Out of the mouth of babes

The other night, as I was putting my almost 3 year old Jack in bed, he noticed a necklace I recently started wearing. "What is that?" he asked, so I took it out of my shirt to show him.

How do we keep our love for the Lord fresh & new? I have been a Christian for 32 years. Over that course of time I have experienced mountaintops and valleys, floods of glory and dry times, times when the sweet presence of the Lord brought tears and times I was so numb I felt nothing at all. Jesus promised "I will never leave you or forsake you," and He never has.

Jesus told the believers in Ephesus, I have seen all your hard work and your commitment to me and to the truth. But you have left your first love. Many years ago the Lord spoke to me from these words in Rev. 2 and showed me how to keep my love for Him fresh and alive. 3 simple steps - remember the height from which you have fallen, repent, and do the things you did at first.

The New Testatment teaches that God has seated us with Him in heavenly places. If we are not depending totally upon Him and His grace, we have fallen from a great height indeed! Step 2- repent. Religion has tried to hijack the word. Its power is in its simplicity - to turn around, to make a change. Step 3- Do the things you did at first.

What did you do at first, when you first truly started living by faith? I became radical for Jesus. I burned music, books, and anything else in my life that did not lift Jesus up. I changed the way I looked, the places I went, and the people I hung out with. The change was so noticeable I was interviewed by my hometown newspaper. In my enthusiasm to tell the world how much Jesus had changed my life I admitted in print to a few things that I afterwards realized the police might want to discuss with me (fortunately, they never followed up on it). Today, there are no books in my house that need to be trashed. Most of my music is praise (with some jazz & U2 in there) and most of my videos are kids videos. But it's really a matter of the heart, isn't it? I still need as much as ever to remember that it is by His grace alone. I still need to repent when I fall short of the mark, and I still need to do what the King James calls the firstdeeds.

A couple of weeks ago I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to get a cross necklace. I haven't worn any jewelry other than my wedding ring in quite a long time. But the Holy Spirit wanted to remind me about the cross. He wanted to remind me of the price Jesus paid for sin, and for me. He wanted to remind me of the promises I made to live for Him, that I am not my own but bought with a price. That my decisions are subject to His claim on my life. So I did one of my firstdeeds and started wearing a cross around my neck.

It is a manly thing, this cross made of nails. Compared to the other pieces in the jewelry case, it looked like an instrument of death. The very nice church lady that sold it to me smiled sweetly and asked "You aren't going to hurt anybody with this are you?" She looked shocked when I replied that I expected to use it in a crucifixion. (My wife punched me in the shoulder even though she knew what I meant.)

It was this cross of nails that my little Jack noticed. So I took it out and told him it is called a cross. He gazed at it a long time then asked, "What does a cross mean?" I have a bachelor's degree in theology, but I didn't need it to answer one of the the most profound and important questions Jack will ever ask. I looked him in the eye and said "It means God loves us." He gazed at it some more before declaring sleepily "It's beautiful."

Jack, my son, I couldn't agree more.