Are You Listening to Christ

“He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To he who is victorious, I will give him the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

(Revelation 2:7)

From the first day and for several years after I was saved at the age of 44, I was overflowing with enthusiastic zeal for the Lord. I picked a church, got very involved, and went to church every Sunday. I started a Bible study with my brothers and their wives that went on for quite a while. However, I became disenchanted with the church I was attending. The preaching was good and biblically based, but the people weren’t very welcoming. I went there for three years and only a handful of people even knew my name. I stopped attending church services all together. I thought I could study on my own and get all the spiritual nourishment I needed. But, I still drifted away from the Lord without wanting to or without realizing it was happening at the time.

When salvation first came to me, I had an abundant love and gratitude for Jesus. However, as I go through my walk with Christ, I must continually refresh and feed my soul. My journey with Jesus quickly hit a dead end when I didn’t constantly refresh my spiritual life with regular attendance. We nurture and build our faith with prayers to the Father, in reading his Word, and in fellowshipping with other believers. My failure to attend church is where I started going wrong. Maybe I didn’t need to keep attended where I didn’t feel loved and appreciated, but I should have been quicker at finding another church. I didn’t completely backslide, but I slid back a long way.

Fortunately, I realized what I was doing and started searching for a new church home. It took three tries, but I finally found a gospel preaching, loving, and nurturing church. I regained my first love and I have returned to the fold. Jesus wants us to remember our first love for him, when we were filled with the Spirit. It was a time when we were consumed with such great love for God and the desire to share Christ with everyone we knew. We all have to fight against the whispers of doubt that will cause our faith to diminish. However, if we overcome we will spend eternity in the Paradise of God! Hallelujah!

Heavenly Father you are the that still, small voice that speaks to us when we need your help and guidance. If we will hear what that voice is telling us, we will turn back and remember how much we loved you at the beginning of our walk. Because we are fallible humans, we begin to take things for granted about our faith. We’re tired, so we decide to skip church services every once in a while. We don’t see anything wrong with going to the football game and not to church. We think we’ll always love you no matter what else happens. Forgive us, Father, when we find other things more important than worshiping you each week. Forgive us when we think we can maintain our relationship with you without good teachers and preachers. We try going without the help and encouragement of our fellow believers. Help us to confess our shortcomings and remember our first love. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen!