Understanding the gifts

Lily Cathcart February 10, 2026 1 0

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1 Corinthians 2: 1-16 (NIV-UK)

1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” - the things God has prepared for those who love him - 10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Isn’t it amazing that we have access to a part of God right inside us? Right here inside everything. So no matter where on this earth we may go, we can be sure that the Spirit is with us, watching us, guiding us to be light and salt in the world. And not only this but the Spirit brings us gifts. Not wrapped in cheerful paper but awoken from within us. 

I have often found this a hard concept to grasp, that I have gifts from God built into my personality and into how I inhabit the world. In fact I might find it easier if the Spirit would appear to me in the form of a dove or a pigeon or a scruffy fox, and hand me a present or a note or a map to show me which way to aim.

I wonder whether God and the Spirit just don’t see the fun in that.

I wonder if they know us humans far too well to offer us an easy solution. They know we can’t resist a puzzle, a half remembered lyric, a feeling just ahead of us that feels like home.

So here is the Spirit, with me and with you, on our journeys. The Spirit walks with us slowly revealing new gifts within us through whispers and sunsets, through mistakes and pain, through happenstance and organisation. Then, once we have a gift, the Spirit walks with us and helps us learn how to use it.

It really is amazing.

Prayer:

Dear God

Thank you that the Spirit journeys with us always.

Thank you that the Spirit is in every part of our world

fighting and striving to bring salt and light and love to it.

Teach us to strive alongside you, and bring our gifts into your service.

Amen