What can you give a person who already
has everything?
Nothing but love.
And that is the only thing that Jesus
wants from us.
He who created the universe, who is Lord
over everything in heaven and earth, He has
created us to share His love.
Will we refuse to give Him the one
thing that He desires?
In today's meditation, Love for Jesus, a Gift
Beyond Compare, Mother Basilea will share personally how
she discovered what it means to love Jesus
with the first love.
Has the Word of God in Revelation 2,
verse 4, ever haunted you in your tracks?
Have you ever felt a strange uneasiness that
pierced to the heart as you read these
words?
I have this against you, that you have
abandoned the love you had at first.
This was my experience some years ago.
It was during a time when I was
fully occupied with the work of God's Kingdom.
Youth groups, teaching missions, Bible classes, private counseling,
much of this required preparation and often left
me on the brink of exhaustion.
It was during World War II.
The suffering created in many German people a
hunger for the Word of God.
They received the Word of God with thankful
hearts.
Time simply would not stretch to cover all
the requests for Bible studies and lectures that
came from churches and groups throughout Germany.
Wouldn't you expect that such a response to
one's ministry would delight the heart?
Indeed, I was thankful for the privilege of
this ministry for Jesus.
Besides this, my personal life was a joy.
I lived with a friend with whom I
could share my inner life and the prayer
and burden for my work.
What could be missing from this full life
in God's service?
But then came a moment when a word
from God unsettled me.
I can't remember now whether it was through
hearing and reading the Bible or during prayer.
It was this word about abandoning your first
love.
With this word of Scripture, a dark question
mark suddenly rose up to cloud my own
faith in my service for Jesus.
I read on a few verses.
The sharp judgment of Jesus over the leader
of the church in Ephesus.
Did Jesus speak the same sharp judgment over
me?
Did he also say to me, remember then
from what you have fallen, repent?
How worth it was my first love.
I didn't fully grasp what the Scripture meant
by first love.
But one thing I knew, my own love
towards Jesus was a shame.
I thought back to the time when the
living God came into my life in a
definite way.
Was it not indeed another love which then
burned in my heart?
Had I traded this love towards Jesus, traded
it for a love of my ministry which
so filled my days and satisfied my heart?
This can be a subtle thing.
Read the Lord's message to the church in
Ephesus in Revelation 2.
I know your works, your toil and your
patience and endurance and how you cannot bear
evil men but have tested those who call
themselves apostles but are not and found them
to be false.
I know you are enduring patiently and bearing
up for my name's sake and you have
not grown weary.
Much to approve, much to praise.
He separates himself from evil men.
He endures patiently through testings and difficulties.
He has not grown weary.
Surely he is a spiritual leader who has
a right love towards Jesus.
Yet, the very next verse brings a sharp
retort of Jesus.
I have this against you, that you have
abandoned the love you had at first.
As I studied this, I became more and
more unsettled.
If the first love is not any of
the things which Jesus praises in this leader
of the church at Ephesus and my own
ministry was no match for his, then what
exactly is it and why does Jesus' value
is so highly?
My whole ministry lay under a cloud.
For I saw one thing clearly.
No matter how praiseworthy our ministry may be,
it will in the end fall under judgment
if this first love be wanting.
Something basic and decisive hangs upon our abiding
in this first love.
Further, I realized that without this first love
we cannot expect to bring forth real fruit,
nor can we be prepared to participate in
the glory of the marriage supper of the
Lamb.
To attain to this at any cost was
my deepest longing.
What did the Lord mean by the first
love?
Why did its loss cause him such great
pain?
The answer came at last in prayer.
Now I saw what Jesus meant by the
first love.
Now I grasped what he was asking of
those who believed in him in Revelation 2.
It had to do with love which seeks
nothing for itself, yet it moved beyond a
love which seeks other people.
For this first love seeks not people but
a person, the one who alone merits our
first love.
The first love is an intimate, personal relationship
of love which one has with our Lord
Jesus Christ.
I praise and sing, who can with you
compare?
Here on the earth, in heaven or anywhere?
Lord Jesus can compare, and none your splendid
glory ever share.
Who is like you?
Now the Spirit of God threw his spotlight
upon my life.
True enough, I had believed in Jesus as
my Lord and Savior.
I had accepted him by faith, out of
love.
I had dedicated myself to his service.
My life stood at his disposal.
I was his witness.
And yet, and yet, at first it passed
carelessly noticed.
But little by little this love has ebbed
away, this first love which alone could satisfy
Jesus.
One might see a comparison in the relationship
of a wife to her husband.
She once gave him her love freely, for
his own sake.
The years intervene.
In the marriage she still has a care
for his needs.
She even shares fully with him the responsibility
and burden of the family business.
Yet the husband knows that something is missing.
The intimate personal tie to him is not
the same as it was in the days
of their first love.
She no longer shows a desire to be
alone with him.
She avoids the opportunities to draw close to
him.
At first her time was his, but no
more.
Now she is just as happy to give
her time to work.
Indeed, she gives herself wholly to her work,
though she tells herself it is all for
him.
I came to see that my relationship to
my Lord Jesus Christ with the passing years
had eroded away.
What did I do when I found a
little pocket of spare time on a Sunday
or a holiday?
I couldn't wait to get together with other
people, people I like, people with whom I
had something in common, so we could share
ideas and experiences.
Or I read a stimulating book, or I
went out to enjoy nature.
I even plunged further into my work, doing
things that I normally didn't have time for.
But to go to Jesus, to give Him
first claim on even my spare time, that
I did not do.
My love was a divided love.
It belonged as much to some other person
or to the particular thing I was interested
in as to Jesus.
In holding a regular, quiet time, my purpose
was not to seek the quiet of prayer,
where the love between Jesus and me might
find expression.
I had no desire to be much alone
with Him.
I did not want to hear the concerns
which weigh on His heart.
I had no deep longing to make Him
happy.
My thought wandered here and there when they
were not directly focused upon some subject.
And so also did my feet.
As soon as I had a free moment,
I was off and going, but never to
some quiet place of prayer.
Yet it was there that Jesus was waiting
for me.
True love, however, seeks a loved one out.
That is what Jesus does.
For He is love, as the scripture says,
God is love.
He seeks us out.
Yet He waits for our love, in turn
to seek Him out.
He waits for a love which seeks Him
and Him alone.
Nothing can satisfy the heart of Jesus except
our love.
To our love we give such as
we no other offer.
Love for all your people.
It is important that we dedicate ourselves to
our work.
It is important that we bear our burdens
with patience.
It is important that we hate evil and
tolerate no compromise with it.
Such things will always be necessary for a
Christian.
But such things alone do not satisfy Jesus.
He wants more.
He wants the intimate personal surrender of our
hearts to Him.
Not just once when we first experience the
grace of forgiveness and salvation.
No, He wants them ever and again, new
every morning.
This is a truth which broke in upon
my life as I read the Lord's message
to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2.
For here our love to Jesus is not
equated with a generalized notion of love to
God.
No, in these words to the church of
Ephesus, Jesus' meaning is unmistakably clear.
He means a love without parallel, truly the
first love.
As I prayed over this, the clouds of
uncertainty and confusion began to lift.
I began to see that here one and
only one kind of love could be meant.
Bride love.
For it is just here in the love
of a bride for her bridegroom that we
speak in this way of a first love.
Through the picture of a bride's love we
could come to a deeper understanding of what
Jesus means by the first love.
A sadness crept through my heart as I
thought about a bride's first love.
For this love has a distinctive characteristic.
It has eyes for the bridegroom alone.
He alone feels her every thought, her every
moment.
To him alone goes the yearning of her
heart.
When I observed my own love to Jesus,
such a yearning, such an absoluteness seemed utterly
lacking.
Bride love gives up all others.
Bride love is a spent-thrift love, lavish
love, doesn't count the cost love.
