Why speak in tongues? and the benefits-This is a summary of some reasons.

[Rodney Lucero]

THE WALK OF THE SPIRIT – THE WALK OF POWER
From the Book by Dave Roberson
The very measure of God’s power in a believer’s life is dependent on how much of his life is ordered by the Holy Spirit. The primary message of this ministry has been praying in tongues.

THE HOLY SPIRIT’S WORK WITHIN

The Holy Spirit prays for us:
Why did God send the Holy Spirit to live inside of you? So He could change you into the image of His Son. And in order to accomplish that goal, the Holy Spirit brought His own prayer language with Him so He could pray for all that concerns you. With that prayer language, He gets involved directly with you in a one-on-one relationship that is independent of anyone else, even of your own mind. When the Holy Spirit prays for you, He takes the plan He hears the Father utter and pours it through your spirit. And the language He uses to express that plan as it flows through you is the supernatural language of tongues.
Every time you give the Holy Spirit opportunity, He will use that language to pray for your calling, to pray out the plan of God, to edify you, and to charge you with His holy power. He will lend Himself to you as your faith allows Him to be activated within your spirit. He will pull you out of everything Jesus set you free from and into everything Jesus says that you are in Him.
If you want to, you can go into your room and pray in that supernatural language for two, four, or even twelve hours, and God the Holy Spirit will create every single word that comes out of your mouth. It is your choice to pray or not to pray. But every time you do choose to pray, you will come out of that time of prayer more edified in His plan and purpose for you than if you hadn’t done it.
God’s plan for you is in the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in you. The Holy Spirit is armed with the knowledge of everything He heard about God’s redemption plan for you before the foundations of the earth. And every time He searches your heart, He does it with the intention to pray that plan – the mind of God concerning you – into existence in your life.

Natural law brought under subjection:
The more of God’s plan we find, the more the Holy Spirit (who is the Executor of spiritual law) will be able to bring natural law under subjection in our lives. Natural law governs the circumstances that surround us, causing things to go for or against us – making us, rich or poor, sick or healthy, happy or sad. But God designed natural law to be made subordinate to spiritual law. And since the divine plan for our lives comes from the very heart of God, it is enforced as spiritual law.
When we spend any amount of time at all praying in the Holy Spirit, we are uttering divine secrets, or spiritual laws. The Holy Spirit then employs those laws to see that circumstances – natural laws – line up with the purpose and plan of God for our lives. We cannot pray consistently for very long before the things that don’t belong in God’s plan for us begin to fall away.
Once I asked the Lord, “Why did You give us such a peculiar language to use in prayer?” this is what He spoke to my spirit: “Among men a language has never come into existence that carries the vocabulary to express everything I am in you through Christ Jesus. Since there was no language with such a vocabulary, I had to create my own and loan it to you while you are on the earth. I just loan it to you till you come up to Heaven; then it will cease. Meanwhile, you know in part, and I know everything – My entire redemption plan for all eternity. Whenever the devil comes against you, don’t worry about it. Because of your infirmities, I will start making intercession for you according to that plan. And even though you only know in part, I will pray the part you need.”

The great exchange: Trading our plan for God’s plan:
There is a supernatural exchange that takes place as we pray in other tongues. Look at what this says: Romans 8:27-28 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
What does that mean, “He searcheth the hearts”? It means that the Holy Spirit continually searches your heart with the intention of removing everything that is contrary to the will of God, your Father the planner. Then the Holy Spirit replaces it with the plan He heard for your personal life before the beginning of time when God formulated His plan for you. He prays the perfect plan of God into your spirit so you not only know what you are called to do but how to fulfill that call in the perfect timing, will, and power of God. God trades your natural plans and ideas for His through the supernatural medium of exchange, tongues for personal edification. You can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that as you yield to that divine exchange, all things will indeed work together for good for you, because you love God and are called according to His purpose.
He helps us find our calling:
However, you can’t discover the purpose God has called you to fulfill just by reading His Word. Now, you can find out in the Word everything you need to know pertaining to the inheritance that belongs to every believer. You can learn all about salvation, healing, prosperity, righteousness, Heaven, the blood, and ministry offices. But you cannot find out from the Word alone what God has called you to fulfill as an individual member of the Body of Christ. I HAVE TO DISCOVER MY DIVINE CALLING BY REVELATION THROUGH THE PERSONAL INWARD WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
No one knows our calling better than the Holy Spirit. He was in the Presence of God when our call was dirst planned. That’s why He brought His supernatural language with Him when He came to live inside us. We’re just too ignorant to know how to pray about our call. So His great reservoir of wisdom and counsel resides within our spirits, just waiting to be released through tongues. This says, 1 Cor. 14:14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. So, in essence, the Holy Spirit creates that supernatural language on the inside or our spirit man. Then a transfer of language and authority takes place from the Person of the Holy Spirit to our human spirit.
This divine transfer enables us as individual members of the Body of Christ on this earth to pray in tongues with the authority of God, knowing that the other two members of the Godhead will answer our prayer. If the transfer never took place, it would be the Holy Spirit praying, not us. But with the transfer, it is literally our human spirit praying as the Holy Spirit creates the prayer. The day you decide to lock yourself in your prayer closet to spend some quality time with the Lord in prayer – that is the day you will enter Heaven’s classroom here on earth with the Holy Spirit as your Teacher. You need that “classroom” if you’re ever going to fulfill your divine calling.

