使用php自动递增LIMIT

我希望每当用户点击提交时，我的限额都会自动增加，这样值就会更新，用户就会看到他以前发送的消息，这是我的代码：

if(isset($_POST['text']))
{
$counter =1;
$message = mysqli_real_escape_string($con,$_POST['text']);
if(!empty($message))
    {
        $id = $_SESSION['id'];
        $time = time();
        $date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $time);
        $query = "INSERT INTO tbl_chat(time_sent,message_text,users_id) VALUES('$date','$message','$id')";
        mysqli_query($con,$query);
        $query = "SELECT TIME(time_sent)AS time_sent, i.users_fname, c.message_text FROM tbl_usersinfo AS i INNER JOIN tbl_chat AS c ON 
                                i.users_id = c.users_id ORDER BY c.time_sent DESC LIMIT $counter";
        $counter++;
        if($run_query = mysqli_query($con,$query))
        {
            while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run_query))
            {
            $time_sent = $row['time_sent'];
            $users_fname = $row['users_fname'];
            $message_text = $row['message_text'];
            echo '['.$time_sent.']'.$users_fname.': '.$message_text.'<br/>';
            }
        }
    }
}

我的代码的问题是sql只将counter的值读取为1，因此它不会回显用户以前发送的消息。有可能用php自动增加限制吗？