A verse I often return to is 1 Corinthians 14 verse 1 which ends 'eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy'. To hear God speaking into a situation must surely be better than heaps of words I could I ever think of or say. Let us let God take us straight to the point!
The passage of course goes on to talk about the corporate experience: how when we are together we need to be mindful of each other and not just ourselves. So what we say and how we speak out must take this into account - hence the whole unintelligible words versus prophecy thing.
What now catches my attention further is the continuation in verse 22 with tongues/prophecy acting as complementary signs. God directly revealing things in the meeting can be enough to convince an unbeliever and propel them towards faith in Christ, causing them to exclaim 'God is really among you!'.
Thats a fantastic point! Prophecy is a sign to us because it reminds us that God is with us, actually among us, revealing and speaking into our (very human) situations. The promise of the Spirit in Joel 2 is that male and female will prophesy, as God is now pleased to dwell in and through our lives. Every time we are enabled to speak or act out God's own words we are reminded of this fact: God has come down to us, He is with us.
No wonder Paul wanted us to be eager for this kind of stuff, especially prophecy.
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