Daily Devotional
Holy Spirit Series | Part 11
The More Excellent Way
A 5-Day Devotional | June 22–26, 2025
Based on 1 Corinthians 12:27–31; 13; 14:1
Tables Church | Madison, Alabama
A Note Before You Begin
This week’s devotional grows out of Sunday’s message on 1 Corinthians 12–14. Paul planted something in that passage that deserves more than a single sitting. He interrupted a conversation about spiritual gifts to say, “I will show you a still more excellent way” — and what he showed them was love. Not sentiment. Not warmth. Not a feeling you generate when you’re in a good mood. Love as a climate. Love as the very atmosphere in which every spiritual gift was meant to breathe. Each day this week takes one dimension of that larger truth and goes deeper with it. You’ll spend time in the text, in reflection, and in prayer. You’ll be invited to pay attention to what the Spirit is already doing in you — and where He still has work to do. Come to this slowly. Don’t rush the reflection questions. Let the prayers become your own. The goal isn’t information. The goal is formation.
— Tables Church
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MONDAY | June 22
The Church Is a Body, Not a Stage
1 Corinthians 12:27 (ESV)
"Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."
Paul doesn’t say you are attending the body of Christ. He doesn’t say you are fans of the body of Christ, or observers of it, or beneficiaries of it. He says you are the body of Christ. There’s no separation between the church and you. You don’t go to church. You are the church.
That changes everything about how you think about spiritual gifts. Gifts aren’t given to the most impressive people so they can perform for everyone else. They are given to every member of the body so the body can function. A hand that hoards its strength doesn’t help the body — it hinders it. A lung that performs for an audience rather than breathing for the whole body has completely missed its purpose.
We live in a culture that has imported the language of celebrity and platform into the church. We measure spiritual health by visibility. We assume the loudest voice carries the most weight. Paul refuses all of it. He says the parts that seem weaker are indispensable. He says the parts we think are less honorable, we clothe with greater honor. God has arranged the body not by visibility, but by necessity.
The person setting up chairs on Saturday night is not doing lesser ministry. The person praying quietly at home is not doing lesser ministry. The person who stays after the service to listen to someone who is breaking is not doing lesser ministry. They are the body functioning exactly as God designed it — every part contributing, every part necessary, every part valued.
The invitation today is simple but demanding: stop evaluating your place in the church by whether people see it. Start asking whether what you’re doing builds the body up.
REFLECT
What gift, role, or contribution have you been quietly devaluing because it isn’t visible? What would it mean to see that as genuine body ministry?
Where have you been drawn toward visibility rather than faithfulness? What’s driving that pull?
PRAY
Father, forgive me for the ways I have ranked Your people by visibility. Help me see the body the way You see it — every part necessary, every part valuable, every part placed by Your hand. Show me today where I can contribute, not to be seen, but because the body needs it. Form in me the kind of faithfulness that doesn’t need an audience. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Identify one person in your church community whose contribution goes largely unseen. Reach out to them this week and tell them specifically what their presence or service means to the body. Don’t be vague. Be specific.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
TUESDAY | June 23
Without Love, You Are Noise
1 Corinthians 13:1–2 (ESV)
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing."
Paul doesn’t ease into this. He goes straight for the throat of spiritual pride. He names the gifts that would have impressed the Corinthians most — tongues, prophecy, knowledge, miracle-working faith — and then says without love, they amount to noise and nothing.
Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say the gift is fake. He doesn’t say the power isn’t real. He says the person exercising it, without love, is nothing. The gift can still make sound. The gift can still draw a crowd. The gift can still produce something that looks impressive in a room. But it has been severed from its source, its purpose, and its proper climate — and what’s left is noise.
This is one of the most uncomfortable passages in the New Testament precisely because we would rather evaluate our spiritual health by our gifting than by our character. We want to be measured by what moves through us. Paul insists we are measured by what is being formed in us.
C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is the great sin, the one vice no one in history has ever accused themselves of — and it is particularly dangerous in gifted people because the gift becomes the justification. "I’m bold." "I’m prophetic." "I’m just honest." What we often mean is: my gift gives me permission to skip the harder work of love. Paul won’t allow it.
