Have you ever eaten a bread and jelly sandwich? Jelly in the middle, and bread on either side.

If you just ate the bread without the jelly, it would probably be a little dry and tasteless. By the same token, if you just ate the jelly, it might be delicious initially, but soon you would decide it was too sweet.

That’s what I think Paul is saying in 1Corinthians 12 through 14.

Chapter 12 tells us about the spiritual gifts every Christian receives, and Chapter 14 tells us how to use these gifts to edify the church.

In-between is Chapter 13, that beautiful portrait of love...

Our sister ministry, The Christian Heart, highlights what people do in their everyday life to show their love for Jesus. Our mission is to encourage Christians to put their faith into action. Here is one of our stories....

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I thought I knew what it meant to follow Christ and to take up my cross. But, over the years, I have learned that God often gives us ministry opportunities that we've never asked for and certainly never wanted. When my heart was broken as a young single woman, God gave me a ministry I never wanted. He gave me a group of women with broken hearts to come alongside. Ministering to other single women was incredibly rewarding but also vulnerable and painful. Years later, God called me to a new ministry in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I never imagined spending nine months in a hospital with my very sick son. I remember holding him and thinking that once again, God had given me a ministry I never wished for...