Generation Church

If you were asked if you consider yourself a loving person, what would you say? Many of us would say we are loving, but the world we live in today promotes a warped and twisted view of love that does not line up with what God says love is. Love is not strong affection, sexual attraction, or blind affirmation. Love isn’t either what we say it is but what God says it is. In 1 Corinthians 13, we get God’s description of what real love is.

God uses all of us together to make up a healthy and effective body. Yet, so often, in the body of Christ, just like in every relationship you’ve ever had, you struggle to value those who are gifted differently than you. It’s not because you are a particularly bad person but because you are human. This is what happened at the church in Corinth and what we are still seeing happen today.

Every person who has been born again has at least one spiritual gift. Do you know what yours is? You may look at your natural talents, but spiritual gifts are not the same as your natural talents. Spiritual gifts come by being born again, and when you use those gifts, God blesses it and blesses others through it.

As we prepare to explore the Gifts of the Spirit, it is important to do foundation work on who the gift giver is. So, who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is not wind, but he’s like the wind. He’s not a dove, but he descended like a dove. He’s not fire, but he burns like a refining fire. The Holy Spirit is a person, our helper, our friend, and our God. And it’s the Holy Spirit who works in us and through us to magnify Jesus!

1 Corinthians 11 discusses head coverings and headship, which can be confusing for many people. It seems to say that everyone should cover their heads, but we also need to consider the time and culture at the time it was written. Looking at other parts of the Bible and this passage, we can see that it’s about more than just covering your head. There are important lessons that still matter to us today, even if some of these commands no longer apply to us.

The journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land was marked by highs and lows. Guided by divine blessings and miracles, they navigated numerous challenges yet also encountered significant failures. Just like them, we receive God’s blessings, but these blessings don’t mean everything will be easy. We will face challenges and temptations, and we must be ready to guard against them.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9 that his purpose in life is to spread the Good News, see people saved, and bring people to Christ. This was his purpose, and it should be our purpose, too. You might not be a full-time gospel preacher, but you are a full-time gospel worker. You’re a full-time citizen of heaven, a full-time child of God, and a full-time friend of Jesus. You have unique gifts, talents, abilities, and opportunities. And your greatest purpose on earth is not building a business or a bank account. It’s building His church. There’s no greater sense of purpose or satisfaction than participating in the mission of Christ.

What if God is not as opposed to obscurity as we are? What if obscurity isn’t as bad as we think it is? Many of us want to escape obscurity, while God might desire to use it to do something in us. We might be trying to sprint from the pastures to the palace, and we’re running from the place God wants to use to do work in our hearts. God is a God who loves to use obscurity in the lives of his people, and there are advantages to obscurity.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the noise of the world drifting away from God’s truth? As we see in Paul’s letter to Timothy, we are called to anchor our lives in the unwavering truth and ways of God, even when everyone else is pulling in the opposite direction. When others live away from God and His ways, we will stay devoted to the Lord and cling to His truth. This is the message that Paul had for Timothy, and it applies to us today.

We are living in the age of perpetual offense, where we’re quick to judge, quick to criticize, quick to condemn, and quick to cancel anyone who offends us. We see this in politics, music, news, and social media through cynicism, complaining, disrespect, backbiting, tearing down, and cancel culture. Division is everywhere. People are going off on each other about anything and everything. And Christians are not immune to dishonor. Don’t dishonor God with your life because honor is a sacred key to God’s favor, and it is truly the lost art of our generation.