Coming Home to First Love: Return. Renew. Rejoice.

 

Sep 30, 2026 · @Josiah Armstrong

A prophetic call from Hosea 2 and Psalm 81 to the church: come home.

Listen to the message: Return. Renew. Rejoice. — The Crossing Life Church Sermons

---

I was at a friend's wedding recently. Weddings are so beautiful. Weddings are so powerful. They are prophetic pictures. They open a window into the very heart of God.

You watch two worlds collide with intense devotion. Two hearts putting away and dying to every other lover, every other attachment, and giving themselves completely, wholeheartedly, to the one their soul loves.

And then I watched him dance with his bride for the first time. He was locked in on her. The intensity of his passion. His love. His commitment. His singleness of gaze.

Friends, that is a prophetic plumb line. That is an invitation into exactly what God wants for you and me with Him.

We are the bride of Christ. We are His inheritance. We are His reward. We are the apple of His eye. He is fiercely committed to us, fiercely devoted to us, consumed with zeal for us. He bought us with His own blood. He purchased us. We belong to Him. God alone possesses this holy jealousy for us, and oh, how He wants us to know it and to love Him back.

Over the recent ten days of prayer between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there was such a groaning in the Spirit: Oh God, turn the hearts of Your people back to You again. Restore the first love of Your people. Restore the lamp of her love. Restore the lampstand of the church in America.

Yes, there is awakening. Yes, there is revival. But hear me: no structural change, no reform, can sustain anything if the heart of the people is not fully yoked and burning in passionate, covenantal love with Jesus. The heart must be alive. Fully given. Holy. Pure. Consecrated. That is how we become salt and light in the earth.

The Scariest Thing

Going through the motions is not God's heart for you. It's not God's heart for me. Just like in a marriage: when you find yourself going through the motions, that is a call to repent. Not to shrug and say, "Well, this is just how it is." It's a call to re-engage with intention, to do whatever needs to be done for the heart to come alive again and the relationship to flourish.

And hear this: God doesn't drift from His people. He's given us all things in Christ. We are the ones prone to drift. Prone to stop abiding. Prone to let go of His word, His ways, His heart, His truth. And when we drift, we find ourselves coping and sedating in other ways.

The book of Hosea is a loud book. It's the tragedy of a marriage that began well and went bad, a parable of Israel and the Lord. Good beginnings that went awry. A people who left their first love and drifted from covenant faithfulness.

Jeremiah carries the same prophetic cry. God says, I remember the devotion of your youth. You followed me into the wilderness, into a land not sown. And then: My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

They traded the glory of their God for something man-made. Something to serve their comforts, their desires, their security, their need to be like everybody else. God stopped being enough for them because they failed to believe He could be enough for them.

This is real. Israel was seduced by the blessings: the comforts, the provisions. They forgot the Source. They took the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they credited them to other gods, to alliances, to themselves.

I'm telling you, the Lord is speaking from heaven. He is knocking on the door of our hearts. He's knocking on the door of the church. He's knocking on the door of America. There is a remnant hearing and responding. But there are others still asleep, satisfied in their own concoctions, missing the greater pleasure of knowing Him.

We have to turn at the sound of His voice. If we don't, we will be wounded by our own willful resistance. By the vanity of broken cisterns that leave us spiritually bankrupt and continually in want. Or worse yet, satisfied, insulated in our comforts and delusions.

I say this because I love you. I say this in the fear of the Lord. It is the scariest thing to be satisfied in life without God. Or to be content with religious systems and routines that are void of real intimacy and a living, dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit.

We need to return to wholeheartedness.

Everything Begins With Repentance

God is calling the church to renew her marriage vows with Christ. To show up in the heart. To remember the covenant. To re-covenant. And that requires stripping away every false love, the forsaking of all else.

Listen to how God responds to His wandering bride in Hosea 2. Not with a divorce decree. With a courtship:

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her." (Hosea 2:14, NIV)

He turns the valley of trouble into a door of hope. He says, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master'" (Hosea 2:16, NIV). And then this: "I will betroth you to me forever" (Hosea 2:19, NIV). Those who were "not my people" become "my people."

