Praying in tongues honors God. It is like me learning your language and addressing you in it. When believers all pray in tongues it is honoring God. Each believer is praying their own prayer to God. There is nothing wrong with it. When a meeting is 'disrupted' by 'some' praying in tongues, there better be an interpreter as in the absence of one it was a disruption to the flow of a meeting. The Holy Spirit is for order, not disorder.
Amd what if there is no interpretation? What does that say to the one disrupting?
If believers in that church really believe that the Holy Spirit is praying, how can Paul command anyone to be silent if the Holy Spirit wishes to pray? Paul saying to not quench the Spirit and yet if no interpretation, let the tongue speaker be silent does testify that believers are not reading Paul's words as they were intended because 1 Corinthians 14:20-21 clarified Paul's position that God's gift of tongues were of other men's lips to speak unto the people. No exception was given to avoid being contradictory.
If the believers know unbelievers are coming, they should only pray a short while in tongues, like after a worship song for example. I think Paul is referring to a meeting where believers pray for long in tongues...whilst knowing unsaved will be there.
Paul introduce the notion that the church did not know and could not know when a visitor may come in as to why there should be order all the time; even after service. If a person outside the church saw a church doing that and think them mad, what does that say to believers outside the assembly for praying in tongues and someone came in on them when doing it? Same poor witness: they would think that believer is mad.
If we are to abstain from all appearances of evil, then God's gift of tongues can only come with interpretation unless otherwise understood by a foreignor in the mission field. Paul gave the format for which these gifts were to be used; to profit the body withal ( 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 ) ; not individual believers as if they can be really edified by it when Paul said it was unfruitful even to himself unless it came with interpretation and so he instructed that whosoever speaks in tongues, pray that another may interpret. but somehow, readers focussed on verse 14 as meaning praying in tongues when Paul meant otherwise in verse 13 to pray for someone else to interpret while they were speaking in tongues as the Spirit manifest the tongue.
1 Corinthians 14:13 Wherefore let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret. 14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. 15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
Verse 15 is Paul's way of saying that tongues is not a stand alone gift for the assembly or for the individual believer which is why the gift of prophesy was the gift to seek after above all spiritual gifts including tongues,
1 Corinthians 14:1Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.
.... and yet today, believers are seeking tongues without interpretation as a sign of receiving the second blessing or another baptism with the Holy Spirit with evidence of tongues when there is no other drink of the One Spirit and so it is not of Him at all.
1 Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
Colossians 2:5 For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. 6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. 8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: It is an adulterous generation to seek after a sign when we are complete in Christ.
2 Corinthians 11:1Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Believers need to go before that throne of grace for discernment and wisdom in understanding His words in the KJV because that is what is happening in the latter days for they believe every spirit that comes over them was of God 1 Timothy 4:1-2 when in according to our faith that He was already within us when we had first come to & believed in Jesus Christ thus serving as proof that what they felt coming over them again was not of God. 1 John 4:1 1 John 4:4
Signs was never meant to serve towards the believers that they had received the Holy Ghost.
Hebrews 11:1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report....6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Galatians 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith....26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 1:12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. 13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. 15 Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints,
May God be peradventuring to recover some from the snare of the devil because it is the will of God for US to pray and having known what we had prayed for, we can give the Father OUR genuine heartfelt thanks in Jesus's name for answered prayers.