It does foolish things.
Bride love is sacrificial love.
It gives everything to the beloved.
All of this, all that would truly characterize
love as a bride love, one would search
in vain to find in my love to
Jesus.
Deeper and deeper went the thought of God's
word.
The Spirit of God convicted me that I
had indeed lost this one thing, this most
important of all things, this that meant everything
to Jesus, my first love, my personal, intimate
love to Jesus.
Perhaps I had even prided myself in years
past that my Christianity was so disciplined and
controlled and therefore assumed that everything was in
order.
But now the scales fell from my eyes.
My sins stood naked and exposed in the
light of God's word.
I had not taken the command of Jesus
seriously, for he had called for a love
that sets him above everything, that loves him
with all our might, that devotes to him
everything that we are and take.
Who is truly realistic and sober in his
love?
Only he who holds to his first love,
spent-thrift love, foolish love.
This was now clear to me, for only
such a love is obedient to the first
commandment.
Can one actually do too much when it
comes to love toward Jesus?
Can one measure out love toward one whose
love is beyond measure?
Yet that was what I had done.
And why?
Because my love had grown cold.
Therefore the word of Scripture stood as a
judgment over my life.
You have abandoned your first love.
Heart sick, I began to long for the
renewal of this first love.
And not only to long for it, but
to pray and beseech God for it.
I knew that I must have this love,
no matter what the cost.
For the alternative was clear.
To be left standing outside a closed door
at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
I must abide in this love.
Otherwise all my service for Jesus would come
under judgment.
My lampstand would be removed.
He would cast me away like an unfruitful
branch, to be burned because I had not
remained in his love.
As a branch abides in the vine.
Now I saw clearly.
Life depends upon love.
If our life is to beget life in
others, it must be a life bound in
love to Jesus.
As my longing and my prayers for this
love grew stronger, I came to see why
I had lost this first love.
My heart was divided.
I did not love Jesus with my whole
heart.
So I began to pray that the Lord
would humble me and give me a broken
heart.
I thought of the woman in Luke 7
who had sinned much.
She fell weeping at Jesus' feet.
Then out of thankfulness for his gift of
forgiveness, her great love poured out.
I prayed for this kind of repentance and
love.
Sweet Lord of life, I will now strive
no more to grieve you and burden your
loving heart, sorrow lady.
Repentance, tears, my Savior, cheers, followed by praise
and rejoicing.
You shall be first.
Jesus, my dearest friend.
The Lord answered my prayer.
He always answered petitions which are in accord
with his will.
And the prayer for a contrite heart is
always according to his will.
In the following years, he led me through
many humbling, difficult judgments and disciplines.
I learned to weep over my sins.
In spirit, I fell at the feet of
both men and God as a helpless sinner.
I humbled myself in repentance before people I
had sinned against.
And in the measure that I accept this
judgment, God grant me a personal love to
our Lord.
Since I have learned to love Jesus, my
life has become unspeakable rich and happy.
In him is fullness of contentment.
What a privilege to love him of whose
love it is written.
How fair and how pleasant are thou, O
love for delights.
Song of Solomon.
No more could suffering and the cross come
upon me as an oppressive power.
For now I had learned to go the
way of the cross.
His love to me and mine to him
transformed the cross.
In the measure that my love to Jesus
grew, people and the things of this world
became unimportant.
They no longer held me in bondage.
In this sense, I could understand the words
of the Apostle John.
Do not love the world or the things
of this world.
And more and more I became independent of
anything the world could give or take away.
Jesus became everything to me.
The portals of heaven opened wider and wider.
The glory of heaven shone forth.
Should one not expect just that?
And as the scripture says, seek the things
that are above where Christ is.
Jesus lives in heaven.
If you seek him, you will find him.
And finding him, you will find all heaven.
But not only did heaven come to me,
the earth also came as a new gift.
For both heaven and earth belong to him.
A bride must love everything that belongs to
the bridegroom.
