Living In The Light

Here's Ann Graham Lotz. Loving the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, having that intimate, passionate relationship with Him is the height of the Christian life, and if you lose it, it's a long way down. You're listening to Living in the Light with Bible teacher Ann Graham Lotz. Today, Ann takes us to Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Here she'll underscore how God shines the light of His Word into the heart of the seven churches of this last book of the Bible.

Anne says, God wants these churches to learn something from the Lord. He commends what they're doing right, and he convicts them of what they're doing wrong. Then the Lord tells them what to do to set it right. And finally, God gives a principle and a promise to each church. Let's join Anne now as she explains more about this instructional pattern given to all the seven churches in Revelation.

Years ago, and I've shared this story many times before, but not recently. I had to look up who I was talking about. But anyway, F. Lee Bailey was one of O.J. Simpson's dream team lawyers, if you can remember back then.

And he had a TV interview, and he wanted to interview my parents from the home in Montreat, which is just across the valley.

So my parents agreed. and two weeks before F. Lee Bailey came with his camera crew, my mother just began to scrub the house and she polished and she shined and she waxed. And so the day the TV crew showed up, she was so confident her house had never looked better. And the house is just an old log cabin, but she had made it just sparkle.

And so she welcomed the men very confident and they came in and they set up their cameras and they had all these cables running across the floor and these big television lights. And so then finally everything was ready and she was sitting with Daddy serenely on the sofa and very pleased with her house. And they said, lights, camera, action. They turned on the television lights. She said her mouth dropped open and she saw in the air there was dust particles in the air and little cobwebs in the corner and dust bunnies under the chair.

And she was horrified. And under ordinary lighting, the house had looked spotless. But under the intense television lights, she saw dirt that she hadn't known was there. and that's what God's word does for us, isn't it? He shines the light of his word into our hearts, and we see little dust bunnies and cobwebs and, you know, sin that we didn't know we had.

Several years ago, quite a few years ago now, I was here at the Cove, and I was preparing for a seminar, not a three-day seminar, a four-day seminar. I'd be giving, I think it was seven messages and some like nine workshops.

So I came ten days in advance to prepare all the material and the messages, and I went up to my cabin the first day and took out my pad and my pen and my Bible and began to work and I got nothing. And so I thought, well, Ann, you're just tired. You need to get a good night's sleep, get something to eat and then you work on it tomorrow.

So that's what I did.

So the next day I got up early. I had my pad, my pen, my Bible and opened it up and asked the Lord to help me and got nothing. And I said, Lord, I've got now nine days and I've got to prepare these messages and workshops. I need your help. If you don't break it open for me, I'm not gonna get it.

and nothing. And then I began to panic a little bit and I reminded him of the time frame and what I had to do. And then this little whisper, you know, and I don't want to talk about your messages. I want to talk about you. And I said, I don't want to talk about me.

So I'll talk about me after we do the messages. And I got nothing, silence. Finally, just don't argue with him.

So I got on my knees, and by that time, the tears were slipping down my face, and I said, all right, we'll talk about me.

So he began to talk about me, and would you believe I was doing a series on revival? I was actually writing a book on revival, and the key to revival is repentance. And so I was reading this little pamphlet about this old-timey revivalist, and in there he had a list of sins. And he said to read the list through three times. And I thought, just to humor this old man who's long since gone, but I thought, well, I'll just see.

So I read it through the first time. Oh, I was so thankful I didn't see one of those sins in my life.

So then I read it the second time and I thought, I felt very spiritual because I could stretch it and maybe see two or three of those sins in my life. Third time I read that list, I saw every single sin in one form or another in my life. And I began seven days of repentance. I'm talking about every time I opened my Bible, the Lord said something else to me that wasn't pleasing to him. It was the most painful spiritual experience I've ever been through.

And he just raked me over the coals. And at the end of it, he just spoke to me from his word and he let me know he was finished. And I said, are you sure? I don't want to go through this again anytime soon. Just make sure you've got everything.

And he assured me that I was finished for that time being. I can tell you that after he finished, I felt like I had a bath on the inside. I felt lighter. I felt like when I looked out at the mountain, the colors were sharper, the sky was bluer. And in three days, three days period I had left, he just downloaded my material to me.

So when I took my seminar, they had no idea what I'd been through. except I think there was a freshness in the power and insight. I believe that's what he's wanting to do with you and me. Repentance is a gift from God. Do you know that?

