First Love Christians

Everybody, welcome back to another episode of Ignite. I want to talk to you about first love Christians, and it's a term I'm using. I hope we can go over the better term, but I'm looking, we're all looking for a term that best describes Christians that are really fully dedicated to God, a way to live for Him and everything that we do. The term evangelicals has been used through a lot of years, and I've always been proud to be an evangelical, but I don't know what that term means anymore. I really don't. You look at the statistics in less than half to say the least, less than half of all evangelicals, even a whole-to-builderical worldview anymore, and believe that there's multiple ways of heaven and on and on and on, you look at it and say, what's an evangelical? So I don't even call myself an evangelical anymore, and when I'm looking at people I'm trying to determine, what are they? I've come down to this term, first love Christians, and I don't think that's the ultimate term, but it's my working term for the moment. There is this term going on right now, sage, people who are spiritually active, government energized. In other words, we're alive in the Lord, we're alive in our faith, but we're not just sitting there doing nothing. We're actually wanting to change our environments, not that we hold politics to be our God, but we need to influence government, and I'm finding a lot of sage Christians that excite me because they understand where we are, but practically, and every other way, and all the turrets going on, but they're excited because this is a wonderful time to share faith, and of course that's much of what we're about. But I use this term first love Christians because in Revelation chapter 2, the love of the Church of Ephesus, and by the way, Karen, I went to, there's some in churches, you know, letters went to seven churches back in the first part of Revelations. You can read them, and we've been to all those sites, and heard biblical scholars talk about what the impact of, what the message is great to be. The one to the letter to the church of Ephesus caught my eye more than any others, because again, speaking to the church, right, and he says, I know you're in church, I know you're there, in my own words, you're there every moment you can be, and you give sacrificially, and you phrase my name, and you know good teaching from bad, and you know all that, but I have this against you. You've left your first love, and you no longer doing the first work. And looking at the church today, I would say that kind of sums up much of what the church is today. I found my own life, you know, by age, I always talk about the right way to do it because I learned that over a period of years, I did it the wrong way many times. And one time I went for two and a half years, and earnestly seeking God to solve a problem in my business, family business, and family business, have internal problems with family, and it was driving me on my mind. I was like, God help me, God help me, God help me, I was praying all, traveling all over the country, looking for people that could help us, and then I heard this preacher on radio, and I was driving on the street, two and a half years into this, where are you going? I never prayed so much in my whole life for two and a half years. And this preacher in the radio said, who's your God? At least I got that figured out, I don't need to have that message. I'm going to ask you again, who's your God? And I thought, yeah, I don't need to hear this, and I went over to change the station. He's, I'll tell you who your God is, whatever fills your prayers is your God. Wow. I don't know if that hits you right now, like it didn't be that, but it was like shooting a bullet in my head. I knew immediately. I had made my business my God. How could I do that? I couldn't wait to get home. I cried to God. I said, God, how's that possible? I can't believe it. I know better. And I made my business my God. I don't care about my, I just want to be with you. I just want to love you. I don't want anything separating us. I just want to be close to you. I want to know you more. It was like 10 years before I prayed for my business again. And that horrible thing when you go to our business was solved. In the next two weeks, all of a sudden, it just all spued out for a long period of time. It was a message that I've learned ever since. We just went through an election cycle where I am, and I know another of the candidates, and I know some of them lost. And they talk to me leading up the election. I told each one of them, you know, who's your God? Is this election your God or is God God? We want his will to be done in our life, right? Not our will. And I'll talk a lot about that as we go through these podcasts, but that's really important. But if we keep him first, he never lets us down. He never lets us down. If we, we can make a ministry. I had a precious brother come to me at the National Woods Broadcast. He's a broadcaster. He loves the Lord. And he'd started a side ministry, and he was all in due to all of a sudden it wasn't going well. And the owner of his radio station wasn't going to support him, and he was all in turmoil. And I think he made it to your God. What? I said, God may want to flourish that ministry. He may want that to go, but right now, you're fired. You've made that a higher priority than him. You know, when you, when you make anything your God that's not God, it involves people. And people will always let you down. So you need to ask yourself, what feels your, what gives you joy? What feels your life? What feels your prayers? And, and that should convict, it can fix me every day. It's a constant battle, because things capture our attention. We want it. We want to help that. And for righteous reasons, but when you do that, and all of a sudden that's capturing your whole life, and God says to capture your life, we start