Mike Parsons –
What is love? If we are talking about first love, we need to ask what love actually is, and what makes first love different. Why is first love so important?
Our eternal destiny is established on the restoration of our first love experience with our heavenly Father. We will never fully become who we truly are unless we know who we truly are. That makes it essential that we discover our true origin and our true identity.
Praying a prayer?
First love, in this context, is not the emotional state we may have experienced when we first encountered salvation. Some people have very emotional conversion experiences. I did not. I had no emotions or feelings associated with praying a prayer and asking Jesus to come into my life. That was shaped by who I was at the time, my relationship with my own father and my life experiences, even though I was only twelve. Those things had already shaped and programmed me.
I prayed the prayer believing it was the right thing to do, but there was no emotion, no ecstasy and no sense of exhilaration. Later in my life, I did have many profound experiences that helped me understand love at a deeper level, so I know that I am loved. But at the beginning, I simply prayed a prayer.
You may have had a very emotional and dramatic salvation experience, and that is wonderful. But when I speak about first love, I am not talking about going back to those initial emotions. Emotions can be valuable, but that is not what first love truly means.
First love is our origin in God before we ever lived in a physical body. First love is our eternal identity, originating in the Spirit of God. In Revelation 2:4, speaking to the church in Ephesus, it says, “You have left your first love.”
The Ephesian church may have once had a powerful and emotional experience of God’s love, grace and mercy, but over time they fell into the trap of religion, works, duty and obligation. Their relationship with God was no longer the priority. Duty replaced intimacy. They were no longer in love with God but were working for Him, almost as if it were a family business. That is not how God intends relationship to be.
Whatever our initial experience of God, He wants to take us beyond it into a deeper reality, one rooted not just in emotion but in depth of relationship. The intention is that we never leave it.
Do you remember?
Do you remember your own first love experience with God? Was it dramatic or deeply emotional? Did it feel like a completely new life? What about your first love relationship with another person? God designed us for depth, passion and intimacy in relationship.
In my own upbringing and insecurities, I never really had a true first love experience, because my understanding of love was distorted by emotional needs, physical needs and teenage hormones. I felt cheated of what love could be. God restored that for me, and I believe He can restore it for anyone.
When we experience first love, whether with God or with another person, there is passion, desire and fascination. Our minds are captivated. We long for connection. My salvation experience was not like that, so God took me into something I had never experienced, at a level I had never imagined.
There are many words associated with first love: besotted, infatuated, enamoured, love-struck, smitten, passionate, consumed with desire, captivated, enthralled, devoted. It is like springtime, when life begins to emerge again after winter. There is freshness, newness and vitality.
I had never felt that towards God, nor believed He felt that way towards me, until He took me on a journey of restoring my first love relationship with Him. That restoration enabled me to understand how that depth of love could also be expressed in human relationships.
So what does first actually mean? It means coming before all others in time and order. It is paramount, supreme and preeminent. It is above every other kind of love. When I consider that, I realise that this is the love God has for me, and it is the love that enables me to love Him and others in the same way.
The priority in my life
First love comes before family, relationships, work, leisure, needs, worries, anxiety, fear, depression or despair. It precedes everything, both in priority and in time. It reaches back to our origin and brings healing and restoration to everything that has happened in our lives. Even painful experiences can be healed when our spirit reconnects with its origin in God.
If first love with God is the priority of my life, everything else flows from that relationship.
In Luke 14:33, Jesus said that no one can be His disciple without giving up all they possess. He was not talking about literal possessions in every case, but about priorities. When God becomes our highest priority, everything else finds its proper place. Earthly possessions and relationships pale in comparison, but they are also enriched by our relationship with our Father, enabling us to love others more fully.
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