We can turn away from our sin, but I think it takes the Holy Spirit to reveal the sin to us that we need to turn away from, at least in my experience. I was in ministry. I was leading a seminar. I was writing a book on revival, and I just saw sin after sin. He peeled me like an onion, you know, one layer after another.

It was horrifying. And I thought of, ah, Anne Graham Lotz in ministry, traveling around speaking writing books and all that kind of stuff If I have that much sin in my life what about other people I not going to point my finger at anybody but Jesus does in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 So if you'll open your Bibles, I think it's very interesting. While you do that, let me read 1 John 3 verses 2 and 3. And John again says, dear friends, now we're children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure.

If you have the hope of beholding him, hope of going to heaven, and not a hope so, but a confidence that you're going and you belong to him and heaven is your home, and you are confident he's coming any moment, then that hope should purify you. and that's what he does in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. There are seven churches in these chapters, and it's as though he takes the light of his word, and he just shines it right into the heart of the churches, and the pattern for the letters are the same, so I'll give you the pattern. He starts out by putting their focus on him, so he identifies himself in a relevant way to that particular church, so basically he's saying, look at me. We refocus on him, and then he says, I want you to learned from me because he commends them for something they're doing right and he convicts them of something they're doing wrong and then he tells them what to do to set it right.

He corrects them. And then he says at the end, listen to me if you have ears to hear. And he has a principle and a promise to give each one.

So the pattern is the same in all of these churches.

So I'm not going to go into detail in each one. I'll pull out a few that have really been meaningful to me, but I'll tell you what the sin is in each one or what they needed to correct, okay?

So the first one is the church at Ephesus. And the church at Ephesus had been under excellent leadership. Paul had established the church. Timothy was the superintendent. They were in their second generation.

So the people that were in the church had been born and raised in the church pretty much.

So they'd been under excellent leadership. They'd known the Lord for generations and identified with that. I've been under excellent leadership. and the Lord has blessed me with not just people in my home, but people that were brought into the home and people I've been exposed to. And my family has been generations of Christians.

I've been born and raised in the church. And for somebody like me, somebody like Ephesus, the tendency is to become so familiar with Jesus and so perfunctory in our faith that we become sort of mechanical. and the sin I see in the church at Ephesus was the sin of busyness where they let their Christian activity overtake their relationship and their worship of the Lord. Verse one, he says, look at me. These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven lampstands.

And I'll just reiterate the stars in his hand. Those are the leaders of the church, but they represent you and me.

So he holds us in his hand. He walks amongst the lampstand, that's the church, and you and I are the church. It's not just the building on the corner, right? It's the body of Christ. And so just to remind us that he's here, and he moves in our midst.

And I'm just praying that he would speak to your heart and whisper to you, and you'll hear his voice speaking. He speaks gently, and listen to me. I'll just tuck this in. If some little voice comes up and just begins to list all these things you've done wrong, one after another, and you're just a terrible, that's not him.

Okay, the spirit of God, just like he did with me, one thing at a time, we deal with one thing at a time, and he does it in such a way that you're encouraged.

So the devil will come out, and he'll just try to lay you out, and you'll think you can never be a Christian, you can never live for the Lord, so just sort that out. But anyway, we look at him, first of all, keep our eyes on him, Jesus is here in our midst, he holds you in his right hand, I believe he's wanting to use you. And I believe every single one of you are here by divine appointment. All right? And Jesus is in our midst, and he wants to say something to you.

So learn from me, he says. I know what you're doing right. In verses two and three, he says, I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance. You don't tolerate wicked men. He goes on down in verse five, you hate those that I hate.

So they were doing a lot of things right. and I think what we hear is heaven's applause.

So many things that they were doing and active and busy in service and I don't know about you, what you're doing for the Lord, are you serving him in your church, in a neighborhood prayer group or Bible study or in some other way and sometimes the people that serve him like that, they're behind the scenes, we don't even know who turned on the light or the people who waited on the tables or cleaning up and all that, so we don't know their name, but he sees. and heaven applauds and says, thank you. Thank you for all that you're doing.

So if you don't hear anything else, there's no catch to this, okay? Just take the encouragement that God sees what you do behind the scenes. He sees the things that go on behind the closed doors, the things you never get recognition for, but he sees and he thanks you.

So he commended them for it. I know what you're doing wrong, he said in verse four. I have this against you. You're forsaken your first love.

So what is the first love? We have had so much fun watching Rachel Ruth's oldest daughter fall in love with Sean. And so I can tell you, they talk to each other. They want to be with each other. At a family dinner, he's always turning around.

