Earnestly Desire the Spiritual Gifts

Recently on the Mark Prater podcast, Mark encouraged listeners to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts as an expression of loving others. Here is a clip from that conversation with Ben Kreps. The full podcast is linked below.

We don't want to just be in name continuation, we want to be it in name and in practice as well. And the New Testament speaks about our pursuit of the gifts in particular. In 1 Corinthians 14 verse 1, "Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy". And then in second Timothy chapter one, Paul is writing to Timothy. And in chapter one verse five, he's reminding Timothy of his sincere faith. And then he says to Timothy in the next verse, verse six, "For this reason (or because of your sincere faith), for this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God..."

So that language of earnestly desiring and fanning into flame, that is active language that exhorts us to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. In other words, they need our intentional pursuit and we need to be reminded of that. That's what Paul is doing in 2 Timothy 1, he's reminding him of his sincere faith and then he's reminding him to fan into flame the gifts that God has given him. And that's so important to us because we need the work and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the members of our churches and the pastors of our churches because it's the Spirit that empowers our gospel ministry and gospel mission. And we will do that best when all of the gifts that God has given every member of a Sovereign Grace church are being used for the common good as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, to serve others. And it is an expression of loving others because we are pursuing love. So it's just something that I want to remind our pastors of, that you would be intentional to remind the members of your church to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.