Rekindling Your First Love: A Call to Return to God’s Heart (with Jeff Stemple)

Welcome.

I'll go ahead and add my welcomes

to those that have already been spoken this morning.

Hey, I just want to take a minute and tell everybody who's here this morning.

Good for you being in church, making church a priority.

The Bible talks a lot about, something called the first fruits.

It says it talks about the first fruits of your time, your talent, your treasure.

And, everybody always talks about Monday being the first day of the week.

Well, maybe the work week, but the first day of the week is Sunday.

And good for you for, giving God the first fruits of your time.

I'm confident that he's going to honor that in ways

that we could have never imagined this week.

As we go about doing, hopefully what we're going to talk about today.

If we have not met before, my name is Jeff.

I'm going to try to adjust this wire real quick.

My name is Jeff.

I'm on staff here at flip Side.

I was thinking, as I prepared for this, today, our time together.

Today, I was thinking about the fact that I'm, This year marks

ten years of me being on staff at flip side.

Crazy. Crazy.

Thank you. I wasn't looking for applause, but thank you.

The other

the other milestone that I'm celebrating this year.

Since I was considering milestones,

is my wife, Jennifer, and I are going to be

celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year.

Couple of months in September.

Yeah. It's crazy.

It's weird.

If you've been married for any significant amount of time.

There's things about when you got married that

if you're like me, they seem like yesterday.

And then there's things about it that seem like a lifetime ago.

Like an eternity ago.

And I was just sitting there reflecting

on, specifically that time of our wedding.

We got married in September,

and during our, we have a we had a relatively short engagement.

It was long enough to plan a wedding.

And then we were we're we're married.

But during our engagement, I had happened to me.

What I think happens to a lot of people, especially guys.

There's a lot of speculation about marriage

in general, but your marriage in particular,

and with guys, it takes the form a lot of of a lot of kind of doomsday

foreboding, like all the freedoms you're going to lose once you get married.

Like when you get married, no more guitar.

Forget about that. Or when you get married.

No more guys night out.

Forget about that. When you get married, forget about that.

And I remember kind of, you know, hearing this talk

thinking, oh my God, I kind of braced myself for marriage.

It's really kind of unfortunate.

I kind of braced myself for marriage, with all these freedoms

that I'd be losing because I got married.

And then once I got married and got a few weeks,

a few months into it, I thought I kind of like being married.

It's kind of cool.

Kind of a sweet gig. This marriage,

but something that nobody prepared me for.

Kids.

Some of you I knew, some of you in this room.

I knew when I was engaged.

And I'm holding this against you for not telling me about this.

Instead of marriage. Nobody.

Nobody warned me about kids.

At least. Maybe I didn't.

Maybe I wasn't listening.

I don't know, maybe the joy of being married, like, overshadowed the.

I just don't think anybody told me about it.

They never warned me about.

Once you have kids.

Dot, dot, dot, where do you have kids?

Dot dot dot and then our first, daughter was born.

That in and of itself was a shock because my dad's dad, my dad's,

my grandfather, one of four boys, my dad, one of three boys, one of me two boys.

I know the numbers are dwindling, but I just thought, I'm going to have sons.

I know there are daughters out there and people have them.

I'm just not going to be one of them.

And then this little time, she was so tiny.

You guys, this little girl's born.

And I remember literally holding her like, you know, like, hold a delicate

piece of, you know,

pottery or whatever.

Holding her and telling Jen, what do I do?

I have no idea what to do.

But there was parenting, like it or not.

You're a parent.

And then I don't know what came over us.

Maybe we thought we'll have another one, because the two will occupy each other's

time, and we'll get to somehow go take a nap.

I don't know where we were.

I don't know what we were thinking, but 16 months later, Ali came around

and I just remember thinking, this parenting stuff is difficult.

I'm not trying to pin anything on Ali.

I mean, everybody knows it's my favorite anyway, so.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. You guys.

The two of them are 16 months apart.

The two of them together.

