Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

 February 11– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“You have left your first love.” 

—Revelation 2:4

We will always remember the best and brightest of hours when first we saw the Lord, lost our burden, received his promise, rejoiced in full salvation, and went on our way in peace. It was springtime in our soul; the winter had passed; the mutterings of Sinai’s thunders were hushed; the flashings of its lightning were no more perceived. The law threatened no vengeance, justice demanded no punishment.

Then the flowers appeared in our heart; hope, love, peace, and patience sprung from the soil; the hyacinth of repentance, the snowdrop of pure holiness, the crocus of golden faith, the daffodil of early love, all decked the garden of the soul. The time of the singing birds had come, and we rejoiced with thanksgiving. We magnified the holy name of our forgiving God, and our resolve was, “Lord, I am yours, wholly yours; all I am and all I have I devote to you. You have bought me with your blood– let me spend myself and be spent in your service. In life and in death let me be consecrated to you.”

But have we continued in this resolve? Our marital love burned with a holy flame of devotion to Jesus, but is it the same now? Might not Jesus rightly say to us, “I have something against you because you have left your first love”? Indeed, we have done little for our Master’s glory. Winter has set in. We are as cold as ice when we should feel a summer’s glow and bloom with sacred flowers. We give to God pennies when he deserves dollars— indeed, he deserves our heart’s blood to be coined in the service of his church and his truth.

Shall we continue on like this? O Lord, after you have so richly blessed us, will we be ungrateful and become indifferent to you? O stir us within to return to our first love and do our first works again! Send us a warm spring, O Sun of Righteousness. [M&E]