The soul who loves Jesus loves everything that
is his heaven and earth, his creation, all
his creatures, which he surrounds with his love
and care, especially mankind for whom he gave
his life.
And above all the brethren, those who belong
to his body, the church.
Nor does a bride's love stop here.
It goes on and learns from Jesus to
love also her enemies, those who oppose him
or us.
First love.
Can any gift compare with it?
What greater wish could one desire?
Truly, in this one has a foretaste of
heaven here on earth.
That is my experience.
One is born on the wings of this
love towards the heavenly glory, which God has
prepared for those who love him.
The myriad supper of Salem.
Those who want to hear and read more
about this first love for Jesus may obtain
the book Those Who Love Him, published in
England by Marshall, Morgan & Scott and in
the United States by Zondervan Publishing House.
Repentance, a creative life-giving power by Vasilea
Schlink is an open door for those seeking
true joy.
See, O Lord, see,
see how a deep repentance is.
Long ago John the Baptist cried out, Repent,
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Is that not the very basis of the
gospel, the good news?
Repentance, the gate to heaven?
Repentance, the gate to the very heart of
the Father?
Yes, repentance makes us joyful and blissful.
It brings us home to the heart of
the Father.
It brings us all the way to heaven.
It is a gift of the Holy Spirit,
who inclines himself to a human heart which
is hard and brittle.
He breaks it into small pieces, so that
the Father, the Creator God himself, can take
these pieces into his hand and create a
new vessel for his honor.
Shouldn't we long for this gift more than
all others?
It is a piece of divine life, of
true life.
Only when a heart can cry and rejoice
is it alive.
Only a dead person no longer stirs.
He is stiff.
He can no longer move.
He is unable to feel joy or happiness,
even unable to weep.
However, a person who lives in repentance has
the characteristics of life.
He cries.
He cries over the one thing that is
worth crying over, because it contains our ruin
and the ruin of all men, because it
brings death and terrible judgment and horrible consequences
here and in all eternity.
He cries over sin.
Greatly sorrowed by his sin, he no longer
cries over things which are not worthy to
be cried over.
Compared with this sorrow, they are only a
trifle, a transient matter.
One who gets too disturbed over temporal things
falls into a sadness that leads to death.
2 Corinthians 7, 10 However, through repentance we
only cry over things which have such terrible
consequences.
Through repentance we have the true godly grief.
As our Mother Basilia tells us, Those who
are repentant are realists.
They are grieved over their sins at the
right time on earth.
Others who neglect to do this will be
sorry for their sins for all eternity.
Those who repent are grieved over their sins
now so that they can turn over a
new leaf and begin to lead a new
and different life.
Yes, those who repent are truly alive, for
after weeping over their sins they break out
in rejoicing which is unknown to other hearts.
The joy of forgiveness, no other joy can
compare in depth and height.
The joy of redemption, no other happiness could
ever compare.
A person who has been imprisoned in chains
rejoices when he is freed.
And yet his imprisonment was only for a
number of years, and his freedom is also
limited by time.
However, here it is a matter of being
imprisoned by the prince of this world and
of the regions of hell, an imprisonment which
could have lasted for all eternity and from
which no man could have freed them.
And now the release has come from a
different side.
It came down from heaven.
Jesus became man.
He let himself be taken prisoner and condemned
to death in our fate so that we
could go free.
Shouldn't that fill our souls with rejoicing beyond
anything we have ever known?
Only contrition and repentance let us partake of
this joy-filled life.
They let us fence our imprisonment and our
death.
Yes, contrition and repentance drive us into the
arms of our Redeemer, our life-giving Lord.
Therefore, people who have not yet experienced repentance,
even though they are pious and faithful churchgoers,
are spiritually dead.
This is what our Lord said in his
letter to the church at Sardis.
You have the name of being alive, and
you are dead.
To live means to repent.
Dead are those Christians who have never wept
over their sins or who have long ago
ceased to weep over their sins.
Dead are those Christians, in God's eyes, who
no longer rejoice and sing because God has
forgiven them their sins.
