Pastor's Blog

The Spirit of God is a person, and we should avoid suppressing, quenching, depriving the Spirit of God of His free manifestation and movement. Now the human spirit, that is something else, as I already said. Perhaps I will stay with this context. In verse 20 it says: “Despise not prophesying.”

To “despise” simply means to “treat with contempt.” Prophesying is speaking in the Spirit of God in the language understood by the hearers. I noticed we had two prophetic utterances this morning. It is speaking in the Spirit of God in the language of the speaker and the hearer without the use of speaking in tongues and interpretation.

In fact, the two are equal. Tongues and interpretation has the same effect as prophecy, but there is a difference. I might go into that some other time. In the meantime, “do not treat prophesying with contempt.” I was in a church in the States where all week long we had no manifestation of the Spirit of any kind. At the end of the week, I said to the pastor, “Brother, don’t you have the gifts of the Spirit in operation in this church?” He said to me, “Oh, we don’t bother with that stuff.” And that’s a Pentecostal man. “We don’t bother with that stuff.”

But the Book says, “Covet earnestly the best gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” It says, “Covet to prophesy.” Paul said, “You may all prophesy one by one.” This word “covet” in the Greek is a very strong word. It means “to be in hot pursuit,” and prophesying is one of the gifts which is open to all Spirit-baptized believers.

“Despise not prophesying.” What Paul had in mind was the spurious. In his day, there were also false prophets and false prophesying as we have in our day. I have heard them. We had a fellow in school. He gave what was meant to be, or purported to be a prophecy. “Behold, thus saith the Lord…” and then he gave a terrific rebuke to somebody. After chapel was out, he happened to walk past me.