Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 
Providence Prayer Room – 7pm Weds, 6.12.24 @ 12 Bassett Street PVD

Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts. – 1 Corinthians 14

PRAYER GUIDE

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us the most robust treatment we find in the New Testament regarding the ministry of the Spirit in the church. He describes his framework for understanding the gifts of the Spirit, the role of love, and how we are to operate in the Spirit during Sunday worship. Paul spends three entire chapters talking about this topic. This instruction was needed, for the Corinthians were a rather wild and wooly bunch. Where the Thessalonian church needed to be reminded not to “quench the Spirit,” and not to “despise prophecy.” The Corinthians needed to know how to do everything decently and in order.

However, it is possible that 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1, contains the very heart of Paul’s instruction…the big takeaway…as it were. What are we actually supposed to do? What is our primary calling when it comes to spiritual gifts? If you’ve ever wondered this – here it is in one verse. We are to do three things.

First, Paul says, “pursue love.” The verb for pursue, dioko, means to chase down, even to persecute. We are to doggedly pursue love. Love is our core pursuit. We are less interested in the actual wow factor of spiritual gifts as we are in the aim of love. This is the first and most important thing. It is what Paul spends an entire chapter on in this section on gifts. Love is everything. If we speak in tongues, but don’t do so in love, we are a noisy gong. If we do deeds of mercy, but lack love, we gain nothing. If we fathom all mysteries, but lack love…you get the picture. Spiritual gifts and the need for them will pass away when Jesus returns…but love will remain ever relevant. So the most important question to ask regarding the things of the Spirit is are we first seeking to love.

Then Paul tells us to eagerly desire spiritual gifts. You may notice in some English translations of the word spiritual gifts, the gifts is italicized…meaning it isn’t actually there in Greek. In fact, many scholars actually believe the idea of spiritual gifts is misleading…as if we all are given some kind of spiritual super power we carry around on our own once we become a Christian…as if God zaps us like the lightning bolt that turned Barry Allen into the flash or the spider that bit Peter Parker and gave him the ability to shoot webs out of his wrists. The danger here is thinking that the spiritual gifts are something we have or do apart from the Spirit Himself. In reality, the Greek tells us, “eagerly desire the things of the Spirit,” or perhaps better yet, “eagerly desire the stuff the Spirit does.” Because the Spirit does do things. When Jesus is worshiped and followed in community, the Spirit manifests the ministry of Jesus in the Body of Christ. The Spirit enables us to speak in tongues, or prophesy, or heal, or preach, or teach, or administer, or serve, or give generously. It is the Spirit who does these things…distributing through the entire body of Christ the charisma of Jesus Himself. He doesn’t manifest all the ministry of Jesus in every believer, so that we may realize we need one another and we are only fully a picture of Jesus together. 

But how do we engage with this Spirit who gives us these ‘gifts.’? We are to eagerly desire these things the Spirit does. The Greek is a very strong verb. zeilo’o means to desire earnestly, and in some uses even means, to be jealous for. Paul is encouraging a burning desire for the things of the Spirit. We are to hunger and thirst for these manifestations of God’s power and love and presence. I liken it to how one of my sons feels when I buy the other a Del’s lemonade on a hot day. When they see the green and yellow cup, dripping with condensation, when they see the refreshing bits of lemon peel in the frozen delicacy, there is only one thing they can think to ask me. “Dad, can I have one of those too?” 

PRAYER PROMPTS

• How hungry are you for the manifestation of the things the Spirit does? In your life? In your local church? Ask God to increase your hunger?
• How hungry is your church to see the Spirit of God show up? Ask God to stoke more hunger?
• Pray for God’s people to see the things we see the Spirit doing in other places or at other times, including in the Church of the New Testament, as not only possibilities for us…but they are a menu of options to ask God for.
• Pray for our motive to be love. As we consider the Holy Spirit, what are our motives to see the Spirit move? Is it to be part of something exciting? Is it to see the spectacular? Let’s ask God to make our primary motive love, as it was for Jesus when he ministered in the Spirit’s power.
• Let’s ask God to fill our hearts with love, and make the church’s primary motivation one of love, and to empower us with the things the Spirit does.

Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

28  “And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

 29 Even on the male and female servants

in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 32 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

PRAYER GUIDE

We are living in a unique moment in human history. In this age, the age of the Church, the age of the last days, the age of the “afterward” of Joel 2, salvation is offered and promised to everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. It doesn’t matter if they are young, old, male, female, Jew, Gentile. It doesn’t matter their race, ethnicity, language, or culture. It doesn’t matter their station or status in society. It doesn’t matter if they are ‘righteous’ or ‘sinful.’ There is only one pre-requisite for salvation: they must call upon the name of the Lord.

And to call on his name requires two things. First, it requires us to know we are in need. We do not cry out or call out for help when we think we have everything figured out. It means we know we don’t have everything together. Our lives are not working. We are missing something. We need rescuing. This, on the one hand, is a terrifying thing to admit. Nobody wants to admit they can’t do it anymore. They can’t hold it all together. But on the other hand, finally admitting we need saving, rescuing, healing…it is deeply liberating.

Second, to call on the name of the LORD means we know about the LORD. It means we have been told about Him, or heard about Him from someone. This is Paul’s point when he quotes Joel 2 in Romans 10:12-13. Paul writes, “there is no difference between Jew and Gentile–the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'”

But what is Paul’s next point? “How then,” he asks, “can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” If people don’t hear about the Lord they can’t call on Him. But who is going to tell them if we don’t?

Anyone who calls on the name will be saved. But in order to call on the Lord, one must first recognize their need for rescue, and then, one must know about the Lord enough to put their trust and faith in Him. This is what we are praying for today. In a season of history in which anyone can be saved…we are praying that many will be saved.

PRAYER PROMPTS

• For people to recognize their desperate need for God, for Jesus, for salvation.
• For Christians to get past their baggage about evangelism and be moved with compassion that people desperately need Jesus.
• That every single Christian would tell another person about Jesus.
• Start by asking God for the privilege of you telling someone about Jesus this year.
• That thousands, even millions of lost people would call on the name of the LORD, resulting in a Third Great Awakening in our nation.

Tuesday Prayer Room – 9am 

28  “And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

 29 Even on the male and female servants

in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 32 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

PRAYER GUIDE

In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God only fell upon special men and women. On one remarkable occasion, in Numbers 11, Moses gathered 70 of the elders of Israel in the tabernacle. The text says: “And the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to them, and he took some of the Spirit that was on Moses and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but did not do so again.” 

But it turned out that in that moment, the Spirit also fell and rested upon two other men, Eldad and Medad, and they also prophesied in the camp. When Joshua heard about this, he asked Moses to stop them. Moses responds: “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”

What Moses could only wish and long for in his era, God actually promised in Joel 2. In the last days, he says, “I will pour out my Spirit,” not on a special prophet or even on 72 prophets, but on “all people.” Moses would have been amazed. 

What is even more amazing? What God promised in Joel 2, we have now inherited. 

Since Pentecost, every class of people, young and old, men and women, slave and free, now have access to the Spirit of God. Because of Jesus’ perfect life, death on the cross, glorious resurrection, and ascension to the throne of heaven, any human being who surrenders and places their trust in Jesus becomes a resting place for God’s own Spirit.

PRAYER PROMPTS:

• Let’s claim God’s promises in Joel 2 – pray them into being. These are things God has promised and things God has wanted. He wants us to want these things too and ask him to honor his own word. 
• For young people, especially our sons and daughters to be filled with the Spirit and to prophesy.
• For old men and women to dream dreams inspired by God’s Spirit. Even those who have been or should be disillusioned or exhausted or disappointed by life, pray that they would be refreshed by the Spirit, experiencing resurrected hope and faith. 
• For God to reveal visions, purposes, divine strategies, assignments that bring hope and activation to the people of God.
• For God to give visions to young people, for their lives, for the church, for their school, city. 
• For God to pour out his spirit on those who are not wealthy or privileged or powerful in society. To visit the poor, those of low status, those on the underside of the economy and society with the presence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. That God would dignify them and bless them as his image bearers, giving them a redemptive role in his Kingdom.