Your first love

"Administrative" reminder: I am hoping to write fewer words, more often to you. Sometimes I'll want to share what God is showing me. Other times I will write to remind you of something going on at church. (Today, it is both.) I am posting this to a blog (you can interact with it if you want) and those postings get sent to a mailing list on to you.

"You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love." (Rev 2:3-4)

I regularly meet with a group of friends. A few weeks ago as we shared things, each of us admitted that we were not having the deep vibrant, exciting relationship that we first had with our wives. Believe it or not, that was the easy thing to admit. The hard thing? We felt the same about our relationship with Jesus. We did not act like we were in love with Him. Things were stale. We remembered when we first loved Jesus -- the excitement, the interest, the desire to spend time with Him... the comfort in it. And, as I said, to some extent we had also let our relationships with our wives go lukewarm.

We agreed together that we didn't want the status quo, not in our relationships with our Lord and not with our wives. The life of the Christ-follower is one of change, both radical and constant. Knowing that my relationship with Lisa flows out of my relationship with Jesus, I decided to go back to the basics that I know. I've always had a regular Bible reading/study time, but my prayer time has been almost non-existent. I committed to returning to spending time with Jesus in prayer, in praise and also praying deeply and specifically for Lisa, each of my kids, my church, etc. (I've told some of you before, because there are so many of you, I pray *specifically* and *individually* for you on a specific date every month, unless there is a specific crisis I know you are in, when I pray more.)

I also committed to 1) get up earlier and at the same time each morning and 2) go to my Bible and prayer-time before I do everything else.

By God's grace I have been successful for over a week now. (Pray for me. Since I have shared it with you I expect the enemy to try to upset this pattern.)

Reminder. The Missional Communities Launch Meeting is this Sunday, September 21. Attend one of the launch meetings 9 or 10:30 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall. This launch will allow you to ask questions and think about which community group you may want to join. You need to do this. We need to build community. I'll be there during the first hour checking things out. (Come talk to me?)