Remember, Repent, and Repeat (Rev. 2:5)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 02/13/2005

 

My Worship Time                                          Focus:  Remember, Repent, & Repeat

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                         Reference:  Revelations 2:5

 

            Message of the verses:  5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.  (NAS95)  5 Look how far you have fallen from your first love! Turn back to me again and work as you did at first. If you don’t, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.  (NLT) 

            In this verse Jesus Christ gives the solution to the wrong that these members of this church doing, and that is forgetting their love for the Lord.  He gives three commands to them to follow.  The first is to remember from where they had fallen, and the word remember is in the present tense, so they are to continue to remember from where they had fallen.  I believe that part of the problem that had caused these members to forget their first love was because of false teachers who had come into their midst.  Paul had warned them about this, as recorded in the book of Acts, when he had left them for the last time.

            The next thing Jesus told them was that they were to repent, which means that they were to agree with Him of the wrong that they were doing.  A person who becomes a believer has to see himself as God sees hem and agree with God that is the way they are in order to become a believer.  Once a person becomes a believer he needs to repent of his sin to the Lord, he must repent of his sin.  Jesus illustrated this point when he washed His disciple’s feet at the last supper.  The illustration was that all believers are clean, yet when they walk around in the world they can get their feet dirty, or they will sin and be in need or restoring their fellowship with the Lord.  It seems that the believer’s at Ephesus had not practiced this process and therefore were in need of a foot washing from the Lord.

            The next thing they were to do was to repeat what they had done when they first become believers, and that was to love the Lord with all of their heart mind and soul.  I once heard a teacher of the Word say that he liked to get around new believers so that he could warm his hands their new found fire for the Lord, but as believers continue on in the faith they can grow colder in their love for the Lord and just go through the motions of being a believer, which is what they were doing at Ephesus.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I believe that what David said in the 139^th Psalm, verses 23, & 24 are appropriate here:  “23  Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts;  24  And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”  This is what the Lord was doing for these believers and this is what the Lord can do for me each and every day of my life.  As a believer I need to keep a short list with the Lord so that I don’t fall into the same problem that these believers had fallen into. 

 

The Word of God was convicting to my heart and at the same time presented a challenge to my heart.

 

My Steps of Faith Today:  To remember, to repent, and to repeat as the Lord leads me.  To ask the Lord to search my heart.