Chapter Nine: First Love Devotion To Jesus

“As she stood behind Him at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair. Then she kissed [gr. kiss again and again] His feet and anointed them with the perfume.”

“It’s always fresh in heaven.” - Zac Poonen

THE CHURCH IS an enduring element in the world. Nations pass away, kings die, ideologies come and go, but the Church remains. This 2000-year-old Church is the continuation of the people of God for 4000 years from the Old Covenant.

Yet the Church can exist with its light dimmed and passion gone. An almost lifeless semblance of what it once was. As we explored in the first chapter of this book the Church has gone through periods of apostasy and decline. Like a bride that has dirtied her garments, prostituted herself to others. What a grim picture that is for what is supposed to be called holy, pure, chaste and single to the Lord. The greatest thing in the world is to love and know Jesus intimately. The second greatest thing in the world is to be able to keep that first love devotion to the Lord in its fulness.

Thus one of the greatest tragedies in this life is to lose or miss Him. Thomas Brooks the old puritan said: “Christ is a jewel worth more than a thousand worlds. Get Him, and get all; miss Him and miss all.”

God is Incredibly Patient

What an amazing thought that God is waiting for us to run out of steam, run out of ideas, run out of enjoyment of what is wrong. He is longing again to embrace us and have that intimate close communion that He shared with us at first when we first saw the preciousness of Christ.

The Ephesian Church was a powerful body of believers, God commends them in so many ways. They stood through tests and trials and were so careful to guard against those who were false. Yet in that guarding to keep the purity of truth in their midst they left something far more valuable, the Lord’s Person Himself.

The Church went on in the motions, prayer times as usual, but it was all just words. A shell of what it used to be. We see what the Lord Himself says to them by the Holy Spirit. I have given below the same verse in multiple translations for us to slow down and really think on what was happening:

“But I have this against you: You have abandoned your first love.”

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”

“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!”

“But I have this [charge] against you, that you have left your first love [you have lost the depth of love that you first had for Me].”

“But I have this against you: You have departed from your first love!”

“Yet I have this against you–that you no longer love Me as you did at first.”

“‘Thou hast left thy first love.’ ‘Is that serious?’ saith one. It is the most serious ill of all for the church is the bride of Christ. As a church we must love Jesus, or else we have lost our reason for existence.”

God values honesty far above religious performance. Losing your first love for Jesus but not knowing it and going on in religious motions is a terrible state. And the great wakeup call comes to us with a “knock.” Jesus Christ is outside, but He did not leave but faithfully came back to knock to be let in.

“It is the voice of my beloved! He knocks, saying, ‘Open for me, my sister, my love.”

Imagine that, the God of the universe, the Son of God who created all things is patiently in love waiting outside the door of your heart, outside the door of the Church that has forsaken Him!

We read the words in the Holy Scripture:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me.”

“Jesus is looking for lovers! I’m interested in a thousand and one things but Himself!”

“‘You’ve left your first love,’ Oh, how it grieves His heart, how it grieves His heart when that heart is not altogether in love with Him.”

The first step in acknowledging our loss of first love for Jesus is simply acknowledging it to ourselves and before the Lord.

Cracked Cisterns Without Water

“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

So many of us at times have fallen in this great error of attempting to dig our own cistern. A futile attempt to capture something meaningful, to do something for the Lord perhaps. But sadly these cisterns never held the true living waters. They were faulty to begin with. It is the difference of work in the arm of the flesh compared to working in the power of the Holy Spirit. God is still the same, it is still “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD of Hosts.”

“There are many wells today, but they are dry.”

In choosing to do anything apart from the Holy Spirit we also at the same time have “forsaken” Him. God wants our fellowship, He invites us even as co-labours into His work.

There are still other dangers then simply going off on our own in the Lord’s work.

We read in Genesis 26 when Isaac was blessed of the Lord and the enemy philistines started to envy his success. “So the Philistines took dirt and stopped up all the wells.” The enemies tactics are still the same, either he leads us to build empty broken wells or fills our good wells with dirt. What stands between you and intimacy with the Lord? Is your well filled with love for money, pleasure, ministry success, envy, unforgiveness? God wants to clean out your well today. The purity of first devotion to Him alone.

