hebrews 4.14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
jude 1.3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
hebrews 2.1-4 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?

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In the world, once something grows worn out and stale; we either throw it out or give it new life with a face lift, a paraphrase, a remix, a modern interpretation. So much of this has rubbed off on God’s people. As Jesus predicted, the love of many has grown cold – and many have drifted from their first love, their first faith. Rather than turning back with everything in them and doing the first works (the things accompanying salvation), they try to warm things up by moving the furniture around. Rather than just denying the faith; they attempt to view it through the filters of personal experience, modify it with philosophy, or paraphrase it to fit where they’re really living.

God’s word is unlike anything we’ve experienced in the world. It needs no face lift. It is living and active – it pierces, it exposes, it discerns. God sends forth his word and heals us. Our first love stands right where it’s always been: hung on a cross with a spear in his side with blood and water pouring out for every last one of our wrongdoings, raised up from the dead by the same Holy Spirit that lives in us, exalted high above all powers and authorities at the right hand of the Father.

If we are at all stuck in boredom or stalemate or ritual; it’s time to clean the inside of the cup and dish, and leave the externals alone. God’s call is not to remix, it’s to repent. Go immediately back to the point where you were undeniably ALIVE; all progress and growth will happen there, and only there. When God reached into my life and pulled me once and for all out of the twisted clutches of sin and depression and deception, I started going to the most pompous ceremonial dead religious church I’ve ever been to (my only choice at that point) – and still was able to drink deep from the river of life. Despite everything they were doing to drown God out, I met Jesus there every time I went. It’s not about the stimuli, it’s about the HUNGER. To the desperately hungry every bitter thing is sweet.

This is our hour. We can’t settle for being a people who retreat to the peripherals; who devour books based (however loosely) on the Bible instead of feasting on the Word itself, who constantly criticize worship and the preaching of the Word rather than swearing off entertainment and diving headfirst into experience, who give up real meetings and make church about social connections instead of the ongoing point of entry into the Kingdom of God, the Holy of Holies, the very body of Jesus Christ. This is our hour to yield totally to the Spirit and live out the pure undiluted Word.

God’s really not going to meet us in our cleverly evolved ideas; he’s waiting for us in the place of our first love >>