Devotional

If you had one last thing to say to your family and friends, what would you say? What would you want them to know? That’s where we find Paul in this section of 1 Corinthians. He’s in the last paragraphs of his letter. He has one last shot to drive his message home....

We’re almost at the end of our study and it’s time to make a choice. We’ve asked this question for the past twelve weeks, and now it’s up to you to answer. Will you choose this risky, others-centered life? [Especially if you have just completed the experiment of...

We’ve talked a lot about the risky life that puts other people before us. It’s a risk because it means we might have to live with unmet needs. We might have to sacrifice time, energy, or money. We might have to say no to something we want for the sake of another...

The others-centered life can be easier to define within our immediate circle. We can think of specific Christians, like we did yesterday, and intentionally invest in them. But as we’ve seen throughout 1 Corinthians, however, the risky life shouldn’t be confined to our...

We’ve made it. We’re in the final chapter of 1 Corinthians. We’ve followed Paul’s words to the fledgling church in Corinth. He’s had to correct a lot of self-centered behavior. He’s advocated for an others-centered life that chooses sacrifice over selfishness, and...

People often spend their lives trying to avoid death. Our culture obsesses over youth. No one wants to grow old. No one wants to appear weak. No one wants to die. We’ll do anything to keep us from meeting the end of our lives. And when the end comes, we don’t know...

One danger we face when we think about the future—Jesus’s return and our resurrection—is that we can get caught up in the details. We can fret about the specifics of when it will happen or how it will happen or what kind of bodies we’ll have. Paul cautions us against...

We’ve talked a lot about the others-centered life in this study of 1 Corinthians. Living this way is a risk because we put our own security, well-being, and control of our lives aside so that we can meet the needs of other Christians. We give ourselves away because we...

Sometimes it’s good to get back to the basics. In the final chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul draws the church back to its roots. He reminds them of what he first taught them when he visited their city years before. It all comes back to the gospel. Read 1 Corinthians...

Paul has been encouraging the church in Corinth to live an others-centered life. This way of living exhibits the sacrificial love of Jesus in all areas of life from the local church to the family to the workplace. We live selflessly only through the power of the Holy...

You might have noticed that we covered chapters 12 and 14, but we skipped over chapter 13. We did that on purpose. That’s because we often take chapter 13 out of the context of its surrounding chapters. We read it at weddings or during a marriage series, which can...

Now that we know we have gifts from the Spirit, we need to know the proper way to use them. We don’t want anything to get out of hand. We want to be selfless with our gifts. But what does that look like? 1 Corinthians 14 is another one of those sticky passages we...

Today's reading is a fun one. Over the years, it has been popular to use spiritual gift inventories and questionnaires to help believers discover their spiritual gifts. The major problem with these tools is that they’re an abstraction; we can take those tests and try...

Think about the last time you needed someone’s help. Maybe you couldn’t reach the top shelf at a grocery store or you asked some friends to help you move. Even though it’s hard for us to admit, we all need help sometimes. The same goes for the church—we need each...

First Corinthians can feel like a beat-down. Paul isn’t happy with how the church is acting, and the past 11 chapters have all been about what they need to fix. The Corinthians were selfish, which caused lots of problems. Paul’s main point is that Christians should...

Selfishness can poison the church. We’ve already seen how it damaged the church in Corinth outside of their corporate worship. But this week we also realized how their selfishness ruined their worship time together. We can fall into the same trap as the Corinthians....

Have you ever experienced the feeling when everyone in the room is on the same page? Maybe it was a meeting at work when every team member got on board with a new project. Or maybe it was the thrill of a concert when the entire audience sang along. Or even when...

The church is diverse. People who follow Jesus come from all kinds of upbringings, social classes, ethnicities, countries, and cultures. The local church is also diverse—everyone comes from a different neighborhood, career, or income bracket. Our differences shouldn’t...