With Wedding season upon us (I think we are at five for the year, with a few more possibly on the way), I've been thinking about ceremonies, love, and lasting relationships. It prompted this question:
You often hear in evangelical circles, songs, and conversations that we need to recapture the fire of our 'first love' for Christ. We are admonished to try and reclaim the passion and excitement we first had when newly saved.
It's like believing couples should always remain in the honeymoon stage, driven by thrills, exhilaration, newness, and emotionalism.
But isn't that wrong? There is certainly a place for freshness and fire in any relationship at any time, but isn't our desire for deeper, more mature, more solid, more stable love? Shouldn't the same be true for our love of God? Instead of 'lighting the fire in my soul again,' shouldn't we pray for and seek a love like the best aged wine, with fullness and solidity - that isn't swayed by every whim of feeling, but holds a firm and straight course?
3 comments:
Greetings, Professor.
I'm not sure what this means for sake of believing couples, and perhaps you're already thinking of this passage anyway, but Jesus did address the loss of "first love" for God among the Ephesians in Revelation 2:1-7.
Though their labor was patient and enduring, their discernment sharp, and their strength in persecution unwavering (all of which seem like marks of solidity and maturity), He said, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (ESV) or "left your first love" (NAS).
While I'm not sure that means believers should always remain in some sort of spiritual "honeymoon stage," it does seem to acknowledge a level of passion and excitement that is fresh and hot. Apparently, at least with love for God, first love is not exclusive from more mature, full, and firm love.
Thanks SKH! Another individual pointed out the 'first love' of scripture revolves around a desire to *be* with Christ and in His word - a solid passion instead of emotionalism. It just seems the use of it in most evangelical circles revolves around an entirely (shallow) emotional reaction.
A friend going through a very rough marital time gave me this quote today by Oswald Chambers...."No love of the natural heart is safe unless the human heart has been satisfied by God first." It seems like this is what you are saying here...and said well. I have found that much to my dismay, trying to find my satisfaction (a lost part of myself ususally)in my spouse first only leads to more dis-satisfaction. Thank you for sharing, dear Leila, and for making us reflect and think!
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