You are talented, you have gifts, maybe even pulling off marvels with your own hands.

You are impressively gifted.

But there's a catch.

You can be a miracle worker and waste your gifts.

Spiritual gifts are like dynamite. In the right hands, they blow up rocks

to build tunnels and highways they can produce, but in the wrong hands, hands seeking to puff up,

spiritual gifts are good for nothing. Today I asked Pastor John, wasted talents.

And that brings us to the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, which we read together today

and to this question from Martha in San Diego.

Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question.

In 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1 to 3, Paul teaches that spiritual gifts,

though valuable, are meaningless without love. He explains that no matter how impressive or beneficial

a gift may seem, whether it's speaking in tongues, prophesying, even giving away all of our possessions.

It all amounts to nothing if it isn't

motivated by love. A spiritual gift plus that gift put in action minus a motive of love equals

nothing. That is a powerful warning from Paul.

How does this challenge our understanding of the role of spiritual gifts in the church?

And why do you think Paul places love even above the most powerful spiritual abilities?

I think the reason Paul makes love the measure of the right use of spiritual gifts is because it is so easy for us

to lose sight of the fact that spiritual gifts are meant for the upbuilding of other people,

not the manifestation of our own powers, even divine powers. In other words, spiritual gifts are

wonderful and dangerous, just like dynamite is wonderful and dangerous. In the right hands,

...