Meditations

1 Corinthians 13

This chapter weaves for us a very compact description of agape love.

• Love lives for others.
• Love’s focus is the good of and the good in others.
• Love is free, wonderfully free, from the insistent tyranny of self.
• Love is above all reproach and beneath no service.

“I have spoken in tongues.” The quiet statement was loaded with pride and reproach. “You are more a prophet than I.” The affirmation was ambiguous in its intent. “When he explains the Scriptures, they come alive!” The admiration for one was the contempt for another. “I prayed for her, and she immediately felt better!” The shocked and pleased exultation would later lend itself to personal exaltation.

We likely have all heard statements of this nature — perhaps even from our own lips. But without love, these things are no more significant that a child’s whimper in a howling hurricane. Some covet speaking in tongues or the gift of healing. Others desire a prophetic voice or an analytical mind. Yet others yearn to serve. But God seeks and uses those who would love as He loves. Because the greatest of these is charity.

Let us build our lives on these principles, priorities, and practices: Read it all

Philippians 3:17-4:9

A faithful church follows good examples (17).

A faithful church weeps for the unfaithful ones who have become enemies of Christ (18).

A faithful church minds those things above, glorying in God and not in their own shame (19).

A faithful church remembers her citizenship and her King (20).

A faithful church, with a mind presently in Christ’s image, anticipates receiving bodies “fashioned like unto his glorious body” (21). Read it all

Acts 2:1-7, 12; 1 Corinthians 14:13-19

Certain things associated with the Holy Spirit’s coming reach out, seize our attention, and give it a focus-riveting shake:

• the mighty rushing sound
• the flame-like tongues of…something
• the filling with the Holy Ghost
• the speaking with other tongues
• the hearing of the message in individuals’ native languages

Rightly so. These things were neither normal nor man-induced. In reading this passage, we witness again the amazing manifestation of God at work among and within ordinary people. Of course such events will grab us!

But what about these next two? Read it all

Philippians 3:1-16

Oh to know “the power of His resurrection”! How we desire to experience the reality of Philippians 3:10! Then why are we so reluctant to pay the price? What would you count as loss and dung in order that you might know and win Christ (Philippians 3:8)? All things, I hope. Read it all

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Who or what unites the body?

• Ultimately, God.
• However, it seems that we have some responsibility to cast aside our own goals and objectives in favor of the Head’s and the body’s.

Which is more important, the eye or the hand?

• The answer is quite relative because it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
• Even then, these two members often need to work together in order to get either’s job done.

What is wrong with the previous question?

• It involves comparing ourselves among ourselves.
• It puts us in the place of judges over the gifts God gives.
• It overlooks mutual need and dependence.

When I look down on a brother or question the body’s need of him, how is it to my own peril and detriment?

• “to profit whithal” (1 Corinthians 12:7)
• “If the whole body were ____, where were ___?” (1 Corinthians 12:17)

What are some perils with trying to determine what individuals’ gifts are? Read it all