Weekly Devotion

October 6, 2024

LOVE infused GIFTS….

In last weeks devotional we looked at 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 where Paul teaches there are a variety of gifts, services and activities but the same Spirit who bestows the gifts and the same God who activates them in His children. Over the past week I hope you have been prayerfully considering:

What your gift(s) are and how God has activated them in you.
Have you seen evidence of how God is activating His gifts in others?

This week let’s move on to 1 Corinthians 13 (NRSV) – such a familiar passage! Please take a moment to re-read it and look at how our GIFTS must be infused with LOVE, otherwise we run the risk of abusing them for our personal benefit rather than God’s purpose as stated in 1 Corinthians 12:7 “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Read how our gifts, without love, are nothing in verses 1-3:

1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

On the other hand, our gifts and our lives infused with God’s love are amazingly wonderful! (vs 4-7) Ask yourself if living this kind of life is even possible without the power of the Spirit in our lives. Consider the example how Jesus lived out His love while here on earth. Take a moment to focus on each of these attributes of love lived out through the Spirit’s power and as seen in Jesus’s life:

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

From what I understand from verses 8-10 our gifts will have an expiration date; they are given to us for this liminal time between the cross and eternity. But there is no expiration date on LOVE!

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 

Verse 11 give us a lived example of “then & now”. We are all born into this world without a clue of anything, we are completely dependent on others. As infants we explore our world in the context of adults and other children around us. As we grow, based on education and experiences of life, we reason or process information as a child. Then… we take that big step into adulthood where our responsibilities change and how we respond to life shifts. Our faith and understanding of God’s love grows in a similar manner over time.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

The “now” and “then” of verse 12 is a picture of how we experience life today in our walk with God and how we will experience life when we are given the gift of seeing face to face and knowing fully the glory and majesty of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What a day that will be!

12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

Living in this time and space, we have the assurance that living in God’s love is the greatest (verse 13). In the Spirit’s power, God’s strength and by Jesus’s example we can live 24/7 today in LOVE. We are living “eternity” now as Love never ends.

13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

On my knees,
Kathy Pruden