Have You Left Your First Love?

Do you remember when you were—as John Flavel put it—“restless and impatient… in His absence”? You could bear anything but that. Sickness you could bear. Pain and temporal losses you could endure. But His absence was unbearable. You could not stand to go on without the sense of His dear smile. You longed to walk and live and breathe in the light of His countenance (Psalm 4:6–7; Psalm 89:15).

Do you remember when “Divine withdrawments were to you as the hell of hell (Flavel)”? Those seasons when God seemed to hide His face from you—when He was distant, and there was not that familiar communion and fellowship in the prayer closet—were to you as hell. You wept and you groaned and you cried for His return. You stirred yourself to take hold of God (Isaiah 64:7), and you wrestled with Him as you told Him you would not let Him go (Genesis 32:26).

Do you remember when the world was a burden to you? Do you remember a time when, if it were not for your sense of duty, you would have gladly and willingly let everything else alone—you would have neglected a whole world—if only to enjoy uninterrupted communion with Jesus? This was your one thing: to dwell in the house of your God and behold His beauty (Psalm 27:4). How you loved to sit at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:39)!

Do you remember when you woke in the night and could say that “the darkness [was] enlightened by the heavenly glimpses of the countenance of my God upon me? How did His company shorten those hours…(Flavel)” You could say with the Psalmist that you remembered Him upon your bed and meditated on Him in the night watches (Psalm 63:6). His lovingkindness was better than life; your soul was satisfied as with marrow and fatness; your mouth praised Him with joyful lips, and you rejoiced in the shadow of His wings (Psalm 63:3–7).

But now it is not so. You are living at a distance from your Beloved. Perhaps you hardly even think of Him as your Beloved anymore. By your prayerlessness you seem content to remain hidden from Him. Though He watches you with love, and urges you to speak, and tells you  He wants to hear the sound of your voice in the prayer closet (Song of Solomon 2:14), your voice is not heard; your prayer closet lies empty. A house once alive with the sound of praise is now silent.

Why? What has happened? Has He been a wilderness to you (Jeremiah 2:31)?

No, even now you know He has been faithful. He has only ever been good to you. In fact, even now He is “incessantly pleading on your behalf, interceding for your well-being with a love that never falters, with uplifted hands that never weary, bending upon you a glance infinitely more tender and wakeful than the mother watching her sick and suffering babe (Winslow).”  

Reader, have you drifted?  Have you lost something of your first love (Revelation 2:4)? Why not tell Him you miss Him?  Cold or lukewarm as you may be, be assured that “he will not despise your cry. The moans of a distressed child work upon the bowels of a tender father…(Winslow)”

Remember who He is. Remember that no matter what your condition, He is unchanged and unchanging (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). Whatever you may be, “Still, Jesus is love, is loving, and loves you. He has suffered and died for you; and were it necessary, He would suffer and die for you yet again. Whatever blessing He sees good to take from you, Himself He will never take. Whatever stream of creature love He sees fit to dry, His own love will never fail. Oh, can that love fail? Can it cease to yearn and sympathize, and soothe and support, which brought Jesus from heaven to earth to endure and suffer all this for us (Winslow)?"

You may have failed Him. You may have drifted far.

Should Jesus ask you, as He did Peter, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:15–17), what would you tell Him?

I think I know the answer.

Dark as things may have become, distant as He may seem, cold and lifeless as you may be—still you love Him.

He knows you do, but tell Him anyway.

And then find a quiet place and worship Him.

--

This post was originally published on my former blog in 2018 and then reposted to this blog in 2020. I have reposted it here with some changes.



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