"First Love"- Beth Moore quote

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write...
I have somewhat against thee,
because thou hast left thy first love.
Revelation 2

Beth Moore in "Beloved Disciple" (pg 165) says:

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"Notice that the church in Ephesus received tremendously noble commendations from Christ and yet somehow let go of the most important thing of all: her sacred romance with Jesus Christ.... Beloved One, you and I can work hard, persevere through extreme difficulty, refuse to tolerate wicked people, and accurately discern false teachers- yet still forsake our first love.

Ironically, many believers don't view an absence of fiery, first love for Jesus Christ as sin. They view it simply as something they lack. This misunderstanding may be part of the holdup. If God's absolute priority for all followers of Christ is love- for Him first and others second- then the absence of such love is sin. I don't pound this point to condemn. Remember, it's not an irreversible condition! I pound the point so that we can do what we must do to get on to the business of loving! God says "Repent!" Repent means turn. I believe God told them and is telling us to turn from whatever we have given a higher priority than our sacred romance with Christ. He tells us to pour our lives back into the first things.

Keep in mind that with the first things rightly established, all other things of value come to us as well. The church in Ephesus very likely allowed spiritual busyness and stalwart religiosity to displace love. Because everything else hinges on the laws of love (see Matt 22:40) over time all things of eternal value would have crumbled in Ephesus. Christ exhorted them to go back to the first priority of love so that all their works would flow form a boundless wellspring of agape. Surely this exhortation speaks to each of us."
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Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen,
and repent, and do the first works;
or else I will come unto thee quickly,
and will remove thy candlestick out of his place,
except thou repent.
Rev. 2:5

Beth explains:
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"That doesn't mean they would lose their place in heaven. We lose our lampstand when we lose our godly influence on earth. In other words, we lose our light in the world."
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