Losing My First Love

"It is easily lost. It is not so easily found.
I knew it, but I'd forgotten.
I believed it, passionately. I still lost it.

I am extremely fortunate. I love my work. I have a great church where I am given appropriate amounts of responsibility, encouraged to develop areas in which I am gifted & allowed to make loads of mistakes. I am constantly growing, learning, being stretched & stimulated.

On the surface all is well. I love my work, I love God, I love sharing the Good News of Jesus with others, but underneath is a different story.

It was so subtle I didn't even realise it was happening; slowly the way I was doing the work of Christ was destroying the work of Christ in me. I didn't stop praying, I didn't stop believing in God, I didn't succumb to escapist sin. I simply lost my first love. Year by year the busyness of work, the fun of ministry, the changing circumstances of my personal life, the painful experiences & the emotional exhaustion slowly focused my attention elsewhere.


While my head was full of new & exciting ideas, my heart grew cool. While I led others to a place of finding new life in Jesus, my life in Jesus was decidedly stale.

I could give a thousand reasons why this took place, but I won't."

These are not my words... but I guess they could be. They come from James Lawrence the author of Growing Leaders - a book written to help the local church to raise up & nurture leadership.

Over this next blog series, I'll be using his ideas & my personal experience to reflect on how as Christians we can lose our sense of call/direction and how we might better live by Jesus words. If you find it interesting/useful, why not leave a comment.

Jesus said to His followers, "I am the Vine; you are the branches. When you're joined with me, & I with you, the relation intimate & organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up & thrown on the bonfire." John 15v5-6