What would it look like to love God with your whole life?
Jesus described loving God as the greatest commandment: to love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. But what does that actually look like in everyday life? First Love is an invitation to explore that question.
In Revelation 2:4–5, Jesus speaks to the church in Ephesus. He recognizes their perseverance and faithfulness, but tells them that they have lost sight of something essential: their first love. His invitation is simple—remember, return, and begin again. That invitation is at the heart of this six-chapter course.
First Love invites you to slow down, listen to God, and consider what wholehearted devotion looks like in the ordinary places of life. This isn't a course about trying harder to become a better Christian or proving your devotion through greater activity. It is an invitation to receive God's love more deeply, return to Him when your heart has become distracted or divided, and allow His love to shape the whole of who you are.
A Journey Toward Wholehearted Devotion
Each chapter explores a different dimension of Jesus' command to love God with all that we are.
The Invitation to Love - Before we can love God wholeheartedly, we begin by receiving His love. We explore what it means to respond to the God who has loved us first and to make His love the foundation of our relationship with Him.
All My Heart - Our hearts include our desires, affections, choices, and will. This chapter asks what has our attention and allegiance and invites us to recognize competing affections and grow toward an undivided heart.
All My Soul - Loving God with our soul means bringing our whole life to Him—our identity, relationships, hopes, disappointments, responsibilities, rest, and future. We discover that there is no part of ordinary life that is outside God's invitation.
All My Mind - Following Jesus involves the way we think. We explore our assumptions, patterns of thought, questions, and perspectives, learning to bring our minds increasingly under the influence of God's truth.
All My Strength - God invites us to offer what He has entrusted to us: our time, energy, abilities, resources, and physical lives. We consider what faithful stewardship looks like and how caring for what God has given us can help us become more available to God and to others.
All That I Am - The journey comes together as we consider what wholehearted devotion looks like when heart, soul, mind, and strength are no longer treated as separate parts of life, but as dimensions of one life surrendered to God.
More Than a Bible Study
First Love combines Scripture, teaching, reflection, prayer, and practical rhythms of discipleship.
Every chapter includes:
Bible Passages to help you engage directly with Scripture
Prayer Practice to give you a concrete way to respond to God
Spiritual Rhythm to help you carry the chapter beyond the classroom and into everyday life
Self-Evaluation to help you honestly notice where you are growing and where God may be inviting you to grow
Next Steps to identify simple, practical responses
My Prayer for This Chapter to give you space to respond to God in your own words
One Thing to Remember to help you carry the central truth of the chapter with you
The goal isn't to complete a checklist or achieve a particular score. The goal is to become more attentive to God, more aware of our own lives, and more responsive to His invitation.
Remember. Return. Begin Again.
The title First Love comes from Jesus' words to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2. Their faithfulness and perseverance had not gone unnoticed, but somewhere along the way, their love had lost its place of priority.
Jesus' response was not simply, Try harder. He invited them to remember. To return. And to begin again. That invitation is for us too.
There may be seasons when our love for God feels deep and vibrant. There may also be seasons when busyness, disappointment, achievement, fear, distraction, or the ordinary demands of life quietly take first place.
First Love gives us space to stop and notice. Where is my heart? What has my attention? What am I trusting? How am I thinking? What am I giving my time and energy to?
And, beneath all of these questions: Is Jesus still at the centre? Because wholehearted devotion isn't simply about doing more for God. It is about giving more of ourselves to God. And we don't begin by trying to manufacture love for Him. We begin by receiving the love He has already given us.
“We love each other because he loved us first.”
— 1 John 4:19, NLT
An Invitation
Whether you are beginning a new season of following Jesus, looking to deepen your spiritual life, or simply sensing an invitation to slow down and pay attention to God again, First Love is designed to help you make space for that journey.
Come ready to listen. Come ready to reflect. Come ready to be honest. Come ready to remember.
And come ready to discover what it might mean to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
Remember. Return. Begin again.