"First Love"- Beth Moore quote

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write…
I have somewhat against thee,
because thou hast left thy first love.
Revelation 2

Beth Moore in “Beloved Disciple” (pg 165) says:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Notice that the church in Ephesus received tremendously noble commendations from Christ and yet somehow let go of the most important thing of all: her sacred romance with Jesus Christ…. Beloved One, you and I can work hard, persevere through extreme difficulty, refuse to tolerate wicked people, and accurately discern false teachers- yet still forsake our first love.

Ironically, many believers don’t view an absence of fiery, first love for Jesus Christ as sin. They view it simply as something they lack. This misunderstanding may be part of the holdup. If God’s absolute priority for all followers of Christ is love- for Him first and others second- then the absence of such love is sin. I don’t pound this point to condemn. Remember, it’s not an irreversible condition! I pound the point so that we can do what we must do to get on to the business of loving! God says “Repent!” Repent means turn. I believe God told them and is telling us to turn from whatever we have given a higher priority than our sacred romance with Christ. He tells us to pour our lives back into the first things.

Keep in mind that with the first things rightly established, all other things of value come to us as well. The church in Ephesus very likely allowed spiritual busyness and stalwart religiosity to displace love. Because everything else hinges on the laws of love (see Matt 22:40) over time all things of eternal value would have crumbled in Ephesus. Christ exhorted them to go back to the first priority of love so that all their works would flow form a boundless wellspring of agape. Surely this exhortation speaks to each of us.”
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Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen,
and repent, and do the first works;
or else I will come unto thee quickly,
and will remove thy candlestick out of his place,
except thou repent.
Rev. 2:5

Beth explains:
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“That doesn’t mean they would lose their place in heaven. We lose our lampstand when we lose our godly influence on earth. In other words, we lose our light in the world.”
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God hasn’t put a period at the end of our sentences yet…"

Thought provoking meditation from Beth Moore’s “Beloved Disciple” (pg 153 )

“Read John 3. List each person identified and write a brief description __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Imagine being named in a letter that turned out to be inspired Scripture for all the world to see! Whether in commendation or criticism, having your name immortalized in scripture is a heavy thought! When I see a portion of Scripture with brief testimonials similar to the segment we’re studying today, I almost shiver… At times I would have been anywhere from devastated to humiliated over what might be written in my life’s theoretical one-sentence statement. I love knowing that as long as we’re kicking and breathing, we can change the course of our testimonies. God hasn’t put a period at the end of our sentences yet…”

ME- May we all think twice about doing things we would be ashamed of were they “exposed”. They are visible to GOD, even if we succeed in hiding them from everyone else… The greek word “hypocrisy” means “mask”.

Beth Moore on Solitude

from Beth Moore’s “Beloved Disciple” pg 79-80

…we are each on our own before God. Every life is separate and distinct. We may think we have partnerships in life or ministry without which we cannot exist or operate. We may think that everything in the Christian experience is about body life, but it’s not. Yes, we’re all parts of the body of Christ, and we function in each generation as parts of a whole; but until we each stand before God with a shocking awareness of our solitary standing, I’m not sure we have a clue about our part.

I don’t believe that one of us who is serious about God will forego this test. It’s no 30 minute quiz; it’s a lifelong essay test written in blood. Will we loose our hold on anything and anyone else as a prerequisite to following Christ in the intensity of aloneness? If you can answer quickly, I’m not sure you grasp the question’s seriousness….

moments come when the awareness of my solitary estate before God so radically overwhelms me that I fall to my knees and weep. Bitterly. Frighteningly. The feeling is so intense that at times I can hardly bear it…

How much of your life you’ve invested in Jesus Christ is the issue. Have we held some back for ourselves- just in case He’s not as real, as powerful, as active as we thought? Just in case He doesn’t come through? Just in case He really can’t be taken at His Word? Or have we banked everything we have and everything we are on the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of all the earth? We will never fulfill our destinies until our hope is built on nothing less.