Being Found at the Feet of Jesus

C.H. Spurgeon remarked: “‘At His feet,’ there shall our heaven be found. Oh, if I may but sit for ever at His Feet.” We are called to come away to be with Jesus, spend time with Him for nothing else but to adore Him at His feet. It is a holy place to be found. Jesus called it the “better part.” Spurgeon called time in this position “better than wine!” To experience the love of Jesus in intimacy is better than all earthly pleasures combined. Jesus is life. He is our fulfillment.

We have two illustrations given us of women at the feet of Jesus typifying the intimacy of the Church with the Lord. The first Mary at the feet of Jesus, the second is the prostitute woman bathing His feet with her tears and perfume.

The call to us today is to “come and lie at His feet.” We are too much at the feet of men and many other things, time is never wasted in devotion to Jesus. We spend so much time trying to find our way by building ourselves up when God wants us to let everything go in His hands.

“The lowly feet of Jesus is the highest place.”

We should run at humility, go low, and seek the lower position. Jesus taught clearly to His disciples the lower place is the place of greatness, it is where God exalts.

“Jesus spent everything to become nothing. We tend to spend everything to become something.”

Our proper response in light of these things should be:

“Oh to be nothing, nothing! Only to lie at His feet. A broken and emptied vessel, for the Masters use made meet. Emptied, that He might fill me, as forth in His service I go. Broken, that so unhindered His life through me might flow.”

Paul Washer a well known minister said:

“Do not seek great things for yourself. Hide yourself, run away. The only thing King Saul did right was when they tried to make him king he went and hid behind the baggage. Do everything to keep yourself from being exalted.”

It is out of jealously for the glory of God in the face of Jesus that we seek to be nothing because in light of being at His feet, He has to be everything!

To the One who wore A crown of thorns. To the One who took the lash and scourge. For the hands and feet that were pierced by nails. For the sacrifice that has torn the veil. We crown You! We fall face down and we worship!

Lovers Vs Workers

Many of us are accustomed to the concept of Jesus as King or Jesus as Lord to be obeyed. And He rightly is both of these but beyond both those titles He is a Bridegroom who wants to relate to us in love and intimacy. Jesus is not looking for workers but lovers. Lovers always work harder.

“Mighty waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.”

This Bridal Love is what is going to characterize the Church at the end of the age. Just like the Ten Virgins we do not want to be found asleep in the midnight hour. True ministry success is growing in love, purity, brokenness, humility. When finances or fame are in the ministry of the Church, the first love was lost a long time ago. We are rich when we are making much about Jesus and eternity. We are to make Jesus famous alone.

It’s all about Jesus. Heaven is all about the cross. Never forget the cross. “Our fixation should always be about the One that hung on wood for us. We follow the bloody One, Jesus.”

Eternity will be spent growing in the love and knowledge of God, yet God’s plan is for it to begin now in this life.

“Forsake good things to obtain the best. Any who purpose to know God, not just know about Him, never suffer disappointment. They discover the object of their affection.”

Hudson Taylor missionary to China spent a life in gruelling service leading many to the Lord. In the midst of his journey he came into this Bridal paradigm of the love of God. His work became light and easy. He became a lover. We read from him:

“Separation never comes from His side. He is always ready for communion with a prepared heart, and in this happy communion the bride becomes ever fairer, and more like to her Lord.

Jesus, my life is Thine! And evermore shall be Hidden in Thee. For nothing can untwine Thy life from mine.

Wonderful thought! that God should desire fellowship with us; and that He whose love once made Him the Man of Sorrows may now be made the Man of Joys by the loving devotion of human hearts.

Let us never forget that what we are is more important than what we do.”

A minister that knew the blessing of the Holy Spirit and intense first love experience was C.H. Spurgeon. He knew that to lose what he had would be a tragedy. In light of this he said:

“I would sooner die a thousand times than lose the helpful presence of the Holy Ghost.”

May we all not just have First Love with Jesus but cling to it tenaciously till the end.

Why This Waste?

