Returning to Our First Love
Returning to Our First Love
Remembering our first love in Christ and learning to see others as God sees them.
There are moments in life when the world’s noise grows so loud that it drowns out the quiet voice of our first love. When opinions, movements, and personalities rise to the center of our attention, it becomes easy to forget the One who called us, redeemed us, and taught us how to walk in love.
I have heard many Christians speak with certainty about earthly leaders—as though God Himself had chosen them, endorsed them, or placed His seal upon them. But I often wonder: How do we know when something is truly from God? And how do we discern when something is simply from “the god of this world,” who is always eager to imitate, distract, and divide?
Scripture gives us a simple test: If you love Him, obey His commandments. Love God. Love your neighbor. Do to others what you wish they would do to you. Anything that leads us away from love, compassion, humility, justice, or mercy cannot be from the God who revealed Himself in Christ.
Rend your hearts, not your garments
Returning to God begins with the heart, not outward displays.
Joel 2:13 (LEB)
“Rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to Yahweh your God, because He is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and great in loyal love, and relenting from harm.”
God does not ask us to tear our clothes in outward displays of devotion. He asks us to tear open our hearts—to let His light expose whatever has grown cold, fearful, or hardened within us. Returning to God always begins with the heart.
Seeing people as God sees them
Learning to look beyond color, difference, and appearance to the image of God in each person.
When I think about how God sees people, I remember a story from years ago. A grandmother in our Sunday School class told us about her granddaughter—a white girl whose best friend was black. They spent their days laughing, playing, and enjoying life together. The grandmother said, “Those two little girls don’t see color.”
Children often see what adults forget: a person is a person, made in the image of God.
I grew up in a time when segregation was normal—when black Americans were pushed to the back of the bus, denied water fountains, and excluded from public restrooms. Even as a child, something in me knew it was wrong, though I didn’t yet understand why.
My parents used the “N” word when they were angry. They didn’t see the harm. They didn’t see the person. They didn’t see the image of God. And yet, this isn’t only about black and white. It’s about how we treat anyone who is not like us.
I cannot say I never see color. I sometimes judge by appearances before I know a person. But when I speak with them— when I hear their voice, their story—the judgment dissolves. The color fades. The person remains.
Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we all saw each other the way those two little girls did?
Guarding our hearts from the spirit of the world
Refusing to let fear, division, and suspicion replace the love of Christ in us.
The world is full of forces that pull us toward division, suspicion, and fear. Some of these forces come through politics, some through culture, some through history, and some through our own upbringing.
But the spirit of the world always has the same goal: to turn our eyes away from Christ and toward anything that divides.
Christ calls us to something higher. He calls us to love our neighbor—not only the neighbor who looks like us, thinks like us, or votes like us, but the neighbor who is different, the neighbor who challenges us, the neighbor who reflects a part of God’s image we have not yet learned to appreciate.
He calls us to be slow to anger, rich in compassion, and steadfast in mercy. He calls us to return to Him.
A call back to unity
Unity begins with returning to our first love and seeing others through the eyes of Christ.
Unity does not come from agreeing on every earthly matter. Unity comes from returning to our first love. It comes from remembering who we belong to. It comes from seeing people as God sees them. It comes from refusing to let the world’s divisions become our divisions.
The God who is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and rich in loyal love is calling His people back to Himself.
May we be a people who answer that call. May we be a people who rend our hearts, not our garments. May we be a people who see others through the eyes of Christ. May we be a people who choose love over fear, mercy over judgment, and unity over division.
This is the path back to our first love. This is the path back to Him.