The good news is that Paul isn’t describing a ceiling. He’s describing a climate. Love isn’t the replacement for the gifts. It’s the air they were always meant to breathe. When a gift operates in the climate of love, it becomes what God intended — something that builds, heals, strengthens, and points to Christ. Without that climate, even the most extraordinary gift becomes a clanging distraction.
REFLECT
Is there any place in your life where you have used a genuine gift — the ability to speak, teach, lead, or correct — in a way that was more about asserting yourself than serving the other person?
What would it look like, practically, to bring love back into that space?
PRAY
Holy Spirit, search me. Show me where I have made my gift the point rather than the people it was given for. I confess the places I have made sound without love. I confess where I have been impressive and empty at the same time. Form love in me that is patient and kind — love that makes my gifts what You actually intended them to be. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Think of one conversation or interaction this week where you felt the pull to be heard, to be right, or to assert your perspective. Before you enter that space again, pause and ask: What does love require of me here? Let that question shape how you show up.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WEDNESDAY | June 24
Love Is Not a Feeling—It Is a Formation
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (ESV)
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Read this passage slowly and notice something: almost nothing here is about how love feels. It’s about what love does and what love refuses to do. Patient. Kind. Not envious. Not boastful. Not arrogant. Not rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way. It isn’t irritable or resentful. It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing. It bears, believes, hopes, endures.
Paul is describing not a feeling but a formation. This is what the Holy Spirit grows in a person who submits to the long, slow, sometimes painful work of Christlike character. It isn’t generated by effort alone. It is the fruit of the Spirit taking up residence and reshaping the inner life.
But here is what makes this passage so personal: each of these descriptions is a mirror. "Love does not insist on its own way." Does yours? "Love is not irritable or resentful." Are you? "Love does not envy." When someone else in your community is fruitful, does something in you shrink rather than celebrate?
The Corinthian church was full of people who were genuinely gifted and genuinely immature at the same time. That is a dangerous combination — because gifted and immature people have the tools to cause real damage. Paul’s letter to them isn’t a rebuke of their gifts. It is an invitation into the deeper work that makes those gifts safe to carry.
Tim Keller once described the gospel as the only message that simultaneously tells you you are more broken than you dared believe and more loved than you dared hope. That combination — known fully and loved fully — is exactly the soil in which this kind of love grows. We don’t have to perform to prove our worth. We already have it in Christ. And from that place of security, love becomes possible. Not easy. But possible.
REFLECT
Go back through Paul’s description of love slowly. Which phrase stops you? Which one most accurately describes where you are not yet? Sit with that rather than moving past it.
How does knowing you are fully loved by God change how you are able to love others? Where does that connection break down for you?
PRAY
Lord, I want to love the way this passage describes — but I can see how far I still have to go. I am not patient in the ways I should be. I am not free from resentment the way love requires. I hold things. I compare myself to others. I insist on my own way more than I realize. Come and do what I cannot do on my own. Form love in me by Your Spirit. Not as a feeling I generate, but as a character You build. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Choose one specific description of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 that you know is underdeveloped in you right now. Write it somewhere you will see it today — on your phone, your mirror, your hand. Let it be a prompt to notice when you’re operating outside of it, and a prayer to ask the Spirit to form it in you.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THURSDAY | June 25
Love Never Ends
1 Corinthians 13:8–13 (ESV)
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away... So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
Paul ends his great chapter on love by making a staggering claim about eternity. Prophecy will pass away. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will pass away. But love never ends. And in that single contrast, Paul reveals why love is greater than any gift: the gifts are instruments suited to this age, but love is the substance of the age to come.
Think about what this means. There will come a day when prophecy is no longer needed because we will see fully — face to face. There will come a day when words of knowledge are unnecessary because we will know as we are known. Every gift we exercise now is a partial, temporary provision for a world that is not yet complete. But love — love is not a temporary provision. Love is the life of God Himself, shared with His people.
