Has your love for God grown cold?

How’s your relationship with God?

What words would describe your current level of closeness to Him? I don’t know about you, but I want to live passionately in love with Jesus. Not just to believe in Him, to trust Him, and to love Him. I want to be passionately in love with Him. If you’ve ever tasted this kind of passionate closeness to God (even for a moment), you know what I’m talking about. 

An illustration from marriage

I remember several years ago if you were to have asked me “how’s your marriage?” I would have used the world solid. I was committed and faithful, and so was she. We both had our roles, and we were living them out really well. It worked practically in our lives. We were raising kids, building a family, running a business, being active in the church, serving together, and spending adequate enough time together. We were solid.

However, I wouldn’t say it was great. I wouldn’t have used words like intense, passionate, or fervent to describe our love for each other. We were pretty complacent in our marriage. Again, we were committed, but we were kind of just living out our roles as husband and wife. I am not content with complacency. Neither is Candace. When we realized the state of our marriage we decided to work on it together; to rekindle some of the passion we had in the beginning. 

I can confidently say today, by gods grace, we are closer and more passionate, and more intimate than we have ever been. But it takes work to get there and to stay there.

Maturity doesn’t necessitate stagnation 

I understand that at the beginning of a love relationship, there is something to the newness of it all that triggers intense, passionate feelings and emotions. We describe them as butterflies in the stomach, fireworks, or chemistry. Of course, it’s mostly based on feelings and emotions. We say, "I’ve never felt this way with anyone”. We know that feelings and emotions are fickle because they change so often. But that doesn’t mean our feelings are unimportant. They are.  

After a while, though, the things we were once captivated by become normal. The wonder and enchantment of the relationship dissipate. That’s not necessarily bad. There comes the point in time in a love relationship when it should deepen past chemistry, and into maturity. However, maturity doesn’t necessitate stagnation. 

Are you playing the role of a Christian?

Just like it’s easy to find yourself playing the role of a husband or wife without any deep intimacy with your spouse, it’s easy to find yourself playing the role of a Christian without any deep intimacy with God. 

It can be hard to spot if you’re just looking at the activity. Maybe you read the Bible regularly, you have prayer time, you’re committed to attending church services, and you’re not living in any gross sin. You’re doing all the right things, but something inside of you cries out for something more. 

A relationship is simply the way we understand the connection between different things. Our relationships with people typically consist of a commitment to activities done together, coupled with the emotions and feelings connected to those activities. 

Are you playing the role of a follower of Christ by doing the activities that Christians do, but your heart is disconnected from Him?

The responsibility is yours

Remember the passionate love and intense feeling of gratitude you had for God in the beginning? Remember how convicting it was that such a perfect and holy God would forgive you, receive you, and call you His own? I do not buy the idea that that feeling is temporal and eventually goes away forever. I believe God can bring us back to that place. 

The thing with marriage is that it takes two people to make this work. Of course in many situations it takes just one person moving in the right direction to woo the other back into wanting it; but ultimately, at some point in time, both husband and wife need to work at the marriage together. 

The thing with our relationship with God is that He is already fully committed. He is continually drawing His people into closer intimacy with Himself. He is wooing us. He wants us more than we could ever want Him. This means the responsibility to turn a solid relationship into a passionate relationship with God is on us. Look at these passages from God’s word: 

John 15:4 - “Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.”

John 15:9 - “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love.”

1 John 4:10 - Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:19 - We love [Him] because he first loved us.

Scripture is clear. God’s love for us is first. God’s love for us is greater than ours. Our love for God can only ever be in response to His first and greater love for us. 

Returning to your first love

In the book of Revelation, Jesus dictates a letter to the church in Ephesus. Apparently, they were doing a lot of good things that a solid, faithful church should be doing. He said, “I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary.” (Revelation 2:2-3) 

They were working for the Lord, enduring hardships, and rebuking evil. They were calling out false apostles, holding firmly to the truth, and persevering for Christ’s Name. In other words, they were doing all the activities of a faithful church. We should pray to have this type of faithfulness in our churches today! 

However, in verse 5 He says, “Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”

How could such a harsh rebuke come from such a solid, faithful church? Jesus tells us in verse 4, “I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.” The Ephesians church was busy doing the work of God, apart from the presence of God. They abandoned (or left, or moved on from) the love they had for Christ they had in the beginning. They laid it aside and focused on the activity of faithfulness rather than the heart of faithfulness. 

The cold state of their heart was not without hope. In verse 5 He says, “Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” He commands them to turn back - to repent. He wants them (and us) to return to the love they had at first. How do we do this? How do we return to our first love? Maybe the overly-simplistic exhortation in Jesus’ letter is good enough. “Repent, and do the works you did at first”. 

Do the works you did at first 

What were the things you did at first? When you first fell in love with Jesus, what was your prayer time like? Where, how, and how long did you read God’s word? What worship songs drew you into that place of intimate reverence? What sermons gripped your heart with conviction, joy, and gratitude? 

Maybe this is an overly-simplistic answer. I’m not saying this is the silver bullet to solve all your problems. But have you tried it? Why not take a day, week, or month to fast and pray? Why not revisit some of those sermons that made you fall in love with Jesus? Why not spend some time alone in worship pouring your heart out to God singing those songs of adoration when you first fell in love with Him?

You can work on this. The key word is work (effort, energy, and time). It will be a disruption to your day. It will be an inconvenience to the things you’ve filled your life with. But He is worthy. Do you believe He is?

God doesn’t just want your obedience and faithfulness. He doesn’t just want your commitment to do His work. He wants your heart. He is willing and able to turn your heart back to Him if you choose to remain in Him. That’s my prayer for myself, as well as you who may be reading this.