Father, our heart declaration this morning is that You reign, You reign in our lives, You reign in our homes, You reign in our church, You reign in our land, You reign all over the world, glory be to Your name forever more. Unto You Lord we have come this morning, Father Lord God of heaven, please speak Your word to us, reveal Yourself to us in the mighty name of Jesus.
And Father, please help us, as many of us who have left our first love, help us to rediscover ourselves and come back home in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus marvelous name we prayed. Praise the Lord!
I thank God for the salvation of my soul and also for the gift of life and that’s why I’m here, that’s why you are all here. I’d also like to appreciate our father in the Lord, daddy thank you for this privilege, God bless you in the mighty name of Jesus.
Please turn with me to the book of Acts 18:24-28 (NIV), “Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. 25He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
27When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. Praise the living Jesus.
I’ll take a bit also from Acts 19: 1 – 4, but in our spare time, let’s take 1 – 20 to sufficiently deal with this topic. While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied. 4Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” Praise the living Jesus.
And finally, Revelation 2:4 & 5, yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. This was the John, now the Apostle talking to the church in Ephesus. Praise the living Jesus.
By the grace of God, our topic this morning is “Do Not Forsake Your First Love”; say to the person next to you, ‘do not forsake your first love’. I had intended that we’d have a short drama just to portray what the first love is but I’ll talk through it. This month of November, like the month of May, in our mission are two months designated for the Explosive Growth Drive initiative of the mission.
Now what is this? For the benefit of those who may not know or who are hearing it for the first time, it is that the mission has a vision that by the year 2032, we’ll have 40 million people membership and this is achieved through many ways, but one of it is this month, the teaching is around equipping us members here and in all Redeemed parishes, equipping us the things we need to know and how to go about and also how for us to remain standing. The concept is members should win souls or members win new members, that’s the idea.
So what we are doing basically this morning like we’ve done in the last two Sundays is just to equip us or to remind us of the task that we have ahead of us. My prayer is that God Himself will speak to us in the mighty name of Jesus.
So the first two weeks on November 9th, the topic was Understanding the Love of God; that day in summary, we learned that God is love, His nature is love, and because His nature is love, the basis of our salvation is love. We are required then to imitate Him and walk in His love by telling other people about Jesus Christ.
That’s the summary of the first teaching on November 9th.
Last week Sunday, the topic was Loving God Firstly; we are enjoined to love God first and above all things and above every other one, and we must demonstrate this in obedience. When God wants us to do something and another situation wants us to do something, who do we obey first? God, we must demonstrate it in obedience, in our service, in our giving, in all ways we must show that God is first. No one can claim to love God who doesn’t love Jesus, and no one can claim to love God who does not love soul winning because God loves soul winning. Hallelujah.
So today by the grace of God, we are looking at Don’t Forsake Your First Love; I’ll start with the story of the early church; according to Acts 2: 42 – 47, the church was first born in Acts 2: 1-4, the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the people in that upper room and they began to speak in different languages, that was the birth of the church.
Then in Acts 2:42, you see that these believers were devoted Apostles, they were teaching everywhere, they had fellowship, they were breaking bread, they had prayers, they shared everything and there was oneness among them. That was the definition of the church, they loved Jesus Christ and it was obvious, they didn’t need anybody. In fact, as a matter of fact, there was a point the Apostles were somewhere and people saw them and they said these ones had surely been with Jesus Christ, they could see Jesus Christ in them, that was the church.
Now, the focus of our teaching has been on the church of Ephesus, so I want to talk about the church of Ephesus; the passage we read from in Acts 18 was how the church started in Ephesus by one Jew named Apollos. He was doing things but he didn’t have a full understanding until he met a couple also, he knew Christ and of course exposed to him but then he traveled, he left the city and Paul came, that’s why I read those two chapters, Paul came to continue that work.