That is the glory of the gospel! But understand: the ones who become His people are the ones who have turned. Not in name only. Not with an empty confession. A heart fully awakened to its great need, that has abandoned ship from the world and its own ways and clung to Christ and His kingdom. With no plan B.

Everything in the kingdom begins with repentance: turning away from dead works, works that lead to death, to faith in the living God (Hebrews 6:1). And God is restoring authentic repentance to His church.

Because here's the problem. People get so inoculated, so numb. They look around, let what they see become the standard, compare themselves to one another, and forget the glory of God. And we end up with a mediocre Christianity that has no power, no depth, no substance, no holiness. No salt. No light. And we wonder why we're still living in cycles of dysfunction and brokenness.

It's because we don't have the knowledge of God right. When we see Him as He really is, we are changed. Like Isaiah, who saw the Lord high and lifted up and was undone. Undone! Then cleansed. Then sent: "Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:8, NIV). Before we can be His witnesses, we have to have that place of I see You as You are.

And friends, every promise of God is yes and amen in Christ. He is the only mediator between God and man. One man, one name, one sacrifice for all time. He is the bread from heaven. He is the living water. He is the light. He is life. Everything we need for life and godliness has been given to us through our intimate, experiential knowledge of Him. We don't have to live under the tyranny of sin. We've been delivered. So don't settle for lesser things!

Savior and Lord

Accepting His lordship is critical. If you want Jesus as Savior but not as Lord, you will stay in bondage. You'll stay stuck. You'll stay oppressed. Freedom comes when we submit our will to His will. Where the Lord is reigning in your life, in every area, that is where you find freedom. Submit to God and be at peace (Job 22:21).

But we tend to cling to our scraps when God has invited us to His banqueting table. We act like slaves and orphans, clinging in fear that we won't have enough. We've forgotten that we are heirs of God, with an incorruptible inheritance in Christ. We belong to the royal family! We are beloved children whom God deeply knows, deeply sees, and takes care of.

When we keep choosing our own way, we think we're protecting ourselves. We're actually robbing ourselves. It's a gross arrogance, and God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Look at Jesus speaking to the churches in Revelation. You see the fierceness of His love: I love you. I want you. But be zealous and repent. Sometimes God will let your own ways run dry. He'll bring what you built to nothing, not because He doesn't love you, but because He's jealous for you. He's asking, How's that working out for you?

There is a better way. But you have to turn radically. Cut it off. Turn around. Don't let the longings of your heart stay stuck on what was, like Lot's wife. Come out from the spirit of the age, because He wants to bless you and cause you to partake of the fullness of what's in His heart for you.

Bring Your Pain to the Throne

Weddings are a glorious and messy array of emotion. Parents give away their children with incredible joy, and yet there's the real pain of transition, of loss. Things are not going to be the same anymore. That's life in the kingdom, right?

When shaking comes, when trials, transitions, and losses come, when people let you down, when people leave, when everything simply changes, listen to me: that has to be processed well. It can't be suppressed. It can't be stuffed. You can't pretend it didn't happen.

Grief and lament are real. And oh, how we must let the pains and perplexities of life pull us into the primary place of relationship, into the Lord. Pain should push you to the throne of God, not to broken cisterns where we cope to manage.

God doesn't want you to just cope. He wants to heal. Restore. Repair. Encounter you. Be something to you that nothing else could ever be. He says, There's a table for you to fellowship with Me right in your suffering, because I suffer with you. Come to Me and let Me comfort you. He will give you beauty for ashes. Joy for mourning. But you have to come.

Stop Avoiding the Conversation

A compartmentalized life leads to disconnection and a destructive detachment that destroys our experience of union and intimacy, with God and with people. Compartments can help us survive a season. But if you want to be healed, renewed, and transformed, every coping system must be dismantled. You come radically into the presence of God vulnerably, and to God's people transparently.

Compartmentalization is a way to avoid pain. It's also a system of control that robs us of deeper surrender and trust.

