Make Love Your Aim
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1 Corinthians 12:4-5; 13:1-3; 14:1
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; . . . 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. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. . .
Make love your aim, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
I started out in Corinthians and Paul’s treatise on love – Chapter 13. Love—agape love—is the core of Jesus’ teachings. It’s beyond a selfless love, it’s a self-sacrificing, and self-effacing love. It’s a love that transcends human emotion and reaches a deeper level of care, concern, willingness to sacrifice all that is possible to experience only through the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
And that is how we are able to discover and activate our spiritual gifts! And this divinely received and accepted level of love is the attitude we are to adopt as we deploy our gifts. We are to desire the gifts so that we may be in meaningful service to others. We desire to discover, understand, refine and deploy these divinely chosen, imbedded, imparted mystical abilities, to build up the body of Christ. We cannot choose the gifts we receive. We can only choose to discover and use them. We cannot determine which gifts we will use, in obedience, we are unable to contain or confine the gifts! No matter how much we deny these divinely appointed gifts, eventually, we will find they burst forth from us!
Jesus, of course, possessed all of the various gifts—since He was God, they all originated from Him in the first place. But He came to earth, in the form of man, to demonstrate how they were to be used, and why; and to implore us to use them freely and out of deep, abiding, love for each other, and the unquenchable desire to serve God. What better way to serve Him than through using the gifts He has given us?
When love is our aim, as Paul tells us to do, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the form of our spiritual gifts, becomes a natural response. Through that love, our gifts are used to serve others in their place of greatest need. Through the healing they receive from us, they are able to discover and deploy their spiritual gifts. Through that deployment they are able to minister to others. Kind of sounds like the “circle of life” in the Lion King, doesn’t it?
This just demonstrates to me how smart God is! He places in a community of believers, those gifted with all the gifts that are needed for the building up of the community. Each according to his ability, gives to those in need. Some are ministered to by the giving, some by the receiving. It is just so amazing to me! God originates the gift, faith in Christ endows us with the love required to desire using the gifts and the Holy Spirit empowers and directs us!
Three in one. Unity. Strength. Wisdom. Power. And love is the aim, source, origination and purpose of it all. How can I express my love to my fellow man? By using the gifts with which I have been endowed. There are many other ways as well, meeting a need as it arises, often calls us to respond in a way other than only through out spiritual gifts. But the most perfect offering we can present, is the one we make through our giftedness.
I hope you’ll spend today praying for revelation as to your spiritual gifts, asking for wisdom in how to deploy them, and thanking God for placing you in a world that needs what you have to offer, and offers what you need.
Mary
