Rekindle Your First Love

This summer my husband and I celebrated 40 years of marriage. With that many years comes many peaks and valleys, disagreement, arguments, but also much joy, adventure, and shared experiences that tighten the bond. Eventually your children leave the nest for good and you are left looking at one another to decide how we will focus on one another in a new way as we spend these latter years of our lives.

Revelations 2 reminds us of 3 ways God wants to rekindle our first love with Him. The angel came to address the church of Ephesus. It is an active church with good attendance and hard workers, but it has forgotten the most important thing in relationship. It has forgotten love and moved to pragmatic functionality. This church is getting stuff done. They are hardworking, persevering, enduring, and tireless. In many ways they are exactly the kind of people we want in our churches. YET. Yet, they have forgotten their first love and the messenger of God has come to invite them back to choosing love.

For God, Christianity has always been about love.  The Trinity decided to add to their harmonious relationship by creating mankind to share in it. God’s purpose in this addition was always love. An invitation for people to choose simple and pure devotion to Jesus. As sin entered the world and a chasm was created between God and mankind, people used different methods to prove their love.  Hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, busyness replaced love. Ministry for God replaced relationship with God.  This Ephesian church is not the only church to need this reminder.  We, the Church, big C, today, needs this reminder as well.

God wants to help us rekindle our love for Him in three ways.  They aren’t necessarily difficult things to do, but will take our focused intentionality.

The first way God wants to rekindle our first love is tenderly and simply. When we first fall in love, we are hyper-focused on the person. We can’t get enough of their presence and want to be with them as much as possible. There is something about the person that the Song of Songs refers to as “ravishing my heart with one glance of your eyes.” In our relationship with Jesus, when we have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good” we want to keep experiencing that love. It bypasses our minds and awakens our heart’s longings for love.

The second way God wants to rekindle our love for Him is by asking us to realign ourselves to His wooing. This is another way of saying repent. He asks us to turn back from the things that have distracted us and realign our heart to His ways and will. Oftentimes getting off track happens very subtly. Slowly we stop spending time in His presence. We skip our daily routines that anchor us in the Word. We stop making time to listen for His voice. We stop waiting for Him in the secret place.  Over time our love grows cold, but we keep going through the motions with little or no feeling of love or desire for intimacy. It is always His wooing that causes us to return to Him. His tender calling of our name to come back to Him and give ourselves to Him again. It is always His kindness that leads to repentance. It may be faint, but He’s calling your name.

The third way God wants to rekindle our love for Him is by asking us to return and do what we did before. What did you do when you were desperate for God? What did you do when you had nowhere else to go? Jesus is asking us to remember and return to those routines and habits that helped fuel our passion and deepen our love and trust in Him. God wants relationship that leads to work, not work that leaves out relationship. Return to the simplicity of pure devotion to Jesus.  He is calling your name.  Make room for Him today and rekindle your love.

Rise Up Like Hagar

Sarai and Abram were desperate for a child in their old age. Though Abram received a promise from the Lord that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:5-6), he did not tell Sarai, so in her impatience and doubt, she took matters into her own hands.

Hagar was an Egyptian maidservant to Sarai and Abram. Sarai planned for Abram to take Hagar as his second wife, a common practice in their culture, hoping to fulfill her longing for a family through her maid. Hagar soon found herself pregnant with Abram’s child. At first, this might have brought her the sense of fulfillment and worth that she had longed for—however, as her pregnancy progressed, tensions grew. She began to despise Sarai, maybe feeling a glimpse of newfound power and importance that clashed with her previous identity as a servant.

Sarai, in turn, reacted with jealousy and mistreatment towards Hagar, blaming her for the situation she herself had created. Even Abram, the head of the household, failed to intervene, leaving Hagar to Sarai’s cruelty (Genesis 16:6). Faced with oppression and distress, Hagar fled into the wilderness.

Near a spring in the desert, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Hagar in her despair, urging her to return and submit to Sarai. “The Angel of the Lord told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her’” (Genesis 16:9). Despite the mistreatment she endured, we see Hagar rise up in grace, humility, and obedience. She chooses to trust in God’s plan, even when it seems impossible.

Despite being caught in the crossfire of human failures, she rose above her circumstances, finding strength in submission and trusting God. Her journey reminds us that even in our darkest moments, God sees us, knows us, and calls us to trust in His goodness. It’s easy to flee from a devastating diagnosis, family problems, depression, anxieties, grief, or barrenness, but God knows exactly what you are going through.

