The Moehrings

A friend from small group shared that sometimes God wakes her up in the middle of the night with the feeling that she needs to pray, sometimes for specific things or people, sometimes for general things. I was kind of amazed by this, that someone could be so in-tune with the spirit that they are regularly awakened by the Spirit and inspired to pray. And this wasn’t an old, wise, retired person who has nowhere in particular to be the next morning, this was a young lady in her twenties working and finishing her college education who valued her sleep. And the thought that there are Christians out there who are so obedient to this calling of being an intercessor so impressed me that it caused me to question what do I really believe about prayer? How powerful is prayer? If God is all knowing and all loving, why would he want me to pray for someone, especially if the person doesn’t even know that I’m praying for them?

I can’t find the source off hand, but right around this period of time our pastor shared an excerpt from a book he was reading about this pastor (~1800) who wrote a book and said something like he couldn’t understand how any believer could get a solid night’s sleep without being stirred to pray. The idea that these nighttime prayer warriors exist and continue to live normal and productive work/family lives intrigued me. I also desired to have that sensitivity to the Spirit.

So I asked for it. I asked God to place in me a sensitivity to the moving of the Spirit, and told God I would be willing to pray for those whom he put on my heart. I shouldn’t be surprised that on multiple occasions, God has taken me up on this offer. It typically happens like this: I’m sleeping, I’m sleeping, I roll over and all the sudden the my eyes are open and my mind is starting to boot up. “I’m awake, it’s not the kids, I don’t need to use the potty, Becca’s sleeping soundly, I don’t hear anything, why am I awake? Oh yeah, I told God I would be an intercessor.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m reluctant, and I certainly have the option of going back to sleep and God won’t try to stop me, but on the other hand it feels good when you know you are being used by the Lord, even if the present does not. Kind of like exercising, I like the results of exercising, but I still don’t care for the discomfort of exercising

Sometimes I stay in bed, sometimes I get out of bed. Usually it’s very short. Sometimes I know exactly what I’m supposed to pray for, sometimes I have no idea. That’s when praying in the Spirit is important.

One night God must have thought I needed a little nudge, I’m sure he was right. I had been feeling good all day, but as the evening wore on, my back developed a knot in it. It felt like all of the muscles in my back were condensing into a single location in the right-middle of my back. This was before I started exercising so it wasn’t like I had just finished doing a bunch of pull ups or push ups. It was seriously affecting my sleep. I rolled and repositioned every way possible to get as comfortable as possible. Finally at 2am I postulated that maybe it was God trying to give me a hint. Since I couldn’t get comfortable anyway, I got down on the floor and began to pray. After about 5 minutes of prayer I sat up, and the pain was totally gone. It’s important to note that I wasn’t praying for myself here, I wasn’t praying for pain relief in my back, I was praying what God wanted me to pray. I stood up and stretched a little and I felt really good again. I went back to bed and slept like a baby the rest of the night.

I think God used this back pain for many purposes. First, it got my attention. Second, it was yet another way for God to confirm to me that he does want to use as intercessors to pray for others. And third that God does hear our prayers, and he is eager to bless us for coming to him in prayer.

This night-time intercessor thing doesn’t happen frequently, maybe it should and I’m just not in-tune or obedient enough to do it more often. But I’m very thankful for the experiences I’ve had when I am obedient to the call, and I hope I can continue to grow in this area of interceding for others and being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit.

-Nate

I previously wrote about praying in tongues, but even with the amazing words I received from the Lord, it still took many months to feel at all comfortable praying in tongues,. At the same time, I didn’t understand what Paul meant by “sing with my spirit” in 1 Cor 14, also referred to as spiritual songs.

14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.

The closest thing I could relate was the book of Psalms, which is more like prose poetry. But not long after I had the experiences I previously wrote about with my prayer language, I had a dream in which I experienced first hand what a spiritual song is.

In my dream, I was at a retreat center. About 5 or 6 of us were lined up in a hallway outside of the sanctuary. People inside were worshiping. The pastor then asked us to go into the sanctuary to pray with people. I recognized one of the people in the worship area and felt called to go pray with her. This lady was recently the main female vocal leader of our church’s worship team, but she and her husband moved across the country for a new job. This dream occurred before their move. After praying for her with my mind, I began praying for her with my spirit, which quickly became a spiritual song. She, being a spirit-filled worship leader, joined in the spiritual song. No, we weren’t singing the same words, nor the same notes, but our songs were beautifully complementary, they blended into a single song. My prayer language was much more fluid than it had ever been before. It sounded good, and it felt like we were intensely praising the Lord together.

