Revelation 2:4

‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.  

      Growing up in a small town named Columbus, the Columbus Day holiday was always a big deal. One of the best parts of the day was watching them fly their hot air balloons. They were all different colors, and it was always amazing to me that they could get off of the ground and into the air. Periodically, they would have to have a burst of fire to create hot air. This was necessary to keep the balloon in the air. If you didn’t refill the balloon with hot air, it would eventually fall back to the ground.

     This is a good analogy for our own lives. We could think of our own Christian walk as a balloon ride. When we first become Christians, we have incredible burst of fire that start us on our journey. We have a burning in our hearts about the word of God. We desire earnestly to do spiritual things. We want to tell the whole world about Jesus and what He has done for us. That spiritual flame is visible to all around us.

     However, just like the hot air in the balloon, if we do not keep that fire going, the air in our balloon starts to cool to the temperature of the world around us. We need to make sure that we feed the fire so that our balloons keep afloat. To keep our spiritual fire, we need to spend time studying the word of God to gain knowledge of Christ. We need to pray to Him and revive that relationship. We need to spend time with other Christians and let our time with them be an encouragement to us. By keeping the fire alive we can stay afloat in this trying world.

‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.  

Genesis 39:12

She caught him by his garment, saying, "Lie with me!" And he left his garment in her hand and fled, and went outside.

Joseph was truly a great man of God. Here he is, a slave in a foreign country, and all of the sudden he is being seduced by his master’s wife. Considering Potiphar was a man of considerable means, his wife was probably considerably attractive. On top of that, he was sold into slavery by his own brothers after recieving a dream from God. No one here knew anything about him or about his God. It would have been easy for him to fall into temptation here. No one would have to know. And yet he resisted temptation.

Joseph does two important things when confronted by Potiphar’s wife. The first is that he remembers how his sin will effect others. He keeps in mind his master and how it would hurt his master to have such a relationship with his wife. Even if Potiphar never knew, Joseph still would have been hurting the husband/wife relationship. He also tells her that he can not do this because it would be a sin against God. Despite all of his hardships, he has kept God close in his thoughts, knowing that this action would be a sin against him. He refuses her both because it would be unloving to other and unloving to God.

Despite being pressured day after day, Joseph stood strong. One day Potiphar’s wife was with him alone, grabbed his cloak and tried to force herself onto him. Joseph would have nothing of it. He pulled away so quickly that he lost his garment. He did not tarry for it though. Knowing that temptation was there, he ran away as quickly as possible. This is another aspect of Joseph we need to emulate. We must run away from sin. It is at times desireable to hang around temptation, flirt with it a bit. To do so is to flirt with danger. We must flee from sin as quickly as possible, not giving it a chance to worm itself into our hearts.

She caught him by his garment, saying, "Lie with me!" And he left his garment in her hand and fled, and went outside.

Daniel 1:8

But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank

Daniel was a man who could have easily stopped trusting the Lord. He was captured from His home people, and might have even prayed to the Lord for protection. He was a talented and attractive young man who was being groomed to be a lead official in the most powerful country at that time. Few Jews back home and even fewer here were truly diligent about seeking the Lord. The Babylonians had no respect for God. Daniel could have easily allowed himself to slip into the Babylonian ways without more than a few passing thoughts about God.

Daniel refused to do this. Instead he purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself. He made a decision that no matter what happened, he was going to follow God. This dedication served him well throughout his entire career, and was what helped him through this test. Daniel was not going to eat the King’s food because it would defile him. His first move was to go and ask the administrator to feed them something else. The adminstrator said no, knowing that to do so was would be to risk his own life. Daniel could have shrugged his shoulders and said, "Oh well, I tried." Instead he kept pushing until he found the way of escape that the Lord provided.

