READ: Psalm 47.1 NLT

'Come, everyone! Clap your hands! Shout to God with joyful praise!'

I once went to visit some friends who were doing mission work in Southern Pakistan close to the Sind desert. It was very, very hot. I remember how keen they were to prevent any draughts because the searing heat was too much to bear, even through the smallest gaps. On Sunday I went to their mud hut church and, as I entered, I was given a percussion instrument to play. I wasn’t asked if I wanted one or if I had any musical gifts! Everyone was given an instrument. The service that followed was in a language that I didn’t know at all but it really didn’t matter because it was clear that we were worshipping the Lord and I was totally involved in it with my newly acquired drum.

The psalms very often encourage everyone to get involved in worship. Whatever our gifts, background or mood we all need to worship God. Whatever kind of worship we are used to, whether it is based on a prepared liturgy or is free and charismatic, there can be a danger that the worship can be seen as a performance. The people at the front are the performers and everybody else watches. This is not what God wants. He wants us all to be involved and to bang our drums (or equivalent!) as an act of united worship. As we worship him together, the church is strengthened and enabled to be the kind of loving, caring, united community that God wants it to be, and the result, hopefully, is that even more people will want to worship him.

Worship is a rich and wonderful experience but, essentially, we are doing two things. Firstly, we are declaring who God is. We are recognising that he made us and that he is all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. He is worthy of the absolute best that we can bring to him. Secondly, we are acknowledging who we are. We are totally dependent on him. Without his strength, love and wisdom we are lost. That’s why we all need to clap hands, bang our drums and shout out our praise to him.

READ: 1 Corinthians 13 8, 9 and 13 NLT

'Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.'

I don’t know about you but I don’t like throwing things away. I am writing this on a laptop. A new laptop. I hung on to the last one for as long as possible. It was starting to run very slowly, and sometimes didn’t want to start at all. I was prepared to concede that it had good days and bad days, because we all do, but, in the end, I had to admit that I was devoting too much of my life to waiting for it to spring into action. The truth is, of course, that all our possessions have a limited life. Our cars, our microwaves, our beds, our desks and even our homes don’t last for ever.

The same principle exists in the spiritual realm as well. Our spiritual gifts are a wonderful blessing but they come to an end. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, preaching, words of knowledge are all amazing gifts of God but the day will come when they are silent. There will be no more need for them. However, some things do last for ever. Paul lists them as faith, hope and love. But one shines above them all and that’s love.

Isn’t it a wonderful thought that the love that we show day by day never comes to an end? It is a reflection of God’s eternal nature and so every time we reach out to another person and truly love them we are sharing in the stream of his eternal love. We need that reminder because loving is often painful and unnoticed and sometimes rejected. However, there is nothing more important that we can ever do than love.

READ: 1 Corinthians 13.4-7 NLT

'Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.'

I am sure that you have often heard these famous words. They give us the most beautiful description of love and, understandably, they are often read at weddings. Love sounds incredibly attractive doesn’t it? We would all long to be as loving as this. But there’s a problem. A very big problem, and we won’t make any progress until we have recognised it. The problem is that no amount of human effort will enable us to be as loving as this. However hard we try we are bound to fail. The reason for that is that the only way to show perfect love is by enabling God to work through us. Hard as we might try, we will never succeed in being truly loving without God’s daily strength.

The way to become more loving is interestingly not by thinking more about love. What matters is that we focus more on God. As we get to know God better, and allow our lives to be shaped by him, his love will naturally flow through our lives. There will be no stopping it! Living in God’s way of love will shape every part of life from the moment we wake up. It will affect the way in which we greet people in the morning. It will guide our prayers for the people we see on the way to work. It will colour our relationship with our families, colleagues and friends. We will, without thinking about it, be seeking the very best for them all. When we meet people in need we will naturally reach out to them and seek to help. We haven’t got time to do much thinking about love because we are so busy loving.

READ: 1 Corinthians 12.14 and 16-17 NLT

'Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?'

I love Paul’s sense of humour! He imagines a conversation going on within the body which is plainly ridiculous. It would be crazy if the ear were to complain that it wasn’t a proper part of the body because it wasn’t an eye. But, funny as it is, Paul is making a very serious point. He is talking about inferiority complexes and they get everywhere. Many people in churches look down on themselves. Some think they don’t count because they are only a Sunday school teacher, or only a cleaner, or only a newcomer. Paul wants to make it clear that, so far as God is concerned, there are no “only” people in the church. Every single person is vital.

Paul recognises that there is another problem as well. And that’s the problem of having a superiority complex, and this is just as absurd. Paul imagines the eye saying to the hand, “I don’t need you” and the head saying to the feet “I don’t need you”. Not only would it be offensive for the parts of the body to talk to one another like that, but it would also be absolutely wrong – the eye does need the hand, the head does need the feet! In every organisation there tends to be a pecking order. Without much thought you can work out who are seen as the most powerful and important in the organisation and who are the least powerful and most unimportant. But Paul protests that in the church, just like in the body, everyone is absolutely crucial. We need to learn to treasure everybody and to value them highly because God has placed them within the church, and without them the church would be unable to function.

READ: 1 Corinthians 11.27-28 NLT

'So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup.'

If you are employed then you probably have the delight of an annual appraisal. The intention is to stand back from how things are going in order to acknowledge what went badly and what went well, and to reflect on how things could be strengthened for the year ahead. Conducted well, appraisals can be a great blessing and I have always been grateful for the ones that I have had. Here Paul is suggesting that we need to conduct a self-appraisal on a regular basis before we meet together to celebrate Christ’s death for us on the cross.

The Corinthian church had clearly made a huge mess of their services. When they had a meal together to celebrate Jesus’ death some of them ate so much that there was nothing left for others. It makes their services sound like a riot! Paul concluded that their services actually did more harm than good. That’s a very severe conclusion and although I have been to many different Christian services over the years, I have never had to be as harsh as that! For Paul, this special service was so important that everyone needed to prepare carefully for it, and crucial to that preparation was self-examination.

When we examine ourselves we need to be ruthlessly honest. This is a very serious business. No-one would want to be found guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. As we look hard at our lives we are not looking for perfection, because we will all fail that test. What the Lord wants to see in us as our honesty. As we shine the light on our lives we need to acknowledge our failings and seek his forgiveness and renewal as we rededicate our lives to him. We come with empty hands so that he may fill us again with his blessings.