Be Still And Know

READ: 1 Corinthians 14.1 NLT 'Let love be your highest goal! But you should also desire the special abilities the Spirit gives—especially the ability to prophesy.' 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is a really famous chapter and rightly so. But the fact is that Paul didn’t write in chapters. Chapter divisions arrived about 1,200 years later! So, whenever we see a chapter division, we need to, at least, peer at what happens next. This is really important in this particular letter because if you only looked at chapter 13 you might think that love is so important that you can forget about the gifts of the Spirit. After all, they have got a limited shelf life as Paul has just explained. But here at the start of chapter 14 he makes it plain that we all need to make love the goal of our lives and, at the same time, we need to seek after the wonderful gifts that the Holy Spirit wants to give us. The church in Corinth had got into a horrible muddle about spiritual gifts and Paul is trying to straighten them out. Their meeting