If You're Not First, You're Last

Revelation 2:4 "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love."

I used to think of this song in the context of the bad Lifehouse. A couple years ago, Lifehouse released a song called "The First Time" and in that song, they sang about the feeling that a person has when he falls in love for the first time. The wonder and awe of a brand new relationship is something of wonder. As Lifehouse puts it "It's like feeling alive all over again." Does God really want me to be super emotional and balls out crazy for Him? Maybe, but being in some emotional high the rest of my life sounds unrealistic. And even so, some people aren't emotional people to begin with. The first love concept in terms of human emotion is something that is merely relative rather than concrete. Let's take a hypothetical situation. Let's suppose that I was in that period of first love and my response was "meh..", does that mean that I could just say "meh.." about serving God? I don't think so..

When the world first is used in this verse, I don't think its referring to that emotional state though. I think it's talking more so about position relative to other things. The first and greatest commandment is to "love the Lord with all your heart". In this case, first refers to primary and most important. God SHOULD be our primary love but is He really? Or is our primary love worldliness, materialism, self ambition, and the like? Here's a scary thought. If God isn't our first love, He holds this against us. But "if God is for us, who can be against us?" so says scripture. Well, what if He's against us? The thought of the One that spoke the universe into motion being against me is not something that puts me at ease. I think it's only fair to take a hard look in the mirror after this and really evaluate where my heart is at. Is God my primary love? Is His glory the driving for in all that I do? Does my heart desire to serve Him and serve Him only?

One thing that my track coach used to say "If you're not first, you're last. " You either win conference or no one remembers how well or poorly you did. I feel like such is the case with this verse too. Either God is first in your life or He isn't. Even if I study really hard and put studying before God and push God to a narrow second, He isn't my primary love anymore, is He?