So if you read from Acts 19: 1 – 20, you will see a lot of things about the church in Ephesus at the beginning. First you could see that they were genuinely saved, there was no pretense, you know when somebody said I’m saved, they were saved indeed, but in the church today, when somebody says I’m saved, you are actually questioning the – in fact, you can even see that there’s no salvation there.
In Acts 19: 18 – 20, they said many of those that believed came and openly confessed what they had done, openly they confessed and they were saved. A number who practiced sorcery, they brought their scrolls together, they burnt everything, they said to hell with sorcery and they became saved.
The second thing about that church in Ephesus was that it was a spiritfilled church, they had the gifts of the Spirit and He was at work among them, Acts 19:1-6. When Paul first got in there, he said, “Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit?” They said the baptism of John; he said, “Oh, that is a shadow of what’s to come,” and he baptized them in the Holy Spirit. So, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Praise the living Jesus!
Number three, that church was a committed church, they were committed to daily attendance for 2 years that Paul was there in their midst, every day he was teaching. Acts 19: 9 – 10 is where you can find this, they were committed to daily attendance.
Number four is that they were on fire for evangelism. They did not stop there, they then went out, everyone went to their city and went beyond, Acts 19:10. We know that Paul alone could not have evangelized the whole city, so by implication, Paul led through the Spirit also went forward to go and make other souls.
And then the Bible tells us in Acts 19:20 that that church grew numerically, that’s in number, and also in power, spiritually, that was the characterizes of the church at Ephesus at the beginning, but then many years after when the church at Ephesus was revealed in Revelation 2:4 – 5, then you saw a different church.
Jesus Christ first praised the church for the many good things that they had done, but He then said to them, “But I have noted something about you: you have forsaken your first love that you have at first.” This was a church that was very vibrant, a church that had full of Holy Spirit, a church that people were passionate about, Jesus Christ. said, “Your fire has gone cold.”
Jesus Christ was saying to the church at Ephesus, verse 5, He said you must consider your ways, you must repent, go back to where you fell, pick it up from there and come back to me again, I’m willing to take you; and He gave a warning, if you would not do that, I will remove your lampstand from its place. May that not be your portion in the mighty name of Jesus.
What Jesus Christ was saying basically to that church is that there’s a loss of weakness, and by removing lampstand, you all know that lamp light gives illumination, it gives direction, He’s saying you will not have direction anymore, you will not have light, you’ll be in darkness because you have forsaken your first love. But I pray for each and everyone again, that will not be our portion in the mighty name of Jesus. We will heed His call this morning in the mighty name of Jesus.
Brethren, many of us will be saying ‘my fire has not gone cold, I have not forsaken my first love’, what’s that first love by the way? You remember what it was the first time you gave your life to Jesus Christ, it was like somebody was intoxicated, every church service you wanted to be there, every first service you were the first person to get there, even when the service finished, you were staying back to pray, evangelism, you were the first person, that was the first love.
But what is it like today? When they call, I said, “Pastor, you must know that it’s about to rain now,” oh, but you were there yesterday, ah, is it every day? Oh, prayer is too much, after all, I’m comfortable already,” that’s what it is now. That’s an example of losing your first love.
What are the symptoms to show that somebody has lost his or her first love? When your obedience and service to God is no longer motivated by your love for God but is now motivated by what you get. You know for some people, they say come to church there will be food, that’s when they will come; for some people, they will say when you come the Lord will bless you.
Brethren, we do not come to Jesus Christ because He will bless us, we come to Jesus Christ because He has saved us and we must do His bidding, and in the process of doing that, He will choose to bless us. So it’s not the other way, it’s not because ‘You must bless me if I come’, that’s why you find people after a few months they say ‘God, this thing is not happening, I will go, I will leave o’, because what they are finding they have not seen, they have not come to look for Jesus Christ.
Secondly, when you have lost burdens for souls and soul winning; when you see people who are doing the wrong things, people who are perishing and you are not able to say to them, you are going the wrong way. In Romans 10: 1, it says, “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”
What’s our desire for the people around us? When last we have burdens for those souls that say God touch this soul? Many times we even make skits out of them, many times we laugh over the things they do. Hallelujah!
