Good Day!
Paul encourages us to desire spiritual gifts. What is a spiritual gift? It seems in this text that the reason to receive a spiritual gift is for the building up of the church. Paul doesn't say stop speaking in tongues, but rather again focuses their attention back to chapter 13, love. How can we use what God has given us to show love to other people? This reminds me of the fruit of the Spirit. A tree doesn't eat its own fruit, but rather its fruit is for others. The good gifts God gives us are for us to use for the benefit of other people.
When our High School youth group was in Mexico it was interesting to hear the Mexican Christians pray. For most of us we didn't know Spanish so we couldn't understand much of anything they said. This particular church had the custom of having many people pray at the same time. So even they didn't know what the other was praying. Seeing a different culture helps us understand our own culture. This experience helped me ask the question, "why do we pray the way we do?" Perhaps it from this passage of scripture when Paul tells us that he will pray with his spirit but also with understanding so that others around may be built up.
Recently, I have been doing devotions with an old prayer book. These prayers are well thought out and doctrinally rich. Their language is a bit thick and antiquated, but I am finding myself built up by their truth. I appreciate that Paul says he will pray both with his spirit and with understanding, and in another place scripture says we worship God in both spirit and truth.
Here is an excerpt from one of the prayers for your edification:
"Strengthen me again by Your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power and strength, so that in daily contrition and repentance I may walk and live before you in righteousness and in purity."
Pastor Adam
adam berge
Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more.
No comments:
Post a Comment