is still using Apostles and Prophets to lay foundational principals of scripture that will ground us and build us up to do the works of the gospel. If you have ever studied church history, it was God’s plan to build his church in this way from the beginning.

Over many years, the Apostle and Prophet ministry within the church has become none existent. Only in the last 15 years or so, God is restoring the Apostle and the Prophets ministry with in the body of Christ. I am not talking about self-ordained people by their denominations, but men and woman who have been called by the Lord. This church at Ephesus recognized the Apostles, because in that day they were functioning and teaching fundamental sound doctrine. Some false apostles had crept into the church and started teaching false doctrines.

In IICorinthians chapter 11, The Apostle Paul said, “false apostles who were counterfeits, masquerading as apostles (special messengers) of Christ the Messiah, had crept into the church at Corinth and he was afraid that just as Eve was fooled by the cunning words of the devil, (for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light), he worried that their minds were being corrupted and seduced from a wholehearted and sincere pure devotion to Christ. He said that the church was tolerating a different Gospel then the one he preached, causing them to receive a different spirit then the Holy Spirit.” This sounds pretty serious to me. We are talking here about references to the devil and different spirits other then the Holy Spirit of God.

Since this is still taking place today in the body of Christ, we can understand why there are some serious foundational cracks in our basic beliefs in following Christ. A house cannot be built on a cracked foundation, for it’s just a matter of time before the whole structure comes down. It won’t carry the weight.

John goes on to say under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that God was in agreement with them on hating the works of the Nicolaitanes. These Nicolaitanes were heretics teaching false doctrine or heresy within the Christian community. In Rev.2:12-15, John also gave a word to the church at Pergamos. He said that they had Nicolaitane leaders also, teaching false doctrine that was becoming a stumbling block to the people. He also said to this church in verse 13, that Satan had a (strong hold) in their mist, yet they were trying to hold fast to their commitment to God. It’s hard to believe that Satan could have a strong hold within a body of believers, isn’t it? Nevertheless, it is true.

The word “heresy”” in the Greek means; to prefer over another, disunion or schismatic; a division of thinking and beliefs within the Christian assembly. This is what false doctrine does when it is accepted into the body of believers. It causes a falling away or a division with our relationship with God and with one another. Please don’t interpret this as only a division with your local church affiliate. I’m also talking about the entire corporate body on the face of the earth. This warfare that has been going on within the spiritual world, has been dividing the body of Christ since Jesus left the earth. The Holy Spirit was given to us for us to learn from Him the true meaning of God’s word. To me, it has been a lifetime of searching the scriptures and rightly dividing the word of God.

(It is absolutely vital that we do what the word tells us to do and that is to look into the perfect law of liberty. The word of God (as the Holy Spirit teaches us) sets us free to explore our relationship with God, with enthusiasm and hope, not with a falling back or backsliding mentality.

With this type of false teachings going on, and if we believe them, it will make us lose our ability and capability of rightly interpreting the word of God. The word lamp stand that John talks about in the Greek means illuminator. This is what gives us the ability for the Holy Spirit to show us His way of thinking.

We must realize, there are consequences when we misinterpret God’s word with our own understanding. This idea of us loosing our ability or insight to rightly interpret the word is not a punishment by God for not seeking Him. It’s the consequence of us not seeking Him on our own daily. There is a difference between the two. God does not hold things against us. We lose the ability of seeing His vision for our lives, when we don’t meditate on the word, night and day with an intense passion.

For years, I have heard from different places here and there, that God inflicts His judgment on people. What I mean by this, he just sits and waits for us to mess up and then He zaps us with some kind of punishment to show us His control and power. God from the beginning of time made provision for us. He knew we would stumble and make mistakes in our lives. He knew we would violate His will. His plan was that, if we would walk in the spirit of repentance, it would always lead us back to Him. Walking in a repentant spirit puts a protected hedge around us. We need to understand the sovereignty and rulership of God in our lives. His loving kindness follows us and hunts us down, no matter whatever happens in our lives. We all need to start taking our walk with God seriously and make meditating on God’s word an absolute regular way of thinking day and night.

In I Timothy 4:1, Paul the Apostle, tells Timothy under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. “In later times (meaning now) some will turn away or (fall away) from the FAITH, giving attention to deceiving or seducing spirits and doctrines or teachings of devils.” The word seduce means; led astray and persuaded to commit some sin or folly. In the Greek it gives the connotation of a intense force of opposition that brings with it a spirit of oppression, this spirit tramples under foot and walks all over the word of God with scorn and contempt.

