Mindy Lee Hopman

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
Revelation 2:4 (NASB) 

First Love

Can you remember the first time you fell in love? Can you recall the feelings of sitting beside that particular person and the hope that he or she would notice you? How fast did your heart race? Were you “twitterpated?” 

Can you remember walking down the aisle to be joined as one with the love of your life? 

The Bible begins and ends with a wedding. -Timothy Keller 

When God Gets Ahold of Your Heart

That moment you realize your Heavenly Father loves you, you become alive! Your racing heart comprehends He has loved you since the beginning of time! He planned for your life before you were born. This understanding changes your heart’s posture towards your Heavenly Father – it causes you to fall to your knees with gratitude.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you… Jeremiah 1:5a (NASB)

The Holy Spirit quickens your heart, and that is the moment you fall in love with the lover of your soul. There is a fullness and completeness that takes place in the soul when you know you are loved and adored by the Creator of all creation. The Holy Spirit is born in you and become connected as one.

Positive emotional health comes from positive spiritual health. Positive spiritual health is a result of oneness with our Heavenly Father. 

This spiritual connection and contentment run deep until the lies of the world begin to surface. You were not discontent until you were convinced you are “less than.” At some point in time, somebody fed you that lie. And you began to listen.

Lies Don’t Make You Wise

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. – C.S. Lewis

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then He rested. He created the world in perfect order and then out of dust He created His finest creation. He breathed life into mankind. 

Adam cultivated and kept the garden beautifully. The land thrived in abundance as he ate from all of the trees, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. With adoration, Adam named the animals one by one. God gave Him one rule, and from the beginning, Adam obeyed his Father. 

The first time God realized there was a need, was when He saw Adam was “doing life” alone because God loves community. God created Eve, and Adam and Eve walked together as one with God. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. Oneness existed in the beginning and they were wed. 

Who Told You That Lie? 

Oneness existed in the beginning. Adam and Eve lived contently until the adversary approached Eve. We have an adversary who comes to kill, steal, and destroy the oneness we know. Eve was convinced she was “less than” and she needed more to become wise. Eve believed the lie that the apple of the world would make her wise. She ate the lie, and she fed some to her husband. 

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. Genesis 3:7 (NASB) 

Life had to be shed, for life to be saved. Life is in the blood. 

Just as God said, death occurred. Not a physical death, but spiritual death. Mankind became eternally separated from God. 

Lies don’t make you wise.

Who told you that lie? Who told you that if you only had “this” you would be so much better? Who told you you would never be good enough. Who told you you could never reach that goal, get that job, or finish that degree? Who told you you were “less than?”

What doubt, comparison, or emptiness have you put in your mind? Discontentment and disappointment run rapidly these days. But God is doing a great work in you and He will be faithful to complete it. Philippians 1:6 

Fake Love 

Adam and Eve tried to cover up their own mistake with fig leaves. The fig leaves were a band-aid to cover up the choice they made. They created fake love to bring their oneness with God back on their own. Humans cannot reconcile the relationship because God initiated the connection. 

Forgiveness comes first. 
Reconciliation comes from God. 
Restoration is on His terms.  
Forgiveness, reconcilation, and restoration result after blood is shed. 

We have to go through the blood to get to God. God shed blood to create a covering of animal skin for Adam and Eve. And then God moved Adam & Eve out of the Garden of Eden into the world to work. 

True Love

God demonstrated true love when He sent His Son, the final sacrifice, to the world to die for mankind. 

Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ John 14:6 (NLT)

…for through Him, we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. Ephesians 2:18 (NASB) 

Jesus experienced death so you and I don’t have to. Once Jesus rose again, God sent us the gift of the spirit, which brings us back into oneness when we believe in His Son. 

God gives you the power of the Holy Spirit. Positive emotional health comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit quickens your soul and leads you to your first love, who is your Heavenly Father. 

Your marriage on earth is a glimpse of your covenant relationship with Jesus.

Jesus wants to be the one you run to, the one you talk with, the one you turn to, the one you adore. He wants to be your first love. You are already the apple of His eye. He wants to be the apple of yours. 

You are already so loved, will you let Him love you?