September 3, 2022 | Back To The Beginning

Triumphant Victorious Reminders 

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"I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don't tolerate evil people...You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. But I have this one complaint against you. You don't love Me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen. Turn back to Me and do the works you did at first..." - Revelation 2:2-4 (NLT)

Doing all the good things...

Praying for people.

Seeking opportunities to be hospitable.

Writing books testifying of the greatness of God.

Posting encouraging social media content. 

Gathering with other Christ-like minded women.

Yet all the while, truly forgetting the WHY. 

So often I would do, do, do because that's what you do as a Christian. This is how you're recognized as one of His own.

Yet God in His mercy and patience, woos us to Himself to respond to His goodness first so we can truly do from a place of awe and wonder. Remembering He is our first love. Loving Him from a place of grateful heart knowing He FIRST loved us, even while we were yet sinners. 

Becoming so intimate with Him that the doing is from a place of overflow, no longer from duty or religious obligation. 

This week, God utilized a dear friend whom I've known since 1987, to remind me of this blog and from how it started. The Holy Spirit was speaking through her to remind me of how He was my first love. It was from my awe and wonder of Him. It started from a place of grateful awe. It wasn't about the "followers" - it was truly about wanting to follow after Jesus.

In this sweet reminder, there was a divine prompting, to go back to my first entry from March 20, 2009. In doing so, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the second chapter of Revelation. The loving Holy Spirit of God opened my eyes to catch that recorded moment in which Jesus spoke to John. Here it was, Jesus instructing John to write this letter to the Angel of the Church in Ephesus. 

The church was doing all the right things; but they had lost sight as to why they were doing it all. Their attitudes in doing good were evidence that it was out of great discipline - but not from a place of great love in response to Jesus and loving one another. 

Have you ever been so in awe of your grit and discipline or even someone else's? To the point where you forgot it was not by your own power or might but truly it was only the grace of God that gave the strength to endure and obey?  

The Triumphant Victorious Reminder today is in everything we do and say, we get to do so as a response of grateful heart to God; from a place of worship. 

This desire He so intimately and intricately placed within us to want to know Him more. 

Not just wanting more knowledge of the things of God; but truly wanting to know Christ more. 

Not just wanting the gifts of God; but truly wanting Him as the greatest gift. 

Not just wanting to pray more with what I think should be said; but praying in a way where I want to lean into how Jesus prays to the Father and agree with Him.

Praying in a way that dying to self is no longer the only narrative, but in dying to self it allows me the greatest joy of getting to COME ALIVE IN CHRIST.

Getting to that place of awe and wonder of Who He is. 

Knowing that we don't have to look for purpose anymore, but realizing from this love from Him, we realize He is our purpose. 

He is our destiny. 

He is our journey. 

From this place of overflow is where we see He is the purpose to why we get to live and breathe. In this reminder, this is when our love for others and ourselves become the evidence of a life that remembers that Jesus is our first love.

He is the reason I rejoice. 

He is the reason I get to delight in my husband, children and grandchildren.

He is the joy of my Salvation and in Him I get to live and breathe. 

It is being reminded to no longer do things for God; but realizing we are simply witnesses of what He does through us as we follow after Jesus with loving awe and wonder. 

"...Christ in us, the hope of glory..."

Love, Teresa Ann 

Scripture References: 

Romans 5:8; Colossians 2; 2 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 11:6; Ephesians 2; Romans 5:1-17; Acts 17:28; 1 John 4:19; Psalm 34:1; Psalm 51:12; Colossians 1:27