Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
There are teenagers in the local church who know the Bible better than a person in the denominations who has attended church all their lives for decades and being only drip fed by the pastor's sermons (which in many cases are not even biblical, being merely only instructional or concerned with ethics or social justice issues etc). This is also evident by the fact that a young person can deliver a biblical message in the meeting, almost as good as any adult, whereas most teenagers in any local denomination would struggle. Two reasons for this - the teenagers are treated like adults and expected to read the Word like everyone else (rather than play games), and secondly unlike in the denominations, the meeting environment encourages people to overcome their shyness and speak.
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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.