THE DIVERSITIES OF TONGUES IN GOD’S GOVERNMENT

The unique nature of diversities of tongues:
There is only one operation we can fulfill immediately after we are born again: the eighth operation of diversities of tongues. The moment we receive Jesus as Savior, we can also receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with other tongues, which begins our spiritual qualification for any and all of the other operations to which we may be called. A person cannot become a mighty apostle or prophet five minutes after he is born again even if that is what he is called to be. He first must become qualified, trained, prepared, and seasoned by the Holy Spirit before God will separate him to the office he is called to.
Why did He design it this way? Why are tongues available to us instantaneously with our rebirth? Because praying in tongues have everything to do with our becoming prepared and qualified for our particular calling. And as we pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is able to build into out heart the understanding of God’s will to build for our personal lives.
Benefits with praying in tongues:
We get spiritual authority. This spiritual power and authority is the means God gives us to overcome torment, worry, fear, and the hopelessness that can take over our lives when we move from one overwhelming situation to another, continually losing ground. Praying in other tongues also supplies the power to overcome character flaws – those deep-seated character traits that keep cropping up and robbing us of our stamina and initiative to overcome in the face of the common testings and trials that precede almost every major victory and promotion by God.
Praying in tongues always affects us in a positive way. God says that it edifies us (1 Cor. 14:4). In Jude 20, He says that it builds us up on our most holy faith. As we faithfully spend time praying in tongues, our lives begin to be transformed. The Word of God begins to come alive as we place our spirit, the “candle of the Lord” in the hands of the expert Illuminator. It does not matter what kind of carnal state we are in when we are first born again. It does not matter if we have been stealing money, lying, drinking whiskey, or stalking women down dark alleys. When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, that first simple little gift of speaking in tongues goes into operation for one reason: to edify or build us up. That is why we are not to wait to pray in tongues until we feel sufficiently spiritual.
Three categories of gifts for three purposes:
Every person in the body of Christ should receive the gift of the diversities of tongues. Why? Because the most important manifestation of the diversities of tongues is the direct operation of the Holy Spirit within the believer’s spirit to edify himself. That is the purpose that his one operation fulfills: it is given for the edification of the saints – until what happens? Until we all come into the unity of the faith. Until we quit being deceived by the cunning craftiness of men. Until we fulfill our call, speaking the truth in love.
So when Jesus ascended on high, He gave three categories of gifts for three separate purposes: 1. the fivefold ministry for the maturing of the saints: 2. helps and governments for the work of the ministry: 3. diversities of tongues for the edifying of the body of Christ. These three categories were given so that we would all come into the unity of the faith and the fullness of the knowledge of the Son of God.
1. (1 Cor. 12:28 – And God has set some in the church) Apostle, Prophet, Teacher, Miracles, Gifts of Healing – corresponds to – (Eph, 4:11 – And He gave some) Apostle, Prophet, Teacher, Evangelist, Pastor – for the purpose of – The perfecting of the saints.
2. Helps and Governments – for the purpose of – The work of the ministry
3. Diversities of tongues (1. Tongues for interpretation 2. Tongues for deep intercessional groanings 3. Tongues as a sign to the unbeliever 4. Tongues for personal edification (anytime, on purpose) – for edifying of the body of Christ.

The four basic diversities of tongues:
Although many diversities of tongues occur as the Spirit wills, four basic manifestations are outlined in the Word.
1. Tongues for personal edification (1 Cor. 14:4) – This is the supernatural language the Holy Spirit prays through us that we can use to pray hour after hour, as we desire. It accomplishes by the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
2. Tongues for interpretation (1 Cor. 14:5) – This manifestation of tongues is normally presented in a public assembly, accompanied by interpretation by the same or another person.
3. Tongues of deep intercessional groanings (Rom. 8:26) – This diversification of tongues empowers the believers to stand in the gap for their own lives, their families, their church, their city, their nation, etc. God may also call on them to intercede for someone or for some situation that is totally unknown to them.
4. Tongues as a sign to the unbeliever (1 Cor. 14:22) – This is the phenomenon that took place on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4-11). It occurs when the Holy Spirit transcends the intellect and all language barriers by empowering a believer to preach, teach, or testify about Christ in some language of men of which the believer himself has no knowledge. When are tongues a sign to the unbeliever? When the Holy Spirit transcends your intellect, empowering you to speak, preach, or teach in any language on the face of this earth of which you have no previous knowledge.
Tongues for personal edification is the most basic foundational operation of God, because it is designed by God to do for you what no preacher or teacher can do. It edifies you by building into your spirit godly traits such as love, divine insight into God’s Word and wisdom to know right from wrong and truth from falsehood. All nine gifts of the Spirit (first seven operations listed in 1 Cor. 12:28, and three of the four diversities of tongues) are all given as the Holy Spirit wills. But there is one diversity of tongues that you can operate at will – anytime you want to, as long as you want to – immediately after being filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is tongues for personal edification.
So after receiving this first diversity through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we begin our climb into the spiritual qualifications for any or all of the other seven operations of God. As we pray in tongues for our own personal edification, the Holy Spirit releases the Father’s perfect plan for us. The Spirit of God is certainly the One most able to qualify us for that plan. As we pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit prays through our spirit for needs in our lives that we are not even aware of, you see, God knows what lies in the deepest recesses of our being, and He through the Holy Spirit prays for us. In the edification process, spiritual authority grows and our faith is built up. We can reach the place where so much authority is released as we line up against the devil and bind him in Jesus’ Name that our commands of faith literally shake the enemy’s kingdom. As we mature in Him, we will become more and more of an asset to Him. Tongues for personal edification is the only diversity of tongues that we can operate “on purpose,” just because we want to, in order to arrive at that mature state.

PAUL’S SOURCE OF REVELATION
1 Cor. 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: 8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. THEN THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING HAPPENS BETWEEN verses 9 and 10: THERE IS A CHANGE OF COVENANTS! LOOK AT WHAT verse 10 and 11, SAYS: 1 Cor. 2:10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. verses 8 and 9 SPEAK OF JESUS CHRIST CRUCIFIED; THEN IN verse 10, THE HOLY SPIRIT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE CHURCH. THE CHANGE IN COVENAMTS HAS TAKEN PLACE. AT THIS POINT, PAUL BEGINS TO REVEAL HIS SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. NOW THAT JESUS HAS DIED FOR THE SINS OF EVERY PERSON, PAUL EXPLAINS, GOD WANTS EVERY PERSON TO HEAR WHAT WAS ONCE NECESSARILY HIDDEN. THESE MYSTERIES HAVE NOW BEEN RELEASED IN FULL-SCALE REVELATION TO THE CHURCH, MADE AVAILABLE TO EVERY BELIEVER WHO WILL YIELD HIMSELF TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. THAT IS WHAT verse 12 IS TALKING ABOUT: 1 Cor. 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
The Holy Spirit came all the way from Heaven to solve the greatest mystery of all time. His commission is to take the wisdom of God – the same wisdom that was hidden in God in a mystery since before the foundation of the world – and reveal it unto us. The Old Testament saints were only given glimpses into this hidden wisdom.
1 Peter 1:9-12 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
But through the mystery of the Holy Spirit, God has purposely revealed the mysteries of His wisdom to every one of us who believe in Jesus. Hebrews 8:11 says that under the New Covenant, we can be directly taught by the Holy Spirit concerning spiritual matters: Hebrews 8:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
This verse outlines the difference between God’s dealings with Israel as a nation under the Law and His dealings with us who have received the Holy Spirit. The Law consisted of the Ten Commandments, various ordinances, and the blood sacrifices. Under the Old Covenant, people didn’t have the recreated nature of the new birth. And since it is impossible for a spiritually dead man to know God, everyone had to be taught to know God through the Law and the sacrifices.
But now we can know God from the least to the greatest because He wrote His laws in our heart and put them in our mind. He gave us the same Source of revelation knowledge He gave Paul: the Holy Spirit, who searches the deep things of God with intention of revealing them to us.