The dream ended. I woke up thinking, “holy cow, I just sang in tongues in my dream!” It was a neat experience, I was stoked. I got up and emailed this lady telling her about the dream and what a neat experience it was for me. She replied and said she was so thankful that I shared the dream with her because she had been very stressed about the upcoming move and it meant so much to her that God would have me pray for her specifically.

Now that I’ve heard what a spiritual song can sound like, I’m not afraid to experiment with singing in the spirit during times of worship, however I have to admit that it doesn’t sound as good as it did in my dream. I thank God for giving me experiences that continue to grow my faith and ways to experience him.

One Sunday two ladies in our church felt God stir them to go through each of the classrooms during Sunday School and pray for each child individually. These two ladies are amazing prayer warriors and are very receptive to the Holy Spirit. They sometimes give words of prophecy within our church service and are often involved in physical or spiritual healings. I’ve learned that when they speak, I should listen closely.

Anyway, on this day, when Becca and I just were serving in the nursery, along with Hannah and Benjamin. We work the nursery once a month. When they prayed for Benjamin, one of the ladies was overcome by the Spirit. By this I mean you could see her become physically and emotionally excited, she began to pray more fervently. She said she had a vision that she saw Benjamin standing on my shoulders, boldly proclaiming Christ to people, perhaps leading a revival, being a mouth piece for the Lord. Her interpretation of him being on my shoulders was simply that his faith will build on my faith, a faith legacy passed down to him. Of course, myself being the son of a 3rd generation pastor, obviously that legacy did not start with me.

What do I do with this? On one hand I don’t want to pressure Benjamin into anything, on the other hand I believe the validity of this prophetic word. In either case it reminds me of my priorities and the significance of this job called fatherhood. My job is to raise up our children in faith so that they will know their Father and desire to serve Him.

-Nate

I suspect for some people the answer to this question is simply yes, and for others the answer is absolutely and unequivocally no. Recently I came across a couple of verses that strongly influenced my position on this.

Rev 7:9-11 says the souls of all martyrs are under God’s altar in heaven. The martyrs are begging the Lord, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge the people who belong to this world for what they have done to us? When will you avenge our blood against these people?”

The response to them is very interesting: “Rest a little longer until the full number of your brothers and sisters, your fellow servants of Jesus, have been martyred.”

It doesn’t just say that more will unfortunately die, but it says “the full number”. This means God has a predetermined number of martyrs that will die, and furthermore, that he will allow these deaths to occur as part of his plan for the fulfillment of his revelation to the world.

Rev 13:7 says the Beast of the Sea was “allowed to wage war against God’s holy people and to overcome them.” Verse 10 says “The people who are destined for prison will be arrested and taken away. Those who are destined for death will be killed.” Allowed to wage war? Destined for prison? Destined for death? Wow, this is intense. It’s both good news and bad news. The good news is God is in complete control, even the bad stuff is “allowed”, nothing is out of God’s control. The bad news is, some of us are destined for the bad stuff…

Romans 8:36 says “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” (see Psalm 44 for more pick me up verses). Paul wanted us to know, that just like the Israelites of the Old Testament, we will be faced with persecution including death, but not even this can separate us from the love of Christ. And furthermore, our death is for His sake! Paul was trying to be encouraging, but why did he feel the need to be encouraging? Because he knew what would be coming, particularly for Roman Christians.

So what does this mean? How should this affect the way we live our lives? What attitude of the heart should we have when we face persecution? For me there are two major conclusions.

First, living in this contention of being chosen but possibly being destined for persecution, highlights the need to see things from a spiritual and eternal perspective. When you look at the short term and personal aspect of persecution, sure, things look pretty grim. But when you look at eternity, and the realities of the spiritual realm, the persecution of the immediate is diminished. I know, I know, easier said than done, but what else can I do? The only way I can prepare myself for persecution so that I can live out what I just preached is to pray that God would continue to reveal to me the realities of the spiritual realm. Eph 6:12 says “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” I’m talking about the Spiritual Gift of discerning spirits. If I can see past the flesh of the persecutor and recognize the evil spirits behind the persecution, then I am better able to speak authority into the situation in the name of Jesus. Or if I am to be martyred, I can have some peace, knowing that it is the greatest form of witness for Jesus’ sake.