As Christians we need to follow Daniel’s example. Satan is going to attack us from every angle, pushing us to fall. We can be our own worst enemy, desiring things that we know are not God’s will for us. When we face battles, we need to decide once and for all that we will not defile ourselves. We need to be willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to do it. If our first attempts are rebuffed, we keep trying like Daniel did. But the battle starts in our hearts and in our minds first. If we do not dedicate those to victory, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank

James 5:16

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

One of the most powerful, and sometimes most neglected, weapons in the Christian arsenal is prayer. As James points out, God’s power is amazing. For Elijah, he was able to control the rain. A brief scan through Genesis and Exodus shows us the amazing power of God. First we see that God is the one who created everything. Everything around us, everything we see was brought into being by him. In Exodus, God does amazing miracles, turning water into blood, controlling the weather and animal infestations, and even the power to give and take life. What is amazing about this power is that it is available to us.

            It would be amazing to be friends with the President of the United States. He could open doors that we did not even know existed. His connections might give us resources that we otherwise would not have. His power could be wielded to solve the problems before us. The important thing to remember is that we have a friend more powerful than the President. We are friends with the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. We can petition the creator of the universe. All the amazing benefits we might imagine for someone like the President we have even more abundantly with the Lord.

            That is why it is so important for us to talk to Him. We can use His help and He can offer us assistance that we never even dreamed of. As wonderful and helpful as the benefits are in the physical realm (and we should definitely pray for help in that area) the are even more impressive in the spiritual. That’s why James tells us to pray to God about sin. When we need help staying strong and fighting the fight, we must go to the Creator of the universe. He will help us beyond what we could possibly imagine.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

James 5:7

Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.

Our society is one of instant gratification. I get impatient when my meals take over a minute to cook in the microwave. Thirty second commercials are much too long, causing most people to flip channels to avoid a couple of minutes of possible boredom. Credit cards allow us to buy things right now without having earned the money yet. We need to lose more than five pounds a week in a diet in order to do it. Basically, we want everything we want, and we want it right now.

It is easy to see how this can be in direct contrast to what God demands of us. God calls on us to put away immediate gratification. For example, God created with many desires, and has given us a righteous way to fulfill those desires. However, we do not always want to wait for God’s way. We like to circumvent the process and fulfill our desires in the quickest way possible In doing so, we find ourselves sinning against God. On top of that, our reward is not in the present. There are advantages to serving God, but our ultimate reward is not in this life but in the next. The problem is that since serving God gives a delayed gratification, and fulfilling our desires in unrighteous ways gives us an immediate gratification.

Like the farmer, we need to show patience and wait for the greater reward. Whatever we may gain in instant gratification is nothing compared to the glory awaiting for us in Heaven. Like the farmer who gets food after a hard year of work, or the athlete who wins a championship after years of physical training, we must be diligent to work with the end in mind. We must let go of our laziness and selfishness, and work hard now, knowing the result will be worth all of the sacrifices we may have to make.

Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.

Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

“Cool Runnings” is a movie about the first Olympic bobsled team from Jamaica. It catalogs the difficulties and prejudices that they face as they try to break on to the Olympic scene. In their first run they struggled, but after a magnificent second run, they put themselves in place for a medal on the final heat. On their third run they were making great time until an equipment failure caused their sled to overturn. After a scary slide down the rest of the path, they come to a resting point at a final straightaway with the finish line in sight. In one of the great all time movie chill scenes, the captain is asked if he is okay. He responds by saying, “I’m going to finish the race, man.” The team then picks up the bobsled and carries it on their shoulders across the finish line, with all of their previous antagonists cheering them on for their fierce determination.

We need to have the same determination that these men did in our own spiritual race. They had worked too hard and too long not to finish the race, to accomplish what they came to do. They did whatever it took to finish the race. There will come a time in our spiritual race that our sleds will overturn. We may get discouraged by the suffering around us. We may be entangled and overtaken in some sin. But we CAN NOT allow ourselves to just quit. We must press on to finish the race.

The Hebrew author also assures that we too have a group of onlookers, cheering us on to the finish. In the previous chapter he talks about the faithful who have already finished their race, and how they now are there, cheering us on to victory. On top of that we have our brothers and sisters in Christ who want nothing more than for us to succeed. They are our own cheering section, giving us that extra push whenever the sled gets too heavy. For ourselves and for them, we must finish the course!

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,