When Faith Becomes a Routine

Verse of the week

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider 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.

Jesus sees the love that has grown cold, and he calls us to return.

A family text thread can become a remarkably efficient place. Somebody needs a ride. Somebody needs to pick up milk. Dinner is in the refrigerator. You answer with a thumbs-up and move on. Everything gets handled. After a while, though, you may realize you haven’t asked how the other person is doing in days.

There is nothing wrong with getting dinner on the table. Love does a great deal of practical work. But we know the difference between being cared for and being managed. We can feel it when somebody listens only long enough to decide what needs fixing.

That same drift can happen in our life with Jesus. We keep our commitments. We know what we believe. People can count on us. Yet the person interrupting our work starts to feel like the problem. Prayer becomes another task to finish. We are doing quite a lot for a Lord we rarely pause to enjoy.

Jesus begins his letter to Ephesus by acknowledging the church’s hard work. He sees their endurance and their refusal to accept false teaching. Their labor matters to him. Then he names something their busy calendar would never reveal: they have forsaken the love they had at first.

That is a searching word. Being useful does not make us immune to growing cold. We may be so accustomed to pointing out what is wrong elsewhere that we have stopped asking what is happening in our own hearts. Jesus loves his church enough to speak about it.

He tells them to remember, repent, and do the things they did at first. Remembering can bring the loss into focus. Think about receiving forgiveness when you knew you could not excuse yourself. Think about the patience another believer showed you. What happened to that gratitude? Where has resentment begun to shape the way you treat people?

We can bring those answers to Jesus without dressing them up. Revelation introduces him as the One who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. His love came before our service. We are returning to the Savior who gave himself for us, and we need his mercy as much now as when we first believed.

Choose one ordinary act of love today. Listen without checking your phone. Pray for the person whose needs have started to irritate you. If you have been sharp with someone, apologize without explaining how busy you are. Let Jesus’ kindness toward you give shape to that encounter.

You may not feel a rush of affection before you begin. You can still turn toward Christ and toward the person in front of you. Ask him to restore the love you have allowed to grow cold. Then give that person your attention long enough to hear the answer to ‘How are you, really?’