An Old "new" Message

There truly is "nothing new under the sun"!  As I have been looking into Revelation and studying it carefully, it shocks me how germane (to use one of our new vocabulary words!) the messages to the seven churches are today!

To the church of Ephesus:  As always Jesus Christ starts with a commendation: You have persevered against false doctrine, you are doing all the good works.  The rebuke:  You have left your first love!  As I studied on, I remembered wrestling with a question in my own soul about church-planting, etc..  I remember asking myself, "What ever happened to the churches that Paul planted?  Did they remain faithful? Would it be a reflection on Paul's ministry if they weren't?"  As usual the LORD is faithful in answering the questions...actually sometimes I wonder if He gives me the questions, so that later on He can answer them, and get all the glory, and I get to know Him better as my faithful God! He's always doing that kind of stuff, ya know, increasing our faith and stuff!

But I digress...Paul had planted Ephesus and commended for their love for one another, about 40 years earlier!  However, here is God rebuking them because they had left their first love!!  What happened?  I guess, we can do all the right things, and fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing them for God when in reality there is no relationship with Him!

This is apparently the church at Ephesus' plight. Oh, they were doing all the right things alright... enduring a wicked culture, confronting heresy, even hating what God hated, but they had no relationship of love with the God they were doing all this for!  So what was the Exhortation?:  Remember how it was before you lost your first love for God, Repent of your straying, and Renew your devotion to God by doing the things that kept your first love burning!

So...how about me?  am I busy doing and not being?  What was God's promise to the church at Ephesus?  The promise is only for those who have ears to hear!  For us believers!  " To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God."  In other words, eternity in the presence of the God whom they love!!!!  But wait, if we don't have a relationship with Him here, why in the world would we want to spend such a loooong time with Him there?  

Oh LORD, hit me upside the head when I start doing things FOR You rather than spending time WITH You!  Teach me to look to You for satisfaction instead of looking to works, action, busyness, etc... for importance.  That would be going back to the "elementary principles of this world", wouldn't it?  Wow! the church at Ephesus wasn't that different than the church today!!