Second, I must answer the question, “what am I willing to die for?” Or even worse, “what am I willing to let my family die for?” Dying as a martyr is one thing, but dying at the hands of some punk is quite another. Recently I’ve taken an interest in self defense and survival skills. As time and money allow I’m making the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and goods a priority for the preservation of my family. This might sound like I’m contradicting my previous paragraph, but I don’t think I am. If someone says “renounce Jesus or I’ll kill your daughter”, I won’t renounce Jesus, but does that mean I have to let my daughter die? Certainly I can try to talk the attacker down and tell them about the love of Jesus, but if that doesn’t disarm the situation, why not use force? In Luke 22:36, Jesus tells his disciples: “take your money and a traveler’s bag. And if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one!” Clearly Jesus didn’t have a problem with the disciples taking precaution to defend themselves against the persecution they would face after Jesus was arrested.

Granted, it’s unlikely that a hoodlum is going to ask you to renounce Jesus, so that leads me to my next point. We live in a fallen world, where due to the influence of free will and sin, random acts of evil greatly outnumber random acts of love. Hopefully with the gift of spiritual discernment, I’ll be able to know when a dangerous encounter has spiritual significance, and when it is simply the result of living in a fallen world. If it’s the latter, I have absolutely no hesitation defending my family.

Tough questions, hard decisions. We serve a God who has decided that some of his children must die to fulfill his plan for this world. Are you ready to die for your Lord? Are you prepared to love God even in the face of death?

-Nate

Ever since Jr. High I’ve regularly had pain in my knees. If I don’t do anything athletic for long periods of time my knees will return to a comfortable state, but immediately after any kind of athletic activity my knees well swell and stiffen for weeks. And of course this inactivity actually makes the problem worse as my knees grow weaker.

I’ve never had a major knee injury, though I have had a doctor tell me in high school that I had some torn cartilage. But the main problem he said was tight tendons have caused the cartilage to wear down so that I have bone on bone friction and pinching of cartilage and tendons that causes swelling. Furthermore, the degradation of cartilage has caused lateral instability in my knees, making the friction and pinching worse.

When I met Becca, she introduced me to co-ed volleyball. We’ve been playing on co-ed leagues pretty much ever since. I’ve really come to like volleyball, it’s a great team sport, yet requires practice to improve personal performance, and it’s indoor which is important when it’s 110 degrees outside. But volleyball is hard on my knees. I love hitting, but when you land from a hit, you have to plant yourself hard so you don’t go into the net. I believe that stopping action causes a great deal of grinding in my knees. The result is for weeks my knees are swollen and painful. The pain got so bad that sleeping and walking (especially stairs) were sometimes very difficult. With pain killers and warm up I could get through the next game, but my reaction speed and vertical jump suffered greatly.

Several years ago, at the recommendation of a much older opponent, I started wearing Robocop style knee braces that have metal inserts on both sides of the brace, on both knees. I still had pain, but I could tell immediately that the swelling was down, and more importantly, I could play the next week without terrible pain or loss of performance. Even still, a fair amount of pain remained that still sometimes makes walking uncomfortable.

We spent Christmas 2009 in Colorado and I got to enjoy a couple of days of skiing. I pushed myself a little harder than normal because I wanted to keep up with my brother-in-law who is ~8 years younger than me. I felt pretty good on the trip, but after we got back, possibly because of the car ride, my knee pain was much higher than normal. Then shortly after that I had a minor twist on a sand volleyball court which really tweaked it. The pain was so bad that when lying on my back with my knee pointed towards the ceiling I physically could not pick up my foot, much less straighten my leg. For the first time ever it was starting to worry me. Not because I’m afraid to have surgery, but because I was beginning to realize that at this rate I won’t be able to enjoy a lifestyle where I have the option of doing athletic things very much longer before my knees make it physically impossible without serious therapy and/or perhaps surgery. This depressed me because I want to be healthy for years to come, so I can challenge my grandkids to a game of basketball and at least get their respect.