The link between tongues and revelation knowledge:
But what did Paul do that was so different from anyone else who was filled with the Holy Spirit in his day? Other apostles were called; they had the same Holy Spirit. What caused Paul to be more equipped and gave him access to more revelation knowledge than any other man alive? In studying and meditating on all the Pauline epistles, I have found a common link between the revelation knowledge that Paul understood and established in his life and something he did. Paul made this key statement in: 1 Cor. 14:18 I thank my God, I SPEAK WITH TONGUES MORE THAN YE ALL:
There is a spiritual link between tongues and revelation knowledge. As I said earlier, tongues is the dividing line between those who walk in the miraculous and those who don’t. This also seems to be the dividing line for the reception of revelation knowledge. Paul prayed in tongues more than any other man, woman, or child in the Corinthian church – probably more than any other man alive in the church world of that day. And Paul was responsible for three-fourths of the revelation knowledge in the New Testament that constitutes the foundation of the Church.
Where did Paul get such astounding revelation knowledge? Well, what do you think he was doing as he walked through the wilderness and from city to city? What did he fill his days with during those long hours of travel? He spent hour after hour communicating the mysteries of Christ before God. And God answered his prayers, bringing him into the fullness of his divine call as the apostle to the Gentiles as He caused the revelation of Christ to be born in his spirit – so much so that Paul orchestrated the entire foundation of the Early Church! The Holy Spirit revealed to Paul those mysteries of the Gospel as an apostle: born out of due time” he wasn’t taught as the other twelve who had fellowshipped personally with Jesus. What he received from God came by direct revelation.

Speaking divine mysteries:
The spiritual link between praying in tongues and revelation knowledge is in understanding of the word “mysteries.” To help us understand this link, Paul mentioned this word three times between chapters 2 and 14 of 1 Cor. We have read first mention in: 1 Cor. 2:7 But WE SPEAK THE WISDOM OF GOD IN A MYSTERY, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: The second time Paul mentioned “mysteries” is in: 1 Cor. 4:1 Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and STEWARDS OF THE MYSTERIES OF GOD. So in the same letter that Paul told the Corinthian church he was thankful he spoke with tongues more than all of them, he also stated that he had been made a steward of the mysteries of God.
A steward is an administrator. A rich man of that day would employ a steward, who acted as an administrator over the rich man’s wealth and goods. The steward guarded the rich man’s good’s against waste, misuse, and thievery. In order for Paul to be a good steward of the mysteries of God, he had to protect those mysteries against infiltration of false doctrine, legalism, Satan’s hatred for the Church, etc. How did Paul do that? By allowing the Holy Spirit to pray these very same mysteries through him hour after hour in tongues. He knew it would affect his spiritual understanding of the revelation of Christ to the Church.
The third time mysteries is mentioned is in: 1 Cor. 14:2 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit IN THE SPIRIT HE SPEAKETH MYSTERIES. Notice that the moment you start praying in tongues, you put yourself in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit bypasses your flesh, soul, and intellect and goes right to your spirit. There He starts creating that supernatural language as soon as you open your mouth, and you begin to speak mysteries to God. But what mysteries is Paul speaking about in this verse? Well, the word “mysteries” basically means divine secrets. These divine secrets are not the kind that can never be told; rather, they are secrets that are hidden on the inside of God. These secrets have been made accessible to us by the blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
So if these mysteries are not for God’s benefit, they must be for ours. Therefore, praying in tongues must be like any other kind of prayer in that it is designed by God to be answered – just as much as is the mighty, mountain-moving prayer of faith or the I will go where You want me to go” prayer of consecration. John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
The Holy Spirit is the intermediary between Jesus, and us and He will only speak what He hears. His commission as the Spirit of Truth is to glorify Jesus by receiving truth from Him and then transferring these mysteries of Christ from His understanding to ours through the supernatural language of tongues. Also in Hebrews 7:25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he EVER LIVETH TO MAKE INTERCESSION for them. This says Jesus is our High Priest for us. So the Holy Spirit hears the intercession Jesus is making for us and then pours it through our spirit as we pray in other tongues.
THE SAME MYSTERIES THAT WERE HIDDEN IN THE LORD SINCE BEFORE THE WORLD BEGAN ARE THE SAME MYSTERIES I PENETRATE THE THRONE ROOM OF GRACE WITH EVERY TIME I PRAY IN TONGUES. AND THE LORD SAID, “YOU GOT IT!” That is why your faith increased every time you pray in tongues. You don’t receive some electrical, tangible charge from speaking a bunch of syllables in the air. The reason you are edified is that you are speaking the same mysteries Paul wrote about: the mystery of healing, the mystery of righteousness, and the mystery of redemption. You are speaking them before the throne room of grace, and God answers them as He does every prayer.
You see, when the Holy Spirit is able to express these mysteries through your spirit, eventually they will manifest themselves in your understanding. Tongues literally free the Holy Spirit to move on your mind with revelation knowledge, insight, wisdom, and understanding of spiritual matters. That is why the devil has removed tongues from three-quarters of the Church. It is much easier for believers to be deceived by the ever-changing doctrines of man when they have been separated from one of the primary teaching tools that enables them to learn from the Holy Spirit Himself.
The Lord gave revelation of what was bringing the revelations: He was communicating with me the same He will communicate with any person who PRAYS OUT THE MYSTERIES IN TONGUES BEFORE HIS THRONE. As you pray out divine mysteries every day, God will answer your prayers by helping you better understand the mind of Christ. The Word of God began to come alive in me. And that is an important part of edification. Here is a natural illustration of what happens when we receive revelation knowledge that may help you understand the process better: You can equate praying in tongues to downloading information onto a computer chip. What is the computer language? TONGUES. So hour after hour, you pray in tongues, constantly feeding divine mysteries into that “computer chip.” Then at some point, the Holy Spirit instantaneously “installs” the contents of that computer chip into your spirit, releasing the entire revelation that it contains in a millisecond.
Suddenly your spirit understands an entirely new aspect of the Scriptures that you never understood before. It would take you months to teach others everything you received in one millisecond. Why? Because your spirit is capable of understanding and receiving hundreds of thousands of bits and pieces of information in a second. It is the natural mind that gives you trouble. Your brain is limited; it can only assimilate one “paragraph” of revelation at a time. The more you pray in tongues, the more you “download” divine mysteries onto that spiritual computer chip. And when the Holy Spirit “installs” it into your spirit and releases the revelation, suddenly you begin to understand the mind of Christ, the mystery of Christ in you, the Hope of Glory, begins to be born in your spirit, accompanied by great faith.
So Paul’s source of revelation knowledge and his means of receiving it are both revealed in the Book of 1 Corinthians: The Holy Spirit revealed hidden mysteries of divine wisdom to him through tongues for personal edification. And the very same gift the Apostle Paul used to receive revelation knowledge is available to you and me. It is a gift that we can exercise at our own volition, on purpose, just because we want to!