Number three symptom of when you have lost your first love, when you no longer are driven by the fire to evangelize. Similar to the first one though and you have stopped evangelism; Matthew 6:33, the Bible says seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and every other thing that we are running after will run after us. Hallelujah!
Then when you have stopped making obedience to God your priority. When God says go this way, what God expects from us is to say yes, Master; as long as God is the One saying it, that is the way, but many times what we do is that we argue with God and say God that’s not correct, I can see the way. So when obedience is no longer a part of what we do, then we are veering off.
Then number five, when you have started permitting the works of the flesh in your life, and we know Galatians 5:19 – 22 tells us about the works of the flesh.
So there are a few questions I would like to ask us at this point and I want us to ask ourselves, is my first love still intact? Or put it in another way, what has happened to my first love? In Matthew 24:12-13, the Bible says because of the increases of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end shall be saved. Praise the living Jesus!
The second question I want to ask, when was the last time that I felt a deep sense of passion for Jesus and the things of God? When was the last time that the zeal of the house of God consumed me? When was the last time that I was excited?
The Psalmist said, I was glad when they say unto me, let us go to the house of the Lord; when was the last time that we had excitement when it was about the things of God? Have we lost passion for the things of God?
Another question we must ask, what are the things that might be distracting me? If the answer to the first two tells us that we are not on track, what are those things that might be distracting me? What are those things that are taking me away from my first love?
The cares of this world, pursuit of wealth, comfort, has it given me comfort and as such, I’m no longer seeking Him? Some people will say, when you are sick that’s when you come to the hospital, and they ask the question, when you are healed and you were on admission, after you become healed, what happens? They say they discharge you. So they say, yes, when I needed things, I come to church, I look for God, when I find it like being discharged in the hospital, I leave. That should not be the way.
And then the last question you want to ask is what steps can I take to prioritize my relationship with Jesus going forward? Brethren, before I answer those questions, I’d like us to know that there are dangers of losing our first love, there are a lot of things that can go wrong especially when you were passionate for God, you have terrorized the kingdom of Satan, when he now has you (God forbid), what do you think Satan will do? First before welcoming you, he’ll say look at you, when you were going about terrorizing my kingdom, he will deal with you a bit before he says oya enter.
So some of the things; number one, unfruitfulness. Unfruitfulness can come, John 15: 4 & 5, remain in me, and I also in you. N o branch can bear fruit but by itself, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5bFor without me ye can do nothing. So if somebody has stepped out of that first love, there’s a risk of unfruitfulness. Hallelujah.
There’s also the danger of lukewarmness, and the Bible tells us in Revelation 15:16 that if you were lukewarm, I will spew you out. There’s that danger of being spewed out, what He’s saying here is that I want passion, I want commitment, I want you to be everything for me because without any of these things is lukewarmness. And when you become lukewarm, it doesn’t feel comfortable for me, Jesus is saying, “I spill you out. I reject you.”
When somebody becomes lukewarm or when you’ve lost your first love, there is the possibility that the person will be discarded and possibly also be substituted. God has substitutes, His work must be done; when Elijah got to a point and was saying I’m the only one left, God said to him, without your knowledge, there are 7,000 that have not bowed, I have 7,000 options to every Elijah, to every man.
To everyone that God has given an assignment, God is saying I have options, if you fail the work will not fail, all we have to do is just tick one of the options and continue. For example, when Saul failed, God raised David; when Eli failed, God raised Samuel; when Judas Iscariot failed, God brought up Matthias, God always has a substitute. May you not be substituted in the mighty name of Jesus.
So what must you do therefore to recover or to go back to your first love? Revelation 2:5 is where we’re going to take the lesson here, there are three points; first you must remember and reflect on your first love; the second is that you must repent, and the third one is that you must return to Him.