Was just overwhelming.

I remember thinking to myself, they.

These don't stop.

They come at you all the time. They don't.

Have you ever tried to call a timeout when you're parenting?

There are no timeouts.

Please. I just wanted to call a timeout.

Nope.

Parenting just came fast and furious.

The thing about that is, there was two of everything.

If you have twins, you know what I'm talking about.

If you have kids

that are real close in age, you know it comes in like biblical waves.

There's two of everything. There were two kids on the bottle.

There were two kids in diapers.

There were two car seats everywhere.

My parents, they bought them two of every outfits.

Bottom two of everything. Toys, bottom two of everything.

And I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I can't.

As rough as all that was,

the thing that really was the most difficult thing

was when they would get sick together

because they have no sense of personal space,

one would get sick and I knew it would that afternoon.

The other would be sick

because they sneeze in each other's mouth and wipe each other's nose on it.

I just remember thinking, you guys separate now.

They have no sense of personal space.

That was the most difficult when they would get sick together.

And I'll never forget there was one winter that some sort of flu

ran through the ran through the house or whatever, but they were both sick.

There was two of them. So we had a man to man defense.

You know what I'm talking about.

You know, whichever parent is closest to the one given the biggest problem that

that's that's my man right there. Pick that pick that one up.

And so I had

Ali in my left arm about 230 in the morning.

And I had Ali and she was screaming in my face, you know what kids do.

They just they don't have any have any couth.

They just scream right in your face.

She's screaming right in my face.

And I had the bottle here,

and I would feed her a little bit and she would eat a little bit,

and then she just spit the bottle out and scream in my face a little bit more.

And I remember thinking,

oh, I'm going to chuck this spot.

We lived in our old house in Fresno, and they had the single pane windows,

and I thought, I'm going to chuck this bottle.

Good thing I didn't chuck the

I'm going to chuck this bottle through our kitchen window.

Like the last semblance of control I had over a situation

that I had no control over.

I'm going to chuck this bottle through that window,

and that the days before rage rooms that'll make me feel good.

And so

I throw my arm back, full head of steam, come forward.

But I extended my arm too far and I hit the side of the refrigerator.

The bottle skids across the top of the refrigerator, loses

momentum, lands on the counter, slides across the countertop, hits

the lip of the sink, and gracefully lands right side up in the sink

where it should have been in the first place.

And I was like, I can't even do that right?

Kids screaming in my face.

And I remember that

winter, that night really.

I can laugh about it now, but that night

really began about a two year period, maybe two and a half to three year

period in my life where I was just there.

I would you've heard the phrase phoning it in.

I was phoning it in, I was robotic, I was just going through things.

I wasn't necessarily tired or

what the Bible calls weary, although there were moments of that.

But that long period of time,

something was going on where I was just you've heard the phrase losing it.

I was losing it.

I was losing the source.

The parenting thing was getting to me,

and I was just numb.

We've been in this series where we're taking a look

at two letters that the apostle Paul wrote to his protege, Timothy.

That's the series we've been in for a while.

We actually just started the second letter last week.

And Timothy is pastoring in a church.

Anybody remember where he was pastoring the church?

Ephesus.

Timothy is pastoring a church in a place called Ephesus.

So, if you know that area, the church is back in that day,

we're not necessarily like we have this church building.

Was anybody here when flip side was at the high school?

Just remember that. Yeah. A few of you were.

That's when we first started coming to flip side.

And it would basically

it was a set up and a tear down every week over called church in a box

set up and tear down every week over at the high school.

Well, the church is back in this first century.

We're like home churches.

And so when it says Timothy was pastoring the church in Ephesus,

it was the group of Christian followers, Jesus followers there in Ephesus

that were comprised of a bunch of really smaller home churches.

That's where Timothy was, and that's where these two letters find him from.

Paul.

So Carl's going to pick back up next week in second Timothy.

But what I want to do this week is kind of zoom out from where we've been,

get a broader picture of what was going on with that church,

because when we take a take a look at it in a general sense, we find out

that the Bible has a lot to say about this church that Timothy was pastoring in.

And it has a lot to say to us

it's 2000 some odd years later.

The Bible has a lot to say to us by looking at this church in Ephesus.

So that's where we're going to be today.

It actually goes all the way back to the book of acts.

If you've heard of that,

if you've never read the book of acts, and you think the book the Bible is

boring, read the Book of Acts reads like an epic novel.

Once I started it, I'm like, I cannot put this down.

But Paul went on for mission missionary journeys,

and they're all chronicled throughout the book of acts.

And towards the end, there,

around chapter 1920, it talks about Paul traveling

by land down through what's what is now modern day Turkey.

And he comes to the city of Ephesus.

And the city of Ephesus is comprised mostly of what's called Gentiles,

basically non-Jewish people.

The Gentiles were not

they were they were polytheistic

with no multiple gods, just to go see the god of the sky.

They were idol worshipers.

They had temples set up for idol worship.

They had people there who would make these idols and they'd sell them.

It was a whole thing, a whole way of life.

And Paul literally walks in

and starts preaching the gospel, starts talking to people about Jesus,

and he

gets this group, this following, who start this church.

And so Paul stays there for quite a bit of time.

There's a, close to a riot there, because people who are selling stuff

aren't really hip to Paul's message,

because he's stealing their business by preaching this one.

God and Jesus, his son, crucified.

They're not really digging it, but Paul goes through the throes of what

it means to plant a church in a place where nothing has been there before.

He's not riding anybody's coattails, really.

He's starting from scratch, and so he stays there for a certain amount of time,

and he starts this church and it actually takes off, starts doing well.

In the midst

of all these struggles and challenges, the church actually starts doing well.

And so Paul realizes, you know, God has called me to this ministry.

I need to move on.

I need to carry out ministry in other parts of the world.

But before he

leaves, he addresses what's called the church elders.

And so that's where we're going to be.

If you brought your Bible with you, we're going to be in acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

We're going to start at verse 28.

Paul is addressing before he leaves.

He's that he's talking to the group of elders, and he's kind of telling them

what to brace themselves for.

Start picking up at verse 28.

He says, keep watch over yourselves and all the flock

of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in

among you, and will not spare the flock, even from your own number.

Men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.

Be on your guard, so be on your guard.

He says.

Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you

night and day with tears.

That's sort of a tough goodbye.

That's kind of like more of a careful danger.

Be beware.

I'm out.

But one of the things we know about the time we've spent looking

at our letters to Timothy is this is exactly what happens.

This is the exact thing that happens.

Savage wolves will come in among you, and we'll not spare the flock.

Even your own number will distort the truth in order to draw disciples

away from them.

Paul's letters have been talking about beware of false teaching.

Beware of false doctrine.

Beware of these people who are going to come in

and are going to try to try to distort the teachings of Jesus,

and they're going to come in from among you, he says.

So it's interesting.

From the very get go, we see that this church is already playing

a substantial part in the growth of people's faith there in that area.

So sandwiched

between what we just read in acts 19 and chapter 19 and 20,

and the two letters to Timothy that we had been spending some time in.

Sandwiched in between those two is a letter to the Ephesian church.

It's a letter to the church in Ephesus.

It's not to Timothy, it's not to some other elder there.

It's not, the church in Ephesus actually had other pastors after Timothy.

But this is to the Ephesians.

The church in Ephesus.

So it's very important that we take a look at this letter,

because that's what we're trying to do here.

We're trying to live out church.

So this letter is divided

into two two parts, two halves.

It's chapters. There's six chapters in all.

There's chapters one through three where Paul gets very theological.

He talks about the spiritual things.

He talks about the grace that we've been given.

He talks about our standing in our calling with God.

And then he takes chapters four, five, and six, and he goes,

then this is what it looks like.

This is how you walk this out.

This is how this all the stuff that I'm about to tell you,

this is how it looks as you're living it out.

So real quick this morning I'm going to try to be brief.

I don't want to spend too much time here,

but I want to take a real quick, quick, kind of like a whistle stop

tour of the book of Ephesians, because it's going to help us

talk about what we're what the rest of our time this morning.

So you don't need to turn there if you want to.

You can.

But I'm just going to go real quick through the some really kind of,

some meat of the letter to the Ephesians,

especially in the first three chapters.

This is home to some of the most famous verses in all of Scripture, really

in chapter one, starting at verse 11,

it says, In Him we were also chosen,

having been predestined according to the plan of him

who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order

that we who were first

to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

And you also were included in Christ

when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation,

when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised spirit.

So Paul's telling these people who have never really gotten a grasp

of this idea of God, he says, you're chosen, you're included, you're marked.

Here's your standing with God.

This very weighty theological, spiritual things.

In chapter two, starting at verse eight,

he says, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

That's what.

That's a really famous verse right there

that talks about saved by grace through faith in Christ, not by works.

If you've ever done any, Bible study on spiritual gifts,

you camp out a lot right there in that part of Ephesians.

And then in chapter three, starting at verse 20,

he says, Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all

we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.

To him be glory in the church

and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

And the church said, Amen.

And so Paul's just unpacked some deep theological truths, encouraging stuff,

telling them their stand, their newfound standing with God.

And it's almost like he's reminding them

he's setting himself up because he needs to do that

because of what he's about to talk about in chapters 4 or 5 and six.

It's a it's a kind of a setup that he goes through.

So starting in

chapter four, here's where the sort of rubber meets the road.

Here's where we get down to brass tacks.

Chapter four, verse 25.

Therefore, because of all the stuff I said in the first three

chapters, therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak

truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

In your anger. Do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down

while you are angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work.

Doing something useful

with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.

And then he says,

do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth,

but only what is helpful for building others up

according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

So he stares off into this.

Here's how it looks practically.

He talks about anger, talks about speech, talks

about lying, talks about stealing, talks about building other people up.

And then he goes into chapter five in verse three.

But among you there must there must not even be a hint

of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or greed,

because these are improper for God's holy people.

So he's talking about sex.

He's talking about greed.

Still, in chapter five, he starts, he uses the word there starting in verse

21, the word none of us like submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do for the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church

and gave himself up for her.

And then he kind of bleeds over into chapter six, verse one.

He says, children, obey your parents, for this is right.

Verse

four in chapter six, fathers, do not exasperate your children.

Instead, bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.

And then we could spend a whole hour talking about this next verse.

He talks, slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear

and sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Stuff that really gets twisted sideways when you try it.

When you try to think about it in terms of culture.

And then lastly, in chapter six,

starting in verse ten, Paul talks

about what's called spiritual warfare.

He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil.

Schemes for a struggle is not against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers, against the authorities,

against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual spirit,

spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

So Paul gives very practical instructions.

At times it's really commands that he's giving

for these people who are trying to walk out this way of life.

Many of them, it's a new way of doing things.

So you might be thinking at this point, where are we going with this?

Why, why, why?

Look at this.

Why spend time on this?

Here's why.

Flipside I think we have more in common with the church in Ephesus

than we'd care to admit.

I think we have more in common with the church in Ephesus than we'd like to.

Then we'd like to see.

Because this is where

we find ourselves all the time.

There's this.

Here's what I heard in church on Sunday,

where it's 72, in fluorescent.

And here's the stuff

that life throws at me, that I am somehow trying to marry these two together.

This is where we find ourselves.

This is where the Ephesian church

found themselves, and this is where we find ourselves.

It's so funny.

Whenever I, whenever I talk to like, like friends and even mild acquaintances

who have not put their faith in Christ yet.

Inevitably, the majority of these conversations

get to a point where they say,

this actually used to happen when I was in, youth ministry all the time.

We had a group of seniors come through and they were read.

I mean, there were there were thinkers and they were always asking questions.

