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1 Corinthians 13 Devotional – Day 4

ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness

GOD IS INFINITE – God is limitless. God is not limited by anything outside of His character. This applies to all of God’s attributes.

Psalm 147:5
Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.

Praise God because He is Infinite.
We are finite and as such we cannot fully fathom infinity. God is not limited by time or space. Praise him because he has been present for every moment of your life, your parent’s lives and for all generations. Praise him because he has been present in every place you and your family and friends have ever travelled or lived. Praise him because he has shown you wisdom, love, grace, justice, and mercy everyday. Praise him because he will never exhaust his ability to demonstrate his character.

CONFESSION: Confess your sins to God and receive his continued mercy.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

THANKSGIVING: Giving thanks to God for his specific blessings in our lives.

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100

SUPPLICATION: Bringing our requests to God.

  • Bring your personal prayer requests to God.
  • Pray for Christian Challenge students who may not know Christ. Pray they would be saved.
  • Ask God to speak and guide during Christian challenge tonight.
  • Ask God to guide us as a church to be faithful to our stewardship of Christian Challenge
  • Ask God to speak as you read and meditate.

SCRIPTURE READING:

1 Corinthians 13 The Message

The Way of Love
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
What are the “wax on, wax off” disciplines that you are using to shape your heart into the image of Christ? Often they don’t seem to have a direct correlation to our goals. For instance you “go to church” or “attend group” and when you leave it feels like nothing “cosmic” happened to you. But what did happen is that you made a life/heart shaping choice. Being with other believers in direct personal contact in worship shapes you. Singing songs of worship to God with others shapes you. Dealing with the differences of others, their sounds, their smells, their idiosyncrasies in generous ways shapes you. You cannot be more patient or kind or any of the things love is by yourself. To learn to love God and others we must put ourselves out there with others. Covid practices have created an ongoing opportunity to “shrink” as people. This is no comment on whether these practices were all warranted or not but simply to say they have in fact lead, in many cases, to relational atrophy. Our relationship “muscles” have shrunk and we have in many ways trained ourselves to be more selfish. It is important to recognize this and to push back. “Wax on, Wax off” kinds of disciplines must be practiced in order to get back into a good growth cycle.

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