September Partner Letter:
Preparing for Fall, by “Falling in Love” With God All Over Again
Revelations 2:4
Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
God bless you partners! Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am so blessed to have you in alignment with our vision here at KCC. As you well know, we are in the month of September. As I often say, “can you believe how fast time has moved.” It seemed like yesterday when we were introducing our theme for the year of 2024. Here we are approaching the culmination of this year. But the good news is that there is still time to “breakout” and be both validated and vindicated. As I was pondering what to write this month, I believe that God placed it on my heart to remind us to “Fall back in love with Him.” Needless to say, the “Fall season” is not a time to fall out of relationship with God, instead we should rekindle our fire for Him. We need to keep falling in love with God. There is so much going on in our daily affairs that is constantly competing with God’s placement in our lives. Our kids are back in school, that means lots of transport hours, sport practices and the like. Our jobs constantly have us on the move and the mundane things of life are always in a tug of war with our relationship with God. Busyness is a direct infringement on our time for God. Hear what Jesus said to Martha about her constant busyness:
Luke 10:38-42
38 Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” 41 And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. 42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Notice that Mary “made time” to sit at Jesus' feet, while Martha allowed other things to “take time” from her worship with the Lord. Life has a funny way of competing with God even when the things that we are doing are indeed needful. I imagine that Martha’s house really needed to be cleaned up, however, at the time, Jesus should have been her priority. Folks, there will always be something else for us to do in a day. I don’t remember a time since I’ve been an adult when I didn’t have something that needed to be done, however, we’ve got to learn to etch out space for
our “first love.” Hence the point of this article, most Christians really need to “fall in love with God again.” Hear the amplified version of our theme verse:
Revelation 2:4 (AMP)
But I have this [charge] against you, that you have left your first love [you have lost the depth of love that you first had for Me].
As we can see in the verse above, it’s not that we totally “left God”, but in so many cases some of us have lost the “depth of love that we first had for God.” When was that depth of love so rich for many? When you first got saved. There is a song that we used to sing in the church that said “take me back to the place where I first received you.” The whole idea of the song was that many believers needed to be brought back on fire for how they used to feel about God on the day when they “first believed.” I agree with this song. I think that many Christians have allowed their relationship with God to go stale and stagnant. We need to get back on fire for God. How does this happen? The same way it works in our earthly relationships, you must “fall back in love all over again.” So how do we fall back in love with God:
1. Reflect on and appreciate His goodness in our lives.
2. Reflect on what life would be like without Him
3. Reflect on your salvation and what you avoided by getting born again
I believe that this is one of the more powerful revelations that God has dealt with us on this year via a partner letter. We have got to maintain our “love walk” with the Lord. Paul had a revelation of just how important the presence of God is for us in this world:
Ephesians 2:12 (ESV) remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
The key word in the verse above is “remember”. We’ve got to remember just how much God’s presence means to us. We fall back in love with God by being reflective and by worshiping Him for all of his kindness towards us. This skill set is adaptable in other relationships. We need to “fall back in love” with our spouses, children and friends. Love has to be maintained. Don’t allow the enemy to strip you of your relationship with God most importantly because you will need Him for the rest of eternity and that means “forever”. God bless you partners, work on your love relationship with God.
With Love, Pastor Gabe