AUGUST 18
THE SPIRIT WITH US
Somewhere in our faith journey we stopped believing in the impossible. We traded in the God who became flesh, born of a virgin, crucified, resurrected, and ascended into Heaven, for a Divine guide-from-the-side. Let us open our eyes once again, or for the first time, to the God who still parts seas, who still heals broken bodies, and who still transforms lives. The God of Miracles. God gives us miraculous gifts in order to be a witness.
Work through the following questions and scriptures on your own or get together with your group, spiritual running partners, or family to talk through what you are learning.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Do you know what your Spiritual gifts are? If so, what are they and how are you seeing God use them to build up His church?
- If you do not yet follow Jesus, in what ways are you naturally gifted and how could you leverage those gifts even more to love and care for others?
2. Read 1 Corinthians 12:1-14. The Apostles Paul is giving instructions to the church in Corinth on how to operate in their Spiritual gifts.
Make some observations about this passage (What does the text say?):
- What do you notice and what are you curious about?
Make some interpretations (What does the passage mean?)
- What do you learn about Jesus?
- What do you learn about humanity?
Now make some applications (what’s my response?)
- How are you encouraged, challenged, or convicted by this passage?
- What should be our response to this passage?
3. How do you see those in your group exhibiting the gifts of the Spirit within your group (or family, spiritual running partnership, etc.). Take time to encourage one another in them.
KEY SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 12:1-14 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
PRAYER
Spend the majority of your time together praying for the Spirit to come in power on each of you and that He would reveal how He desires to use each one of you for the building up of the church.
PRACTICE
Join us for Pray First, where we devote 21 days to intentional prayer as a church family and commit to praying for the transforming power of Jesus in your life and others.