In Ephesians 6:10-18, Paul gives one of the clearest pictures of what we as Christian are up against. He says, “be strong in the Lord, and be empowered through your union with Him.” Draw your strength from Him, which He has plenty of. Put on God’s armor that a heavy armed soldier will need to fight against the trickery of the devil.”

The Greek definition gives the connotation of an attack from the backside or we get blind-sided because we are not aware of Satan’s devises or plots. He goes on to say that, “we are not wrestling against flesh and blood; meaning physical opponents or regular people, but against the powers, against spirit forces in the supernatural sphere in this present Dark Age. Therefore, have your armor on, so you will be able to stand firm and resist the temptation to give up your allegiance to Him. Have your mind guarded by knowing the truth. In this way, you will be able to fight those inner thoughts that make you feel less then a whole person. Above all, walk in the Spirit of grace and know God’s love for you. Continue to pray or interact with the Holy Spirit in your thought life. In turn, this will keep you alert. You need to persevere and have a strong resolve, keeping an eye on yourself and others.”

Let’s give some examples of what these false doctrines do. Doctrine in the Greek simply means a teaching or learning. Now the point I want to make is, whom are we interpreting our learning from? Is it our own interpretation or is the Holy Spirit doing the teaching?

In Eph.4:13-16, Paul says, “God’s intention was to mature us by giving us a true and accurate knowledge of His ways so that we might arrive at mature manhood, which is nothing less then being exactly like Him. By us allowing Him to do this, we would no longer be children, tossed (like ships) to and fro between chance gusts of teachings and be a prey to cunning and unscrupulous men, who were inventing errors to mislead.”

In Col.2:8, Paul says, “See to it that no one carries you off as his plunder as in a war and makes you yourselves captive by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism or plain nonsense, following human traditions, men’s ideas rather than spiritual perceptions and disregarding the teachings of Christ.”

In I Tim: 1:3-7, Paul encourages Timothy when he admonishes him by saying that, “certain individuals were teaching different doctrines that were promoting speculations and endless questioning. He said these people had missed the mark and wandered into vain arguments and purposeless talk. These were people who wanted to be teachers or doctors of dogmatic assertions.” Dogma meaning; an arrogant assertion of there own opinions.

The word arrogant has some very enlightening examples one could use to identify these false teachings. They had an attitude of pridefulness and conceit. In their teaching, they used comparisons between themselves and others. There was not an attitude of total acceptance and of giving the people the choice of accepting or rejecting the teaching. They used fear tactics and consequences of eternal judgment with a lack of mercy and patience. It was as if they tried to put a spirit of condemnation on the people as they taught.

In Galatians Chapter 5: Paul admonishes the Galatians’ people and tells them that, when they accepted Christ, they were liberated from their ritualistic teachings. They believed before they were saved that they had to be circumcised to be approved by God. He said, now that they had committed their lives to Christ, circumcision was meaningless. If they wanted to continue to believe this, their experience in Christ was brought to nothing and he said because of this false perception, they had separated themselves from a love relationship with Christ. This had caused them to backslide meaning they had fallen away from experiencing God’s grace away from experiencing God’s grace.

In turn, they had become dull minded in their understanding of His unconditional Love. He goes on to say that if you’re going to live by laws like this, you have stopped living by faith and can no longer be energized by the Holy Spirit to give you direction for your life. He says who has hindered and stopped you from following the truth. This evil persuasion is not from the Holy Spirit who called you and invited you to freedom in Christ. A slight inclination to err, or a few false teachers, perverts the whole concept of faith in Christ and misleads the whole church. We see here that Paul emphasized that, when the Galatians church was influenced and gave into this evil persuasion of falling under laws and conditions of acceptance by God, they lost the vital awareness of God’s unconditional love and unmerited favor.

I want to focus in on this word grace as the scripture defines it. Grace is not a blessing from God. Grace is what keeps our spiritual eyes open, as an eye salve clears our physical eyes when they’re not clear. Grace is the aroma of the Holy Spirit and the only way we can receive and interact with God. Its like grace is the Spirit of the Holy Spirit and has to be role modeled to us by Him. For this to happen, we must be interacting with Him daily. Earlier we talked about attitudes behind these false teachings and described them so we could identify the false spirit behind it. Let’s now define how the Spirit of grace interacts with us.