PRAYING OUT THE MYSTERIES OF GOD’S PLAN

Finding God’s perfect will for you:
Every time you spend an hour or a day praying in tongues, you are praying the mind of Christ that encompasses the full foundational revelation of the Church – the mystery of everything that Christ the Hope of Glory is in you, to you, and through you. But as you continue to pray out those mysteries, the Holy Spirit also expresses the mind of Christ for you on very personal level, helping you find and walk in the absolute perfect plan of God for your life.
That is one of the Holy Spirit’s most crucial roles in your life. Why? Well, are you sure that you know exactly what your calling is in the Body of Christ? Did you know that you could flounder around all of your life under the ceiling of the flesh and never find God’s perfect will for you? (For instance, if you stop along the way to fight with people, you will go no further than that fight until you deal with it according to the Word.)
That is why the Bible says there are a GOOD and an ACCEPTABLE and a PERFECT will of God for your life (Rom. 12:2). Jesus also talked about different types of “ground” in people’s hearts: One type yields thrityfold, one sixtyfold, and another a hundredfold of the Word that is sown (Mark 4:20). Many people never leave the “thirtyfold” stage of God’s plan for them. They spend their entire lives cheated out of their reward because they don’t know how to release the power of the Holy Spirit inside of them. If they understood how to do that, then every day would bring them closer to God’s perfect plan. Next year would be different than this year, and five years down the road, they would be able to look back and know that they had not wasted that time.
I went on a personal search to discover from the Word of God not only how to find the perfect will of God for my life, but how to go on by the power of the Holy Spirit to pursue it. I found my answer in the Book of Romans. And now there is not a thing this side of hell that the devil can do to stop me, because greater is He who is in me than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4)!
The good, acceptable, and perfect Will of God:
Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that GOOD, AND ACCEPTABLE, AND PERFECT, WILL OF GOD. These verses say that somehow through the offering of my body as a living sacrifice, I will go through a process that causes me to no longer be conformed to this world – its way of thinking and what it does. Somehow I will experience transformation by the renewing of my mind to prove not only the good, but also the acceptable, and finally the absolute perfect will of God.
So my question to God was this: “ What ‘perfect will’ are You talking about? I mean, if I am going to offer my body as a living sacrifice and, as a result, find Your perfect will, I would like to know what ‘perfect will’ I am looking for.” I went to someone known to be knowledgeable of the Scriptures and asked him, “What perfect will of God is the Bible talking about in Romans 12:2?” the man said, “You are being transformed by the renewing of your mind as you learn more of God’s Word. You are finding the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.”
THE GOOD, ACCEPTABLE, AND PERFECT WILL OF GOD REFERS TO YOUR CALL IN THE BODY OF CHRIST THAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU BY GRACE. And if you ever learn to offer your body as a living sacrifice, you will find not just the good, not just the acceptable, but the absolute perfect will of God for your life. To prove this look at: Romans 12:4-8 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.
Within this many-membered spiritual body called the Body of Christ are many graces and callings that differ from one another, whether they be apostle, prophet, teacher, pastor, evangelist, helps, governments, or the diversities of tongues. So this passage of Scripture, taken in context, is saying that if I ever learn how to offer my body as a living sacrifice, the result will be that I find God’s particular grace and calling for my life.

How do we offer our bodies as living sacrifices?
THE REASON SOME PEOPLE DON’T EXPERIENCE MANY FAITH VICTORIES IN THEIR LIVES IS THAT THEY ARE NOT FULFILLING THEIR CALL. THEY ARE NOT FINDING WHAT GOD WANTS THEM TO DO. THEY ARE NOT PURSUING HIM TO DISCOVER WHAT HIS ABSOLUTE PERFECT WILL IS FOR THEIR LIVES. I am personally so hungry to know God’s perfect will for my life that I will do whatever is necessary to attain that goal. I want to know to the “nth degree” what Jesus has called me to do, for what purpose I was born, and what anointings are available to me.

Every condemning sentence cancelled:
Notice that in Romans 12:1 I BESEECH YOU THEREFORE, BRETHREN, BY THE MERCIES OF GOD… the word “therefore” means, “Based on what I have already said.” In other words, Paul is saying, “Use the information I taught you in the previous chapters to go on and offer your body so you can find the perfect will of God.” Look at these verses previous to show us how to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices: Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them, which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. 2 Cor. 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 2 Cor. 8:9 For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.

How to walk after the Spirit:
That brings me to this question: How do I walk after the Spirit? Paul would not make the statement he did in Romans 8:1 without going on to tell me how to leave behind the walk of the flesh and begin to walk after the Spirit. In the verses that follow, Paul differentiates between the walk in the Spirit and a walk in the flesh. Notice in verse 13, he says, Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye THROUGH THE SPIRIT do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
So now Paul is telling me that to walk after the Spirit, I must somehow mortify, or put to death, the deeds of the body through the power of my reborn spirit as it is edified and built up by the Holy Spirit. This is starting to sound like Romans 12:1. There it tells me to offer my body as a living sacrifice. But back in Romans 8:13, it tells me that I can’t do it through will power, the enemy of the flesh; it has to be through the Spirit.
How do I release the Holy Spirit to edify and build up my reborn human spirit to mortify the deeds of the flesh and offer my body as a living sacrifice so I can find God’s perfect will for my life?

Nothing can separate you from God’s plan:
I can’t spend six hours praying in the Holy Spirit and worshipping God without the Holy Spirit taking the plan of God – His perfect will for my life – and enforcing it out ahead of me. As I pray, the Holy Spirit will lay hold of and remove every boulder and every mountain that stands in the way of my fulfilling the perfect will of God. And who is a match for the Holy Spirit? That is why this says: Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Why will all things now work together for good? Because the Holy Spirit is the One who seizes hold of everything that is contrary to God’s will for my life and uses His power to replace it with God’s perfect plan. And He does it because I have found out how to release the perfect will of God into my life. Romans 8 ends with a triumph: Romans 8:37-39 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
How can I be so convinced that neither height, nor depth, nor any creature, nor things present, nor things to come can separate me from God’s plan and His love for me? Because I discovered how to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. I found out how to allow the Holy Spirit to work God’s plan in my life as I pray much in the Holy Spirit.

