8-6-2022

Good Morning!    

       1 Corinthians 12:31; “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

    One of the things I truly enjoyed was coaching little kid baseball.  There is nothing more pure than the excitement of a child who comes to master certain tasks.  When they start, they have a hard time hitting or throwing or catching but soon they are able to do it with a certain amount of skill and proficiency.  Of course, every so often, you run into a parent who sees things a little differently than you do.  The problem that I had with those parents was that they saw short term success as the only measure.  I had a long discussion with a parent who wanted her son to swing up at the baseball when he played Tee ball baseball.  “If he hits it in the air; it can be a homerun!! Don’t you want them to hit homeruns??” When I told her “no,” she was completely deflated.  Then I explained to her that swinging at the baseball like she wanted him to would only work if the ball was always stationary and sitting on a “T.”  When a pitched ball is swung at; you want a slightly downward motion not an upper cut.  I was trying to teach them to be real baseball players and to have skills that would serve them throughout their playing days.  I thought learning the game properly was a higher goal; something that was of greater merit than winning a Tee ball game.

    This is sort of what Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians in our verse.  The Corinthians were arguing and engaging in divisive practices because of different spiritual gifts.  Some thought highly of speaking in tongues and some spoke highly of healing and so on and so on.  Of course, the gifts that I had were better than the gifts you had and the whole debate went downhill from there.  So, Paul told them that there were higher things; far greater than the spiritual gifts they sought.  So, he told them about these higher gifts.

   Paul ends up telling of three greatest gifts, faith, hope and love.  These are what we should desire over everything else.  Faith, because this is what gets us through today.  God gives us faith, the desire to trust in his promise of salvation, so that we can know for certainty that, whatever befalls us today, will never derail us from God’s love and his mercy.  We have hope because this is what leads us to a better tomorrow.  Hope is that anchor that we can toss out to secure us in God’s salvation.  We have hope because God’s act of salvation does not depend on you or me, it does not depend on whether you believe it or not; it always depends on God.

   Paul called love the greatest, probably because that is the one thing that will always remain.  Some day we will not need faith or hope; we will be standing side by side with Jesus in victory.  At that time, the only thing we will need or want is to love and to be loved.  These are the higher things, and they are more excellent than any earthly or other spiritual gift.

Father, lead me to seek after higher things.  Lead me to seek after faith, hope and love that I may be drawn even closer to you.  Lead me to see the excellence of your gifts which give me life and hope.  In the precious name of Jesus our risen King we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret