Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:3 (NIV)
31 Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way. 13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
What is the “most excellent way”? Love. One of the issues facing the Corinthian church was who had the spiritual gift of “tongues” and who did not. If you had it, you were deemed to be better or more “spiritual”. Paul essentially says that having spiritual gifts without love is like wearing expensive perfume while holding an open bag of stinking garbage. Wow! Great! Who cares. No one wants to be around you because of your lack of love, so your spiritual gift is useless. Pray that we at Shepherd of the Hills would never settle for the lesser things that lead to nothing, but would pursue the most excellent way of love that only comes by looking away from ourselves to the source of love: Jesus Christ.