Excerpt from Returning To Your First Love

RETURNING
TO YOUR
FIRST LOVE

Putting God Back
in First Place

Tony Evans

Renaissance Productions
MOODY PRESS
Chicago

This book is gratefully dedicated to:
Lois, my first earthly love,
whose faithfulness, patience,
graciousness, support,
and loyal love
have been the foundation
of my life and ministry.

?You are altogether beautiful, my darling,
And there is no blemish in you.?
Song of Solomon 4:7

FOREWORD

If the Lord Jesus Christ were to come to your house or mine and sit down with us, what do you think He would say?

I believe one of the first things He would ask is, ?Do you love Me?? That?s the question the resurrected Christ asked Simon Peter three times at their seaside breakfast (John 21:15-17). Peter had denied the Lord at His crucifixion, and he needed to be restored.

Jesus undertook that restoration by bringing Simon back to the basic issue: ?Do you love Me?? The Savior wasn?t satisfied until He had zeroed in on the issue of Peter?s love for Him and gotten the right answer. Only then did Jesus release Peter for ministry: ?Feed My sheep.?

The lesson Jesus taught Peter-and the lesson the Holy Spirit wants to teach us-in this marvelous passage is the fundamental lesson that devotion precedes duty. One reason this is important is that we so often get the order reversed.

If we had been in Jesus? place that day by the seashore, most of us would have asked Simon Peter an entirely different set of questions. We probably would have asked him if he was truly sorry for what he did in denying Christ, and if he had confessed his sin and been forgiven.

Or we might have started off by asking Peter if he was still serious about being a disciple, if he still wanted to be a member of the team. The more devotionally minded among us would have quizzed Peter about his personal life, making sure he was spending time daily in prayer and study of the Scriptures.

And the service minded among us would probably have made sure Peter knew what his spiritual gifts were and was plugged into a ministry in which he was exercising those gifts.

But Jesus did not ask Peter about any of these things. Did Jesus not care about Peter?s spiritual condition and future service? Of course He did. But Jesus knew that unless Peter?s service was motivated by intense love for Him, it would lead to duty without devotion, practice without passion.

That?s also true for you and me, by the way. Our love for Christ is so foundational that Jesus Himself called it our ?first love? in Revelation 2:4. Here in the first of His messages to the seven churches, Jesus Christ tells the church at Ephesus that all their doctrinal purity and hard work could not compensate for what they had left behind: their ?first love? for Him.

Dr. Tony Evans points out that Jesus Christ takes this issue so seriously that unless we put our love for Him in first place where it belongs, nothing else we do for Him really matters. That?s why I appreciate Returning to Your First Love and am happy to recommend it to you.

Dr. Evans has done us all a service in focusing the biblical spotlight on the absolute necessity of keeping our love for Christ as the central passion of our hearts. Any earnest Christian knows how easy it is to become so absorbed in doing things for Christ that we forget to cultivate our love relationship with Him.

In his own provocative way, Dr. Evans helps us correct this imbalance. He begins by showing us how we can get turned off the right road and leave our first love. Then he offers us some very biblical and practical ways to get back on the right road.

This book is stimulating and challenging, and it goes right to the heart of the matter and speaks to us in language we can understand and apply. Returning to Your First Love is a welcome and much-needed book for the church and for individual Christians, and I pray that God will bless its truths to your heart.

CHARLES STANLEY

Atlanta, Georgia

PREFACE

To professional basketball players, rebounding is an art form. Some players are considered highly valuable for their rebounding ability alone.

Why is rebounding such a valuable art in basketball? Because those guys miss a lot of shots! The ball doesn?t go in the hoop. It bounces off the rim or caroms off the backboard. The winners are those who get the rebound and take another shot.

That?s true in the Christian life too. All of us take bad shots. We know where the hoop is and we have the ball, but somehow the two don?t meet. The issue I?m concerned about is not so much the missed shot, but the rebound: what you do to get up and get back in the game.

Let me put it in other terms. If you have allowed something to replace your first love for Jesus Christ, there has been a missed shot somewhere. But the game isn?t over. You can rebound, you can regain that first love for Christ and still come out a winner in the game of life. That?s what Christ wants you to do.

Jesus said the greatest commandment is, ?You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind? (Matthew 22:37). Love for God has always been first on His priority list. God not only wants our duty, He wants our devotion.