I had already seen God move mightily in response to prayer (see previous post), and there was news that the prayer team of our church had experienced some physical healing miracles. I decided what the heck, let’s go get prayer for my knees. I decided to believe that God did not want me to live in a life of pain any more than the cripple who lived a life of immobility next to the pool of Bethesda. (John 5). At first I was reluctant because I believed my knees were insignificant, I still had my health and could function fine either for my own secular desires or for the Kingdom of God, why would God heal me? But later a useful analogy was given to me. If your child falls of their bike and scrapes their knee, wouldn’t you do everything possible to make them feel better physically and emotionally? God wants to heal us because he loves us that much, and what’s more, everything is possible for him.

So probably for the first time ever, I sought out prayer for physical healing. I am pleased to say that today my knees feel much better than they have in a long time, though I wouldn’t say they are completely healed, but that really isn’t what this post is about. I believe God used the physical pain in my knees to bring me to humble myself to have me pray for something even greater, the old bait and switch routine.

While I was there, one of the individuals praying for me asked me if I had ever been “baptized in the Holy Spirit”. Fortunately I had already started reading The Holy Spirit & You, so I knew what he meant when he asked me that question. I really dislike the expression “baptized in the Holy Spirit” because it confuses the issue of water baptism and receiving the Gifts of the Spirit. Thanks to the book I now realize that being “baptized in the Holy Spirit” actually has little to nothing to do with baptism, a much better phrase I think might be something like “realized the power of the Holy Spirit”. I think that all believers have the Holy Spirit in them, but those who are “baptized” in the Holy Spirit have a greater appreciation of what that means. Not that they are greater, or any more special to God, or have received anything extra from the Holy Spirit, but that they understand and believe that with the Holy Spirit comes the Gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:8-11), which are powerful, applicable to the world today, and for the purpose of expanding the Kingdom of God.

Anyway, when he asked me this question I immediately got excited. I had already been praying in my personal prayer to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit”, but this individual was able to coach me a little on what that means, how to release the gifts when they are granted, and had the prayer team lay hands on me to seal the deal.

Long story short, that night, for the first time, I received the gift of tongues.

He prayed that the Holy Spirit would speak to my spirit, encouraged me to verbalize what I received, and encouraged me to put aside any judgement my mind may make about the unusual words. As he explained, the mind is used to being in control of the body, and so when we allow our spirit to take the driver’s seat, the mind becomes jealous. And of course the enemy wants to keep us from believing in the gifts of the spirit, because they powerful weapons in spiritual warfare.

To my surprise, I did receive some words. It’s hard to describe, but it did feel like they were received, not constructed. In the security of the prayer group I mustered the courage to utter them, but to be honest they sounded absolutely absurd even to myself. They had no meaning to me. I wasn’t sure what to make of the experience, but I went home hopeful, and perhaps joyous that I had received such bold and profound prayer. It was a breath of fresh air of Christianity for me.

As soon as I got in my car, I wrote down the words that I had received as best I could guess to spell them, “itcus milack shallock”. After writing them down, I prayed. “Lord, I don’t know what to make of this. You tell us that if we seek we will find, so I’m sorry if I’m acting like a man of little faith, but I need to know that this means something to you or to somebody.”

The Lord did not disappoint, but before I get into that, I want to share some things that I learned about speaking in tongues. Before this year I only thought of tongues in terms of Pentecost, speaking in human languages that we do not know so that others can hear the word of God in their own language. This is certainly an important reason for tongues, but there is another that is equally documented in the New Testament, but yet was new to me in my Christian experience, and that’s “praying in tongues”. Praying in tongues is simply listening for the Holy Spirit and verbalizing what you hear. It’s a way of allowing your spirit to pray, instead of your mind. God wants us to intercede in prayer for others, but sometimes we don’t know what to pray for, God does! You can be sure that praying in tongues is “effective” prayer because the words are coming directly from God! Here are some good verses that show the validity of “praying in tongues”, that is, praying with words that are only understood by God. (1 Cor 14)

2For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.

4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself,

14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.

18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.

There are many many more verses about speaking in tongues in the bible if you will only have faith and accept it as truth, yet it is so unusual that most Christians reject it as being a gift from God.

Even though I had read these verses before receiving these 3 words, I wanted to be sure that they were from the Holy Spirit and not something that I conjured up. So I got on google. Within 30 minutes I had found, with very little modification to my original spelling of the words, a very plausible translation.

Itcus – Latin – wound. As soon I found that “itcus”, a word that I had never heard before, was a real word in another language, and more over, that its translation, “wound”, applied directly to the subject for which I was seeking prayer, my knees, I was floored! I got goose bumps. I was humbled that God would think so much of me not only to bless me with his gifts, but also grant my request to allow me to find an interpretation for my tongue. Think of it this way. Imagine you make a promise to your son AND you’ve kept every promise you’ve ever made to your son, how would you feel if your son said, I don’t believe you dad? I know you’ve been really good to me all these years, but I just don’t believe that you’re telling me the truth here so you’re going to have to prove it to me.” Wouldn’t that kind of annoy you? Maybe that would hurt your feelings a little bit? Here I was, a bratty adolescent Christian saying “I don’t believe your Word, God, prove it to me so I can know if it’s true or not.” That’s probably not the best tone to take with God, but yet He did prove it to me, and as you will soon find out, he answered my prayer abundantly.

Milacku – Czech – my love. Wow! That’s pretty good, that sounds like something God would call me! Thank you God!

Shellac – English slang – defeat decisively. This was the hardest translation. The other words translated so directly with very little effort, but this word I had to change the spelling and use a slang definition, but hey, God knows slang! More importantly, in the context of the other three words, my spirit rejoiced because I felt like it was the right fit.

Put it all together, add a few connecting words, and rearrange it into an English grammatical structure and you get this:
“My love, [I will] defeat [your] wound decisively.”

Holy cow! That sounds like the words of a God who loves me, who hears my prayer, and who has the power to do what he says! Praise Jesus!

That was it, 3 little words was all I needed to experientially believe God’s Word. Praying in tongues is a legitimate way to communicate with God. But there’s more…

My prayer group had encouraged me before leaving that night to repeatedly pray the 3 words God had given me. They said they are now a part of my “prayer language”, and praying them will give me confidence to begin to accept new prayer words.

So a couple of days later I was out walking the dog, repeating itcus milack shallack to myself, thankful for what God had revealed to me, when I got 3 new words, “morrocon iyeki yha”.

Morar – Spanish – to live.
Moro – I live.
This was initially a hard translation until I discovered that Morar was actually a Spanish verb. Once I realized that ‘moro’ was a conjugated verb for ‘I live’, my jaw dropped! Not only was God speaking to me and giving me the interpretation, he was even conjugating verbs for me!

Con – Latin – with, together, connected
Extremely easy translation.

Iy iki – Turkish – good that
Very easy translation.

Yah – Hebrew – Name of God
Extremely easy translation once I saw it context with the rest of the sentence.

Push the pulse button on the blender:
“[It is] good that I, God, live with/in [you].”

That sounds like God, in fact he even calls himself by an Old Testament name, Yah, and it lines up with scripture. (1 Cor 3:16) Praise God!

Later that week, on Saturday afternoon, I received 3 more words: “eco tata sasa nara”. It sounded like complete jibberish, even after having had these two amazing interpretations I thought to myself “this can’t possibly mean anything”. But again, God revealed it to me:

Eco – Greek – root word ‘house’
Tata – Italian – nanny
Sasa – Swahili – now
Nara – Turkish – cry

“House nanny now cries.”

Not much to leave to the imagination there, but what did it mean? Not very many people have nannies so I this was another instance of God speaking directly to me. Then I remembered that on that very same afternoon, our nanny was acting as a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding. This wasn’t just a gift of tongues, this was also a word of knowledge, another Spiritual Gift. If I had not known she was at a wedding I would have called her and make sure everything was okay, but given that she was participating in a wedding I figured this was normal and therefore not urgent. When our nanny returned on Monday I asked her if she cried during the wedding and what time she thought that was. If I remember correctly the time she gave me was only about 3 hours prior to the time I received the word. But what I really took from this experience is that our opinion of what the words sound like is irrelevant.