We can lock arms with fellow servants just as the disciples did. We will experience a measure of God’s anointing and perform some significant works. For the parts of a whole to work as God intended them, however, each part must stand on its own before a highly personal God. If we insist on a boat full of company, we’ll miss the waves where we ride only one at a time. When a wave of loneliness suddenly erupts, ride it. Let your stomach rise and fall with fear and peculiar excitement. Don’t fight the feeling. Don’t just busy yourself. Ride the wave straight into the presence of God and experience the adventure of feeling you’re the only one there.

The intensity of your solitary estate is often most obvious when you fight to reconcile the facts of life with the words of faith. Do you grapple with questions like, Why did God let my brother die but perform a miracle for my best friend? I’m not sure if John ever figured this one out…

Solitude is not so much the place we find answers as the place we decide if we’re going on, possibly alone- without them. Many of us will. Why? Because the privilege of wrestling with such a holy and majestic God still beats the numbness and pitiful mediocrity of life otherwise. Sometimes we don’t realize how real He is until we’ve experienced the awesomeness of His answerless presence. He knows that what we crave far more than explanations is the unshakable conviction that He is utterly and supremely God.

Beth Moore Confesses

quote from “Beloved Disciple“

‘It’s high time I made a blatant confession. I am a Christian hedonist. Have been for years even before I knew what it means. I wish I had better words for it, but let me just say Jesus makes me happy! He thrills me! He nearly takes my breath away with His beauty. As seriously as I know how to tell you, I am at times so overwhelmed by His love for me, my face blushes with intensity and my heart races with holy anticipation. Jesus is the uncontested delight of my life. I never intended for this to happen. I didn’t even know it was possible. It all started with an in-depth study of His Word in my late 20s and then surged, oddly enough, with a near emotional and mental collapse in my early 30s. At the end of myself I came to the beginning of an intensity of relationship with Christ that no one told me was possible. Now I spend my life telling anyone who will listen…

CS Lewis wrote… “if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”‘

Beth Moore quotes

Quotes from Beth Moore Breaking Free

For the believer, the first step of freedom from any stronghold is agreeing with God concerning the personal sin involved. Please understand, the object of our imaginations itself is not always sin. The sin may lie solely in the exaltation of it in our own minds. For example, nothing could be more natural or reflective of the heart of God than a mother’s love for her child. However, if she has passed the bounds of healthy affection to overprotection, obsession, adoration, and idolatry, she has constructed a stronghold. Pg 191

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God loves perfectly. His love is both vocal and demonstrative. He balances blessing and discipline. God’s love is unfailing, so any time we perceive He does not love us, our perceptions are wrong. Anything we perceive about God that does not match up with 1) the truth of Scripture and 2) the portrayal of His character in Scripture- is a lie.When we realize we’ve been believing a lie, our bonds lose their grip. At those times we might pray something like: “I may not feel loved or lovable, but Your Word says You love me so much You gave up Your beloved Son for me. I don’t know why I continue to feel unloved, but at this moment I choose to believe the truth of Your Word. I rebuke the enemy’s attempt to make me doubt Your love. Satan knows the truth will set me free and I have believed his lies over Your Word. I also pray for forgiveness for the sin of unbelief. Help me overcome my unbelief.”

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I …remember the harrowing moment God opened my eyes to see what a lie I had believed. I cried for days.I originally thought this lie was a good thing. My heart, handicapped in childhood, had deluded me. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I eventually bowed down and worshiped it. My only consolation in my idolatry is that I finally allowed Him to peel away my fingers and to my knowledge, have only grasped His hand since.Had I not discovered what a lie was in my right hand, I would never have run to Him to fill up the void it left. I have discovered the glorious satisfaction of only the Lord Jesus Christ can bring. I can truly say to you at this moment that I love Him more than anything or anyone in this world. Jesus is the uncontested love of my life. Yes, I plunged to the depths to discover this level of satisfaction. Sadly, I often learn things the hard way. I pray to settle for nothing less the rest of my days. I am very aware that Satan will constantly cast idols before me. I hope never to forget that the same one I bowed down and worshiped before I could fall to again. Beloved, whatever we are gripping to bring us the satisfaction is a lie- unless it is Christ. He is the Truth that sets us free. Pg 63