If there were any doubt about this, the risen Lord erased it when He aimed pointed words to the church at Ephesus:

I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name?s sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place-unless you repent. (Revelation 2:2-5)

What an amazing passage of Scripture this is. When Jesus Christ looked at the church in Ephesus, He saw a lot of good things. He saw good works, He saw hard work, and He saw continuing work. These folk were not lazy. They were diligent in the things of God. They had even endured persecution and hardship for the sake of Christ?s name. So far so good.

When Jesus Christ looked at the church in Ephesus, He also saw doctrinal soundness. These believers could sniff out false apostles and false teachers because they knew their theological facts. They knew the Scriptures. The truth was important to them. Any pastor has to love a group of people like that.

In fact, there was only one area where the Ephesians had let things slip. Something had gone wrong, and it was this: the duty that was the result of devotion took the place of devotion. The Ephesians had left their ?first love,? their love for Christ Himself. They were efficient in their Christian lives-but they were coldly efficient. Somewhere along the line, the warmth and excitement of their love for God had grown cold and lifeless.

Well, you say, three out of four isn?t bad. They had good deeds, they served God with endurance, and they were sound in doctrine. They just needed to work harder on the love thing.

Is that what Jesus Christ told them? No! He said, ?Without your love for Me being what it ought to be, nothing else you do really matters. Unless you return to the love you had for Me at the first, I?ll remove your church?s lampstand from its place!?

God never meant for our duty to replace our devotion. That makes the issue of our first love so important that it?s worth taking this and the following chapters to talk about it. I want to do this under two headings which will take us from where we are to where we want to be.

Unfortunately, since we are fallen, redeemed people living in a fallen, unredeemed world, there?s a lot around us and even within us that can cause us to take our eyes off Christ and lose our ?first love? relationship with Him. We face some formidable enemies: the world, which according to John includes ?the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life? (1 John 2:16), and that old lion the devil (1 Peter 5:8).

So in part one we?ll talk about some things that can rob us of the priority of our love for Christ, and the consequences of allowing this condition to continue. This is part of the picture, because Jesus gave such a strong warning to the Ephesian church that we have to realize what we?re risking if we don?t put God back in His rightful place in our lives.

The second part of the book is the fun stuff, where we talk about regaining our first love. The outline for this is taken from Revelation 2:5, where Jesus told the Ephesians to remember, repent, and redo. This section is heavy on application, but all along the way I?ll be giving you ideas for putting the truth we?re learning into practice. Let?s get started.

PART ONE

LEAVING YOUR
FIRST LOVE

CHAPTER ONE

THE CANCER
OF CARNALITY

If we went back twenty-five years and did away with all of the country, pop, and rock songs that deal with someone leaving his or her lover, the list of available tunes would probably be cut in half. One that would definitely have to go is the seventies hit song by Paul Simon, ?50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.?

Judging by the music our secular culture keeps churning out, one would have to conclude that we are in a love crisis and have been for quite some time. The world?s crisis is twofold. First, no one seems to know how to keep love alive, how to keep the flame lit, the fire burning. Second, everyone seems to be stepping out on his or her true love.

Well, I can testify that the church has a love crisis too. We have a hard time keeping our first love in its rightful place. The title of this book suggests that it?s possible for us Christians to leave our first love. Jesus Himself said so to a group of Christians in the church at Ephesus (Revelation 2:4).

So we?ve got a problem. As I suggested in the preface, because we are very imperfect people in an imperfect world, it?s easy for us to get our priorities messed up. And the place where we often mess up is in getting our eyes and hearts off Christ and on something else. It?s called leaving your first love, and there?s only one remedy for it. It?s called returning to your first love.

Now, if you?ve ever been lost, made a wrong turn and left the road you were supposed to be traveling on, you know you?ve got to return. In fact, if you?re like me, you want to return to the right road once you see you?re going the wrong way!

But before you can get back to where you?re supposed to be, you?ve got to see where you are, figure out how you messed up to get where you are, and retrace your steps. If it?s possible to leave your first love, and Jesus said it is, we?d better identify and deal with the attitudes and actions that can get us off track. That?s what I want to do in these early chapters.

The first of these love-stealers is the spiritual condition the New Testament calls carnality. Whether it?s in our individual lives, our family life, our church life, or our life in society, a lot of what is wrong with us is attributable to our own carnality.

God has too many children who are not really sure whose family they want to be a part of. They?re trying to step out with Christ and the world at the same time, which leads to unanswered prayer, emotional and physical weakness, loss of peace, loss of joy, lack of stability, and all manner of ills.

