We are following through this journey and have been at base camp looking to discover how we can engage God in the spiritual realms both within us and within the realms of heaven. And we have been looking at two pathways to do that.
The pathway of relationship leading to deeper intimacy with God which flows from the inside out. Flows from heaven through the gateways of our spirit, soul and body around us to create the atmosphere of the kingdom around our lives.
But also, the pathway of responsibility. This pathway leads to kingdom rulership, where we take authority as sons of God in the realms of heaven, to manifest heaven on earth. And that flows from the outside in.
So, we go from here into heaven and we present ourselves as living sacrifices so that we can find out what God’s will is and out work that will.
So, today we are going to look at the gift of tongues and how tongues is a vital element in terms of spiritual growth. And we are going to look at meditating through the word, opening the eyes of our heart and open the eyes of our spirit. So, that we can just follow this journey along the way. So, tongues in spiritual development I believe is one of the key factors in spiritual growth.
And many years ago, in the previous two centuries they actually fought battles over tongues as a gift. And people would tarry for hours and days waiting for that gift to be released. And so, it was a precious thing, and they really appreciated the value of speaking in tongues as a spiritual gift but over the years that became easier and easier for people to receive the gift of tongues. But I think along with receiving it easier people lost the sense of the value of it and the importance of it. So, we are going to look at using the gift of tongues three ways.
Using the gift of tongues as we engage the word of God and as we engage vision and looking into the things of God.
Hebrews 5:14 solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
And so, we need to practice training our senses to engage God. Both our spiritual senses and the senses of our soul and body so that we can discern.
Discern means to understand something spiritually. Now we are going to use plenty of exercises to train our spirit and build our spirit up just like we use physical exercise to build the body. We need to use spiritual exercises to build the spirit. These exercises are just the scaffolding used to build the house. Once you built the house you live in it, you don’t use the scaffolding anymore.
So, a lot of the exercises are practice until this becomes part of our lifestyle. And last time we saw that there are many different ways that we can build our spirit. Fellowship- spending time with God, that we just absorb him as we spend time with him, as we behold him, we become like him.
There is meditating on the word of God, waiting on the Lord. Praise, worship, and adoration. But one of the keys is speaking, praying, and singing in tongues. We are going to look at that today. In all these things there has to be perseverance. It is not a one-time thing. I am going to pray in tongues one day and then my spirit is just going to be huge. It’s an ongoing thing that our spirit grows stronger, bigger and has a greater dimension to engage the kingdom of God.
So, if we desire our life to be engaging God and out working our destiny in the spiritual realms and to manifest the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven through us as a gateway. Then we need to put discipline in.
Because you can have as much desire as you like but without discipline to follow it through, actually it won’t work.
The same will be in anything, when you’re looking to engage physical exercise or let’s say you’re looking to lose weight or do anything like that. If you have the desire, the desire will enable you to develop the discipline.
But sometimes we have only wishful thinking, like New Year’s resolutions, that didn’t last beyond the first week in January. It was a good idea or a wishful thinking, but it wasn’t really desire.
Think of desire as hungering and thirsting, you have not eaten for a while, and you are really hungry. You haven’t drunk any water and your mouth and throat are very dry. You cry out for food and drink. This should be the same for spiritual things.
When you really desire something, you will develop the discipline to outwork it, then it will become a delight. It just becomes part of our lives in which our spirit is active in this sense, and we are living in the benefit of it.
But it does take time to develop. So, really what we are doing is developing our relationship with God, so we can hear his voice, so we can see what he’s doing and that enables us to do what he is doing.
What I would encourage you to do in these exercises, when you practice in your own spiritual walk with God, is to journal everything. Write down what he says to you, write down what you feel, the impressions you are getting from him. Write down everything, but don’t try and analyze it at the time. Because if you get your mind in the way when God is speaking to you, often you miss what he is saying to you because you are trying to figure it out and understand it intellectually rather than spiritually.
Everything that comes in the Spirit has to be appraised by our spirit not just the mind. It doesn’t mean we throw our mind out, what it means is we go back to it later. So, once we’ve written it down, we can go and review it and in reviewing it, we can meditate around it, asking God to give us revelation of what it meant.
Maybe the imagery of the vision may be understanding of the words he speaks and then we can revisit that experience and get more out of it.
So, a key is journaling, it is a really key factor in spiritual growth because you have a record, and you can go back and see the things that God spoke to you and how they were out worked in your life.
That is the price and the testimony of how your spirit grows and develops. The gift of tongues is really a gateway gift into all these things. The Spirit of God has given us that language we call speaking in tongues or praying in tongues. It is the language of our spirit. The Holy Spirit communicates with our spirit through the gift of speaking in tongues. That gift is a spiritual gift; it’s not something you can develop or cultivate naturally. It is a spiritual gift, and it can be imparted through laying on of hands and also the gifts of the Spirit can be imparted that way.
1 Corinthians 14:2 says the one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but God and this is really a key factor. It is about speaking to God in words no one understands, but in our spirit, we speak mysteries, one of the greatest forms of payer and intercession.
Mysteries are things that you don’t understand, but in speaking in tongues you get to understand those mysteries and verse 4 says the one who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, builds themselves a house God can live in. And they grow stronger in their spirit.