Wherever this joy is missing, even though we
call ourselves believing and faithful Christians, there is
something wrong in our lives.
For just as it is true that we
continually sin and continually need forgiveness, it is
also true that repentance must continually pour into
our hearts.
Yes, contrition and repentance must become the very
basis of our life.
Otherwise, our whole Christianity is on the downward
path, and we will become like the proudly
exultant ones of Zephaniah, who says that they
will fall under severe judgment, Zephaniah chapter 3.
Therefore, repentance must be the foundation of our
life.
It is the only proper attitude we can
have towards God.
Can we come before a holy God in
any other position than lying on our faces
before Him as broken sinners?
For we daily sin against Him.
Furthermore, repentance must be our foundation of life
because we daily sin against our fellow men.
Truly, there is no one among us who
lives completely in love.
For that reason, we must lie with broken
hearts before the difficult ones with whom we
live and work, those we often sin against
by not helping in love to find the
right path.
Repent.
That is the call of Scripture.
Time and again, Jesus calls us to repent.
To the complacent and self-satisfied, Jesus says
in His letters to the seven churches, Repent.
Yes, He begs us turn away from this
attitude which brings destruction to the believers.
Only those who overcome will remain in the
book of life, Revelation chapter 3.
Only coupled with repentance can faith save us
from death and lead us to eternal life
and allow us to experience a foretaste of
that life now.
Only those who are alive can bring life
to others.
Whoever does not live in repentance belongs to
the spiritually dead who cannot bring life to
anyone.
But the repentant one is full of life,
full of divine life and able, therefore, to
beget it in others.
Whenever someone repents, he scarcely needs to say
a word.
He doesn't need to preach to others.
Rather, when he lies prostrate before God and
man and confesses with a broken and contrite
heart, I have sinned.
I am guilty.
His words have the power of life.
They open the hardest hearts and bring life
to the dead.
These words spoken by the prodigal son as
he lay weeping before his father caused the
father's heart to overflow with love.
The same thing happens whenever we confess our
sin and admit our guilt before men.
When we ask them for forgiveness, their hearts
are opened.
Tears of contrition soften the hardest, most unforgiving
hearts.
Tears of contrition transform us and others.
They give birth to love and a new
life.
What a creative, life-giving power is inherent
in repentance.
For that reason, our Lord Jesus and Peter,
too, on the day of Pentecost, commanded the
churches of his faithful followers to repent.
This is the way to be brought to
life and filled with the Holy Spirit.
For it is in repentance that the kingdom
of heaven is at hand.
But perhaps you are asking, what is the
way to repentance?
The first step is for us to realize
the fact that we do not have it.
This is fundamental, because there is nothing we
lack more since the fall of man than
repentance.
The prophets of the Old Testament were the
first to speak of God's desire for the
people to repent.
Then John the Baptist gave the call.
And finally, Jesus himself wrote that even today
you knew the things that make for peace,
Luke 19, 42.
Because of our human nature, we are apathetic
and indifferent towards our sins, much of the
time being unaware of them.
We weep easily over the difficulties of our
lives, over things that have been done to
us, our sorrows, griefs, and disappointments.
But because it is not natural to our
human nature, few of us come to the
place of real contrition and repentance.
The heart of man has a way of
thinking it is always in the right and
sees no reason to weep over its own
sins.
Our human nature is so self-righteous and
impenitent, we mostly want to blame others rather
than ourselves.
Or we even blame God and say His
ways are incomprehensible to us.
Therefore, as Mother Basilea has often told me,
the first step then is for us to
realize we have no repentance.
After seeing this, we are ready for the
second step, to know we cannot produce it
ourselves.
No one is able to change his own
hard heart into one that is soft and
broken, able to weep over its own sins.
This must be accomplished in us by a
work of grace, which is a gift of
God.
We must look with faith towards our Lord,
for we have a God who says, Is
anything impossible with me?
His good pleasure is to create by His
Holy Spirit something in our hearts that was
not there before.
