Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

I'm excited to preach this morning.

I believe God has a word.

I'm always discouraged when I wake up in the morning and there's like there's people sick.

There's people that can't make it.

I like people when they're, I like them when people come to church.

You know what I mean?

And obviously things happen.

But what I'm going to ask you to do for those of you who are here, if you are blessed by the message, and even if you're not blessed by the message, maybe it wasn't for you, but maybe it's for somebody else.

I'm going to ask that you would share this message because I do believe God has a timely word for his church.

Amen.

So I'm going to, I'm going to task you to do that this morning that you would share this.

The PNEUMA Church podcast, we have a podcast.

You can share it.

I don't know if we're live right now.

We were having some internet issues, but if all else fells, you can share the podcast.

And I also want to make one more announcement. our men's conference is coming up.

Our women's conference is next week, right?

It's next week and Saturday.

And, man, I know that God is going to move.

And if you are a woman and you have not registered for that, register.

And if you are a man, I'm sorry?

At the door.

Register at the door.

Okay.

If you are a man, three o'clock.

If you are a man, we are having our men's conference in a couple weeks.

Amen?

Man.

And God, man, God always shows up at our men's conference.

And he's going to show up again and it's going to be awesome.

But look, we're trying to feed y'all guys for free.

Okay.

So I need y'all to register.

Okay.

Guys have the worst habit of not registering for things.

And they tell their wives to do it.

Hey, fellas, you can do it.

Okay?

You can do it.

Pick up your phone.

Go to the website and just all you have to do is say, I'm going.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it.

It's all you got to do.

Okay, I'm not mad at y'all, but like, come on, get it together.

Register, okay?

Amen?

I heard more ladies and men.

Godly.

All right.

Let's stand.

We're going to go to the Word this morning.

We're going to go to 1st Corinthians chapter 14.

And we're going to read a little bit, 1 Corinthians 14, 1st Corinthians 14, 1 through 26.

If you have it, give me an amen.

We're going to skip a little bit just for the sake of time.

I don't want to lose you.

1 Corinthians 14, 1 through 26.

I would love for the church's attention this morning.

If you can help it, if you can hold it, hold it to the end of service.

Because God has a word for his people.

Amen.

It says this.

This is the apostle Paul speaking. he says pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

For the one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God.

No one understands him.

But he utters mysteries in the spirit.

On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to the people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.

Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy.

The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues unless someone interprets so that the church may be built up.

Down to verse 12.

It says, so with yourselves, since you are eager for the manifestations of the spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret.

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.

What am I to do?

I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.

I will sing with my mind also.

Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your Thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?

For you, you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up.

I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.

Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct us. others than 10,000 words in a tongue.

Down to verse 26, what then brothers?

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.

Let all things be done for building up.

Amen.

Let's go to God in prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for this word, my God, that you have given to your servant.

Lord, I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would be on my lips this morning, my God, that you would allow me to deliver your word, Father God, with power with authority, my God, and that we would receive it, my God, with humility and conviction in Jesus' mighty name.

Amen.

You can be seated.

As I prayed over this word this week, I prayed that this would be a message that the church would really embrace.

I've had this word to preach for a while now.

I haven't preached it because it's not one of those words that I'm, like, excited to preach, if I'm being honest.

I'm not sure if this is one of those sermons that you really, you know, feel like on a personal level.

Like last week's sermon was very personal, and I praise God it spoke to many of us.

This word is one that we really have to receive together as a body in unity.

Somebody say, together.

We got to receive this together as a body.

So much unity.

And I mean, you've heard me talk about this ad nauseum.

Like we've lost unity in churches around the world due to differing, you know, theology and biblical interpretation and cultural preferences and all that.

And even though we can all, even though we're all united to Christ by the spirit of God, when it comes to some of the things that we're going to talk about today, there's often some disagreements that caused a church. to divide.

Okay.

So I want to ask you that we would all intentionally be in one accord today.

Focus on this word that God, that we may receive it as a body.

Amen?

Together.

Can we do that?

