First love is your sincere openness to the Lord during the first season you understood the Care of God for your life. The sacrifice, strength, covenant and enthusiasms you made available for your new Christian life is called the First Love.

Today’s message will explain some critical indications that could help you to know if your first love is intact with the Lord.

The famous passage in the Bible that emphasized the danger of leaving the first love is in the book of Revelation chapter 2 verses 2 to 5:

“I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.”

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place–unless you repent.”

How to Know that You’ve Left the First Love

1. You delight in secular films, books, and songs more than the gospel books, songs and newsletters.

2. Your personal fellowship (prayers and worship) with the Lord is inconsistent.

3. The first love is gone when you separate yourself from disciplined Christians that chastise you when you do wrong.

4. You give one thousand and one reasons for your little disobedience.

5. You love to share issues about marriage, child-bearing, politics, business and weather reports, but you easily get bored once the talk is switched to the Bible and spiritual topics.

6. Search for your first love when you spend more time, energy and heavy budget on your physical look than investing on your inner spiritual beauty to satisfy the Lord.

7. You are careless about pleasing God in every decision you take, but you are more careful to please everyone around you.

8. The first love is gone when you involve yourself in a character that contradicts the commandment of God and you never felt bad about it.

9. There is danger when you hardly think about God during your daily activities.

10. The red flag must be raised when your utmost care only goes to your physical enjoyment and at the cost of your spiritual growth.

11. Your first love is gone if you are pushed to give your service for Gospel evangelism.

12. Something is missing if you are more interested in entertainment and having fun than in cultivating intimacy with Jesus Christ through Bible studies.

13. When those minor issues that prick your conscience no longer destabilize you again, then ‘there is fire on the mountain’.

14. Your First Love for God is sacrificial; forsook worldliness for godliness.

15. Your first love must have left if you noticed that your worship to the Lord is strictly formal, it has no tune of a child to his Father.

16. Your desire towards God is not like a burning fire.

17. You don’t have the zeal to learn new thing from the Word of God.

18. Your first love is gone when you go back to the wrong habits that you put off when you were a young vibrant believer.

19. Check it out if you are more concerned about the sins in others lives than in yours.

20. Go get your first love if you noticed that you are not grieved by sins happening around you.

Some of the points above crept into my life when I was over-zealous to become ‘rich for Christ’. But I thank God I was not carried away by the love for money…

Please, if you notice any of the points above in your life, then I implore you to have a re-think and make your path straight with the Lord.

“Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12)