Don’t Give Your Leftovers

Read

Revelation 2:4-5 “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”

Think

I walked in the front door after a long day of ministry. It was late. Probably one-thirty in the morning. The house was dark. Everyone was asleep. And the second I opened that door, Level was there. Level is our dog, and he greeted me like I had been gone for six months. Tail going, tongue out, jumping, spinning in circles, the whole production. He was throwing everything he had at me. Zero restraint. Full enthusiasm. No holding back. You would have thought I had been deployed overseas and just returned. It was one-thirty in the morning and this dog was giving me everything he had.

I walked upstairs. Lisa was in bed. Half asleep. I whispered, "Hey, I’m home." She mumbled something. Might have been "Hey." Might have been "Mmhmm." Hard to tell. She rolled over and went back to sleep. And I stood there for a second thinking, the dog just gave me more energy in thirty seconds than I am going to get from anyone else for the rest of the night. That is not a complaint about Lisa. She was tired. She had earned her rest. But it made me think about something that I believe most people are guilty of, and I include myself.

We give our best to what matters least and our leftovers to what matters most.

Think about your average day. You get up. You get dressed. You put on your best face for the office, the clients, the customers, the meetings. You are polite to the barista. You are patient in the parking lot. You are professional in the conference room. You smile at strangers. You use manners with people whose names you do not know. And by the time you walk through your own front door, you have nothing left. The people who matter most to you, the ones who will still be there when the job changes and the clients move on, they get the dregs. The emotional leftovers. The tired eyes and the short fuse and the "can we talk about this tomorrow?" that never actually leads to talking about it tomorrow.

Jesus says to the church at Ephesus, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first." The church at Ephesus was impressive. They had doctrinal integrity. They had endurance. They had perseverance. They could spot false teachers from a mile away. On paper, they were the model church. And Jesus looked at all of that and said, "I have something against you." Not because they were doing something wrong. Because they had stopped doing the first thing. They had forsaken their first love.

That phrase hits me every time I read it. "Consider how far you have fallen." Not how badly you have sinned. How far you have fallen. There is a distance between where you are and where you started. And Jesus is asking you to measure it. He is asking you to look at the gap between the passion you once had and the routine you are living now, and to see it for what it is. Not growth. Not maturity. A fall.

Proverbs 20:5 says, "The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out." Here is the insight I want to draw out today. The problem is rarely about effort. The Ephesians were working hard. They were busy. They were active. They were doing all the right things. But they were doing them on autopilot. The fire was gone. The love was mechanical. They had replaced passion with procedure.

I see this pattern everywhere. The employee who used to light up on Monday morning now dreads the alarm. The volunteer who used to arrive early now shows up late. The person who used to pray with fire now prays out of habit. The friend who used to call just to talk now only reaches out when they need something. Nobody decided to stop caring. They just started distributing their energy in the wrong order, and by the time they got to the things that mattered most, the tank was empty.

Here is what I have noticed about Level. He does not ration his enthusiasm. He does not save his best greeting for the most important person and give everyone else a lesser version. He goes all in, every time, regardless of the hour. Now, I am not saying be like a dog. But I am saying there is something to learn from a creature who does not calculate how much energy to spend on the things he loves. He just loves. Fully. Without reservation. Without leftovers.

Jesus tells the Ephesians to repent and do the things they did at first. Go back to the beginning. Remember what it felt like when the love was new, when the passion was alive, when the relationship was not a to-do list but a living, breathing thing. And do those things again. Not because feelings are everything, but because action rekindles what routine has dampened.

Level was there at one-thirty in the morning with everything he had. The question is, what are you greeting with everything you have, and what are you greeting with a mumbled "mmhmm"? If the most important things in your life – your walk with God, the people closest to you, the calling he placed on your heart – if those things are getting your leftovers, something needs to shift. Not later. Not next week. Today. Do the things you did at first. Stop giving your best energy to what will not last and your scraps to what will. The lampstand is not a decoration. It is a light. And it only stays lit when the love stays first.

Apply

Reorder your energy – Look at how you spent your emotional and relational energy over the past week. Who or what got your best? Who or what got your leftovers? Choose one relationship or commitment that has been getting the scraps and give it your first and best energy today. Show up the way you used to. Do the things you did at first.

Pray

God, I have been giving you and the people I love the leftovers. I have been saving my best energy for things that will not last and handing you what is left over at the end of the day. Forgive me for letting routine replace passion and procedure replace love. I want to go back to the beginning. I want to do the things I did at first, when the fire was real and the love was alive. Reignite what has grown cold in me. Help me to reorder my energy so that the most important things get my best, not my scraps. You deserve more than a mumbled "mmhmm." You deserve everything I have. In Jesus’ name. Amen.