Hockey played a huge role in my life. I played it ever since I was a kid. I would eat, sleep, and breathe hockey. I loved the game so much. You would find me either playing ice hockey, playing street hockey, playing hockey video games, or even just watching hockey. I could not get enough of it. I absolutely loved hockey. Hockey was everything that I was. Nothing gave me greater excitement than this game.

Time went on in my life and I started to drift from hockey. Other things in my life now started becoming important as well. It was things like my job, wife, house, and my kids. These things all needed my attention and time as well. These are not bad things either, I would even say they are greater things than hockey. Hockey was kind of being forgotten in my life in a way. It also did not help that the Red Wings had started to decline in these years as well and became a pretty bad team for some time.

Recently though, I started to get really back into watching hockey again and I began to realize how much I really love the game of hockey. It reignited a passion that was within me that I had somewhat forgotten. I felt like a kid getting excited about the game and watching the plays develop. I had forgotten how much I really loved hockey.

1. What is something that you used to love but have forgotten how much you love it?

2. What caused you to forget it?

Today we are going to continue through Revelation and look at the warning to the church of Ephesus. Read Revelation 2:1-7.

3. How does God know everything that the church has done?

4. In what ways does that change our perspective of God at all?

5. What things were these people doing well at?

We see that in the first couple of verses God commends the church for things that they were doing well. God saw their hard work, their patient endurance, how they loved sound doctrine, and how they have not grown weary.

6. What does it mean to have patient endurance? What does that look like in our lives now?

7. What does it mean to have a sound doctrine?

8. What does it mean to hate evil?

After God commends the church for what they were doing well, He proceeds to show them a great area that they are lacking. He was discouraged in their love. Read verse 4 again.

Even though this church may have seemed like they were doing some things great, they had abandoned the love they had at first. This is actually the most important thing because the love that we have should be what fuels us to continue in other works.

9. What is our first love?

10. In what ways can we forget it?

The church had lost the love they had at the beginning of their walk with Christ. They were doing all of the right things but had forgotten the love to go with the things they were doing. This can be a very easy thing to do. Sometimes we can get caught up in the busyness of doing things well, and we can forget the why behind everything.

This is a really big problem. It is not that they had completely forgotten about God. It is that they were pursuing the truth apart from a heart filled with the love of God. You can be a church that is filled with truth but empty in love. This is what God is warning about.

Read Revelation 2:4-7.

11. What does He call us back to?

12. Is God calling us back to loving Him or loving others?

13. How can we repent?

God warns that if we do not repent, we will be removed. God then calls us to hear His instruction back to loving Him first and that everything pours out from that. He will also call us to love others like we once did.

14. How can we actually return to our first love in practice?

15. What does it look like for you to truly love others as Jesus does?

16. Why is it so important to remember this truth?

I can find it very easy to forget my first love with God. It feels like it was so long ago that I was saved. I can still remember how sweet the first moments as a believer were. “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed” (“Amazing Grace”). I was filled with love. I was filled with a love for God. I was filled with a love for others. It was the greatest feeling ever.

Then life continued. I had started to serve in many ways and had begun to fill my life with so many things. I let things start to take the place of my first love in Christ. I started to do ministry out of truth rather than love. It is an easy trap to fall into. You deceive yourself into thinking that you are serving God through it so it is good. However, God wants your heart. He wants your everything, not just an outward appearance or action.

I can still fall back into this trap routinely in my life. I never forget God, but I can forget my love for Him. Out of that, I can forget my love for others. I am called to repent of this heart and go back to my first love in Christ. I am to always look back to the cross and never forget that this is why I do anything. He first loved me, so I love Him first in my life.

Something that always brings me back is the song “Amazing Grace.” Take a moment to look over these lyrics. If you know the song, sing it in your head.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind but now I see

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright, shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind but now I see

Oh, “how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!”

Take a few moments of quiet time and reflect on that “hour.” Reflect on your first love.

If you do not know what that hour of grace feels like, talk to a leader during this time about what it means to know Jesus.