Sunday 16 Jan 2022

January 16: 1 Corinthians 12:1-6

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 12:4
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.

Devotion:
How many times have you been persuaded to do something which, when you look back on it, was a terrible idea! The more modern technology comes into our lives, the more we seem to give in to scams and to things which we find out, afterward, are just plain wrong! We somehow think, because it is technology, we should believe it and take it for granted it is correct. As a programmer, I can tell you the opposite!

When a programmer makes a stupid mistake in their code, it can be catastrophic for the system; all it takes is for a bad bit of code to completely ruin what seemed like a good idea at the time! When something goes wrong in the code, it can take a very long time to find the fault, but when it is found, you cannot un-see the fault because it now looks obviously wrong! The same goes for our spiritual lives – the more we get involved with something which is wrong, the more it goes wrong and the worse the situation becomes! It is only when you find out what has gone wrong you realise it was not right to start with… but it can take a fair while to spot where you go wrong.

This is why God has given us the bible – so we have a reference point we can compare things to so we can find out what is wrong. If we did not have this reference, we would continue to go down the wrong path and continue to mess up our lives and the lives of the people around us!

God has given each of us some spiritual gifts; whether it is to spot where things go wrong, to help others find their way, to comfort people in troubled times; whatever they are, God has given them to us. We need to compare the gift we think we have with what God describes for us in the bible. If it goes against the bible, it is likely not given to us from God! It may be very difficult to spot right from wrong because the bible does not explicitly describe each personal gift God gives us...

Points to Ponder:
Do you long to have your spiritual gifts on show?

Why not spend time with God asking Him for advice instead of making a big fuss?