The reason love is the greatest is not because it is more useful than faith or hope. Faith will become sight. Hope will be fulfilled. But love doesn’t get replaced by something better. Love becomes more fully itself. The love we learn to practice imperfectly in this life is the very thing we will inhabit perfectly in the next.
This is why it matters so much what kind of people we are becoming now. N.T. Wright often says that what we do in the present, in the power of the Spirit, is not wasted — it builds into the new creation. The character formed in us by the Holy Spirit is not lost when we leave this world. Love, formed in us now, is preparation for an eternity in which love is the total atmosphere. So when Paul says pursue love — he isn’t just talking about strategy for a healthier church, though it is that. He is talking about becoming the kind of person who is ready for what is coming. The gifts serve us in this age. Love equips us for every age.
REFLECT
How does the eternal weight of love change the way you think about the ordinary, unglamorous moments of choosing to love today? What would it look like to take those moments more seriously?
Where are you most tempted to invest your energy in things that are temporary rather than things that last?
PRAY
Father, thank You that love is not just a strategy — it is Your own life shared with me. Help me take seriously the small, daily moments of choosing love, because I believe they are building something that will last. Where I have been distracted by what is impressive and temporary, redirect my heart toward what is eternal. Let love be what I am becoming. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Today, pay attention to the small moments when you have a choice between self-interest and love. The moment someone interrupts you. The moment a conversation becomes inconvenient. The moment someone needs something you weren’t planning to give. In one of those moments, choose love consciously — and recognize it as practice for eternity.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FRIDAY | June 26
Pursue Love. Earnestly Desire the Gifts.
1 Corinthians 14:1 (ESV)
"Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy."
After thirteen verses on the supremacy of love, you might expect Paul to say: "Therefore, forget about the gifts." He says the opposite. Pursue love AND earnestly desire spiritual gifts. The "and" matters enormously. Love and gifts are not competing agendas. They are meant to operate together. Love is the climate. The gifts are what thrive in it.
The word Paul uses for "pursue" (Greek: διώκετε) is a hunting word. It means to chase, to press hard after, to not stop until you have it. This is not passive sentiment. You don’t stumble into love by accident. You pursue it. You make it the aim. You let it become the test by which you evaluate every decision, every word, every use of what God has given you.
And then — from within that pursuit of love — you earnestly desire spiritual gifts. Not for status. Not for a spiritual identity. Not to create impressive moments. But because you love the people in the room and you want every resource God has made available to serve them well.
This is the tension the church has to hold. Some communities pursue gifts without love — and the result is chaotic, manipulative, and unsafe. Other communities pursue order without power — and the result is dry, self-sufficient, and ultimately dependent on human ability rather than divine presence. Paul refuses both errors. He says: pursue love so relentlessly that when you desire gifts, they have the right motive and the right climate behind them.
As Tables Church moves into the gifts of the Spirit in the weeks ahead, this is the foundation we return to. Not: are we doing the gifts correctly? But: are we doing them in love? Are the strong making room for the weak? Are the visible honoring the hidden? Are the words being offered building people up or feeding the ego of the one speaking? Love is the question behind every gift. And when love is the answer, the gifts can finally become what God always intended them to be.
REFLECT
As you look at your own life, which side of the tension is harder for you — pursuing love with discipline, or earnestly desiring spiritual gifts without embarrassment? Why?
What would it look like for you, practically, to be someone who pursues both — not as an either/or, but as a both/and?
PRAY
Holy Spirit, I want to be someone who chases love the way Paul describes — relentlessly, as the main thing. And I want to be someone who hungers for Your gifts, not for my own sake, but because I love the people around me and I want everything You have made available to serve them. Give me the courage to want both, and the wisdom to hold them together. Make me useful to the body. And make me loving while You do it. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Before Sunday, take five minutes to pray specifically about how God has gifted you. Don’t minimize it. Don’t perform it. Just ask honestly: What has God placed in me that could build someone up this week? Then look for one opportunity to use it — not on a stage, but in a conversation, at a table, in a moment no one else will see.
