There is a passage in Revelation where Jesus compliments the church at Ephesus and then gives them a warning to return to the things they did at first. This is what He says, “You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5 NIV).

The immediate intention here is that Jesus is telling the Ephesians to not drift so far from their beginnings that they end up lost. He says, “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

In the Christian life, it is easy for us to lose the feelings and practices we had when we began following the Lord Jesus. Our zealousness gets tempered and our excitement softens as time puts a distance between those beginnings and where we find ourselves today. Perhaps over time we decrease how much we study the Bible and have communion with God in prayer.

Many Christians start with a focus on building a personal relationship with the Lord but somehow end up consumed with service to the church congregation. It is possible to be so busy doing good to serve God that we lose sight of the God we aimed to serve. Unfortunately, our faith can become less about worshiping the Lord and more about working for a church.

There is an analogy to this experience that most of us can easily relate to and it is the experience of marriage. The further we drift from dating and the honeymoon, the further we find ourselves out of touch with marriage. The solution, however, is the same: “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

In a marriage situation, we sometimes have to intentionally get back to doing the things we did when we were dating and newly married. We have to get back to doing things together, talking together, and expressing our love for each other. It’s not much different for the Christian either.

In the Christian life we sometimes have to intentionally get back to giving priority to devoting time to being in communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to give focus again to building our relationship with God by having devotional times, by being in the Word, by having a prayer life, and by sharing with others what God is to us.

As Christians, we may find ourselves in need of a spiritual renewal or personal revival and the solution is to “Repent and do the things you did at first.”