Amen.

I entitled the sermon, the power to build.

The power to build.

The church has been empowered by the Holy Spirit. to build up, amen.

As soon as the Holy Spirit was descended on the apostles, that was the first order of business, to go out, to make disciples, and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right?

To build the kingdom of God.

And apparently, that message was being lost in the Corinthian Church.

The Corinthians had a lot of problems.

We've talked about this before.

They had problems of division.

They misunderstood how to properly use the gifts of the spirit.

They didn't know how to have church in a way that edified the church.

They were a very selfish group of believers who were ultimately missing the mark of building up the church.

The role of any church is to build up the body of believers in that church.

Jesus told Peter, on this rock, I will build my church.

He said that to a man that he had to first build up for three years, through discipleship.

And then he commissioned him to go out and do the same.

The church should always be built up.

Jesus never said on this rock, my church will do nothing.

He never said on this rock, my church will just come to church.

He never said on this rock, my church will just be entertained.

No, he said, I will build my church, meaning lives are going to be transformed through the work of the church. people will be saved because the church pointed to Jesus.

Families will be restored because the church walked with hurting people all the way to their healing.

And this should continue on and on and on and on until Jesus returns for his church.

So in everything that we do, our goal as a church, as a body of believers, is to build.

And there's power to build.

There's power.

Come on testify this morning.

How many of you can honestly say that the church has helped you grow?

You've learned the word at church.

You were healed at church.

You were forgiven at church.

You were introduced to Jesus at church.

You've done ministry at church.

You've let go of some things at the altar at a church.

You've received some revelation for your personal calling at church.

You've been edified here.

You've been edified at church. maybe not this one, maybe another one.

But we have been built up spiritually because there is power in the church.

This is why we need the church.

Because together we grow closer to the likeness of Christ.

Look, the church doesn't give me eternal life.

It doesn't heal me of my sins, but it is the vehicle that takes us to those things.

And the fuel to that vehicle is the Holy Spirit.

And so the moment that the church, and when I say church, I don't mean temple, I mean the people of God.

We are the church.

The moment the church is no longer building up others, when we're no longer discipling, when we're not teaching, when we're not seeing people grow, we got a problem.

And let me just side note something here.

Like if you ever get to a place where you feel like you're not growing here at PNEUMA, come talk to me.

Okay.

Come talk to me.

People, people have come to this church.

And when I asked them why, some of them have said because they weren't growing at their previous church.

And that's fine.

It's fine.

But, you know, when you leave without even having a conversation about why you're leaving with your pastor, that hurts, bro.

We got feelings to, you know.

To later find out from somebody else, they just felt like they weren't growing.

That's, we take that personally. because that means we're not, we did something wrong to not steward the people that we have intentionally sought to steward.

We've missed the mark.

So if that's ever you come and talk to me, talk to a leader, talk to one of our pastors.

And you know what?

Not everybody is going to grow in the same way and at the same rate.

It's such a vague thing sometimes when people say, well, I wasn't growing.

In what way were you trying to grow?

How were you trying to grow?

Some people need to grow in a very specific call that they have in their lives.

And sometimes not every church is going to be able to steward your growth.

Elijah needed to be under the leadership of Elijah.

Not because they weren't any other godly men around, but because Elijah had a very specific calling and it needed to grow under a specific leader.

A couple years ago, someone, they had been attending our church, you know, faithfully, and they loved our church, they loved our services, they loved the worship, they loved the preaching, they loved everything.

But he felt like he was being called to another, to a very specific area of ministry.

And so I remember he came up and he told me, he said, Pastor, I'm feeling tugged to another church right. now another pastor they're disciplining their members in a very specific area that i feel called to their pastor was gifted um in a certain area and he felt like he needed to be under that pastor's leadership i said go man i said get out of here man nobody wants you here i'm just kidding i didn't say that i would never say that i gave my blessing i said go go pastor danny and i even prayed over him we gave him our blessing because the church is less about growing in numbers and more about growing in spirit right the way that the holy spirit empowers us as believers to build the church is by giving power to our gifts and listen guys i know when we talk about you know the church in this way we all we always think about pastors and we think about leaders this is not a message for pastors not a message for leaders this is a message for the church the body because the body is gifted you are gifted And one of the many topics that Paul addresses here in this letter to the Corinthians and one that has been of great interest throughout the church, especially in Pentecostal churches, is the topic of spiritual gifts.