There are things we just don't want to talk about with the Lord. And He's saying, Would you stop avoiding the conversation? How long are you going to run around, busy yourself, distract yourself, keep doing religious activity, and never just come sit in My presence? Let Me whisper tenderly to your heart. Let Me persuade you of My love and My sufficiency, so you can give up every other false refuge.

That's part of repentance: turning from my own ability to hold it together, and coming weak and vulnerable before my God.

Embrace Weakness

Humanity wants to be strong. We want to look able, valuable, righteous by what we've done. All of that self-righteousness has to fall to the ground. Everything we define ourselves by outside the love of God and the Word of God must come to death.

To the depth that you surrender, you open capacity for His power and presence. If I keep trying to find security in my own abilities, my own knowledge, my own strength, my own wealth, I have diminished the power of the cross. The way of the kingdom is the way of the cross: crucified in weakness, raised in glory and power.

When we keep putting on fig leaves to cover our fears, weaknesses, and failures, we rob grace of its effect. The grace of God is scandalous! It offends the rational mind. It confronts human righteousness that wants something to boast in. That's why Paul boasted in nothing but Christ crucified and his weaknesses.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Lord, I can do nothing apart from You. I need You, moment by moment. Paul felt the sentence of death in himself, so that he would not rely on himself "but on God, who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9, NIV).

We Belong to One Another

This is deeply personal, and it's deeply communal. Christ-centered community is deep union in Christ, experienced together in suffering and victory, in loss and breakthrough and abundance.

But look at me: when you don't go to Christ personally and intimately, you'll always cling to people. Community becomes a codependent, broken system when you look to people for what only God can give you. We are interdependent. We each bring what we've received from Jesus in the secret place. We open our hearts, confess our sins to one another, and pray for each other that we may be healed. We walk in the light together.

And you can never divorce your love for God from your love for people. You cannot say you love God, whom you have not seen, and hate your brother, whom you have seen. Read the prophets! They confronted how God's people treated one another: in the home, with neighbors, in business, in every structure of society. Justice. Mercy. Compassion. Care for the poor, the orphan, the widow. Walking humbly with God. Those things matter to Him.

The Richest Rewards in Him

There is something better in Christ. There is a richness of reward He wants to give us, if we turn, if we repent, if we renew our covenantal vows as the bride of Christ with eyes only for Him.

Isaiah 55 and Psalm 81 are crying out: Just listen to Me, and your soul will live. Let My words sink into your heart. Don't refuse Me. Don't resist Me. I have something better for you. You have no money? Come, buy, and eat! "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it" (Psalm 81:10, NIV).

God desires to satisfy the deepest places of your heart. There's a place of intimate exchange He wants for us. He wants to ravish the heart of His church again. He wants to prove the sufficiency of His grace for your life.

But you don't get the benefits of the covenant if you keep dipping into other cisterns. If you keep spending your wages on what is not bread, on what does not satisfy, you'll be dull and numb, filled up on lesser bread that is not the Living Bread.

Sometimes God withholds. He lets the natural things dry up. He won't let the breakthrough come. Not because He doesn't love you. Precisely the opposite: because He is jealous for you. He's after your mind, your affection, your trust, your reliance. But when the heart is restored, the covenant blessing of God begins to manifest in very real ways. Grain. New wine. Oil. As your soul prospers, the rest of your life prospers, because we all live from the inside out.

Death Leads to Rest and Joy

There is an invitation to die. The one who has died has been set free from sin, to live the rest of their earthly life for the will of God and not for evil human desires (1 Peter 4:1–2; Romans 6:7). When we die to the old ways that never really served us, we truly live. Death and resurrection. That's the glory of the cross!

And there's utter freedom when our boasting is completely in Christ. Paul says the true people of God worship by the Spirit, boast in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3).

When Christ becomes your joy, when your heart cries, Wow, You are all. You forgave me. You gave me an inheritance. I'm lacking nothing. Even if everything else is perishing, You are my reward, You are my joy — friends, that leads to a life of celebration that transcends circumstances. In pain. In grief. In loss. In transition. There is a sustaining place of life and healing and joy when Christ alone is your reward. A joy inexpressible and full of glory!