Hagar’s experience serves as a reminder of God’s compassion and sovereignty. Just as He saw Hagar in her distress, He sees each of us in our moments of suffering and uncertainty. He knows how you are feeling. He sees you and me. Nothing is hidden from Him. He pursues us. He wants to help us live out the plan He has for us.  In fact, he knows exactly where we are, and He meets us there. He will never leave us or forsake us. His grace is sufficient for us, made perfect in our weakness.

In the end, God’s faithfulness prevails. He blesses Hagar with a son, Ishmael, and reaffirms His promise to her. Through her story, we are reminded that we are never alone in our struggles. God is with us, guiding us through the wilderness towards a future filled with hope and promise. We just need to humbly obey and trust Him.

I’m Available

During my time as a student at Nyack College, I participated in the Brooklyn Gospel Team. Each Friday night, a group of students would make the trip into New York City to work with a local church and bring the gospel message to people on the streets of Brooklyn. One Friday night driving home, I stared out the window of the van. As we passed numerous apartment buildings with their lights on, I heard the Lord say, There are lost people living there—will you let me use you to share hope with people? And I said, “Yes!” I wanted to be a willing servant.

That was 43 years ago, and I have served the Lord in ministry for all the many years since. It has not always looked like what I imagined, and my husband and I have been          called to some hard places, but I do not regret saying yes to the Lord.

The prophet Isaiah responded to the Lord as well. Isaiah 6:8 records the following statement, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” There was no hesitation on Isaiah’s part, even though God tells him that the message he will be bringing is not a pleasant one.

I often ask myself, “If I had known the cost of going where the Lord planned to send me, would I have said, ‘yes?’”—and I can honestly say I would. Even in the hard and discouraging times, I know that I am walking in the path God has laid out for me.

Isaiah asks the Lord, “How long?” and the Lord basically tells him, “Until the task is finished.” Most would fall away, but a remnant would remain, and in that remnant, there would be found a holy seed—a reference to the Messiah.

Sometimes in ministry, we can feel as if our message is falling on deaf ears, whether believers or non-believers. Yet, if God has called us and we have responded with “send me,” then we must trust that God is working in people’s hearts. Only one or two may respond, yet, that one person may be the one that God uses to bring in a large harvest. Don’t be discouraged with the results or the numbers. God sees the results and they are not ours to worry about. Our task is to remain faithful to the end.

Our “yes” to God may take us down some hard paths, but obedience to your call will be used by Him to further His Kingdom.

Rise Up Like Lazarus

It is impossible to live in power and purpose when we are living in our garments of death. Those
garments of death are saturated with the stench of sin and keep us captive in an old life. They
are not meant for us to wear. They were never meant for us to live in. God is telling us to take
off our garments of death.
A large stone sealed off the cave where Lazarus’ dead body lay. With great intention and
purpose, he had been in there for four long days. He had succumbed to a progressive illness
that quickly took his life. And now, Lazarus was gone.

All he had needed was a touch. And by this time in Jesus’ ministry, even the disciples could have
performed such a miracle. From afar, Jesus could have spoken healing into existence. After all,
he had already done that with the centurion—why not a repeat performance? God’s glory is a
beautiful and mysterious wonder, but it often comes by way of suffering.
Jesus is always on time. He is never early, and He is never late. He is intentional with His arrival,
knowing exactly what needs to get done and when. Four days late by our standards is right on
time through that Kingdom lens. Four days late offers the ultimate glory of Jesus to be seen and
experienced by all. What a scene that must have been.
“When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came
out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to
them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go’” (John 11:43-44).
It was time for Lazarus to rise up. Death had lost all power at the sound of Jesus’ voice. He
immediately commanded Lazarus to take off his grave clothes, for it was those very clothes that
tethered Lazarus to sickness and death. It was those very clothes that wreaked of decay. Jesus
had come to free him from all bondage. As Lazarus walked out of that dark cave and into the
bright light of life, everything had to be left behind, so he took off his garments of death and
walked toward Jesus.
Many of us are weighed down by the very things that have been nailed to the cross—somehow,
they have crept back into our soul. Once again, we find we have been taken captive. Maybe it is
our past that haunts us. Maybe a sin that just won’t die. Maybe it is a battle, a struggle so
intense that we seldom experience the light He called us to live in. Fear, doubt, anxiety, and
depression are smelly clothes that enslave, preventing us from the fullness of God. These
garments of bondage don’t belong to us—they have been nailed to the cross. These garments
are no longer ours to wear.

Dear friend, He has called you out of the grave. Leave your garments of death behind and rise
up, for you have been freed. Step away from the garments and move towards Christ. Rise up
like Lazarus and live!