So, the gift of tongues in personal use is for building ourselves up and to engage with those mysteries. In verse 5 Paul said this- now I wish that you all spoke in tongues because he saw how valuable this gift was. Verse 14 says if I pray in tongues my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. That means praying with our spirit can work against our soul, because our soul wants to know what’s going on. It wants to be in charge and therefore tongues challenge’s the rule of the soul in our lives. And then Paul says- what is the outcome? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind.
There is nothing wrong in praying cognitive things. I will pray for somebody with my mind, but actually praying in tongues helps us to pray according to the spirit. If we are just praying the problem, according to our flesh, it can get in the way of what God wants to do. We need to pray with compassion for someone, this releases power in our prayers. We got the law of agreement working for us. Our mind and our emotions agree, and this releases the power of the Spirit.
With our mind we may be praying for God to get them out of that situation, when actually God is using that situation to change and transform their lives. So just praying with our mind (soul) about something is a dangerous thing. So, praying in tongues enables us to by-pass the mind and become more fruitful in our prayer life.
So we can pray with the spirit, sing with the spirit and also sing with our mind. So speaking in tongues is designed to help us and equip us from the inside out. It is not something we apply from the outside in. It’s flowing from the inside out and it builds up our spirit and strengthens it. Which is important, because all permanent change comes through our spirit. Our spirit needs to grow and be strong so that our spirit effects change in our life which lasts. When we tried to change ourselves, we were using self-will or effort and it didn’t last, then we slip back into old ways of thinking and old ways of behaving because we’ve not affected permanent change.
When our spirit begins to rule and to direct our soul then permanent change comes, because our soul surrenders to our spirit’s control. It no longer fights for control of certain areas, it allows our spirit and the Holy Spirit together to lead and to God and to direct our lives.
So, tongues comes in as an activation gift, to activate things of the Spirit in and around us.
1 Corinthians 12:7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
So, it is not just one sort tongues, there are various sorts of tongues that we can see in the in the word of God. There’s a gift that is given in a in a church meeting that needs interpreting. We don’t really see that gift operating much because we’re already prophesying a lot ourselves. So, tongues for interpretation are another sort of tongues and that manifestation is normally public gatherings where interpretation by the same person or a different one is given and it is only as the Spirit wills, you cannot just make that happen.
Romans 8: 26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
The Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So tongues of the intersessional groanings is also a one of the gifts of tongues. This variety of tongues empowers believers to stand in the gap for their own lives and that of families, a church, city, nation etc.
Sometimes God moves us to intercede for people. People get woken up in the night to pray for someone or something. When you get a strong urge to pray in tongues, God is using that to effect change in a situation. God always wants someone on earth to be involved in the process of change. That’s why He’s given authority to us, and He wants us to be involved in the process of change and transformation.
The Holy Spirit transcends people’s minds or language barriers empowering the believer to preach, teach, and testify about Christ in some language of men. This is a gift that people in the missionary field get.
But when we practice speaking in tongues in our personal prayer language, our spirits grow stronger and stronger so we can engage the realm of the Spirit easier. We use it to build ourselves up and to engage God. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, God transfers those divine secrets, all the mysteries from His Spirit to ours. We have the mind of Christ in our spirit. Only the Holy Spirit knows the deep things of God and He reveals these things to our spirits. He wants to reveal those deep things to us so that they are no longer hidden mysteries but personal revelation, because everything that was ever written about us in heaven, everything that was ever thought about us in heaven, is contained within the revelation of the Holy Spirit for us.
God wants us to understand those mysteries so when we’re praying in tongues our spirit is receiving revelation of the truth, so there’s a strong link between praying in tongues and spiritual revelation and understanding what were mysteries.
The definition of a mystery in Webster’s dictionary says it is truth only known by revelation and that’s really what it’s about. It is not something we can try and understand with our mind, we need to receive it by revelation and by receiving revelation it causes us to experience abundant life.
1 Corinthians 2:7 we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery.
So it’s the wisdom of God that we receive when we begin to speak and pray in tongues. This is the wisdom God predestined for us before the foundation of the world for our glory.
And that is what praying in tongues will release when were in faith for it. Because if you’re just praying in tongues not really knowing what The Lord is doing, then you’re just doing the exercise, but not in faith. We need to be in faith that God is going to release the revelation of those mysteries, so that it effects permanent change, and our spirit can engage in the unseen realm.
Paul was a steward of these mysteries and each one of us can become a steward. We are called to be good stewards; in other words we faithfully steward the things God’s given us to make the best use of them.
There is a strong link between tongues and ancient revelation knowledge. God has given us talents to use and is we don’t use them then God will not be able to fulfill everything, in our destiny.
Paul he traveled all over the Middle East, he traveled a lot of Europe he did a lot of walking and a lot of traveling on ships. It took a long time, it is not like jumping on a plane and being there in an hour. So he had a lot of time to pray in tongues and receive revelation of those mysteries. I believe on the journeys that he took he was developing an understanding in the spirit of the mysteries of God and then when he got at certain places and he was faced with situations he was able to minister out of the wisdom he received. He wrote lots of letters to different churches to encourage them from the revelation of the mysteries he received because he built his spirit up praying in tongues, that’s why he valued it so much. I believe he knew it would release that the revelation knowledge. He said at the end of his life that he fulfilled his destiny.