Tonight's Bible Study

Verses:
I Corinthians 12, 13, 14

The first thing I have to say is that I love my new Bible...it's the New King James Version. It is so good and so much closer to accuracy than the ones I have. If I read it and then another version, it gives a really good perspective on what the verse/passage really means.

Okay, so now to what I got on here to write about...

I was once told by a friend that they looked up to me as a spiritual leader....in the next conversation, they said that they may have been wrong to look to me as a spiritual leader (this was after, of course, I shied away from being seen as one since I told them that I was not perfect and that they should look to Jesus more than me). Yet another friend a few weeks ago commented on how she never knew how deep I was about spiritual matters until I spent three hours one late Sunday night talking to them about our spiritual heritage, beliefs and knowledge. To be really honest with you, this has been one of the things I've been contemplating (which I do a lot...as you can tell).

First, what is it that makes us spiritual leaders or deep? Second, how are we seen as a spiritual leader to one but not to another? Third, what makes a spiritual leader or who should be one...who is worthy to be someone's spiritual leader?

These are all tricky questions...and in my situation, you'd have to know the other people involved to know why they felt these ways individually. However, there is one thing that can be discerned from the info: how ever big or small, I am a spiritual person and I have spiritual gifts.
But what the big question that should be asked is how in tuned are we all to our spiritual gifts...and have we given God the reigns to bring our spiritual gifts to completeness?

As a young believer, and once having learned about the spiritual gifts, I wondered if I possessed the Spiritual gift of prophesy. I had many instances of visions, dreams, nightmares and things that I dreamed that eventually happened that I could not explain. I was scared of it and I admit that wholeheartedly. But I did pray for God to reveal to me if this was one of the gifts that He had given me. I don't remember how long I prayed but it wasn't more than a year; still, it was long enough for me to be satisfied that it wasn't the gift of prophesy...but it was definitely a gift from God for something else. As I grew (and did numerous spiritual gift assessment tests), I came more in tune to the actual spiritual gifts I had or that God had given me.

Recently, however, I've been questioned on this very topic and it's been posed that maybe there are certain gifts that we all have. There are very good arguments and verses to back up either side of the discussion. However, 1 Corinthians 13 has the right answer. 1 Corinthians 12 & 14 are great passages to study the spiritual gifts (especially for the ones that some sweep under the rug: prophecy, tongues, healing and interpretation of tongues). But I think we miss a very important, important point that Jesus and Paul makes emphatically, and I quote Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, "Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away." And in Jesus' words in Matthew 22:37-39, "Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Why do many of us forget that? It’s not just about all the spiritual gifts we have or don’t have, it’s about how we love God and others. The real question is that if we truly love God and others, everything else will fall into place. But so many of us don’t, including me. A lot of us are about all the laws and picking out verses and interpreting them correctly AND incorrectly, and pointing the finger and saying “you hurt me or I hurt you or we hurt each other” and blah, blah, blah. But the first thing that should happen is that we need to love God completely and then others. And if we all came from a place of love from the beginning, all these little arguments wouldn’t mean anything and wouldn’t happen because we’d already know.

But yes, we live in a fallen world and though we are made in His image He tells us that we can never fathom completely who God is or truly the love He has for us. We fall so short because of our sin…but in the times that we do feel love for others, we are amazed at the feeling. But how awesome is it that at the times we feel we are truly loving and feel love, that His is still infinitely greater!

And so we go back to figuring out how to love more by picking out this verse and that verse and saying how we don’t do this or that enough so that’s why we aren’t loving like Him and why we can’t be friends with everyone and giving ourselves and each other excuses…excuses from our past, how we were raised differently, how we experienced different things, how only those in our situation can understand us, how we seem to think that there is some underlining negative meaning behind every word that someone says to us and that they are innately evil.

That’s a load of you-know-what and I know I have been guilty of it. It’s about love, people! The answer to all of our questions is one four-letter word: L-O-V-E.

That is my Bible study for tonight and it is so fitting. God knows that I need to find more ways to love and to let go of all the drama, all the negativity that is surrounding me. Some of it is unwarranted and unfair; some is rightfully so…but all of it is forgiven…

Because He showed us how to love with three rusty nails and a cross. What better example and picture of love can anyone think of? We can’t because it’s the greatest Love of all.