He'll kiss her on the cheek or he'll wink at her and she just sort of melts.

So our first love is emotional, passionate, affectionate. And Jesus said to the Ephesian church, they had lost their first love. They no longer loved him with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. They no longer had that passionate, emotional, intimate love for Jesus. And this is where he spoke to me years ago And I had taught Bible study fellowship for 12 years I never missed a class because I wanted everything he had to teach me as I taught others.

And then I left, felt very called out. The last message I gave my leaders was from this passage. And I told my 65 leaders, don't put the mechanics of the class before the ministry. Make sure you maintain your first love for him. Then I went out into the world.

I went to Fiji. the first thing I did, Helen went with me. We went to Fiji for a pastor's conference, and I was given six sessions, and another Bible teacher wanted to sit on the beach. And so he dumped three of his sessions on me. And so I did much more than I was supposed to, came back, went to Brazil to speak to an evangelism conference.

They heard I was down there, and then I went south of Brazil and did a youth congress and came back, and I was speaking all over. And I knew when I went to church, I no longer entered into the worship. And I knew that when I read my Bible, he no longer seemed to speak to me. And I knew when I prayed, my prayers just seemed to hit the ceiling. But I thought I was just tired.

I thought I was just jet lagged, you know. And then I was in this passage and the Lord just whispered to me, and you're losing your love for me. I went to the next verse. I knew that wasn't me because I tell other people how to love him.

So I knew that couldn't be me. But then he kept bringing me back to that verse. And you know how he does. You hear it from every different direction. And so again, I got on my knees and I said, all right, you know, what do you see?

And he said, and you're losing your love, your busyness, running around speaking. You're so busy, busy, busy. You're losing that love for me. And I said, well, what do I need to do? And so in verse five, he told me three things.

So I'll just, let me stop and ask you, somebody here, remember what it was like to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, to fall in love with Jesus. Can I put it that way? And so he said, remember the height from which you've fallen. And I think loving the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, having that intimate, passionate relationship with him is the height of the Christian life. And if you lose it, It's a long way down.

Do you remember the height from which you've fallen? Maybe you thought it was just your age. Maybe you think mature Christians don't have that or, you know, don't get excited about them anymore. And then he said, and remember the height from which you've fallen. Repent.

And repent means to stop it. Turn away from it. And I said, well, Lord, if our first love is emotional, affectionate, how do I, I can't control those things. How do I stop not having an affection or not having that kind of passion. And then he told me the third thing, return to what you did at first.

And I said, what first? And he brought to my mind the cross and return to the cross and confess your lack of love is the sin that it is. And take a good look at Jesus and what it cost him to bring you in to that love relationship. And so I did. and confessed my sin of just acknowledged it.

It took a lot of courage to say, Lord, I'm losing my love for you. That hurt. Because since I was a girl, I had been in love with Jesus, and I wanted to love him with all my heart. And then I asked him, well, what else? And the other first thing he brought to my mind, what I was doing when I was in love with Jesus that I wasn't doing then, and I knew exactly what it was.

That all that time of teaching Bible Center Fellowship, I was preparing new messages and speaking, but when I went out into this itinerant ministry, I was taking a few messages, giving the same ones over and over, and I wasn't studying the Bible fresh. I wasn't doing my three questions. And so I picked up a pad and a pen and my Bible, and I started doing that on the book of Revelation. That's where I started. And so this message actually is fruit of my repentance.

And my first book, The Vision of His Glory, is the fruit of my repentance.

So I can tell you when I turned away from that and I remembered the height, I returned to the cross, I repented. Within a week's time, the joy was back, the love was back. It didn't take time, it just was like I was set free on the inside and I never want to lose that again. I've come close, I can tell you, when I get so busy and so weary. I've come close, but I never want to lose that first love again.

He warned me in verse five that if I didn't put that first love back in my life, that he would remove my lampstand. That's a stand on which you place the lamp that lets the light grow out broader and I felt like he was talking about my ministry.

So Ann, if you don't put love for me back first in your life, then I'm just gonna dry up your ministry. And there was a time when I was afraid he'd called me into ministry and then there was a time when I was afraid he wouldn't. And with all my heart, I wanted to serve him because when you love somebody with all of your heart, you want to do something for him. And that's what ministry is to me. It's my act of worship.

And I'll tell you this, I've been in churches. You know, the Lord won't bulldoze the church building, but I've been in churches where the Spirit of God is left. And I don't even know if they know why. but I wonder if it started with somebody just getting so busy, busy, busy that they put their work before their worship.