Tables Church • Madison, Alabama
Holy Spirit Series | Part 11
The More Excellent Way
A 5-Day Devotional | June 22–26, 2025
Based on 1 Corinthians 12:27–31; 13; 14:1
Tables Church | Madison, Alabama
A Note Before You Begin
This week’s devotional grows out of Sunday’s message on 1 Corinthians 12–14. Paul planted something in that passage that deserves more than a single sitting. He interrupted a conversation about spiritual gifts to say, “I will show you a still more excellent way” — and what he showed them was love. Not sentiment. Not warmth. Not a feeling you generate when you’re in a good mood. Love as a climate. Love as the very atmosphere in which every spiritual gift was meant to breathe. Each day this week takes one dimension of that larger truth and goes deeper with it. You’ll spend time in the text, in reflection, and in prayer. You’ll be invited to pay attention to what the Spirit is already doing in you — and where He still has work to do. Come to this slowly. Don’t rush the reflection questions. Let the prayers become your own. The goal isn’t information. The goal is formation.
— Tables Church
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MONDAY | June 22
The Church Is a Body, Not a Stage
1 Corinthians 12:27 (ESV)
"Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."
Paul doesn’t say you are attending the body of Christ. He doesn’t say you are fans of the body of Christ, or observers of it, or beneficiaries of it. He says you are the body of Christ. There’s no separation between the church and you. You don’t go to church. You are the church.
That changes everything about how you think about spiritual gifts. Gifts aren’t given to the most impressive people so they can perform for everyone else. They are given to every member of the body so the body can function. A hand that hoards its strength doesn’t help the body — it hinders it. A lung that performs for an audience rather than breathing for the whole body has completely missed its purpose.
We live in a culture that has imported the language of celebrity and platform into the church. We measure spiritual health by visibility. We assume the loudest voice carries the most weight. Paul refuses all of it. He says the parts that seem weaker are indispensable. He says the parts we think are less honorable, we clothe with greater honor. God has arranged the body not by visibility, but by necessity.
The person setting up chairs on Saturday night is not doing lesser ministry. The person praying quietly at home is not doing lesser ministry. The person who stays after the service to listen to someone who is breaking is not doing lesser ministry. They are the body functioning exactly as God designed it — every part contributing, every part necessary, every part valued.
The invitation today is simple but demanding: stop evaluating your place in the church by whether people see it. Start asking whether what you’re doing builds the body up.
REFLECT
What gift, role, or contribution have you been quietly devaluing because it isn’t visible? What would it mean to see that as genuine body ministry?
Where have you been drawn toward visibility rather than faithfulness? What’s driving that pull?
PRAY
Father, forgive me for the ways I have ranked Your people by visibility. Help me see the body the way You see it — every part necessary, every part valuable, every part placed by Your hand. Show me today where I can contribute, not to be seen, but because the body needs it. Form in me the kind of faithfulness that doesn’t need an audience. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Identify one person in your church community whose contribution goes largely unseen. Reach out to them this week and tell them specifically what their presence or service means to the body. Don’t be vague. Be specific.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
TUESDAY | June 23
Without Love, You Are Noise
1 Corinthians 13:1–2 (ESV)
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing."
Paul doesn’t ease into this. He goes straight for the throat of spiritual pride. He names the gifts that would have impressed the Corinthians most — tongues, prophecy, knowledge, miracle-working faith — and then says without love, they amount to noise and nothing.
Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say the gift is fake. He doesn’t say the power isn’t real. He says the person exercising it, without love, is nothing. The gift can still make sound. The gift can still draw a crowd. The gift can still produce something that looks impressive in a room. But it has been severed from its source, its purpose, and its proper climate — and what’s left is noise.
This is one of the most uncomfortable passages in the New Testament precisely because we would rather evaluate our spiritual health by our gifting than by our character. We want to be measured by what moves through us. Paul insists we are measured by what is being formed in us.
C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is the great sin, the one vice no one in history has ever accused themselves of — and it is particularly dangerous in gifted people because the gift becomes the justification. "I’m bold." "I’m prophetic." "I’m just honest." What we often mean is: my gift gives me permission to skip the harder work of love. Paul won’t allow it.
