The Priority of Abiding in Jesus

The Priority of Abiding in Jesus

Revelation 2

1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write this: 

The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks in the midst of the seven gold lampstands says this:

2 I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate the wicked; you have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and discovered that they are impostors.

3 Moreover, you have endurance and have suffered for my name, and you have not grown weary.

4 Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first.

5 Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

6 But you have this in your favor: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

7 Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the victor I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that is in the garden of God.”

As Jesus begins His letter to the church in Ephesus, it sounds like a very good church.  But by the end of the letter, He is threatening to yank their lampstand which we know is their designation as a church because in Revelation 1:20 Jesus revealed that the lampstands are the churches.  So that is a pretty severe penalty!

What is the reason for such drastic course of action? “You have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first.”  Notice that this lost love even affected the quality of their works.  They were no longer what they were at first.

Evidently their love had grown cold.  How did that happen?  What causes people to fall away?  And what can we do to prevent this calamity from happening to us?  What is the antidote for this dreaded disease?

This type of scenario comes up a lot in the forum and in the Journey Home program in people’s own journeys, churches, families and circles of friends.  It is a major source of concern and heartbreak and the subject of many prayer requests.

A frequent suggestion is that better catechesis (teaching) was or is needed.  If they just had been provided with better, more accurate biblical and theological information, then they wouldn’t have wandered away, left the church, drifted into heresy or whatever.

But that is not what Jesus, the Bible or the Catechism says.  Knowledge and understanding are very important and helpful but there is something more important still that is often missing in peoples’ lives and that is frequently overlooked.  They’ve either lost it like the knowledgeable Ephesians (Revelation 2:2b) or they never really had it, which is perhaps the problem of the Pharisees in John 5:39-40, who were also very knowledgeable in the Scriptures.  Jesus told the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” RSVCE

What is this missing and/or lost element which makes people more susceptible to wandering away?  It is having a real love relationship with Jesus.

The Apostle Paul prays for us in this regard in Ephesians 3:14-19.

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,  16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man,  17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  18 may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  RSVCE

Note that love is what roots and grounds us and keeps us from being shiftless wanderers.  And that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge even though knowledge is very important.

Often we put knowledge before love and forget to pursue the love relationship. 

We can also put action and service before love as Martha did in Luke 10:38-42 and as the Ephesians were doing in the Revelation 2 passage.

38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house.  39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.  40 But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”  41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things;  42 one thing is needful.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” RSVCE

I always find it interesting how people bristle and come to the defense of Martha and seek to negate what Jesus is saying to Martha in this passage.  I think Jesus is touching a sore spot in their lives.

I am guilty of having done both of these things, putting knowledge and action/service before a love relationship with Jesus.

So how do we develop this love relationship with Jesus?

Well, the first step is to be honest ourselves and with God and admit that we have a problem. 

Jesus told the Pharisees, you need to come to me in order to have the life you are seeking to find in the Scriptures.  He told the Ephesians, “You have lost the love you had at first.  Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first.”  And he told Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Which story matches best with where we are at?

I think I was more like the Pharisees.  I never really had it in the first place.  Even though I was raised in the Presbyterian Church from birth through age 14, had a “born again” experience where I asked Jesus into my life as Lord and Savior when I was 20, prayed extemporaneously on occasion, studied the Bible, theology and church history and became a Bible teacher and lay preacher, I had never really developed a love relationship of trust with Jesus.  He was more of an acquaintance to me.  I knew I needed to develop a closer walk with Him but I couldn’t seem to do it.  I prayed for the Holy Spirit to fall on me in prayer and praise and worship songs.  I looked at the various Protestant traditions, movements and spiritualties but nothing changed.  I looked at Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy on my way to the Catholic Church but still nothing lasting and consistent.

So what was the game changer for me?  Well, Jesus led me to His Church, the Catholic Church with its myriad of devotional helps and channels of grace like the Sacraments, prayer books, holy cards, rosary beads, crucifixes, statues, paintings, liturgy and rites, smells and bells.  Most of all He led me to the Rosary so I could learn to spend time in His presence, meditating on twenty events/mysteries of both His and His mother Mary’s life while asking for her help as I do so.

You see, in order to become close to someone and learn to love and trust that person, you have to spend time with him or her.  That’s why it is so important to pray to God, the Holy Trinity.  The Catechism goes so far as to say in paragraph 2558.

"Great is the mystery of the faith!" The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles' Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two), so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.

It is also important to bear our hearts to God for the Apostle Peter exhorts in 1 Peter 5:6 and 7.

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you.  Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.

Often we do not have words for what is in our hearts, but prayers like the Rosary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the Liturgy of the Hours keep us in prayer long enough so that God can begin to deal with our hearts and draw the things that trouble and hinder us to the surface.  The written/memorized prayers are also a rich resource for additional ideas about what to pray with God about.

So what is my motive for starting this topic?  It is simply this.  I spent many years knowing a lot about God but not really knowing, trusting and experiencing Him on a daily basis in prayer.  Evangelical Christianity is highly intellectual.  It focuses on knowledge.  Prayer is mentioned and even urged but at least in most of the churches I attended hardly any instruction in prayer was ever given.  Extemporaneous prayer was all that was needed and intercessory prayer was the main focus.

I have listened to and read hundreds of conversion stories because I love to hear them.  Many of them center on discovering the truth and authority of the Catholic Church as reasons for conversion.  Often the Eucharist and other Sacraments are mentioned but I would say to a lesser degree.  They are all good reasons.  But prayer is not mentioned very often as a reason for conversion.

Now maybe people are more reticent to talk about the state of their prayer lives and so that is the reason it isn’t mentioned very often.  Kind of like lovers talking about their love lives, perhaps.  Or perhaps they haven’t yet discovered and dived into the vast ocean of grace and mercy to be found in Catholic spirituality and prayer.  If the latter is the case, then I desire for them to find what I have found after long searching and almost despairing of life.

Jesus wants that love relationship with us.  I will close with an excerpt from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Prayer as God's gift

2559 "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God." But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or "out of the depths" of a humble and contrite heart? He who humbles himself will be exalted; humility is the foundation of prayer, Only when we humbly acknowledge that "we do not know how to pray as we ought," are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. "Man is a beggar before God."

2560 "If you knew the gift of God!" The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

2561 "You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." Paradoxically our prayer of petition is a response to the plea of the living God: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water!" Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.