So how busy are you? And he says, listen to me. The principle I believe is this, that love for Jesus must come first. He wants your love for him more than all of your service combined. Did you know that?

And he wants you and me to put our worship first before our work. The promise in verse 7 to the one who overcomes this busyness that robs them of their first love I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that's eternal life and eternal life is that passionate intimate relationship with Jesus now and you eat of it in the paradise of God right in God's presence in other words I'm going to be satisfied in my love relationship with him and aware of his presence in my life so somebody here needing to put your worship back first before your work. You know, when your church finds out that you can do things and you're willing to work and you love the Lord and so you ask to do this and then they see, boy, you can do a good job and then they ask you to do something else and you do that and pretty soon, it overtakes you, doesn't it? And you get so busy, you've lost your first love.

so there's a neat scene in Revelation chapter 4 when the cherubim and seraphim are surrounding the throne and it says they never cease to worship holy, holy, holy and yet in the Old Testament we see them taking answers to prayer to Daniel and visions to Ezekiel and so is that a contradiction because they do a lot of work in the Old Testament but I think it's that they never cease to worship and while they worship they're doing their work so put worship back first. And the work will flow from that. Are you listening to what the Spirit is saying? Ephesian church did not, and tourists walk among her ruins today. The church at Smyrna, I'm not going to go into, but I will just say that she was a beautiful church.

He didn't find one thing to correct in her life. Can you believe that?

So he commended her because she had suffered even to death in persecution. But he says in verse 10, don't be afraid. And I just wondered if fearfulness of further persecution was something that was keeping her from being more bold in her faith. Because once you share the gospel and you get rejected and they come back and throw it in your face, next time you have opportunity to share the gospel, you may not do it. You'll be quiet.

You'll be silent when you should speak up. She didn't do that, but that's what I see a tendency to do, and I see that in my own life. If we get a really negative response to our witnessing, then we may not witness as boldly next time. But Smyrna was a beautiful church, and I will tell you the principle in verse 10 is that you'll suffer persecution for 10 days. In other words, persecution or suffering is temporary.

Even if it lasts your lifetime, your lifetime is temporary compared to eternity. And then the promise is, I'll give you the crown of life. You keep your eye on the big picture. And the Bible promises a crown for those who are martyred for their faith, which Smyrna had experienced. And then he says in verse 11, he who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.

That's hell.

So you take up your cross, but the crown follows and the glory.

So don't be fearful.

Somebody you're afraid to share your faith. Maybe in a family where you've had hostile, and I think in a family we need to live it out before them. We need to speak up, but live it before them. But people like my father-in-law who lived in New York, and he knew if he didn't share the gospel with that person, he'd probably never seen him again. He was as bold in his witness as anybody I've ever seen.

Almost embarrassing to me when I was with him. But he wasn't afraid. And how many times he got rejected, and how many times the gospel was received.

So don't be afraid. Share the gospel, especially today when there's so much fearfulness and so much deception, so much confusion. Share the gospel. Tell them there is a God who loves them, loves them so much that he sent his own son to die on the cross, to take away their sin, that they could be forgiven. They could come into a right relationship with God.

They could know that they know that they know they'll never go to hell. They have eternal life, which is a right relationship with God now in heaven when you die. Oh, they need to hear that, don't they?

So you have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying. Smyrna did, and there's still a Christian church in Smyrna today, except it's not called Smyrna, it's Izmir. It's on the coast of Turkey. The third church is the church of Pergamum. And Pergamum, I've listed her as politically correct, but I think we could use the word progressive.

Because in Pergamum, they had an altar to Zeus. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They were very religious. They had a medical university, a library of 200,000 volumes. And Jesus says, look at me.

And he says in verse 12, these are the words of him who has the sharp double-edged sword. The word of God came from his mouth. and the Pergamites thought they had progressed beyond the need for God's word.

So the church, when it was established, their people were so excited because they thought now the church can permeate Pergamon, this worldly, sophisticated, religious, intellectual city. And instead, Pergamon infected the church. And they allowed false teachers in and I'm not going to go through all of that, but basically they were, I think, leading the church to doubt and deny and dilute the truth of God's Word as though they had grown past it.

So he says the principle, I think, is this, that we don't stand in judgment over God's Word. God's Word stands in judgment over us. You can hear Living in the Light with Ann Graham Lotz weekly and for ways to experience the God-filled life as you pursue your personal Bible study, go to anngramlotz.org and she'll help you get started with free resources you can use and share with others. Join us here each week for Living in the Light.