Revival Series — Part 1 (Regaining Your First Love) | Pastor Steve Pinto

For the next two weeks I want to speak to you about regaining (recuperando) what has been forsaken (abandonado). I want to speak to you about regaining our spiritual energy and our spiritual passion. This is something we call… regaining our first love or restoring the joy of our salvation.

Just like good ideas grow tired (se cansan), so also good people grow tired… good churches grow tired!

With every work of righteousness Passion and Energy are spent. That is why renewal is needed in cycles (ciclos)… in life cycles….

When our spiritual energy and passion is spent… we grow tired and burn out. When we get tired it affects us and everyone around us deeply and it makes us susceptible to the devil and his schemes.

Every Church and every believer has a need to renew their hearts and refuel their passion.

We’ll all go through dry spells (temporadas de sequedad)… through the desert… (not necessarily a storm, but a desert).

Often people’s lives have been invaded by despair (desesperacion). Often they are not quite sure what’s going on. “Maybe I’m going crazy. Or perhaps I’m just depressed.”

These seasons of confusion can be a scary experience, for laypeople (laicos), pastors and churches alike.

The fifteenth-century Christian writer John of the Cross, described this experience as… The Dark Night of the Soul (La noche negra del alma).

The scary thing about the desert is the temptation to settle (se arraigue) there. Life will give you what you settle for…. It’s not what you do or feel, but what you settle for…. (Settle for the stain in the carpet… etc).

This is why we need to learn how to renew our life cycle…. And we’ll have to do it several times in our life.

Next week, from the life of David, we’re going learn how to renew our spiritual Joy, but today, from the Ephesian church we’re going to learn how to regain our first love.
— Pastor Steve