Yielding your authority to the Holy Spirit:
The Holy Spirit knew what to target in order to help us in our infirmities. He was not going to try to conquer our soul, our mind, our will, our intellect, or our emotions first. So the Holy Spirit just bypassed all that mess – or wavering soul, our defeats, our up-and-down emotional roller-coaster rides, our whimpering, our swelled speeches of doctrinal error, our lying down in defeat, and our little deceptions. INSTEAD, HE WENT STRAIGHT INTO THE DEPTHS OF OUR SPIRIT – THE NEW CREATION THAT CONTAINS ALL THE AUTHORITY JESUS TRANSFERRED TO US: Matthew 28:18-19 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Then the Holy Spirit said to each of us, “Look, little one, you are being whipped because you are puny and weak and your spirit has no understanding of revelation. But your man does have a new nature, a capacity to understand spiritual matters, and the spiritual authority I deposited in you when you were born again. “So, excuse Me, but I am here now, and I would like to borrow your authority from you. You see, I need a conqueror. And although I am the all-powerful Holy Spirit, I can’t do anything in your life without your authority.
“First of all, I need your permission and authority to pray through you. Will you give that to Me and let Me help you fulfill God’s perfect will for your life?” you see, the Holy Spirit has a handicap – us. He would have finished taking care of mankind’s mess a long time ago if it was not for His handicap. HE CAN’T EVEN PRAY THROUGH US UNTIL WE GIVE HIM THAT AUTHORITY! Only when we yield our authority to Him will He transfer His supernatural language to our spirit man, giving us utterance to pray mysteries before the throne of God.
If we are wise, we will lend our authority to the wisest, most powerful Being in the universe, the One who moved on the face of the deep and separated the upper and lower firmaments. He who has all that power needs only our authority to operate it in our lives. THE MOMENT WE START PRAYING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, WE GIVE HEAVEN THE AUTHORITY TO CREATE THAT PRAYER IN OUR SPIRIT SO WE CAN PRAY THE MIND OF CHRIST. AS WE YIELD OUR AUTHORITY TO HIM BY PRAYING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, WE TURN HIM LOOSE TO MOVE US INTO GOD’S PERFECT WILL FOR OUR LIVES!
Watering the seed of God’s plan:
The moment you were born again, and the Holy Spirit came to dwell within you, that book about my life, was deposited on the inside of your spirit. That book is God’s perfect will for your life in seed form. On the inside of that seed is the “DNA” programming for God’s entire plan for you. And if you will yield to the Holy Spirit, He will bring forth its contents, causing it to grow into a strong, deeply rooted tree of blessings and divine purpose. He will continually work God’s plan, searching your heart moment by moment and praying the will of God for your life way out ahead of you.
The Holy Spirit does not run things the way a natural man does. He does not play with your life. He is out for your success! But you have to cooperate with Him by allowing Him to pray through you. When Jesus said that out of your innermost being shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38), He was speaking of the Holy Spirit. So the more you pray in the Holy Spirit. The more you water the seed that contains God’s plan. As you continue to pray and sow to the Spirit, you will eventually reap from the Spirit, for the seed will sprout and grow into the will and the direction of God for your life. The more the seed grows, the more prevalent God’s plan will become.
As you continue to walk after the spirit, that divine direction will become so strong in your life that it will be almost impossible for you to walk in the wrong direction. God’s direction will no longer be hard to catch; it will be hard to miss. You will literally have to get past God to fail! God’s wisdom and guidance will gradually consume and overtake you, until the voice of the Holy Spirit becomes louder than the enemy who surrounds you with adverse circumstances and proclaims you are going to fail. And at every level of God’s plan that you attain, the anointing of His Spirit will be there to give you the grace to fulfill His perfect will.
YOU HAVE A CALL. NO ONE ELSE HAS IT. God would have to arrange something else for the Body of Christ if you failed to find and fulfill what God has called you to do. But you can find your divine call. You are still on this earth; you are still breathing. You still have the opportunity to release the Holy Spirit in prayer to help you find and fulfill God’s perfect will for your life. Are you going to let your lazy flesh cheat you out of hearing those words, “Well done”? I don’t think so!

THE CHANNEL THROUGH WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT SPEAKS
The Holy Spirit always speaks through the same channel. We need to become familiar with that channel so we can differentiate His voice from every other voice, thought, and impression.

Identify the channel of communication:
Every time God talks to you, He will communicate through the same channel, you can open a door to a spiritual treasure house that no man can close. When we hear God’s voice, it seems as if it comes from somewhere deep down in the center of our being and rises to our mind. Most of us have enough sense to know it does not originate in our natural mind; it comes up to our mind.
The Holy Spirit once gave me an inner vision to show me how the Holy Spirit transfers His supernatural language to my spirit. In the vision, I saw the outer man and the inner man. The Outer man, the fleshy man, was the darkest of the figures. The soul was another shade lighter, and the spirit man was absolutely light. I saw the Holy Spirit literally creating or bringing into existence His supernatural language in my spiritual mind, which was actually encased within the natural mind of my outer man.
What science has labeled the subconscious is actually the spiritual mind. Scientists say that it possesses incredible ability that far exceeds the operational capacity of the physical brain. So when the Holy Spirit creates His supernatural language in you, those tongues originate way down deep I your spirit and then come up into the recesses of your spiritual mind, which lies within your physical mind. This explains the fact that when the Holy Spirit speaks, it is not a surface speaking. It comes from the depths of that spiritual mind and bursts outwardly into your intellect.
That is why if you don’t let the tongues come out of your mouth, those supernatural words will bypass your mouth and drift up to your thoughts, and you will “hear” the tongues in your natural mind. Now, as long as you let the supernatural language that the Holy Spirit creates come out of your mouth, your mind is free to think of other things. For instance, I have made it a regular practice to read the Word while I pray in tongues. But what if you stop that flow and stop speaking those tongues out? Can you pray in tongues in your mind? Not effectively, because you actually complete the channel of prayer by allowing the Holy Spirit’s language to come out of your mouth. If you don’t speak out that language (and it can be just a quiet whispering under your breath), eventually your mind will shift over to something else and dismiss the tongues, and you will find you have stopped praying. You have cut short the flow of prayer coming through God’s channel of communication.

The door to another world:
When you pray in tongues, you immediately put yourself in the Spirit, because you open the door to another world. You have opened the channel to your own human spirit, giving yourself direct contact with the Holy Spirit. So lets isolate the door through which God’s voice comes so you can recognize when He is speaking to you. Locate the channel through which I (the Lord) communicates through me. Start praying in tongues for a while, then stop. NOW LISTEN. As you keep quiet and listen, the tongues will continue to come up from your spirit and explode across your intellect. Even though you won’t be speaking in tongues out of your mouth, you can “hear” them in your mind. You will realize that the channel through which the Holy Spirit creates His supernatural language is the same channel through which He brings revelation, visions, prophecy, and so forth, to your mind.

