Though the church at Ephesus was doing a lot of things right, they were guilty of leaving their first love… They had made deliberate choices to abandon—not their church… or their faith… or even their love for Christ… They made deliberate choices to put away their “first love.”
Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (p.46) – ‘The love of God is a delightful and affectionate sense of the divine perfections, which makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto Him, desiring above all things to please Him, and delighting in nothing so much as in fellowship and communion with Him… (p.62) – ‘Love is that powerful and prevalent passion by which all the faculties and inclinations of the soul are determined, and on which both its perfection and happiness depend.’
Bryan Wheeler Pastor Bryan Wheeler was converted to Christ in 1973. For most of the 20 years that he served in the U.S. Air Force he was actively involved in church-based preaching and teaching ministries in the U.S. and overseas. Pastor Wheeler was ordained into the gospel ministry in 1987 and was called into full time ministry in 1989. He is the pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Verona, VA. He and his wife Maureen were married in 1968 and the Lord has given them 6 children and 4 grandchildren.
