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Set Apart August 3 Devotional

by David Joynt on August 03, 2024


1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-7 | 1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and       understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

No discussion of gifts is complete without a mention of the greatest gift. Paul insists that no gift has power without love. Heavenly speech is a droning noise, prophetic powers and knowledge, faith, generosity, and even martyrdom, are meaningless and powerless without it. Love animates the other gifts and directs them so they are not used to burnish reputations, score points, or impress others.

 

Love shows up as a set of practical virtues: patience when others are difficult, humility and ego control that eliminates boasting, envy, and arrogance, a refusal to be touchy, self-assertive, or resentful. Love celebrates the truth and has an unlimited capacity to endure, trust, hope, and carry on.

 

Are you growing in love?

 

 

Gracious God,

May we use our gifts in loving ways to help our neighbors. Fill us with Your agape that shapes and powers all we do and say.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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