Let’s talk about the three; first, remember where you fell, reflect on your love, your first love, remember how it was in the good old days, remember then what happened on that night? What happened on that day? What happened in that business forum? What happened at that conference where you began to fall? You must trace it back to where the problem started. Praise the living Jesus!
And part of doing this, reflect on your journey, you must recall the times that you were closest to Him, how He was good and how He was no longer good, remember where you fell from. You remember the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, he left the house but he got to a point, he said, “I remember that once upon a time in my father’s house, there was abundance of everything that I’m suffering for here,” so he remembered.
Then the second thing that we must do, we must repent. Revelation 2:5, remember therefore from whence thou had fallen and repent; there must be genuine repentance, we must come to the point where we are saying God I am sorry for what I have done or what I’ve not done. The prodigal son got to a point where there was genuine repentance, and from that repentance he took a decision to go back.
And that’s the third point, we must return to Him. And you know what? Like the father of that prodigal son, His arms are open to anyone and everyone that has chosen to return to Him. My prayer is that as we go through this pathway to reflect on our journey, to repent and then to return to Him, His arms are open to receive us in the mighty name of Jesus. He says, “As many people as will come to me, I will no wise cast away,” He’s waiting for us to come back to Him.
Let’s look at a few practical steps; you must spend quality time with Him in prayer, in worship, in Bible study. You must remain connected to Jesus from now on so that what swept you away before will not be able to take you away again.
You must have a prayer journal where from time to time you are writing your journey; write prayer points, write revelations, take a deep relationship with Jesus Christ. Take your Bible study seriously and then you must make time out for worship because in worship you are having fellowship with God. Take time out for worship. Hallelujah!
You must seek Him first above every other thing as we learnt in the previous messages, seek God first, seek His kingdom first; if there is a conflict between what God wants you to do and what someone else or something else wants you to do, go the route of God, He has never failed, He knows the end from the beginning. Praise the living Jesus!
You must then reconnect with fellow believers, because the Bible says we must not forsake the assembly of one another. When you come to fellowship like this, it is easy for you then to grow again, but if in the process of coming back to Him you are staying alone, you are still giving the devil an opportunity to still toy with you because here you hear the word of God, here you listen to testimonies, here you listen to praise and worship, here you see other believers and you see their journey and you are encouraged.
So do not forsake the assembly of believers, come and fellowship, and then you must surround yourself with believers who would encourage you and hold you accountable, everybody must be accountable to somebody. You must surround yourself with people who can put you in check and say bro, this is not right; somebody must be able to look at you and tell you that what you are doing is not right. If there’s nobody who can tell you that, chances are that when you are veering off nobody will be able to call you back.
You must share your testimony also, it helps; share it with others, share Jesus with others. What that also does for you is that it continues to give you a push, you can’t go back; when you say once upon a time I was this, Jesus has done this for me, in the eye of those that you have said it, you don’t want to go back, so it keeps you going. Share your testimony. Hallelujah!
Then you must serve; you were saved to serve others. There are many people sitting here who can do a lot of things for God, but everybody is sitting comfortably. This is an invitation, come and serve, come and serve the Lord, and God will bless you in the name of Jesus.
And then we must find ways to overcome the distractions. You remember one of the questions was what was the distraction? In one of our digging deep series, we went over distractions and overcoming distractions, it will do us good to go back and review those.
Please overcome your distractions, the major distraction we have in the world today is social media, the telephone, even as we are here now, some people are doing Tik Tok, is the biggest distraction in the world today. In that same phone there is a Bible but some people have never opened their Bible in that same phone, please overcome your distractions, identify what your idols are and you must set boundaries.
Even when you want to do social media, you have your itinerary for the day, put a time, after this time or not before XYZ time, because I must work and after work I want to see the news, I want to see what’s going on in Nigeria, yes, and the world, but after then put it down and do other things or go to sleep. You must set boundaries, the Lord will help us in the mighty name of Jesus.
