The very first thing we receive from God, before anything else, is Love. Our conception, our birth, our first breath are all the love of God manifest in our physical reality.
As we struggle to deal with this unleashing of the spirit of death and loss, we all as Christians seek to reconcile the words of Jesus with our personal experience of it.
"Not by fine words." ... When was the last time you you encountered that in the church? Unfortunately I have to admit that I have not experienced a "demonstration of the Spirit's power" in the church the way Paul means in this passage.
