Back to basics

Remember therefore from where you have fallen;
repent, and do the works you did at first.
If not, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place, unless you repent.

Revelation 2:5

You can read the context here for yourself. This statement is from the letter to the church of Ephesus. These guys had so much going for them. It's all listed in the statements before and after this one. But something was so wrong that God says repent and do what you did at first. They had stopped doing these first things, these basic things. Every musician, athlete, artist, poet, writer, comedian, and soldier knows that practice, working out, sharpening the saw, doing the fundamentals; is the key to going forwards to goodness or greatness. It's the same thing with being a Christ follower. Ya got to keep following. You don't stop following. Great leaders are themselves great followers.

You don't get beyond the basics and become superior to them. Sounds foolish even saying it. Doing ministry without relationship to the head is dead. There's a constant contact, communion that must be cultivated and not taken for granted. You don't get beyond simple Bible Study, simple worship, simple prayer, and simple fellowship; and all this results in simple sending on mission to take the other simple's out there, and bring back the over complicated to the simple. And the simple I'm talking about is actually the most profound. God so loved the world that he sent his only son: simple, yet completely profound. The gospel. You don't go beyond this. God isn't sophisticated, God is profound, yet able to be approached and met in simplicity.

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