Growing in the Gifts of the Spirit - Motivated by Love (Daily Devotional)

Hello and welcome to Living Supernaturally. God has called us to live supernatural lives because He's a supernatural God and we have His word and the Holy Spirit indwelling us and leading us to do so. This week, we are on this topic of the Holy Spirit and specifically we're talking about growing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. When it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it is one thing to receive and be excited about and also walk in it to some extent, but God's desire is for each one of us to grow in the expression of the Holy Spirit through us, to grow in the manifestation of His presence and power through us. So, we have a role and responsibility to focus and intentionally do this, to grow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So, we're going to look at different aspects and in today's episode we're looking at how we need to be motivated by love. In order to grow in the gifts of the Spirit, we need to be motivated or the motivating force or the thing that is driving us in order to go and minister to people, it should be love. Now we looked at 1 Corinthians chapter 13, that whole chapter on love and interestingly it's placed right there in the middle of that whole section on the gifts of the Spirit, between chapter 12 and chapter 14. Paul very focusedly writes about the love of God and it is for this particular reason that the expression of the Holy Spirit should not be without the character of God which is the love of God. And also, we see in certain other places where faith works through love. Now faith is required for expressing the work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is required for the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit. And so, faith works effectively through love. Love is our motivator, It is something that is required of us, love of people, love of God's people, love for God, love for the things of God and it's not a casual thing. It is something that is intentional, it is something that we go after. And in fact, the exhortation given in scripture is pursue love. Pursue love, which means to go after in an intent manner, which means that what motivates us should not be anything apart from love of God or apart from the love for God's people. Now potentially we could be motivated by many things. We could be motivated by a sense of validation, we want to feel worthy, we want to feel valued, we want to feel respected, we want to be honored by people, and so we move in the gifts. We pursue the gifts of God, we earnestly desire the gifts of God even and while it all seems noble, what is hidden and what is unseen is our motivation, our heart posture, and our very attitude towards it. So, that needs to be clear, that needs to be refined because God sees all, God knows all and it cannot be anything apart from love. We could be motivated by a need for recognition, a need for reputation, a need for fame and popularity. In today's day and age, where information flows so quickly across the globe, and it's visible for everyone and therefore, the temptation could be to get recognition and to get fame and to get be popular which could be expressed in terms of how many posts we put up and how many likes are there, how many views are there and we could do it for that purpose alone. Now, yes, it is good to analyze and see how many likes or how many views are there on a post, and we could actually learn from it and avoid certain mistakes. But if we are going to validate ourselves based on that, then it's a wrong motivator. So, if we need to grow in the gifts, then we need to understand that the motivation should be love. The foundation should be love and love alone. Even as we pray today, let's let go of the need for self-affirmation, the need for recognition, the need for pride, and sometimes even comparison and competition, saying, "Why should that person alone move like this? I will also do this." And so, the need for competition and comparison and so on. So, let's let go of all that and come back to God and say, "Lord, you fill me with your love, and let that alone motivate me to move ahead and grow in these gifts. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you because you poured out your love through your Spirit in each one of our hearts. Father, we thank you that you desire for your love to be expressed in and through us. And Lord, may we make that right choice, may we come aligned, may our hearts and thoughts come aligned to your love even as we choose to grow in the gifts of the Spirit, we thank you, in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
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Daily devotions to strengthen your faith each day. Daily Devotional for Spirit filled living. Each daily devotion is about five minutes in duration. These daily devotionals are centered around a weekly theme. So there are seven daily devotions that focus on the theme and bring you insight, understanding and revelation from the Bible. Each week's theme is listed as a series. So you can listen to the current week's devotions or go to any previous theme/series that speaks to your present need (https://apcwo.org/resources/daily-devotions ). Also available free sermons (https://apcwo.org/sermons), and free Christian books (https://apcwo.org/books) to nourish and strengthen your faith.