And, you know, the biggest debates surrounding spiritual gifts are those more specific to like the supernatural gifts, like, you know, divine healing and tongues and foreknowledge, all of which we believe that, you know, God still uses today.

But if you are a Christian, you probably desire to have some type of spiritual gift.

In fact, we should all desire gifts of the Spirit.

Paul says earnestly desire them.

Pray for them.

Pray that God would use you in the way that he wants to use you.

Seek to better yourself to the Lord's service.

When God has called you to something, do your due diligence.

Study, get prepared, get better. earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.

And by the way, the spiritual gifts are not limited to 1st Corinthians 12.

Paul offers another list in Romans 12 in Ephesians.

He tells Timothy to fan the flame of the gift that he received.

Like, everyone is graced with their own gift, whether that's listed in the Bible or not.

For some of you, might be writing, it might be singing, it might be rapping.

I don't know.

It might be counseling.

It might be administrating.

I just, I want to acknowledge that because so many Christians walk around thinking that they're not gifted by the Spirit when in fact you are, you just haven't realized it yet.

And so the purpose of any gift that we received by the Spirit is not for our own glory.

It's not for our own profit and it's not for our own praise.

It's so that God may be glorified through the building up of his church.

Right?

We all know this.

I don't even think I need to preach this.

But if we're honest, sometimes the personal praise and the applause and the prophet, sometimes, sometimes that gets in a way of why we do what we do.

And so, you know, you have musicians who they started playing in the church because, man, they just desired to play.

They loved God so much and they loved the ministry so much.

They would be used and abused and they didn't care how long they were going to be at service.

They didn't ask for anything in return, but now those same musicians can't get invited to another church to minister out without asking what's it paid.

Ouch.

And even like, I'm not just going to pick on musicians, I'll pick on everybody.

Evangelists, even if you don't have an honorarium, you probably expect to go to a church and they're going to give you a love offering.

I'm not trying to be sitting call.

I'm not trying to bash. any type of ministry.

And I'm also not saying that it's wrong to honor ministers.

We should be honoring our ministers.

And that's something I believe in.

And whenever we have an invited a guest, man, we bless them.

And we bless them well.

Because they got to eat and they got to live.

And if we can help it, they deserve to live a good life, not just barely be getting by all the time for the sake of the gospel.

I'm an advocate for that.

I'm blessed enough to be employed by the church. what I'm saying is that these are the temptations that we fight against when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The temptation to enjoy a little too much the personal fruit that comes with the gifts of the Spirit.

So we constantly have to be reminded of why we were empowered in the first place.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12.7, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. not for your own pleasure, not for your own profit, not for your own glory, for the common good.

And I want you to understand this today.

And I know we're a little quiet today, but I hope you're getting this.

Because I believe that every single person in the church has been blessed with some type of gifting from the Holy Spirit.

You have some type of talent or knowledge or wisdom or experience or influence or maturity.

You all have something to offer in the building up of the church.

Like I said it last week, man, we all have something to steward.

And if you're newer to your walk and you're just walking in and you're just saying yes to Jesus and maybe you haven't discovered your gift yet, the more of the spirit you grow in, the more the spirit will grow in you.

And you will begin to, the Holy Spirit will manifest certain things in your life to tell you how he wants to use you in the service of his church.

So whenever the Holy Spirit reveals to you a way in which he wants to use you, a way in which you can be helpful, you have to be aware of some unseen realities.

Whenever you have a gift of the spirit in your possession, there is also a spirit of selfishness that's lurking around the corner.

There is a spirit of pride and competition.

There is a spirit of comparison that wants to get you to compare. your gift is somebody else's gift.

