Last Sunday’s sermon was based Revelation chapter 2 addressed the “Ephesus problem” – they had abandoned their first love. The quote below was cited and it resonated deeply with me. It could very well be my own testimony as to “how it happens”.
How does it happen, this loss of first first love? My friend Earl Palmer still understands the tragedy best. “The Ephesus problem” he writes, “happens quietly and by gradual imperceptible shifts of focus.” Palmer goes on:
A man or woman is first united with the Christian church because of having discovered and believed in Jesus Christ and his love. After a few years of being a Christian, that person becomes leader in the church with very heavy responsibilities for the fellowship. But something happens along the way. That person – who, because of giftedness and hard work, may now stand at the vortex of church politics and decision making – experiences a subtle shift in style of life. That person is adrift as a disciple and find himself or herself motivated and nourished by the organization or by controversy or by ambition to hold power. The first love has been abandoned, and in its places the starchy, high-cholesterol diet of activity and church work that will never nourish the human soul.
Palmer the makes this profound insight:
The irony of this latter condition of ‘the Ephesus syndrome’ is that the Christian becomes totally preoccupied, fascinated with themes and goals that would have never won him her in the first place to have joined the church. Arguments over fine doctrinal points, distinctions of polity, exoteric giftedness, etc. How can it happen to us? It happens to marriages, It happens to human friendships. It happens to the life of discipleship,
“You left your first love.”