November 11

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Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place – unless you repent. Revelation 2:4-5

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🔊 Jesus’ rebuke here reveals His highest priority – that the people of God must abide in love.  Love is not just an emphasis, it is the air that God and His children breathe.  Love cannot be imitated, nor can it be practised from an insincere heart.  Love must flow from a heart that is yielded to God.  Love is always spontaneous, and is revealed in the sudden outburst of joy and praise.  Love plans a thousand things to surprise and delight her loved ones.  These plans are the outflow of a love that dreams and hopes and believes wonderful things.  Love is incapable of thinking an evil thought, and so it does not get depressed, though it may be grieved.  Love never gives up; so even when things go wrong, love is constantly active to pick up from where things are at any given moment.  Jesus tells the believers in Ephesus to do three things: remember, repent, and do.  This is astonishingly simple and we must receive this command in all its wisdom and power.  Remember the time when love moved your heart, made you get up early, moved you to do things that others might even consider extreme.  Repent of cold attitudes and respectable Christianity that have threatened to stifle the warm flow of the Holy Spirit in you.  Do again the things you once did; don’t wait for feelings before you do them – the feelings will come as you act.  We benefit from the wisest counsel in the universe, and we must not neglect it.