Women’s Devotional: A Woman in Love

Are You a Woman in Love?        

Can you remember what it was like to fall in love? Was the one you loved always on your mind?

Or have you met a woman in love who has just received a marriage proposal from the man she loves?  She is so excited.  She can’t wait to show everyone her ring.  She talks about her fiancé and shows his picture to those who don’t know him.

Most of all she wants to spend as much time as possible with him.  She and he talk together and make plans for their future.  They frequently tell each other, “I love you.”  Sometimes they write each other love notes and keep in touch with text messages.  And they talk on the phone.  Staying in touch with the one she loves as much as possible, even when they can’t be together, is important to a woman in love.

She and her beloved have great anticipation for their wedding day.  They are eager to no longer live apart from each other.  A woman in love longs for the day when she will have a home with her husband.

Jesus, Our First Love

When we first come to know Jesus, we get really excited about His love for us, and we respond with love for Him.  We talk about Him to others and are excited about the new relationship we have with Him.  We spend time reading His Word, which is a love letter from Him to us.  We enjoy talking with Him throughout every day.  The Scriptures teach that we are His Bride who will be married to Him in that time when He comes to take His people from the earth.  So we live with joyful anticipation of that time when we will be with Him every moment in our home in Heaven.

Losing Your First Love

But along the way, often something happens. We get involved in serving Jesus in order to bring others to know Him. We get very busy and distracted.  We allow different things to become priorities in our lives, and sometimes we put a person, a job, our family, a business opportunity, or even a ministry ahead of simply expressing love to Jesus and listening for Him to express his love back to us.

That is what happened to the church at Ephesus.  In Revelation 2:2-4, Jesus says to this group of believers that they did some great things:

They did good works for Him.
They were patient.
With discernment, they dealt with false teachers who came to deceive them.
They persevered when things were tough.
They worked for Jesus without becoming weary.

Jesus recognized what they were doing right, but He said that he had something against them:  They had left their first love,

Jesus called them to repent from this.  It was a serious condition.

It’s possible for us as Christians to be living and working for Jesus without cultivating a love relationship with Him.  If we have lost the excitement of spending time with Him and of experiencing the closeness of His Presence, this may be a sign that we have become like the members of the church at Ephesus.  Christianity can become merely the practice of a religion instead of a day by day dynamic relationship with the One who loves us so dearly.

Jesus loves us and longs for us to spend time talking with Him;  He wants to reveal things to us and show us how to stay close to Him.  So often our prayer life is just a bunch of requests about what we want Him to do.

Can you imagine the newly engaged woman spending her whole time with her fiance just asking him to do this and that and never just sitting with him and enjoying just being with him.  If that were the case, the engagement might end, for he would feel like she wasn’t really interested in him, but only in what she could get from him.

Restoring Your First Love

If you have lost your first love for Jesus, repent.  That means, turn around and go the other direction.  Spend time expressing your love for Him and listening to hear His words of love back to you.  Open your Bible and ask Him to show you whatever He wants to reveal.  Write some notes of what He shows you, and go back and reread them from time to time. If it will help, read a devotional book along with your Bible.

You will come to find your special time with Jesus is your best part of the day.

Go to Part 2