MOVE — Week 2
Last week’s message was about stirring up a gift already in you. This week turned to the gifts people tend to misunderstand, argue about, or quietly avoid altogether — the ones where God speaks through a person’s mouth. Prophecy. Tongues. Interpretation.
Before getting into the mechanics, the message laid down something that needed saying first: gifts and fruit are not the same thing. Fruit — love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest — is character every believer is called to grow in, all the time. Gifts are different. They’re what you’re equipped to do, distributed as the Spirit wills, not a uniform set everyone carries the same way. Confusing the two is part of why this whole topic gets misused as often as it does.
One clarification mattered more than any other: there are two different things people mean when they say “tongues.” There’s the gift of tongues — a public message meant to be interpreted, for the whole church. And there’s the grace of tongues — a private prayer language, between you and God, that needs no interpreter. Scripture treats them differently because they aren’t the same thing, and most of the confusion around 1 Corinthians 14 disappears once you separate them.
Paul is careful about the order he gives these gifts:
“Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy… he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.” — 1 Corinthians 14:1, 3-4 (NKJV)
Pursue love first. Desire gifts second. Whenever the order gets reversed, gifts stop being something you give and start being something you prove. And notice — Paul isn’t ranking a private prayer language beneath prophecy as though one were shameful. He says elsewhere he’s grateful to pray in tongues more than anyone in that church. He just knew where each gift belonged.
So what is prophecy, if it isn’t mainly prediction? Simply put: a word from God, through a person, for edification, exhortation, or comfort — delivered at the right time, in the right way. Paul pictures a whole room full of this happening at once:
“How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” — 1 Corinthians 14:26 (NKJV)
Each of you. Not the platform only. This gift was never reserved for a title — it requires the Spirit and a willing mouth, nothing more.
And when it comes to how these gifts operate together in a room, Paul closes the whole conversation with two commands, not one:
“Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.” — 1 Corinthians 14:39-40 (NKJV)
Don’t unplug the gift. And manage the button. A church that only remembers the first half gets chaos. A church that only remembers the second quietly forbids what it was told never to forbid. We need both halves, held together, every time we gather — not order instead of the gift, and not the gift instead of order.
Reflection
Have you ever let fear of getting it wrong keep you from exercising a gift God has already given you — in public or in private, in your prayer language or in a word for someone else? What would it look like this week to actually open what’s been sitting wrapped?
Prayer
Father, thank You that You still speak. Thank You that this gift didn’t stop with the apostles, and that You’ve entrusted ordinary people with the ability to build each other up with a word at exactly the right time. Take away the fear of getting it wrong, and take away the pride that turns a gift into a performance. Let love lead every word I speak. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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