Get acquainted with God’s channel:
As you pray in tongues, the channel is opened through which God communicates. This is what happens when tongues for interpretation operates. The tongues open the channel for what is about to come. Once that channel is open, the Holy Spirit can send the interpretation through in the same manner He sent the tongues.
As you consistently give yourself to praying in tongues, that channel of communication will become increasingly clear and definite. You will find it easier and easier to enter into the rest of faith as you learn to shut out the world and hear the voice of God within. It won’t be long before you will immediately know the difference between mental energy and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
But if you are not consistently allowing the Holy Spirit to create that supernatural language in your spirit as you speak it out of your mouth, it will become much more difficult to shut out external circumstances. You won’t find it easy at all to monitor your spirit for what God may be saying to you.
As you faithfully keep praying in tongues, you will learn how to listen to that channel. You will know where His voice comes from, where visions come from, where revelation knowledge comes from, because all of these things originate in the same part of your spirit. As you begin to pray out the mysteries of Christ in other tongues, what happens? You open up the channel. Now you can experience direct communication with God – something the Old Testament saints longed for but could not experience.
Four ways the Holy Spirit communicates:
There are four basic ways that the Holy Spirit uses that channel to communicate to us:
1. Inner Witness: The Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us is a continual source of absolute peace. He will continually pour His peace throughout our being if we will let Him. Therefore the inner witness is often manifested as a disruption to that flow of God’s peace, alerting us to a wrong turn, a problem, an obstacle, etc.
2. Revelation: To our spirit. Holy Spirit loves to communicate by revelation. He likes to encapsulate an entire revelation and send it through that same channel. All of a sudden, the revelation hits your spirit and it explodes outward. You receive the entire revelation in a hundredth of a second. Do you want to increase these types of experiences in your life? Then spend time praying in the Spirit. You will keep the channel wide open and promote peace and edification in every area of life.
3. Audible Voice: You may be thinking about something else, when suddenly He says something in your spirit that seems audible to you. You hear it as clearly as if someone were standing next to you speaking.
4. Visions: One example is teaching visions. They may explode across your mind with lightening speed.

The anointing within: Inoculation against deception:
One more important benefit of becoming familiar with the way God communicates is when you go into a meeting where someone is teaching false doctrine, that wrong teaching will not be able to penetrate into your spirit. You will be able to discern what is going on as you sit in a meeting. Is the devil attacking the service and the Holy Spirit fighting for it? Or is a “wolf” behind the pulpit, trying to steal the wool off the sheep? You see, developing the ability to discern what is not true, even if it is spoken from behind the pulpit, is one of the first results of consistently praying in tongues. Praying in tongues is an inoculation against deception.
THE EDIFICATION PROCESS

What does it mean to edify your spirit?
1 Cor. 14:4 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue EDIFIETH HIMSELF; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. This verse tells us what happens when we pray in tongues for any amount of time. The word “edification” is derived from the word “edifice,” which means a massive, magnificent building. So when you pray in tongues, you are actually erecting a superstructure, a divine operation, on the inside of your spirit to house the anointing of God and to qualify you for your divine calling. Before a tangible anointing is manifested through a person, he must go through the edification process that causes it to manifest. Not many Christians seem to know anything about that process. Often they think that they receive some kind of “magical” charge from praying in tongues that will immediately begin to operate through them. When you pray in tongues, Satan has no idea what God is saying to me. Why? Because the Holy Spirit creates that supernatural language within my Holy of Holies, and it is outside of all satanic jurisdiction.

Building yourself up on your most holy faith:
So what happens when I pray in tongues for personal edification, which I can do at will, anytime I desire? Why is this, the most “foolish” of all gifts to the natural mind, so important and so powerful? Look at: Jude 1:20-21 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. We know that God is only pleased by and only moves in response to our faith. In Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But we also know that we can hear and hear and hear the Word and yet not see any change in our lives. We still have to get that Word planted in our spirits and then find some way to release the faith that the Word has produced.
Thousands of people around the world are filled to overflowing with God’s Word. Yet still, for the most part, the Church does not experience the miraculous results found in the Book of Acts. SO THERE MUST BE A MISSING INGREDIENT MOST BELIEVERS ARE UNAWARE OF. The truth is, any minister, no matter how anointed and full of the Word he may be, can only tell you what he has learned through experience and as the Holy Spirit has taught him in his own times of meditation on the Word. But that teaching will not profit you if you don’t find some way to mix faith with it. You must personally get that Word into your spirit and then let the Holy Spirit teach you.
That is why Jude says we are to build ourselves up on our most holy faith by praying always in the Holy Spirit. It is only as we willingly and freely present our bodies as a living sacrifice and take the time to endure in prayer that the Holy Spirit can begin to reveal to us the mysteries of Christ. Only then can He release the faith in out hearts that is needed for God’s power to operate in our lives.

Rising above a carnal sense-ruled walk:
This edification process of Jude 20 delivers us from the strife-filled, carnal condition described in Jude 19 and enables us to live continually in: Jude 1:21 KEEP YOURSELVES IN THE LOVE OF GOD, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. In other words, praying in tongues is the bridge between a state of strife and sensuality and the love of God.
Oh, how much we have sought God for that elusive increase of the faith God deposited on the inside of us – and here was this verse all along, giving us in black and white an ironclad guarantee that we can build ourselves up! Up where? Up above a walk where disease brings us to a standstill. Up above a walk where poverty reigns in our lives. Up above a walk where our children are lost to the world forever. Up above this sense-dominated realm where we are more moved by what we see, hear, and feel than we are by the Word of God. We can release the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we build ourselves up on our most holy faith. HOW? BY PRAYING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT!

Pray until the power comes:
Your job is not to change God’s truth, but to find it. Jesus inspired Jude to write verses 19 and 20. So Jesus is saying there is a key that, when acted upon, will build you up above a sense-dominated walk where everything you have been delivered from defeats you. Instead, this key will cause you to walk in power on your most holy faith. WHAT IS THE KEY? USING THAT SUPERNATURAL LANGUAGE CALLED TONGUES.

Why are you edified?
The Lord opened up the Scriptures to show the why behind the edification process of tongues. He took me back to: 1 Cor. 14:2-4 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but HE THAT PROPHESIETH EDIFIETH THE CHURCH. Notice that Paul says in verse 4 that he who prophesies edifies the church. Why? Because through the simple gift of prophecy (which is equivalent to the gift of tongues and interpretation operating together), suddenly the mind of Christ for that day and hour is made known to that particular public assembly.
So when a person prophesies, it edifies the church collectively, and when he prays in tongues, it edifies him individually. However, the reasons why either the body of believers or the individual is edified are the same. In both cases, the mind of Christ is revealed.
Prophecy causes the mind of Christ to be manifested collectively to the church. On the other hand, praying in tongues causes the mind of Christ to be manifested in you as an individual, for the Holy Spirit will begin to take the mysteries you have been praying before the throne of God and communicate them back to you by revelation. That is why you are edified through praying in tongues!
Therefore, spending three hours praying in the Holy Spirit would be one of the wisest moves you have ever made. And if you do it every day – look out, devil! You are building yourself up on your most holy faith, receiving greater and greater revelation of the mind of Christ – and the devil has no idea what you are saying. He just has to watch it happen!