Now don?t misunderstand me. I am not insinuating that every time a Christian has a problem, it is because he or she is carnal. But I am suggesting that far too many of us are having far too many failures because we are carnal and are half-stepping with the gospel.

What does it mean to be a carnal Christian? Simply stated, carnality is that spiritual state where a born-again Christian knowingly and persistently lives to please and serve self rather than Christ. Paul explains the concept of carnality in 1 Corinthians 3, which we will consider below.

A GENUINE CHRISTIAN

The first thing I want to note is that a carnal Christian is a genuine Christian. When I say carnal Christian, I mean just that. I am not talking about those who have never come to Christ. You can?t leave your first love for Christ if you were never properly related to Him in the first place. So when I talk about a carnal Christian, I have in mind a born-again believer.

Did you know it?s possible to be on your way to heaven and yet be of little use to God on earth? It?s possible to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and yet come to the place where you refuse to submit to His lordship. That?s the picture of the carnal Christian: someone who is on his way to heaven but has compromised his life of faith on earth.

Many people think they are carnal Christians when they are not Christians at all. Some think they have backslidden when they?ve never frontslidden! If you?ve never trusted the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation, then you need to be born again (John 3:1-7). You need to repent of your sins and be saved, to entrust your eternal destiny to Jesus Christ, who paid for your sins on the cross. Carnality is not your problem if you?re in this category.

Sometimes we see a person who professes to have been born again but who is now living a Christian lie. It?s easy to say this person was never a Christian. That?s possible. But it?s also possible that this person is a genuine Christian who has grown lukewarm and has become a failure in the faith.

This is so because Christians have a two-fold relationship with God. Just as it is possible to be legally married without enjoying the intimate fellowship that marriage should bring, it is also possible to be truly married to Christ but not enjoying the fellowship that ought to be part of our salvation.

That a person can be a Christian and be carnal is clear from 1 Corinthians 3. Paul says in verse 1, ?And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ.?

Please notice that Paul addressed these people as brethren, as being ?in Christ.? Brethren are part of the family of God. And if you are in Christ, you are a Christian. Yet in this chapter, Paul is going to chastise his readers because even though they were brethren (part of the family) and in Christ (genuine Christians), they were failing spiritually.

Back in 1 Corinthians 1:2, Paul opened his letter to this church made up largely of carnal Christians by writing, ?to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.? The Corinthians were people set apart for God?s purposes. They were saved, sanctified brethren, members of the family. Yet they were carnal, living as if Christ were not the object of their love at all, let alone their first love.

There are many illustrations in the Bible of people who committed themselves to God and then became abysmal failures. I think of Saul, the first king of Israel. He was the Lord?s anointed ruler, chosen to lead Israel (1 Samuel 10:1). Yet here is a man who because of rebellion against God wound up using witchcraft and ultimately committing suicide. Saul became suicidal because of his rebellion against God.

Saul?s successor, David, lived in a state of carnality when he not only committed adultery with Bathsheba, but committed murder and then tried to cover it up until Nathan the prophet confronted him (2 Samuel 11-12).

David?s son Solomon was a great king. The first ten chapters of 1 Kings tell us how wonderfully committed he was. When he had a chance to ask for anything his heart desired, Solomon prayed, ?Don?t give me riches, give me wisdom? (1 Kings 3:2-15). And there are few prayers in the Bible as great as the prayer of Solomon when he dedicated the temple (1 Kings 8:22-53). He was a man committed.

But the Bible says in 1 Kings 11:1, ?Solomon loved many foreign women.? What an understatement for someone who wound up with 700 wives and 300 girlfriends on the side! These women ?turned [Solomon?s] heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God? (v. 4). If that isn?t a description of leaving your first love, I don?t know what is.

No wonder that by the time Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, his theme was the emptiness of life. When he left his first love and entered into a life of carnality, all Solomon could talk about was the meaninglessness of life apart from a dynamic relationship with God because he had become a carnal saint.

The list could go on and on. Later in 1 Corinthians, we read about a man who was living with his stepmother in an incestuous relationship. Although Paul pronounced severe judgment on this man in expelling him from the church, the man may well have been a believer who needed severe discipline to bring him to repentance and restore him (5:1-5).

My point is that getting saved ten years ago doesn?t fix you spiritually today. God gave you new life, but you must live the new life He gave you in order for it to be meaningful. It is possible to be a spiritual victor yesterday and a spiritual disaster today. Unless we keep short accounts with God, unless we live this Christian life day by day in a dynamic walk with Him, it is possible for us to be spiritual failures.