The good news is that Paul isn’t describing a ceiling. He’s describing a climate. Love isn’t the replacement for the gifts. It’s the air they were always meant to breathe. When a gift operates in the climate of love, it becomes what God intended — something that builds, heals, strengthens, and points to Christ. Without that climate, even the most extraordinary gift becomes a clanging distraction.
REFLECT
Is there any place in your life where you have used a genuine gift — the ability to speak, teach, lead, or correct — in a way that was more about asserting yourself than serving the other person?
What would it look like, practically, to bring love back into that space?
PRAY
Holy Spirit, search me. Show me where I have made my gift the point rather than the people it was given for. I confess the places I have made sound without love. I confess where I have been impressive and empty at the same time. Form love in me that is patient and kind — love that makes my gifts what You actually intended them to be. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Think of one conversation or interaction this week where you felt the pull to be heard, to be right, or to assert your perspective. Before you enter that space again, pause and ask: What does love require of me here? Let that question shape how you show up.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WEDNESDAY | June 24
Love Is Not a Feeling—It Is a Formation
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (ESV)
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Read this passage slowly and notice something: almost nothing here is about how love feels. It’s about what love does and what love refuses to do. Patient. Kind. Not envious. Not boastful. Not arrogant. Not rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way. It isn’t irritable or resentful. It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing. It bears, believes, hopes, endures.
Paul is describing not a feeling but a formation. This is what the Holy Spirit grows in a person who submits to the long, slow, sometimes painful work of Christlike character. It isn’t generated by effort alone. It is the fruit of the Spirit taking up residence and reshaping the inner life.
But here is what makes this passage so personal: each of these descriptions is a mirror. "Love does not insist on its own way." Does yours? "Love is not irritable or resentful." Are you? "Love does not envy." When someone else in your community is fruitful, does something in you shrink rather than celebrate?
The Corinthian church was full of people who were genuinely gifted and genuinely immature at the same time. That is a dangerous combination — because gifted and immature people have the tools to cause real damage. Paul’s letter to them isn’t a rebuke of their gifts. It is an invitation into the deeper work that makes those gifts safe to carry.
Tim Keller once described the gospel as the only message that simultaneously tells you you are more broken than you dared believe and more loved than you dared hope. That combination — known fully and loved fully — is exactly the soil in which this kind of love grows. We don’t have to perform to prove our worth. We already have it in Christ. And from that place of security, love becomes possible. Not easy. But possible.
REFLECT
Go back through Paul’s description of love slowly. Which phrase stops you? Which one most accurately describes where you are not yet? Sit with that rather than moving past it.
How does knowing you are fully loved by God change how you are able to love others? Where does that connection break down for you?
PRAY
Lord, I want to love the way this passage describes — but I can see how far I still have to go. I am not patient in the ways I should be. I am not free from resentment the way love requires. I hold things. I compare myself to others. I insist on my own way more than I realize. Come and do what I cannot do on my own. Form love in me by Your Spirit. Not as a feeling I generate, but as a character You build. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Choose one specific description of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 that you know is underdeveloped in you right now. Write it somewhere you will see it today — on your phone, your mirror, your hand. Let it be a prompt to notice when you’re operating outside of it, and a prayer to ask the Spirit to form it in you.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THURSDAY | June 25
Love Never Ends
1 Corinthians 13:8–13 (ESV)
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away... So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
Paul ends his great chapter on love by making a staggering claim about eternity. Prophecy will pass away. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will pass away. But love never ends. And in that single contrast, Paul reveals why love is greater than any gift: the gifts are instruments suited to this age, but love is the substance of the age to come.
Think about what this means. There will come a day when prophecy is no longer needed because we will see fully — face to face. There will come a day when words of knowledge are unnecessary because we will know as we are known. Every gift we exercise now is a partial, temporary provision for a world that is not yet complete. But love — love is not a temporary provision. Love is the life of God Himself, shared with His people.