And we would talk through these, these Bible things.

And it was so interesting.

We would inevitably, on so many of these occasions,

get to a point where they would go,

you don't even need to be a Christian to know that's true.

You don't even need to be a Christ follower to know that's how life is.

You don't even need to say you're a Jesus follower to know

that's the struggle.

That's where the Ephesian church

finds themselves, and that's where we find ourselves.

There's the good I know I need to do.

There's the good, I know there's the there's the things God has told me

about me and about him and about us.

And then there's this.

A lot of times, this crazy environment that I've got to go out

and somehow apply this stuff to.

That's where the church in Ephesus was,

and that's where we find ourselves so many times.

And that's why what we're talking about here

today is so important for us to get Ahold of.

You guys,

anybody either graduate from college or high school or you just moved up a grade.

Anybody in here?

Wow. Got a lot of.

What about job reviews?

Anybody ever get a review at their job?

Sometimes a merit increase or a raise is dependent on it.

Remember, in school, you get a report card.

If you're like me, they would come in like a half manila envelope.

And there was like this really suspenseful time where you'd be like,

oh, I was talking to my daughter Sydney the other day.

It's all online now.

There's no suspense anymore.

It's like trying to hang up.

Remember, in the old days you could really slam a phone down

when you're you can't do that anymore.

Like the report cards in the old age, they'd come.

And a lot of times you would your parents would have to sign them

and send it back so that they knew that they got sent home.

And somebody significant saw them.

I remember getting that report card going, oh,

there was a letter C on there a lot, and sometimes it had a minus a plus.

After it.

Report cards.

So your job review you know you get you go in.

It's time for a merit increase.

There's time for a raise.

And they're like how'd you do.

Let's see how you did get a report card.

What did you get?

Well, how'd you end up this semester?

Wouldn't it be nice

to know how the church in Ephesus did

all we've talked about? Paul, man.

He wrote three letters to that area set up this year.

Wouldn't it be nice to know how they did, to kind of go back and go.

How did all flesh out for you, Ephesians?

Where do you end up with this stuff?

One of the things I love

about the Bible.

Is we get a report card on the church in Ephesus.

We get a report card, we get to know how they did,

and we need to know how they did

because we're more like them than we care to admit.

We need to know because life has a way of making us better.

Life has a way of making us resentful.

Life has a way of piling up regrets.

We lose sight of purpose.

So we need to know.

Someone once told me, it's a very wise man who can learn from the mistakes

of others instead of making all, making him all his own.

I learned this, you know, they say, especially with guys.

They say your frontal lobe develops some time in your early 20s.

I don't know if it is that my frontal lobe developed or what, but me

during my teenage years was me making all my own mistakes.

There were people in my life that were like, sometimes literally

screaming at me, stop or go.

And I'm like, no, I'm going to go ahead and make all my own mistakes.

And they're like, they're going. I did like three years ago.

I did what you're doing.

Stop doing that. And I'd be like, no, I'm good.

And then somehow around my early 20s, I'm like,

God has put these guys in my life that are like ten years older than me.

Perhaps I should start listening to them and learning from their mistakes

instead of making all my own.

We need to know how the

church in Ephesus did.

So God gives the report card

in the last book of your Bibles in the Book of Revelation.

It's so interesting.

He gives a report card for some other churches,

but we just don't have the background that we have with the church in Ephesus.

There's some other churches that get report cards there in the first part

of the book of Revelation, but in chapter

two, starting at verse one,

some of your Bibles may say to the church

in Ephesus.

I said, starting in verse

one, starting in verse two, this is Jesus talking.

Jesus is giving the report card.

That's one of the reasons this is so valuable.

It's like gold.

My ears are like, please tell me

he's talking to John the Apostle.

John. John is the only one left.

All the other apostles, all the other apostles have been martyred.

And John is exiled on this island called Patmos.

And Jesus comes to him and says, John, there's some stuff

I want you to write down in. You're in exile here.

