Join us online! - Next online service starts Sunday at 9 AM • Watch Live →
Oct 16, 2022
Church 101 | Come Holy Spirit: The Heart of God
The church at Corinth gives us a glimpse into how the Kingdom landed and found shape in a rather typical First Century Roman city. There was nothing exceptional about the Corinthian church: just believers trying to learn how to walk out of familiar kingdoms of darkness and walk into the Kingdom of Light.
Songs for this week: Spotify
1 Corinthians 13
Message Questions:
- What are some of the things that we use to measure the spiritual well-being of a church? What do we use to measure spiritual maturity in our own lives?
- Read vv 4-7, substituting “Jesus” for “love.” (“Jesus is patient; Jesus is kind …) How does this prompt you to worship him?
- Look at vv 4-7 again and list the characteristics of love included there. Compare them with the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. What similarities do you notice?
- Choose at least one of the characteristics of love from vv 4-7 (for example, “love is not easily angered”) and ask:
- How does our culture encourage or discourage this?
- Where have you witnessed or experienced this in action? What was the impact?
- How easy or difficult is it for you to practice this characteristic of love?
(If you have time, look at another characteristic with the same questions.)
- As you consider your life and lifestyle, is there anything that you may need to adjust to provide space for the Holy Spirit to grow your capacity to love?
Share with a friend
Recent Sermons
Paul never recovered from God including the Gentiles in the salvation invitation.
Like some of us, perhaps, he felt like some people should be excluded by virtue of where they were born or how badly they have behaved.
More than included, Paul instructs that former ‘outsiders’ should be treated as precious insiders, treated even better than we would treat ourselves. What would it look like if love came to town?
Human beings need reminders about how to get along, and Christians are no exception. We especially need reminders about how to love each other while we disagree. Paul draws the believers' hearts and minds back to what Jesus has done, and that paves the way for loving each other well through conflict.
How do we live with Jesus in a society that opposes him? Paul tells us to wake up to our resurrection hope. When we do that, loving others and rejecting sin in our own lives makes sense.
Romans 12 is the description of what happens when God’s mercy overflows in a church’s life. Lifelong attitudes change, love becomes genuine, mocking enemies are not met with equal and opposite force but, quite the opposite, with peace and gentleness. Be praying even now for how God will speak uniquely to your small group.
All along, we’ve been saying that God’s heart is to see us INCLUDED. That’s why Jesus came, and that’s the subject of Paul’s letter to the Romans. At times, Christians forget God’s radical inclusion of them and go back to the old patterns of competing and comparing. Sadly, that was happening in the Roman Church. Paul has one powerful dose for that sickness.
The resurrection changed everything! The story includes an invitation, a blessing, and a commission for the first witnesses … and for us today.