The reason love is the greatest is not because it is more useful than faith or hope. Faith will become sight. Hope will be fulfilled. But love doesn’t get replaced by something better. Love becomes more fully itself. The love we learn to practice imperfectly in this life is the very thing we will inhabit perfectly in the next.
This is why it matters so much what kind of people we are becoming now. N.T. Wright often says that what we do in the present, in the power of the Spirit, is not wasted — it builds into the new creation. The character formed in us by the Holy Spirit is not lost when we leave this world. Love, formed in us now, is preparation for an eternity in which love is the total atmosphere. So when Paul says pursue love — he isn’t just talking about strategy for a healthier church, though it is that. He is talking about becoming the kind of person who is ready for what is coming. The gifts serve us in this age. Love equips us for every age.
REFLECT
How does the eternal weight of love change the way you think about the ordinary, unglamorous moments of choosing to love today? What would it look like to take those moments more seriously?
Where are you most tempted to invest your energy in things that are temporary rather than things that last?
PRAY
Father, thank You that love is not just a strategy — it is Your own life shared with me. Help me take seriously the small, daily moments of choosing love, because I believe they are building something that will last. Where I have been distracted by what is impressive and temporary, redirect my heart toward what is eternal. Let love be what I am becoming. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Today, pay attention to the small moments when you have a choice between self-interest and love. The moment someone interrupts you. The moment a conversation becomes inconvenient. The moment someone needs something you weren’t planning to give. In one of those moments, choose love consciously — and recognize it as practice for eternity.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FRIDAY | June 26
Pursue Love. Earnestly Desire the Gifts.
1 Corinthians 14:1 (ESV)
"Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy."
After thirteen verses on the supremacy of love, you might expect Paul to say: "Therefore, forget about the gifts." He says the opposite. Pursue love AND earnestly desire spiritual gifts. The "and" matters enormously. Love and gifts are not competing agendas. They are meant to operate together. Love is the climate. The gifts are what thrive in it.
The word Paul uses for "pursue" (Greek: διώκετε) is a hunting word. It means to chase, to press hard after, to not stop until you have it. This is not passive sentiment. You don’t stumble into love by accident. You pursue it. You make it the aim. You let it become the test by which you evaluate every decision, every word, every use of what God has given you.
And then — from within that pursuit of love — you earnestly desire spiritual gifts. Not for status. Not for a spiritual identity. Not to create impressive moments. But because you love the people in the room and you want every resource God has made available to serve them well.
This is the tension the church has to hold. Some communities pursue gifts without love — and the result is chaotic, manipulative, and unsafe. Other communities pursue order without power — and the result is dry, self-sufficient, and ultimately dependent on human ability rather than divine presence. Paul refuses both errors. He says: pursue love so relentlessly that when you desire gifts, they have the right motive and the right climate behind them.
As Tables Church moves into the gifts of the Spirit in the weeks ahead, this is the foundation we return to. Not: are we doing the gifts correctly? But: are we doing them in love? Are the strong making room for the weak? Are the visible honoring the hidden? Are the words being offered building people up or feeding the ego of the one speaking? Love is the question behind every gift. And when love is the answer, the gifts can finally become what God always intended them to be.
REFLECT
As you look at your own life, which side of the tension is harder for you — pursuing love with discipline, or earnestly desiring spiritual gifts without embarrassment? Why?
What would it look like for you, practically, to be someone who pursues both — not as an either/or, but as a both/and?
PRAY
Holy Spirit, I want to be someone who chases love the way Paul describes — relentlessly, as the main thing. And I want to be someone who hungers for Your gifts, not for my own sake, but because I love the people around me and I want everything You have made available to serve them. Give me the courage to want both, and the wisdom to hold them together. Make me useful to the body. And make me loving while You do it. Amen.
ACT THIS WEEK:
Before Sunday, take five minutes to pray specifically about how God has gifted you. Don’t minimize it. Don’t perform it. Just ask honestly: What has God placed in me that could build someone up this week? Then look for one opportunity to use it — not on a stage, but in a conversation, at a table, in a moment no one else will see.
Tables Church • Madison, Alabama
Holy Spirit Series | Part 11