Let me make an observation first and that being, that as we become more like the Holy Spirit, we begin to interact with each other with the same Spirit of Grace. In the Hebrew it states, the word grace is defined as, a person who humbles himself and shows kindness to an inferior. We are not using the word inferior here as a word of lower quality. What we are saying is the Holy Spirit, yearns and takes pity on us. It’s His earnest prayer, to raise us up to a relationship of Kingship and rule as God’s children.

In the Greek translation, grace takes on a different meaning. It represents a work going on inside of us, rather then someone reaching down to us and trying to give us a hand up. It says that the Holy Spirit has a divine influence upon the heart and it’s reflection in our life. Now what this means is that if we are interacting with the Holy Spirit in our conversations with Him, He in His loving way is uncovering for us in our thought life, those areas that are not Christ like and focusing His rays of grace on those areas.

This makes us become more transparent in our walk with Him and others. While this is taking place, our joy in the Lord becomes greater and our power to live the Christian life becomes more comfortable. We become more sensitive to God’s voice and because of this, we become more open minded. Our ability to change to His way of thinking is something we begin to hunger after. Our awareness and relationship becomes one of cheerfulness when we meet and when we depart in our conversations. Our thankfulness to Him and gratitude for the friendship we feel makes us respond as the bible says, “His praises are continually flowing out of our thought life and mouth at all times.”

God tells us to come as we are, with all our hang-ups and He will change us from the inside. Our praising Him comes from a heart of gratitude from within because of the relationship of grace that is going on inside us. Worship to God can only be from a sincere heart that will be accepted by Him. Worship comes because; we are enjoying this deeper walk of grace that we are discovering with Him by, constantly learning how real and loving He is.

This can only take place as we begin to identify the difference between seducing spirits and doctrines of devils verses grace, the Spirit of the Holy Spirit. The word of God can only become truth if, it is implanted into our hearts by His grace and love. II Corinthians 5:17 Says “if any man is engrafted in Christ, he is a new creature all together, the old moral and spiritual condition has passed away and the fresh and new has come.” Since we have become this new creature, it’s only by us being continually energized by the Holy Spirit that, will keeps us alert and stops us from being deceived.

Let’s recap. We have two spirits at work here. One that brings us under teachings that are taught by a spirit of control and obligation with fear tactics and condemnation verses, a Spirit that gives us a choice to think and respond with joy. In turn, this creates a freedom of exploration with enthusiasm and a great hunger and anticipation of new truths from God.

Many years ago, I sat under ministries that preached fire and brimstone. I can’t remember how many times I had to go down to the altar to check myself out and see if I had lost my salvation. Over the years, I believe we are beginning to understand that God loves us unconditionally, no matter what. I am sorry to say there is still some subtle preaching from pulpits with conditional love themes. I would like to believe that these non-grace statements are being said, because of the lack of true knowledge and understanding of God’s love that they have. In some cases that’s true and the only way I have learned to deal with it is by praying that, those making these statements receive a greater vision of God’s love or if the opportunity arises, give them a word of correction, if they will receive it.

It grieves me to say that in many cases we have teachers or preachers in pulpits that don’t even know the Lord and are just preaching laws of do’s, don’ts and obligation. Flat out doctrines of men.

In Col. 2:18-23, Paul the Apostle says, “Don’t let any one defraud you by acting like an umpire telling you, you don’t measure up, insisting on visions that they have had or just being puffed up with sensual notions and inflated thoughts and fleshly conceit. Since you have accepted Christ, don’t govern your life by teachings of externalism. Don’t submit to rules and regulations such as, do not handle this or don’t taste or touch that. These things perish with their use. Stop following precepts and doctrines. These practices look good from the outside and look like they are wise things to do. All these things do is indulge our fleshly desires and feed our lower nature.” In essence, it makes us prideful and we lose our humbleness to receive God’s grace.

The way we recognize that we are being led by the Holy Spirit is, God constantly is making us aware through circumstance and our thought life of how much He loves us. With this, He shows us how much more empowerment we need from Him to love others the same way. Grace is the love of God. I must emphasis this again. Maturity and growing up in God can only be learned as we realize that God loves us without conditions PERIOD!

In Ephesians chapter 1:19-20, Paul the Apostle says that, “we are to know the love of Christ which supersedes our own understanding of it.” (This can only come through divine revelation and a living relationship). He goes on to say that, “ we need to be full of God and in turn this will make us able for God to do exceedingly and abundantly above all that we may ask of Him or think, but it is only based according to the grace and love working in our inner being.”