So you got all the time in the world.

So grab a pen and write down what I'm about to tell you.

Jesus says to the church

in Ephesus, right, here we go.

Great time.

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars

in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.

If you've ever

read the book of revelation, it's really big on symbolism and and imagery.

But suffice it to say, Jesus talking about himself, he's

the one with the seven stars in his right hand.

And he says,

I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested

those who claim to be apostles or not and have found them false.

You have persevered

and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.

Yeah. Hey,

that's a pretty good report card.

All the stuff that they've been that they were talked to about.

This is what you want from your kids, right?

All that stuff that I talk to you about, do those things and they get it.

Hey, he's like, good job, says Jesus.

That's I mean,

hey, if you have one a day from anybody, that's what you want to know from, right?

He says, good job, Ephesians.

Good job doing that.

Didn't tolerate wickedness.

All the stuff that Paul talked about with, false teachers and sound doctrine,

you nailed it.

You nailed it.

You got an A on the final guided people.

But that's not where it ends.

Jesus continues.

In verse four

he says, but I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love.

You had it.

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.

So, like I said,

one of the best things about this report card is it comes from Jesus Himself

and he says in somewhere along the way

you lost what he calls your first love.

Somewhere along all of the command, keeping

and the deed doing and the hard work you lost your first love.

All the instructions,

all the carrying out of the things that they were talked about.

You lost your motivation for life.

You lost it.

And there's a really important truth

that we need to understand here this morning,

because when we understand it, it can save us from things like quitting.

It can save us from things like hopelessness.

It gives us new perspective on old things.

That's a really good to have a new perspective on old things.

It makes difficult situations less difficult.

If we get Ahold of this, because the fix for the Ephesian church

is the same fix for us,

and it comes in a very short

verse by the same apostle that Jesus told to write this down.

His name was John,

first John.

There's four letters from John.

It's in the first one, first John, chapter four, verse 19.

He says, we love because he first loved us.

Proper motivation has everything to do with love.

If you've heard anybody ever say they've lost the love,

that's what they're talking about.

That's what they're talking about.

Returning to our first love has everything to do with the fact

that the idea of first didn't start with us in the first place.

This whole idea of first.

It wasn't our doing.

We had nothing to do with it.

If God has everything to do with God, if God hadn't made the first move,

none of the things we try to do with him, none of the things

the Ephesian church was trying to do, none of this,

this marrying between these two things, none of it would be possible.

And none of it would have even been relevant.

So here's where I want to camp out.

This is what I want to hit on hard and look back

at the remainder of our time here this morning.

When you accept that God loved you first,

it changes the motivation for everything you do.

When we latch on to the fact that God loved us first,

it changes our motivation for everything that we do.

It makes it possible

to do the things that Paul was telling the Ephesian church to do.

It makes it possible to do the things that Paul

was writing to Timothy about.

Jesus says, return to your first love,

return to the thing, and let the motivation be the thing

that called you to faith in the first place.

There's three things that Jesus talked about there.

In that last part of revelation. He says,

first thing he says is repent.

Recognize it, ask for forgiveness, confess it, and then turn and go

the opposite direction.

The Bible says it's not God's judgment.

It's not God's justice.

Those things are there, but those aren't the thing that calls us to repentance.

The thing that calls us to repentance is his kindness.

It's his love.

It's the fact that he took the first step and loved us first.

The second thing the Bible tells us do,

or that Jesus tells the Ephesian church to do, is return.

Go back to the basics.

Whether you've been following Jesus for decades,

or whether you're here this morning and you're just considering this idea

of what it means to be a Christian, to put your faith in Jesus,

this idea of the basics.

This will fuel this will fuel your walk with God.

The things

that are elemental, the fact that God loved me first

while I was still a sinner.

Romans chapter five

verse eight says, God demonstrates his love toward us,

that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I put, I didn't become a Christian until I was 27 years old,

put my faith in Jesus in August of 1997.

And this was the thing

that drew me to that, to that moment.