As we conclude brethren, our environment where we live today is already heated; there are issues everywhere and as we know insecurity is on the front burner, this is a critical time for every one of us who has left his first love to come back because in Jesus Christ there is protection, in Him there is guidance, in Him there is direction. Hallelujah!
It is also the time for us that we have the greatest need to share the love of God to those who may not have known Him or those who used to know Him but have gone out of their first love. This is the time to reach out to the unreached people of the world, this is the time to reach out to those who are backsliding, this is the time to go everywhere, let people feel us, let them see the love of God.
This is why as Christians you are commissioned to share the good news, we must pray for divine peace, we must pray that God will guide us, we must pray that God will bring the people back. You know some people will say ‘I win souls’, nobody can win a soul actually, what we do is just go and represent God and then He will use you as that vessel to touch the heart of the persons and then they will come back to God. My prayer is that He will use us mightily.
In 1 Corinthians 10:12, it says, “Take heed so you do not lose your fire, so that you do not forsake your first love,” so if there’s anyone here this morning, you have forsaken your first love, the call this morning is please come back home, remember where you fell, repent about your past that was not in the way of God and return to Him, He’s waiting for you.
I want to call a few people because we will pray shortly; so if you are here in the house today, the questions I asked about how do you know if you are falling off, you know already that it is not what it used to be, the fire has gone cold, you are not the person that you used to know 5 years ago, this is an opportunity to come back home. So first you are in the house, you have forsaken your first love but you want to return to Him..
[Altar call]
The second category is that if you’re in the house, you have never at any time come to Him, you are hearing about Him now but you want to be a disciple, you also want to be part of winning souls…
[Altar call]
Let us rise up, brethren, let’s begin to give thanks to God, let us bless His holy name, let’s magnify Him, let’s thank the Lord for His love, for His love of calling us back into His fold, let us thank the Lord Almighty. Father, we thank You for Your love, we thank You for Your hands that are open to receive us back home, thank You for opening our eyes, thank You Lord for revealing Yourself unto us, glory be to Your name forever more, in Jesus wonderful name we have prayed.
We are going to pray again and say Father, please help me to remember my first love in the mighty name of Jesus. Help me, Lord, to remember how it used to be, just replay it to me again, Lord, please help me to reflect on where I was coming, my journey at the beginning with You.
Father, help me, oh Lord, to reflect on my journey at the beginning, help me, oh Lord, to remember my first love. Glory be to Your name forever more, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
And we are going to pray here and say Father, Lord God of heaven, I want to come back home, please restore me, revive my soul, revive my spirit in the name of Jesus. Help me to refocus in You, Lord, please restore me, please restore me in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus wonderful name we prayed.
And then we pray, Lord, help me to return to my first love and never to go back again, help me to return to You and never to go back again in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father.
I’d like us to take one or two prayer points for our nation Nigeria, Psalm 122:6, the Bible says pray for the peace of Nigeria, they prosper that love thee. You’re saying Father, let there be peace in Nigeria, let Your peace reign all over Nigeria in the mighty name of Jesus. Our God and our Father, You are the God of peace, let Your peace reign in Nigeria in the mighty name of Jesus. Father, let Your peace reign all over Nigeria, in the name of Jesus, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
In first Kings 18:17, Elijah talked about the troublers of Israel, we are going to pray and say Father, every troubler of our Israel, every troubler of Nigeria, Father, please trouble them, arrest them in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
Psalm 40:1-3 talked about somebody being a miry clay and God helping the person to come out; sometimes when you are in the miry clay, you need a help, you need helper. Our situation is likened to being in a miry clay right now, we need divine help and God Himself will not come, He will send agents, He will send people.
So we’re going to cry to the Lord Almighty and say Father, please send help to us in Nigeria, we need help. Father send help to us, bring us out of this miry clay, Father please send help to us in the mighty name of Jesus.
