I’ve always found the topic of spiritual gifts complicated. They perplex me each day that I spend thinking about them. Why are we given spiritual gifts? Are there guidelines to using them? Do we follow those guidelines? etc. Most of all how much do we desire these gifts? This is the question that always gets me. One because we should not desire any gift over God; if that happens we are erecting the gift to be an idol. What is supposed to be used to glorify him, has now become a hindrance to the believer. Second, what is the greatest commandment in the Bible? You can find it in Matthew 22:37-39
And he said to him, “You shall LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And a second is like it: You shall LOVE your neighbor as yourself.”
Love, that is the foundation of the greatest commandment. So why do we so often push aside love and desire these spiritual gifts. Without love the gifts are useless. I Corinthians 13:8-13 “Love never fails. Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
“Prophecy and tongues will cease because they are limited in nature but love has always existed and will always exist because God is love.” (I John 4:16b)
So maybe you already see where I’m going with this. It is love that we should want to be filled with and want more of. It is love that allows us to use these gifts to glorify God. It is love that set forth creation, and it is love that hung a man on a cross.
I’m not denying that Paul says “desire spiritual gifts” look in I Corinthians 14:1, but even Paul mentions “follow the way of Love.” For me, I won’t be praying for tongues or the gift of prophecy, no I’ll be praying that God fills me with an overwhelming abundance of love. That every man, woman and child I meet, I will show them the love of the father. That I would overflow with it. Now if God uses tongues or prophecy in the process, great, but I have to remember it is a gift. It is given to me within his will and used to glorify him, in his perfect timing.