There is a spirit of division.

There is a spirit of arrogance that makes you think that this gift is just going to puff you up.

All of these spirits are crouching behind you whenever the Holy Spirit gifts you with something.

You have to be aware of that.

If you have something of value to offer in the church, the devil is already planning an attack, so that your gift becomes fruitless and ineffective.

Are you with me?

Y'all quiet?

Layla has been asking for a few months now.

Layla's my eight-year-old daughter.

She's been asking if she can sing at church.

And she doesn't want to sing on the worship team.

She wants to sing a solo.

And, you know, my mom is like the biggest encourager I know.

So I think she has a lot to do with that.

She tells her, you need to tell your daddy to let you sing at church.

So what does she do?

She tells her daddy that she wants to sing at church.

And I've been working with Layla for a little bit now to better her voice.

Claudia also a couple months back kind of gave her some vocal lessons.

And Layla's getting better, man.

She's actually got a good, strong voice.

She must be daddy's daughter, right?

And so I'm telling her, my mom's telling her, her intellectual. who we know can sing is telling her, mommy's telling her that she's really starting to sound really good.

And so all of this, I mean, she's listening to all of this, and I'm picking up on this because Lado's a lot like I was when I was her age.

And so I'm noticing that her desire to sing is suddenly coming from all of this encouragement and praises she's receiving.

And again, there's nothing wrong with applause and letting somebody know that they did a good job, but it cannot be the fuel to why we do what we do.

And so just last week, Leila asked me again, Dad, when are you going to let me sing at church?

And finally I asked her, I said, well, why do you want to sing at church?

I asked why?

And I'm not throwing shade in my eight-year-old daughter, okay?

She's very smart, wise, a kid who loves Jesus, but she obviously, she's still learning.

So I asked her, why do you want to sing at church?

Can you tell me why you want to sing?

And she said so that people can hear how I sing.

And I told her, with all my love, I said, my love, that answer tells me that you're not ready to sing.

I don't want you just to want to sing.

I want you to want to minister.

Because if you think, if you ever think that the stage is about you and not about God, your gift is already tainted.

If there is one ounce of selfishness, I'm talking to the church this morning, in your ministry, in your service, it's not compatible with the purpose that the Holy Spirit meant for that gift.

We always hear about these like megastars, man, the Justin Timberlakes and the Katie Perry's and the Beasts and the Beasts. and the Beyonce's super talented people who started out singing in the church, but because they enjoyed the personal praise, rather than giving the praise back to God, they started to use their gift to build up themselves rather than to build up the church.

And if you don't catch that early enough, it becomes dangerous.

And so I saw it in my daughter, baby, you're not ready yet, Mama.

Not until you want to start to minister with that voice.

Not until you want to start leading people to Jesus with that voice and through that voice.

I want you to have a beautiful voice.

I want you to do the runs.

I want you to get it, girl, but I want you to get it after Jesus.

And I'll tell you this too.

Look, God will use you anyway.

He will.

Like, I'm not going to try to scare you and say, well, if you become selfish, God's not going to use you.

No, God will use you.

God will milk your gift for his glory. because my God is a glorious God and he is going to get his glory he don't care who you are.

But while he's allowing you to be used for his glory to bless others.

And one of them, are you still with me?

I got to do my check-ins.

One of the more challenging parts of being gifted is the balance between knowing you're gifted and having the humility to not make the gift about yourself. you get that those kind of a lot of words in there because in order to minister effectively you at least have to know you've got something to offer you got to know that you can sing if you're going to say I'd like to be on the worship team please for the love of God if you know you don't know how to sing if you know there's no hope don't ask to be on the worship team please well it's just I just want to sing you can sing from down there ministry is for the coming good they ain't no good coming out of that nasty voice well some people felt convicted i'm sorry my wife look look look this is what i'm saying this one i'm saying this because if you know there is nothing if you know that there is no gifting in you and you want to present it to the lord you're making it about yourself.

You're making it about yourself.

Like, why would I step into a ministry where I know I'm not going to do it effectively?

