

Ephesus
The Book of Revelation reveals the heart of God. God has a son. His name is Jesus, the only son that God can ever have, the only spiritual kin he will ever have. The incarnation can only happen once. Like most fathers, God wants the best for his son and God wanted to expand his family.
So God created mankind to be the bride of His son. But the bride became tainted, dirtied by sin, hopelessly lost. Jesus came to be the hero of the bride, giving himself totally for her salvation. Jesus earned the right to be the husband of the bride by giving himself completely. Nothing more could he give her.
And what does a sacrificial giving husband expect from his bride? Submission to his love.
The church in Ephesus was a hard working church, diligent in staying on the straight and narrow, taking care of the poor, testing prophets to see if they’re “real”. But God had one thing against them; they’d lost their first love, their betrothment to their future husband. Whatever they were doing became more important, more time-consuming than Christ.
It’s what happened to Satan. God gave Satan the same thing that Christ gives us, liberty. Satan was created with great beauty, talent, unsurpassed ability. His power gave him the feeling of superiority. He reasoned that he was better than God. He forgot who gave him that privilege. He came to the point that submitting to the authority of God became repulsive and pride settled in and he thought he was better than God.
We like to think of ourselves as pretty good people. We do nice things. We’re giving, spend a lot of time making sure all our ducks are in a row. We’re so “good” that we’re pretty sure we’re better, better than those over there and proud of all we do. We too are better than God.
We forget who the lover of our soul is. If you love someone, you want to spend time with them. Doing the good we can do in this world is certainly worthwhile but all that stuff pales in importance when it comes to the one we supposedly love.
Our first love is Christ, at least it’s supposed to be. What do we talk about? Is it sports or the things we’re doing in ministry or what? It’s not that we can’t discuss things, be involved in good works, or anything else “Christian”, but what is it that lights up our eyes, that make this life worth living, that is the embodiment of everything we dream and hope for?
Is our whole life filled with the exciting thought of being the bride of Christ? I have to examine my life and re-evaluate how I spend my time on a regular basis. All that “righteous” stuff I do is dirty rags if they keep me from the one I love.
When we remember who Christ is it puts a whole new emphasis on loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Everything I’ve got is all about loving Christ. Everything else is just dirty rags.