Recapturing our first love as Christians and conquering worry and anxiety is what Crawford Loritts, senior pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Roswell, Ga spoke about in chapel February 17 and 18.

Loritts addressed recapturing our first love. He said that passivity has taken place within Christianity during the last 20 years.

He said there needs to be intentionality in a Christian’s relationship with God.

“We’ve become very passive in thinking that my feelings determine how I should pursue Jesus,” Loritts said. “This hyper response to extremes is given us a harvest of dismantled relationships and a superficiality in our Christianity that’s destroying us.”

He said that God uses the imagery of marriage in the Bible to bring attention to faithfulness.

“You don’t build a marriage on feelings of love and a desire for intimacy. You build a marriage on a commitment to love and a passionate pursuit of intimacy,” he said.

Unless a Christian is intentional about his or her walk with God, it will go through what Loritts called the four-fold process: passion, neglect, boredom and departure.

Loritts said that some Christians think that because they spend a lot of time doing something they think it’s a priority in their life.

“One of the most insidious dangers of being Bible-believing Christians is we can make the dastardly assumption that what we do for Jesus is the same thing as a passionate pursuit of the savior.”

“If the fuel that drives your passion isn’t Jesus, you have left your first love,” he said.

On Wednesday he talked about what to do with worry and anxiety and how to develop a steady heart.

Loritts referenced Psalm 112 verses six through eight, and said that a righteous man is not afraid of bad news because his heart is firm and steady because he trusts in the Lord.

Bad times are going to come, but it’s a matter of “when and how much, not whether or if,” Loritts said.

He said when those times come, a Christian should: embrace the event, exchange his or her load for God’s, choose to not be anxious, continually go into God’s presence and confront the issue.

“Worry is fear due to loss of control,” Loritts said.

Christians deal with the same struggles as non-Christians, but Christians have to remember to “take stuff off of you and get in the yoke next to Jesus and learn,” he said.

“Let go of stuff, let Jesus have it. Follow him until it is resolved,” Loritts said.

The Georgia pastor said Christians should not let emotions control them and allow joy to diminish during difficult times.

He also said Christians should not ignore a problem.

“Biblical faith is never the denial of a problem you encounter,” Loritts said. “[It] confronts the issue with eyes of faith and courage.”

Junior Laine Comegys said that Loritts’ message on worry and anxiety was a good reminder.

“We go through life knowing that God is in control but not always surrendering to him,” she said. “It’s not compartmentalizing giving up, it’s fully surrendering to God.”

Junior Dave Geroux said that Loritts’ message on recapturing our love is important among Christians, especially Christians who have been saved a long time.

“It was almost like a prophetic message because it hit me hard in a place that I’ve really been working on for a while,” he said. “It was just really encouraging for me to keep seeking God.”