I'm not going to do anything for the common good.

I'm doing it for me.

So I can be better.

No, you already started off the wrong foot.

So to do ministry, you have to have some acknowledgement that you've got, something to offer.

If I'm going to get up every week and prepare a sermon, I have to at least have a little bit of confidence in my ability to prepare a sermon.

And knowing that the strength of it doesn't come from me, it comes from the Lord, but there's something there.

And it takes recognition that you have a gift, but it also takes humility to submit that gift to the Lord.

Now, specific to the text, because I know we haven't even gotten too deep yet, I just, I wanted to set all this up first.

Paul is talking to a church that is misusing the gifts of the spirit.

They've made it all about them.

They're treating the gifts of the spirit like it's Christmas Day.

If the Holy Spirit ever gifts for the common good.

So this leads me to a very hot topic.

Y'all ready?

Ooh, I'm excited to get into this.

This is the hot topic, especially in Pentecostal churches, the gift of tongues.

I'm not going to preach for a little, but I'm going to teach for the next five minutes.

Is that cool?

Because I'm frequently asked this question, frequently, many times.

What do you think about speaking tongues in the service?

And that's such a conflicting question for me.

Because on the one hand, I know what Paul says about it.

Paul's whole message to the Corinthians is that in a corporate worship setting, the goal is to edify the body.

That, I think, is the biggest lesson that we tend to miss.

We all want to know about the spiritual gifts and how to use them effectively and when they're appropriate.

The greater lesson that Paul's trying to teach these Corinthians is that at church, you have to be edified together.

That's what this is about, to be drawn closer to God together as a body, because as a body we can do more than we can by ourselves.

And so Paul says, well, when it comes to tongues, you're not edifying the body, you're edifying yourself.

Well, hold on, hold on.

Why would the gift of tongues even be a gift to the church if the gifts are supposed to be used for the edification of the church?

Well, they are.

Tongues were the very first gift given to the apostles in Acts chapter 2.

Read Acts chapter 2 when you get home. the Bible says that they spoke in different tongues, literally different languages, so that the people in the room could be ministered to the gospel of Christ in their native tongue.

It was a supernatural gift that made the unbelievers say, this is wild.

And Acts 2.7 says, and they were amazed and astonished saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?

we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

So when the gift, Paul is, he's not diminishing the gift of tongues.

He even says that I want you all to speak in tongues.

He says, I speak way more tongues than you all.

He pulls a Donald Trump.

I speak more tongues than you guys do.

I'm way better at this than you guys do.

And so he makes it very clear that he values this gift of tongues, but he is calling the church to remember that yes, even in a church service, you have to be mindful that the church needs to be built up.

So he said, more than anything else, I want you to prophesy.

Paul loved the gift of prophecy.

To him, prophecy was a real MVP.

And apparently it's something that all the church, somebody say all, somebody say me?

Yes.

All the church, we can all.

We can all.

We can all prophesy.

And prophecy, not in the sense of foretelling the future, prophecy as in interpreting divine will.

So he says, prophesy when you're in a corporate setting.

Prophecy when you're at church.

Why?

Why prophecy?

Well, it's all tied to the greatest gift that every Christian should possess.

What is that?

Love.

Paul dedicates an entire chapter to the gift of love.

He says, without love, there's no point to anything.

There's no point to what we do.

Our praise is just noise and our worship is benign.

So how is love tied to prophecy?

You still with me?

I know I'm talking a lot.

The way that I love you as a pastor is by prophesy, is by telling you, is by speaking forth the truth of the gospel.

If I'm not giving you the Word of God, I'm not declaring the word of God to you.

I'm not loving you.

If somebody comes to me and wants my honest opinion about something that I know to be sin and I tell them you can do what makes you feel well, I'm not loving them.

I have to tell them the truth.

I have to prophesy to them with the word of God.

I love you by pointing you to Jesus.

I can't do that if I'm speaking in tongues while I'm praying over you.

I can't do that if I preach in a language that you don't understand.