moving away from him. And he's no longer our first love, folks. We always have to keep him as our first love. I, for everybody is God, you're my first love. I love you. And I want nothing separate. You know my, you know my frailties, you know how weak I am. I mean, I am just a wretch. I can't believe you even, love me, and you save me, I, you're just amazing. And I want nothing separate against trying my heart, oh God, I'm an open book, you own me. That's the prayer. That's how God wants us to have him as our first love. And then when we do that, you do the first work. It's automatic. The first, the first thing every Christian does is share their faith. They got to tell people, you cannot stop a new Christian from telling people about Jesus. That's where we should love not that first day of our salvation, but every little day of our life. And we can keep that when we do it. And when we love God, you know whatever we love, we talk about. If you love your wife, if you love your girlfriend, you're going to be talking about her. You know, if you love that hamburger you had last night, you're probably going to be telling people today about how great that hamburger was. If you love God, you can't stop yourself. You can tell people where they are in their first love real quick. Just listen to them talk, take them to dinner and over dinner, listen how much they talk about God, how much they talk about other things. You can tell real quick, are they a first love Christian or are they not? It's amazing. So that context, you know, it goes on and on in scripture. You know, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. First love, first word, you got that. Okay. Next thing is let's go back to where he said, you know, if you love me, keep my commandments, who know that? I think it's John 4 or so. But then they ask, okay, what's the most important commandment? What do you say? He said, love me, all your heart, mind, soul, strength, love me, nothing between his first love. Okay. If you love me and you love your neighbor as yourself, if you love your neighbors yourself, you're as concerned for their salvation as you are your own. And 90% of people around us are not saved. So are you as concerned for their salvation as you are your own? And if you are, that changes you. I came this realization about 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, that I have responsibility and people around me are lost. And so that changes everything. He says, if you do those two, you will fulfill all ten. You will fulfill all the law. Well, how's that possible? Well, if you're doing everything you can to bring everybody around you closer to Jesus, if you're seeking and saving the loss, if you love them and you're as concerned for their sub-issue as you are your own, everything in your life is committed to that. Oh, in fact, what you talk about, what you laugh at, you know, what gets you excited. What's the center of your conversation? Probably how you address, probably how you indulge. You think you have free to do that? Well, you do. And you get to have them. But is that helping you lead people closer to Jesus? I don't know. That's something you have to figure out for yourself. There's a mirror that all the way down to about every podcast I think I mentioned Romans 828. I love this scripture because it's so misunderstood and I think it should be preached for the Pope. But every Sunday in every church, it's after John 316, I think it's the second most important scripture in the whole Bible. Yeah, yeah, it's the one that says, I'll make everything in your life work together for good. But much you say, yeah, I know that scripture, but it hasn't worked out very good for me. So I don't know if I can really trust God or I don't, you know, my Murray doesn't love me. I mean, we've got all these things. You have to read the whole scripture. You know, he promised eternal life to all of us, right? But are all of us going to go to heaven? No. It's a partnership, right? I promise you eternal life, but but you have to recognize it's your sitter and and and accept my gift of eternal life, my setting, my son to die in that cross for you. That's what God did for us. And by recognizing it and being a Lord of Realize what and then we confess and when you confess with your mouth, you'll be saved. That's telling people about Jesus in that amazing how that works. So when that all, when you put that all together, you have this total promise to him that you love God with your whole heart and then what in fact, if you read the scripture, it puts it together. It didn't say and it says to those who love me to those and say and to those who live their lives for my purpose. What's God's purpose? He came to see, could save the last. That's his purpose. I mean, there's no, there are no theologians that want to make that issue. So he's saying when you love me and you love your neighbor to yourself, you're as concerned for their salvation as you are for your salvation, follow me. If you live to seek and save the last, if you're living your whole life to bring to him, if you're living your life to move everybody every day closer to Jesus, you live in the promise of Romans 8.28 and he'll make everything in your life work together for good. That takes us back to when you love God first. When you really love God first, you will share him first. That would be the driving force of your life and he's telling you when you do that, he sets you free and you live in the promise of knowing he's making everything. Even the bad stuff in your life worked together for good. I mean, can you imagine what that means? It's incredible. All you have to do. It's his focus. Not trying to get scalps and not trying to be preaching, not memorizing scripture, read scripts and tell your story and all that, just simply love on people. And focus on moving everybody every day closer to Jesus. That's a strong message, see you next time.