When the learner yields to the teacher’s intentions, both student and teacher succeed. God does not leave things to chance. We glorify Him the most when we yield to his loving intentions. That is also when we are most blessed.
We cultivate the fruit of the Spirit through daily individual decisions in which we reject the flesh and yield to the Holy Spirit. These decisions add up over time and put us on a trajectory to more productive Christian living. We are beginning to “walk by the Spirit”. A “walk” implies both direction and empowerment; The Holy Spirit gives the believer both of these.
Chuck Smith in his book Charisma Versus Charismania begins with a story of the abuse of the gift of tongues that he witnessed as a young man. The church in 1st Century Corinth bore some similarity to the church of Chuck Smith’s 20th Century youth. It seems some of things that made Chuck uneasy made the Apostle Paul uneasy too. Today’s chapter deals with a church’s prioritizing and use of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.
Perhaps the biggest problem in the Corinthian Church was disunity. This disunity came out in any number of ways, but these were mostly symptoms of one core fault: The church in Corinth as a group did not value each member’s place within the church. Paul takes on this problem of disunity by comparing the church to a body, specifically, the body of Christ. He explains that the body is composed of people who all have differing spiritual gifts.
Central Reflections 