In our walk with God we experience times when we feel like we are stuck on a level and things stop working the way they did before. All the mechanics of our walk with God, all the ministries and gifts are not supposed to be our goal. The goal always has to be a deeper experience of God’s love for us.
At the end of the 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul is addressing this issue that happens with almost everyone. But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31). Paul was saying that we all should look to walk in the gifts but there is a more excellent way.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1–2).
Without a deeper experience of appropriating the Divine love, we tend to get stuck on the level that we were yesterday, and everything that we do can become like a noisy gong. Paul was not saying we should stop doing the things we do in our walk with God, he was saying that we need to learn to always be expressing the love of God in everything that we do.
And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16).
1 Corinthians 13:1-9
Ephesians 3:14-21