It was not all the ridiculous

garbage mistakes that I have made.

Those were there.

But this idea that God loved me last year, five years ago

when I was doing that stuff and had no first put God for what?

That even leave me alone?

God still love me.

That idea, that is what drew me to him.

And that is the basic first love that

that Jesus is telling Paul, or that Jesus is telling John about.

Can you

imagine what this would look like if we got a hold of this in our lives?

Can you imagine what applying this like?

Tomorrow you walk into work, you still got the same desk.

You still got the same chair.

There's a window there.

There's still that same jerk. Two cubicles over.

But we recognize both.

First, the fact that God loved us.

First the God.

The fact that God took the first step.

It changes our perspective on things.

It changes that motivation.

When the girls were little

and I was losing it, what I was not, I wasn't losing my mind.

There were moments where I thought that was happening,

but I wasn't losing my mind. I was losing my motivation.

I was losing this idea of first love.

I was just phoning it in. Robotic

Jesus tells

the church in Ephesus, you all have become robotic.

Go back to your first love.

Yeah, you got an eye on all that stuff.

But man, one of the things about those types,

those types of environments is they're not very appealing.

They're not very welcoming.

None of us want to go, yeah, that's what I want to sign up for.

That's what I want to get involved in.

This could change.

We get this, get Ahold of this and apply it to our lives.

It could change everything.

When we were out for my mom's 82nd birthday

the other day, and, we're at this restaurant,

my daughters were there, and I said, girls, there was there was a conversation

going on a few tables over, and I said, girls, please do me a favor.

Please do not let me turn it.

I've come to the realization that I'm getting older.

I've just embraced it. I've accepted it. It's happening.

Just can't stop it. Embrace it.

I said, girls, please don't let me turn into a bitter old man from your world.

I can't stand it when I said,

girls, please don't let me turn into a bitter old man.

This is the type of thing that keeps that type of stuff from happening.

Remember your first love

because God shows up every day and he says, I chose you first.

Let that fuel your walk with God.

If you haven't put your faith in Christ yet here today, let that fuel you towards

accepting Jesus as your personal Savior.

The last thing

Jesus says to the Ephesian church he says return, says repent, return.

And the last thing he says is, remember.

So we're going to do that here.

If you did not get a communion cup, I'm going to invite

the worship team to come up as we go through this time of remembrance.

If you not did not get a, a cup with the elements,

go ahead and raise your hand and somebody will bring one to you.

The Bible tells us that,

on the night before he was given up to be crucified,

Jesus had supper with his disciples one last time.

And it was at that meal that he took the bread,

and he broke it, and he passed it around to them.

He lifted it up to heaven.

He gave thanks, and he passed it around to them.

He said, take this bread and eat it.

And each time you do it, do it in remembrance of me.

So this morning we do that.

The Bible says in a similar way, Jesus took the cup

and he lifted it up to heaven.

He blessed it and he gave thanks, and he passed it to all his disciples.

And he said, take this cup,

all of you disciples here, take this cup and drink from it.

This is a symbol of my blood.

It's going to be a new and an everlasting covenant,

symbol of my blood that will be shed for that

for everybody here, so that sins may be forgiven.

And he said, do this in memory of me.

And so we do that this morning.

Let's pray.

Church, you

God, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you that it that it just gives us such great instruction

for how to how to walk things out,

how to how to put this into into application, into our lives.

God, you've called us to be some places this week where we already know.

We already know what's in store. We already are.

Maybe we've even written stuff down and and, on a schedule of some sort.

But, God, there's also places

where, we're going to find ourselves that we we did not plan.

We had no idea it was going to be a thing in our lives.

There was no playbook for it.

So, God, in those moments,

I pray that we

will let the fact that you took the first step towards us,

you made the first move, that you first loved us

and therefore we can have love be the motivation behind everything we do,

whether it's easy or whether it's hard.

Jesus, help us to do just that to you.

Help us to love you more.

And it's in your name we pray. Amen.