So apparently in the Corinthian churches, there was such a focus on the gift of tongues that people were not receiving the gospel.

Think about the irony of that for a second.

The gift that first brought people the gospel was now withholding the gospel.

They were not being educated.

They were not being taught because they would go to these services and visitors would show up and they wouldn't understand anything that was going on.

Look, there is a line between not caring what the world thinks about Christians and not caring what the world thinks about God.

When we come to church to worship God, we also represent the God that we worship.

I'm going to say that again because I want you to get it. when we worship God in here, we also represent the very God that we worship.

And so this is why Paul says, God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.

So on a Sunday morning, when you invite your Thia to come to church, even though she's had a lot of bad experiences with the church, when you invite your atheist brother who finally shows up and gives you a chance, as a body, we have to be mindful that their spirit needs to be built up with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They shouldn't walk out of the church more confused than when they walked in.

And man, I wasn't even going to say this because I think some of y'all are going to get offended by it.

But I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it to be 100% true and believe that this is what scripture teaches.

Unbelievers should never walk into a church service and find all Holy Spirit and know Jesus.

I can't see y'all, so I don't know what faces y'all are making to me.

I don't know if that hurts.

But we should never bring a visitor and have a visitor come to church for the purpose of getting saved.

And they can't even find Jesus.

Where was the gospel?

What was the message?

where was Jesus?

I was never given.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I heard people speaking in a language I didn't understand.

Look, not of worship.

Go all out, man.

You know, go nuts.

But we have to be mindful of the people that do not yet have the level of faith that you have.

And if you are the church, because you are the church, who is commanded to love in the love of Christ, we have to be mindful.

We have to be mindful. of the way that they receive the Spirit of God in a corporate worship setting.

The Holy Spirit is the vehicle to Jesus.

When the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, it was to declare the message of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into the truth.

So he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Summary, there will be power, the Holy Spirit, to build what belongs to Jesus, the church.

That makes sense?

I'm having the worship team come up.

Now, earlier I said this was conflicting when people asked me this question, because the conflicting part for me is that even though I know all of this, I still speak in tongues when I come to church.

When I'm down here and I'm worshiping God personally and I'm having a moment with God, sometimes I'll speak in tongues.

And I think that's okay.

What's not okay is if I stay there too long so that the body is never edified.

If I don't take the time to explain to the people in the room who all of this is new to, if we don't take the time to build up with the word, because we're in a corporate setting and the focus is the church being built up to Christ.

That's what can be disorderly about our worship.

It's when the gospel of Christ is an afterthought.

It's when our priorities are not properly aligned.

Paul says, so my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order.

He's not saying that speaking in tongues is out of order, but he is cautioning the church to not prioritize their own edification when the whole point of church is the edification of the church.

The order in a corporate worship setting is honor and glory to God.

That's number one.

Edification of the church.

That's number two.

And then at the bottom, again, we're talking about a corporate worship setting.

Personal edification.

I'm serving God by serving you.

You're serving God by serving others.

That's the order that we must follow as a church.

Have I confused anybody today?

Are we good?

I don't know.

I don't know what to think by that.

Let me illustrate it like this.

Sometimes in Spanish service, I'll sit you know I'll sit back and I'll I'll enjoy the service.

I don't have to preach in Spanish.

I don't speak oh very well.

So I can enjoy the service and you know Pastor Danny he'll be preaching and he'll you know he'll give a word he'll give a text and a lot of times I'll go deeper into the text that he's preaching out of.

Because I love the Word of God and sometimes there's just a really interesting passage of scripture and, you know, he'll read a portion of it.

And then I keep reading and I keep studying and I'm doing all the cross-referencing and I'm like, oh snap, and I'm taking notes in my phone.

And I find myself doing a personal Bible study while he's preaching.

And I catch myself every time happens like for like two minutes.

And I'm like, all right, I'm going to look at that later.

Because right now, there is a word for the body.

And I'm going to miss it if I make this time about my own personal edification.

There's nothing wrong with personal Bible study.

We all need more of it.

But there's a time and a place for it.

There is a reason we don't come to church on Sundays and say, okay, everybody go into your own corner, open up the Bible to wherever you want to open it, and just study there for a second.

Why don't we do that?

because God has a word for his people as a body, as an assembly.

And so we need to be in one accord.

That's how the church gets stronger.

That's how we stay united.

This is how we defeat the devil together.

And so when we speak in tongues here at church, let it be a part of your personal worship that we allow time for.

But don't forget to look up.

Don't forget to look up at that brother that's coming up to the altar for the very first time needing to be prayed with.

And the Holy Spirit has prompted you to go and pray with him and just to stand there with him because he's broken in this moment.

Don't forget to look up to that person who might not understand what's being said in the sermon and explain it to them.

Don't don't forget to look up to the one who doesn't understand the manifestations of the spirit or the one who doesn't understand why we do. do communion or water baptism, don't forget to be a part of the edification that God has called each and every one of you two.

We're all called to be builders in the kingdom.

You're not just a piece of brick.

You're also a tool.

Use it.

Don't just sit there on the building that is being built.

Use what God is giving you to continue the edification process of your brothers and sisters.

Let me, let me, let me end it here.

Verse 23.

Same chapter.

Paul says, if therefore the whole church comes together in all speaking tongues and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

But if all prophesied and an unbeliever or an outsider enters, he is convicted by all.

He is called to account by all.

The secrets of his heart are disclosed.

And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

We all have the gift of prophecy in our lips, church.

When you tell somebody Jesus loves you, Jesus desires communion with you, are you not declaring divine truth?

When you tell people where you were, where you used to be, and now where you are today.

I know my brother Adrian can do that very well.

He's prophesying.

When you tell people that God can do the impossible, that God can heal your marriage, God can restore your family, God can bring back your son.

God can do things that you think that he cannot do.

You can understand that.

There is power in that truth.

There is power on your lips when you speak the name of Jesus declaring victory.

There is power when you write. that song in the name of Jesus.

There's power when you send that text message in the name of Jesus.

There's power when you're speaking to that other person on the other side of the phone.

When you're declaring Jesus over their life, don't doubt the power that's been given to you by the Holy Spirit Church.

Because he wants to build up your family.

He wants to build up your friendships and your children and your church and your co-workers.

Don't doubt the power that's been given to you.

Jesus says not even the gates of hell shall prevail against his church.

I want you to stand with me.

As I said earlier, this is a word that we have to receive together.

As a church in unity, that we would desire to be a church that continues to. to build that continues to disciple that continues to teach and preach the word of God.

Holy Spirit, I pray right now in Jesus name, let me pray over you, church.

I pray right now, Father God, that you would activate spiritual gifts, my God, in the lives of every single one of these people this morning.

I pray, my God, that we would boldly and unashamedly.

Father God, speak the name of Jesus in any room that we go to, Father God, wherever we're at, Father God, that we would point all the honor, all the glory to you, that we would be empowered, that we would be moved, that we would be led by your spirit, my God, to point people to Jesus, the power, the power of the name of Jesus, the power that we've all experienced, my God, at one point in our lives, my God, the power that we continue to experience on a daily basis, my God, I pray.

Father God, that we would have the power to speak the truth of your word, Lord.

Together.

My God, protect every single one of us, Lord.

I pray that you would give power through the insecurity.

My God, through the doubt, my God, through the fear, Father God.

That whenever the enemy, Lord, wants to come against the church, the church would stand in unity, declare the power and the holy. of our Jesus Christ, we love you, my God.

I don't have a specific call this morning, but what I want to do, I want to ask the prayer team to come forward.

And if you are in need of prayer, you are in need of some building up.

I want you to come forward.

And I want you to allow us to pray with you.

That's you this morning.

As the worship team sings, the altars are open.

If you are hurting, if you are broken, if you are broken, If you are lost, if you are confused, if you are sick, allow the church to do what the church does through the power of the Holy Spirit.

These altars are open.

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

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Thanks again and God bless.

Thank you.