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"Remember then how you received and heard ; Keep it, and repent." Revelation 3: 3

"If thou return, O Israel, return to me." Jeremiah 4. 1

Abandoning reprehensible habits and putting oneself in a mold of good morality is not, in itself, a true conversion. A true conversion is to believe in Jesus the Savior and in His work on the cross, and then to obey the Lord. Repentance and change of conduct are only the results of this process. First, Christ must live in us to bear fruit.

Similarly, in a local church, the redress of a deplorable situation and the restoration of fraternal love will only be superficial changes, if not accompanied by a return to the source of life, to Jesus Christ himself.

Recovering the true Christian doctrine and following the teachings of the Word too long forsaken may well produce a spiritual awakening, but it will remain fragile if it is not primarily the result of a return to Christ himself.

The reproach given to the Church of Sardis (first verse of the day) does not concern guilty practices or doctrinal aberrations, but the loss of the spiritual life : "You have the name of living, but you are dead" (Rev. 3. 1). The first love that characterized the brothers and sisters of the church in Ephesus tied them together to Jesus : they had "learned Christ", they had been "instructed in him as the truth is in Jesus" (Eph 4. 20). Their love had led them to reflect Jesus in their entire lives. Then their love had cooled: they no longer loved the Lord as in the beginning, nor consequently their brothers and sisters.

What about me ? Not my brother or sister, but myself first. To live a full blessing necessarily involves a single path, that of true personal repentance and a return to Jesus Christ : to better learn who he is in his person, to be instructed in him by his Word to be better consecrated to him. Then our whole being will be filled with his love, which will produce a true attachment to his person. When everyone experiences it, the whole community will return to this first love, of which it will have found the inexhaustible source : Jesus himself.

Source (To pleasing the Lord)