PURGING AND MORTIFICATION
At the same time the Holy Spirit builds you up in your spirit to understand revelation knowledge in God’s Word, He also strengthens your born-again spirit with the power to mortify or put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:13)

The purging process:
Jesus said, “If you bear fruit, I will purge (or prune) you” (John 15:2). Whether we like it or not, if we bear fruit as a branch connected to the vine, we are going to undergo purging, why? So we can bear more fruit. So beware: you are going to provoke an internal war when you begin to consistently pray in tongues, because impurities will soon start to surface that you don’t want to get rid of. God will endeavor to purge those impurities off your life so you can fulfill your divine call without being destroyed by the devil. But I can assure you of this much: the Holy Spirit will not immediately try to purge every dead limb your flesh is clinging to. He will wait until you have built yourself up to a place high enough in the Spirit through praying in tongues that you can handle the emotional war that will result when He cuts each dead limb out of your life.
The first step: Waking up the conscience:
You can’t be charged up and edified in your spirit man without also undergoing a purging process in your life. It is impossible to rise upward in God without cutting off the things that are holding you down. Therefore, the first thing the Holy Spirit does as you keep praying in tongues is to wake up your conscience. It becomes much more difficult to do the fleshly things you used to do. When the Holy Spirit wakes up your conscience to something you are doing wrong, that means He is there with the power to put it to death. When you add your faith and begin to resist it, mortification takes place and the Holy Spirit cleanses you from it. THAT IS EDIFICATION.

Things hidden in the darkness revealed:
The mysteries you pray out in tongues are for your benefit, not God’s. Every time you pray in the Spirit, you communicate up before God’s throne the mysteries of Christ in you, the Hope of Glory. When God starts to answer those prayers, you begin to receive insight into His Word. The understanding of everything that Jesus is in you starts to come forth on the inside. At the same time these mysteries are revealed to your understanding, the Holy Spirit also casts a brilliant light on spiritual roadblocks that are hidden in darkness – those sins, faults, and shortcomings that keep you from producing a hundredfold harvest of God’s plan for your life. This is what Jesus is talking about in this verse after describing the different types of bad ground in people’s hearts, He says this: Mark 4:20-22 And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.
And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?
So Jesus calls me “good ground” if I receive God’s Word – both the written Word and the mysteries of His personal plan for my life – and then bring forth the fruit of that Word thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Remember, praying in tongues is like any other prayer – it is designed to be answered! But because it is our human spirit doing the praying (1 Cor. 14:14), it is also our spirit man receiving the answer to our prayers.

Will worship verses mortification by the Spirit:
YOU CAN’T DISCOVER THE ROOT OF FLESHY WORKS IN YOUR LIFE ON YOUR OWN. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SEARCH THE INNERMOST PARTS OF YOUR HEART TO FIND THE ROOT. Then He edifies your reborn human spirit to rise up and put to death the deeds of the flesh on a daily basis. That is why the baptisms in the Holy Spirit takes place in the human spirit – because that is where all permanent change comes from.
It was not until I found out how to release the power of the Holy Spirit inside of me that I was able to put to death that old man’s fleshy deeds. Then finally, finally, Jesus, the Man of Compassion, could begin to come forward in my life. Mortification through the Spirit is the process by which the Holy Spirit rises up on the inside of you to destroy the hold that the flesh has had over you. Instead of the sin having dominion over you, you gain dominion over it!

The cart before the horse:
How do we loose that power on the inside of us to mortify the deeds of the body? Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. SO THE KEY TO RELEASE THE HOLY SPIRIT’S POWER IN OUR LIVES ON A PERSONAL LEVEL TO MORTIFY THE DEEDS OF THE FLESH IS THE SUPERNATURAL LANGUAGES OF TONGUES. MORTIFICATION THROUGH THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT GOES FOR THE ROOT, AND THEN THE BAD FRUIT FALLS OFF. ONCE MY REBORN SPIRIT HAS BEEN BUILT UP SUFFICIENTLY BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, IT STRIKES THE ROOT, AND THE BAD FRUIT DRIES UP AND FALLS OFF THE LIMB FOR GOOD. IT BEATS ANYTHING YOU WILL EVER SEE.
Whether it is smoking, eating too much, arguing with your spouse, or any other deed of the flesh, the principle is the same: relying on sheer willpower to change your fleshy weaknesses will take you only so far. It is only through the Spirit that you mortify the deeds of the body.
Breaking the cycle of defeat:
There is only one true purging process, and Jesus spelled it out: John 15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. So it is through the Spirit and according to God’s Word that we mortify the deeds of the body – those fears, faults, and bad habits with which the flesh attempts to keep us in a never-ending cycle of defeat. That is the only way we can take the limits off our lives.
Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. Therefore, the only thing that stands between us and any kind of miracle is the fleshy pattern or system of thought that has captivated us in the realm of the soul. That unscriptural pattern is something faith can’t give substance to. It is hope that has been programmed wrong – hope that has gone amiss. It is full of fear and torment instead of faith.
The Holy Spirit will replace that mess for the kind of hope that faith can give substance to. But we must yield to His leadership when He begins to root out those destructive patterns: otherwise, we will just remain in that same invisible prison until the day we die. You see, it is no accident that right after Paul talks about mortifying the deeds of the flesh in Romans 8:13, he says: Romans 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. The term “son of God” refers to the mature believer who has been nurtured by the Holy Spirit to the point that he can now walk by his new nature rather than by the dictates of the flesh.
You may say, “Well, I want God to lead me into this ministry or this job promotion.” BUT THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS FOR GOD TO LEAD YOU OUT OF ANYTHING THAT KEEPS YOU IN A PERPETUAL CYCLE OF DEFEAT. That is what Romans 8:13,14 is talking about: as many as will allow their reborn human spirit to be nurtured and taught by the Holy Spirit, they are the mature sons of God. For it is through the spirit – through the new nature within them – that they mortify the deeds of the flesh. The Holy Spirit will lead them out of patterns and systems of thought that enslave.
Paul described this condition of enslavement in Romans 7:7-24. He said, “What a wretched man I am. There is a bent toward sin loosed in my members, and the more I try to serve God, the more it wars against my mind. There is nothing in me to ‘rebottle’ it. Even though God gave me the law and I try to keep it, this lust for sin persistently wages war inside of me. I can’t seem to stop it.” This hopeless spiritual condition is the reason why the whole world became guilty before God and subject to His judgment. The world needed a Savior. So Romans 8 tells us how the Savior came to lead us out of our enslavement to the flesh into a walk of the Spirit.