He is able to His glory to perform
the miracle of melting the hardest hearts.
When Jesus on the cross destroyed Satan's power,
He also destroyed the hardness of our hearts,
the blindness towards our sin with which the
enemy has bound us.
He destroyed our unrepentance and won for us
the ability to weep over our sins.
He made it possible for us to know
tears of sorrow, not only for the suffering
we have brought to God, but also for
the suffering we have brought to men.
Jesus' call to repent is not only a
command, it is also a promise, for with
every commandment God provides His power, with which
He can obey it.
This was done for us at Golgotha in
the sacrifice of Jesus, who overcame in the
crucifixion and resurrection all principalities and powers that
could hinder us from true repentance.
Therefore, when we continue faint-heartedly and excuse
ourselves by saying that we were unable to
have a penitent heart, it is a sign
that our thinking has been clouded by the
enemy.
And because man likes to have an excuse
for everything, we finally blame God and say
that He has not given us this gift.
But we really have no excuse.
Jesus obtained repentance for us on the cross.
God shows us that we can experience it
by the prayer of faith, trusting in Jesus'
victory.
When we recognize the hardness of our own
hearts, our inability to repent in our own
strength, we can then pray, believing in Jesus'
promise.
Everything you ask in my name will be
given to you.
Yes, we may pray this prayer for a
penitent heart in Jesus' name because He came
to free us from self-righteousness.
He came that we might be repentant sinners,
returning home like the prodigal son.
Whoever goes to God with this prayer, trusting
in His help, will not be disappointed.
For inherent within the promise is the certainty
of being heard.
When I daily ask, Lord, give me the
grace of repentance, give me a broken heart,
enlighten my eyes that I may see the
being in them and realize my own sin
against God and men.
He will hear me.
He will open my eyes so I can
see the depths of my sin, the pain
I have caused in others rather than what
they have done to me.
I will then see things in the light
of God's truth rather than in the darkness
of the enemy who puts the sins of
others before me like a large screen which
blinds my eyes and blocks me from seeing
my own sins.
Give me your light, the truth to let
my people hold me.
Oh, give me light.
Give me your light without fear, Lord.
Yes, the prayer for the light of God's
truth to come into our hearts, our talking
and acting, is important so we may be
freed from the darkness in which the enemy
has wrapped us.
He wants to keep us from seeing the
truth of our sinful nature.
He doesn't want us to be repentant sinners
whose lives are filled with holiness, joy and
power.
But we do not have to stay any
longer under the enemy's spell.
Jesus says, I am the light of the
world.
He who follows me will not walk in
darkness but will have the light of life.
His light is truth which casts a searchlight
on our pathway so that we may see
when we go astray.
But it is still not enough to pray
daily that God would give me the light
of truth.
It is still not enough to ask daily
that the grace of repentance be given to
me for every day I must also accept
the Lord's chastening.
I only show repentance when I daily pray,
Father, do with me whatever you must do.
Chasten me and break me into pieces so
that afterwards you can give me a humble,
penitent heart.
More Christians have to come to repentance through
God's punishments than through sermons and the need
for repentance.
Those who long for the grace of repentance
must pray for the willingness to accept God's
punishments that our hearts may become soft and
broken.
Repentance does not just fall from heaven like
a rain of grace.
It must be prayed for and received by
faith.
But it must also be received through chastening
and suffering.
And when we are not afraid of it,
the walk on God's pathway of discipline is
really rewarding for it bears the most wonderful
fruit.
It is almost incomprehensible the way the holy
life grows out of contrition and repentance.
All true joy and happiness, all power in
our work for God's kingdom depends upon living
in this grace, weeping day by day over
our sins, continually bowing down before God and
men.
Therefore, it is of the greatest importance that
we continue praying, imploring for repentance to be
given to us, never failing to watch for
the obstacles which hinder us in receiving it.
It is also of the greatest importance that
we are willing to accept His ways of
punishment and discipline which will bring us to
repentance so that Christ can be formed in
us.