Egyptian pastor: Go back to your first love to see Jesus
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, June 16, 2005
EDINA, Minn. – Sameh Maurice of Kasr el Dobara Church in Cairo, Egypt, told the story of a young man who was converted to Jesus and was about to be baptized.
After the doors were closed to seal off a Christian rite that Muslims oppose, the young Christian was invited to talk about his faith in Christ.
Sameh Maurice“He shared that Jesus had appeared to him,” Maurice said. “He had a dream. He said he decided to seek, to read the Bible until he believed Christ.”
An elder asked the young man if he understood the price he may have to pay for believing in Christ in an Islamic nation.
“The young man turned to the elder and asked him, ‘Did you see Jesus?’
“The elder looked at him and said, ‘Not really. I know him by faith.’
“The young man said, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.'”
With that tale Wednesday night, Maurice, one of three Presbyterian leaders from other nations speaking at this week’s New Wineskins Convocation, preached on loving Christ and getting to “see” him.
Maurice seemed eager to repay a debt to Western missionaries who introduced the gospel in Egypt. “Thank you for what you have done,” he said. “There are now more than 1,000 evangelical churches in Egypt. At the same time, I come to encourage you. Go on, go on, stand fast in the Lord.”
He made a quick segue into his principal text, the message to the Church at Ephesus in the second chapter of Revelation.
“Jesus was saying to the Church of Ephesus that you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first.”
“He is saying, I am ready to be yours; are you ready to be mine?” Maurice said. “From the beginning, he is calling the church to love the same way he has loved her. From time to time, his message is wake up, return to your first love.”
Maurice described three elements of the kind of love Jesus summoned from his disciples: intimacy, passion and obedience.
“Love means intimacy,” he said. “When you love somebody, you sit beside him, you hold his hand. Love means you want to spend quantity and quality time with him. You want to talk to him and listen to him.”
“The length and depth of our prayer life determines how much we love him,” Maurice said. “Is the time I spend with him so precious or so boring? Do I look for that time? Am I trying to do anything instead of spending time with him?”
His suggestion: “Pray until you’re grateful, until you meet him, until you see, until you’re transformed into his image.”
“Love means passion,” he said. “Passion is not just emotion. When I pray, I will pray with passion; when I preach, I will preach with passion; when I serve the lord, I will serve the lord with passion.”
“Love is obedience,” Maurice said. “If you love somebody, you want to please them. Love equals obedience. We Presbyterians, with our theology, know enough. Do we obey? Do we give more than we receive? Do we love one another as he loved us?”
The one who loves Jesus will find him, Maurice said, and Jesus promises that he and the father will “come to him and make our abode with him.” In other words, those who love Jesus will see Jesus – just as the young Egyptian covert told the church elder.