Summary
This whole experience has really woken me up to the fact that the Gifts of the Spirit are alive and well in the world today, and that there is a way to pray that I had never been taught before. I do pray in tongues regularly now, but I do not take the time to look up all the words that come out of my mouth and I do not allow it to dominate my prayer time. I do not expect that all words of a prayer language exist within a known language on this Earth, that would be far too limiting for God. And we know that the Spirit can pray in groans (non-words, Rom 8:26). No, in fact I think the 3 experiences I had of direct translation are probably rather rare, and were gifts given to me explicitly for the purpose of building my stubborn and doubting faith.

Instead, I pray in tongues when I want to intercede for someone but I do not know what to pray for. As Paul says, praying with our mind is fruitful, but praying with our Spirit is a different kind of prayer that is equally important.

I have also learned through experience and observation that praying in tongues is often times kind of a “stepping stone” in learning to utilize the other Spiritual Gifts because it is the least intimidating to step out in faith to do, and it can be “practiced” in the privacy of your home or car.

I am slowly learning that a large portion of the Christian world does pray in tongues today, but even among them praying in tongues is often kept on the down low. This is one of those things that can scare newcomers away because it is so different. But I’ve had the privilege of participating in prayer with some mature prayer warriors and I am amazed by how fluid and natural their prayers can be. I don’t know what they’re praying but my spirit tells me that their spirit is praying something intense, and we’re all getting the benefit from it. I’ve also learned that prayer languages can sound utterly absurd and that’s okay too, as long as it isn’t being coerced or forced.

Conclusion

I’m not sure how to end this blog. I have hesitation about posting it because it’s one of those topics where people get labels applied to them like radical, zealot, or freak. But the purpose of these blogs was not that you would think more of me, but rather that you would think more of God, and hopefully the testimony I have shared here does that.

God is good,
Nate

This weekend I found myself having a rather unexpected conversation with a friend about whether or not prophets exist today. I decided to do a little research to find specific biblical references that lead to me believe what I believe about modern-day prophets. My definition of prophet is different from the public’s common definition of prophet. I’m not talking about Nostradamus or Mohammed that predict the future or start religions. I’m talking about humble servants who act as messengers for God. Now of course, I believe God can speak directly to his children through prayer and the living word, but I believe God also uses prophets when a) he wants to speak to a specific group of people, or b) we just aren’t being diligent in word or prayer to hear for ourselves what he has to say.

1 Cor 14 describes what “orderly worship” should looks like. I’ve pulled out verses that specifically relate to prophets:
26 When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.
29Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.
39Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy,

1 Cor 12 is the known as apostle Paul’s instruction on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are supernatural gifts that God gives to his people (through God’s spirit) for the purpose of building up the body of believers and doing God’s will here on Earth:
7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire the greater gifts.

1 Cor 13 is commonly known as the Love Chapter. It describes what perfect love looks like. It’s no coincidence that it is sandwiched between the two most authoritative chapters on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. God wants us to use these gifts to demonstrate his love for them. Moreover, without love, these gifts are meaningless.

1 Cor 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

However, Jesus warns us to be aware that false prophets do exist:
Matt 7:15-18 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

As an aside, Paul later describes exactly what good and bad fruit look like:

Gal 5:
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Moses also warned us to be aware of false prophets:
Deut 18:20-22 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

Paul also warns us to be aware of false prophets, but does it immediately after telling us to respect prophecies:
1 Thes 5:20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21Test everything.

Because God is unchanging, everything a prophet says must be in agreement with everything God has already said in his written Word. This is another reason it is important to know your bible, so that you will not be led astray by false prophets.

And finally, those who have the responsibility of church leadership and those who have been given the spiritual gifts of wisdom and discernment should evaluate all spoken prophetic words and taken action to correct anything they believe may not truly be from God.

I believe prophets are currently operating within their respective churches today, but probably not to the extent that they should be, and the church as a whole has never given prophets the respect they deserve. Their job is to deliver messages from God to the people of God. 1 Cor 14:4 and 26 tells us that prophecy is for people in the church, not really for people outside the church. This would also help explain why the world at large is not aware of modern-day prophets.

But we do also have examples like Jonah who was given a message for people who did not worship God. So prophets are not restricted to only speak to God’s people. But it makes sense to me that it would be much less common because most likely an unbelieving person would not respect the claimed authority of the prophet anyway. However, Moses, Malachi, and the apostle John all prophesied that before/during the end times a different kind of prophet would appear, prophets who will amaze the world by the supernatural things they do and say so that people will know the end is near and hopefully turn to God.