“She broke the vial and poured it over His head. But some were indignantly remarking to one another, ‘Why has this perfume been wasted?’”

The Lord has ordained that the message of the story Mary anointing Jesus should accompany the proclamation of the Gospel. Perhaps one reason for this is we are so prone to leave a life of intimacy with God. The Gospel demands our full allegiance to the Lord, He is our Bridegroom there are no others, I would give all for Him.

Watchman Nee elaborates on this passage in a wonderful way:

“Now the breaking of the alabaster box and the anointing of the Lord filled the house with the odor, with the sweetest odor. Everyone could smell it. Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered; been limited, gone through things for the Lord, willing to be imprisoned by the Lord, just being satisfied with Him and nothing else, immediately you scent the fragrance. There is a savor of the Lord. Something has been crushed, something has been broken, and there is a resulting odor of sweetness. The odor which filled the house that day still fills the Church; Mary’s fragrance never passes away.

Friends, we cannot produce impressions of God upon others, impart the sense of the presence of God, without the breaking of everything, even the most precious things, at the feet of the Lord Jesus.

Oh, to be wasted! It is a blessed thing to be wasted for the Lord. So many of us who have been prominent in the Christian world know nothing of this. Many of us have been used to the full–have been used, I would say, too much–but we do know what it means to be wasted on God. We like to be always “on the go”: the Lord would sometimes prefer to have us in prison. We think in terms of apostolic journeys: God dares to put His greatest ambassadors in chains.”

One ramification of this full devotion to the Lord is that it will upset others. When people see a life “wasted” on the Lord they will ridicule, mock, persecute, malign. It will “cost” you to be a Mary for the Lord. To sit at His feet in pure unwavering devotion and fixation.

Nothing is ever wasted that is given to Jesus. “Then Mary took about a pint of expensive perfume, [That perfume was worth a year’s wages] made of pure nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

“‘She broke open the Jar,’ once it breaks you can’t unbreak it.” Mary broke what was precious to her.

God Is Concerned About Our Love

There is so much teaching and messages we hear about God’s love for us. These messages are absolutely true but who has ever heard of messages on God’s concern for our love for Him? Jesus weeps for lost humanity and has deep sorrow for all the sins. But who weeps for Jesus and shares His sorrows and empathizes for Him? Who comforts Him in his pain?

Bridegroom love shares the sorrow of the other. A sister given to the Lord in celibacy, sister Basilea Schlink shares these wonderful insights to this love:

“He is concerned about a special kind of love. It is the love which is shadowed in the relationship between a bride and her bridegroom; that is, it is an exclusive love, a love which places the beloved, the bridegroom, above all other loves, in the first place. As a Bridegroom, Jesus has a claim to ‘first love.’ He who has loved us so much wants to possess us completely, with everything we are and have. Jesus gave Himself wholly and completely for us. Now His love is yearning for us to surrender ourselves and everything that we are to Him, so that He can really be our ‘first love.’

Jesus stands before us as One who entreats. His love is a jealous love, because it is so great and filled with such a strong ardor for us. It is a grief to Him when we do not return His love with all that we are and have.

I shall never forget the time when it sank into my heart that because Jesus is the same today as He was yesterday, and because His heart is still suffering today, He is waiting for us to make Him happy and to refresh Him, yes, as the scriptures say, to be comforters for Him. Since that time, my first concern has been Jesus Himself and not my ministry for Him, although I have throughout sought to fulfill that ministry. Now I was concerned about if one may express it this way the ministry unto Jesus. Since that time adoration has burned in my heart. I was grieved for Jesus’ sake, because He received so little love in words and songs of adoration. Since then adoration has never been lacking in my prayer life.

Jesus is yearning to have fellowship with us and to hear words of love drop from our lips. He is waiting for us. He wants us to be close to Him. He wants to speak to us in our hearts, to cultivate love’s intimate relationship with us. Only in times of quiet when no one else distracts us, and nothing else draws us away, can Jesus visit us with His love. Let him who wishes to know the presence of Jesus and who desires to enter into bridal love for Jesus keep his times of quiet holy and faithfully for Him.

Jesus is waiting for our love.”