As you pray in those thirty minutes before service, you are praying in the Spirit to yourself, and you are not bringing confusion.  Somebody sitting three rows away from you is not asking, “Is that a message in tongues?  What’s going on?  How come somebody’s not interpreting that?”  It is very obvious that I am not speaking to the whole company.  That is not what was happening in Corinth.  Everybody was praying at a volume where it sounded like it was a message to the whole community.  In fact...  “Hey.  I can praise God louder than you.”  They started trying to outdo each other, and the next thing you know, everybody was shouting in tongues.  Paul said, “No.”  This is part of what was happening here in this church.  Everybody was wanting to draw attention to themselves.

That is the whole basis of what Paul is addressing here.  It is not about you.  It is not drawing attention to yourself.  It is not showing how spiritual you are.  “Look at the gifts that I have.”  You do not possess these gifts.  Those gifts are not to you as an individual.  Those gifts are to the body, and God is allowing them to flow through you to edify His body.  If it was your gift, then you could use it any time you want, but it says it is by the Spirit.  If it was your gift, then you could go out and do whatever you want.  You could work miracles any time you wanted to.  You could prophesy and speak forth words of knowledge any time you wanted to.  It is by the Spirit.

We see all that as he is bringing this order.  He said, “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.”  Let the others judge.  For the hour that I was just speaking of, there are all these self-appointed prophets, running from church to church and wanting to have a word from the Lord.  If we had a visitor come in here from some other church in the area…  First, when we talk about everything being done decently and in order, I am going to give you an example of something.  If I am a prophet, or I think I am, and I go to a church where nobody knows me, an orderly way to do that would be to check in with the pastor.  Say, “Hey, I’m a prophet.  I may go off in this service.”  Then the pastor should take him to that verse and say, “If you do, you will be judged.”  Isn’t that what it says?  Let the prophet speak and the others...  That is order.

If you are going to speak, be prepared to be judged.  Who are the others?  The others are obviously the eldership and the prophets that are residents.  We will not go into the simple gift of prophecy in this particular teaching.  The fact that God may use you one time in a service to prophesy does not make you a prophet; amen?  It says to let the prophets speak.  This can be the prophet of the moment speaking a word of edification, supernaturally by the Spirit, unto edification, exhortation, and comfort.  If that person goes off that simple prophecy that is taking place, that is edifying us.  It is edifying.  It is exhorting.  It is comforting.  It is edifying, exhorting, and comforting.  Now, it becomes a foretelling of what God is going to do somewhere in this ministry in the future—Blah. Blah. Blah.  “Nope.  Hold that.”  That is not how the course is set for the church; amen?