Jesus is so beautiful. So good. So kind. So thoughtful, so in the details. There is nothing outside His gaze. You are not outside His gaze. Do you believe that?

Pause right now and pray: Lord, I acknowledge You in every aspect of my life.

The Feast of Tabernacles

I preached this message during the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths. It's the prophetic picture of God dwelling among His people, a time of joy and thanksgiving as we remember His faithfulness through our sojourn on the earth. Even in the discomfort of tents and booths, there was the promise of His presence and nearness. And it all points to Christ, and to the day when "God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them" (Revelation 21:3, NIV).

So as we turn, as we return to the Lord in repentance, as we restore these marital vows of single-hearted love and devotion to Christ, in response to His love and devotion to us, it awakens celebration. Rejoicing in His presence. Thanksgiving that abounds. He is all. He is enough. He is good. He is our ever-present help in time of need. He is the I AM. He is here now.

Will You Renew Your Vows?

Repentance turns us back.

Renewal makes us new in love and devotion.

Restoration gives back what was lost.

Relationship makes us whole.

Rejoicing becomes our response.

And underneath all of it is one central reality: we return to God because God is our treasure.

Turn back. Fall in love. Surrender everything. Receive His life. Rejoice in His presence.

I'm not calling you to agreement. I'm calling you to response. Imagine standing before the Lord as a bride stands before her bridegroom, and hear the question:

Will you renew your vows?

Will you return to your first love? Will you surrender the false lovers? Will you put down the broken cisterns? Will you stop trying to find your identity in things that cannot hold you? Will you surrender your control? Will you bring your pain into His presence? Will you forgive? Will you love again? Will you allow yourself to be known? Will you stop hiding behind compartments? Will you trust Him again? Will you receive His love?

And will you find your joy — not primarily in what He gives you — but in who He is?

Pray With Me

First, get quiet and ask: Holy Spirit, show me. What have I been trusting instead of You? What false lover have I let into my heart? What broken cistern am I still drinking from? What pain have I compartmentalized? Who do I need to forgive? Where have I stopped trusting You?

Then pray:

Lord Jesus, I repent. I turn away from self-reliance. I turn away from unbelief. I turn away from control. I turn away from every false refuge and every competing affection. And I turn toward You.

Jesus, You are my first love. You are my treasure. You are my portion. You are my security. You are my inheritance. You are enough. I give You my heart again. My family. My relationships. My future. My disappointments. My wounds. My dreams. My weaknesses. I give You everything. You are Lord.

And Lord, teach me to love. Not conditionally. Not transactionally. Not only those who are easy to love. Give me courage to forgive, grace to reconcile, humility to apologize, courage to be vulnerable. Make us a people who don't just attend church together, but belong to one another in Christ.

Look at Him

Come on, turn your gaze to Him like a lovesick bride. Don't be distracted. Other things, other people, other circumstances — it doesn't matter. Look at Him. Look at Him.

Surrender your control. Surrender every false love. Bring your pain into His presence. Choose to forgive. Choose to love again. Let go of hardness. Let go of fear. Let go of unbelief. Let it go. He wants to meet you. Receive His love. Let Him be your joy.

We Are Coming Home

We're coming home to first love.

We're coming home to surrender.

We're coming home to community.

We're coming home to the presence of God.

We're coming home to joy.

We're coming home to Jesus!

And we're not going back. Not to the broken cisterns. Not to slavery. Not to orphan thinking. Not to false lovers. Not to self-reliance. We belong to Jesus.

Because we belong to Jesus, we are free to love.

Because we are loved, we can love without condition.

Because He is faithful, we can trust again.

Because He is present, we can rejoice.

Because He is enough, we don't have to live in fear of scarcity.

Because He is our treasure, everything else can find its proper place.

---

Hear the full message: Return. Renew. Rejoice. — The Crossing Life Church Sermons

Want to go deeper? "Coming Home," a 30-day devotional Workbook, walks through this message one day at a time.  Pick it up the devotional workbook on Amazon and go to josiaharmstrong.org for the FREE email journey.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.