Tearing down strongholds in the soul:
All you have to do is look at the root word of “mortify,” which means death, to know you are in for a battle in the purging process. Paul describes this battle in: 2 Cor. 10:4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 2 Cor. 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Who possesses the thoughts that are brought into captivity? Paul didn’t change the subject between verse 4 and 5. If you are the possessor of the thought, you are the possessor of the fortress. The strongholds Paul is talking about are the imaginations and high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. They are carnal strongholds in the realm of the soul. Paul is telling us to bring into captivity every disobedient thought, because the devil will cut us to pieces with the soulish strongholds that are not cast down. Some of those strongholds hinder us so greatly that if they are not broken, we will die in our defeated condition, never to fulfill our godly desires or divine call.
A stronghold can consist of a certain set of imaginations that makes a person so infuriated; he separates himself from the truth through strife and unforgiveness. A stronghold can also be an elaborate system of religious thoughts that enslaves the hearts and minds of an entire nation. But whether it is a stronghold in the soul of an individual or of a nation, it all starts with an uncaptivated thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ.
The most important weapon that God gave to us was the Holy Spirit inside of us and a supernatural language. That language is a gift that edifies and builds us up above a carnal realm where our natural senses dominate. And as we employ this gift by praying in tongues, the Holy Spirit begins the process of purging us of every “high thing” that exalts itself against God’s plan for our lives.
Where does this purging process take place? Well, everything that shows up on the outside is generally a picture of what is working on the inside of us. Therefore, mortification occurs in the realm of our character. The Holy Spirit begins a work of discerning the thoughts and intents of our hearts, rooting out systems of thought and soulish strongholds that cause us to fail. As we keep praying in tongues for personal edification, He tears down any strongholds of the soul that have not been constructed by God’s Word.
At the same time, the Holy Spirit constructs a superstructure in our spirit man by imparting revelation knowledge of God’s Word. For what purpose? To mature us, to edify us, and to build our lives higher and higher into God. The Word of God is a two-edged sword that divides asunder soul and spirit (Heb. 4:12). It is the only qualified agent to deliver such a distinct blow between spirit and soul. And in this purging process that encompasses all the realms of the soul and spirit, it is the only standard I trust as I endeavor to understand the Holy Spirit’s Word inside of me.

The last forty percent:
The dead limbs of the last forty percent are hard to get to. A good deal of edification must take place first in your spirit before the Holy Spirit will even focus in on those hard-to-reach limbs and begin to purge them. IN FACT, DURING THE FIRST SIX MONTHS YOU PRAY CONSISTENTLY IN TONGUES, THE HOLY SPIRIT IS STRENGHTHENING YOUR SPIRIT TO GET YOU WILLING TO EVEN DISCUSS CUTTING THOSE DEAD LIMBS OFF! Remember, Jesus said that you are clean through the Word He has spoken (John 15:3). As the Holy Spirit girds up your spirit with revelation of the Word, you will be able to cut off those hideous dead limbs that clutter and hinder your life.

Three levels of sanctification:
As the Holy Spirit prays for us, He purges us on three levels: Spirit, Soul, and Body. That is what it says in: 2 Cor. 7:1 Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us CLEANSE OURSELVES FROM ALL FILTHINESS OF THE FLESH AND SPIRIT, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. When you start to pray in tongues, that sanctification process starts immediately, beginning with filthiness of the flesh. This refers to any habitually destructive thing that is detrimental to the body, such as drinking, smoking, chewing tobacco, etc. The Holy Spirit will help you get rid of all those bad habits for you. Then, if you will keep praying, He will bring revelation knowledge that will aid in the sanctifying of your soul.
Filthiness of the soul includes such things as hatred, strife, selfish ambition, envy, self-exaltation, manipulation, lying, and unforgiveness. You won’t be in your prayer closet long before it will become impossible to keep praying without dealing with these sinful strongholds of the soul. Either you will stop praying, or you will allow your new nature to go ahead and purge those dead limbs out of your life. If you make it through the impasse that the sanctification process can trigger in the realm of your soulish emotions, the Holy Spirit will move on to help you get free from filthiness of the spirit. This refers to incorrect belief or doctrine that keeps you from being fully equipped with the power of God to fulfill your call.
All three areas of sanctification overlap one another, BUT THE STRONGEST PURGING TAKES PLACE IN THIS AREA OF INCORRECT BELIEFS. As God answers the mysteries that you are praying out in the Holy Spirit’s supernatural language, all of a sudden an awareness of spiritual things begins to flood into your understanding. Wrong believing, or filthiness of spirit, begins to fall away. The more of the mind of Christ you pray before the Father, the more revelation knowledge the Holy Spirit reveals to your spirit and the more roots of false doctrine He destroys. He will not leave you stuck in the mire of some wrong belief that has neutralized God’s power in your life.

This is the refreshing:
Are you weary from a long, inner battle? Have imaginations and high things exalted themselves against the knowledge of God in your life? Have uncaptivated thoughts taken their toll until you feel mentally exhausted? Is it a struggle just to drag yourself to church, much less take a step further and begin to daily worship Him in private? Do your emotions say, “I am worn out? I have sat in church most of my life, but I am approaching the point where I don’t care anymore”?
Well, this verse says speaking in other tongues is the rest and refreshing that causes the weary to rest:
Isaiah 28:11-12 For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. Praying in tongues is a priceless gift that God has given us so we can feel rested and refreshed right in the middle of a very imperfect world! Jesus said, “Why don’t you take My yoke upon you and learn of Me?” (Matt.11: 29). What is that yoke that He is talking about? Well, remember – Jesus is meek and gentle. The yoke He asks you to take upon yourself is not trudging through life with the great burden of the Gospel on your shoulders. THE YOKE HE ASKS YOU TO TAKE IS THE RESPONSIBILITY TO LEARN OF HIM. If you want to draw closer to God – if you want to put to death the fears, uncertainties, bad habits, pressures, and cares that stand between you and a closer walk with God – then praying in tongues is a precious gift to take advantage of. It is a spiritual key that will bring you rest and refreshing, unlock divine mysteries, and build you up higher In God.

PURGED TO STAND IN THE GAP
You will never be able to stand in the gap for others the way God intends if you remain an unpurged vessel. Before we can enter deeply into intercession, we must experience a certain degree of mortification of the flesh nature. Intercession requires dedication, determination, and endurance. Generally, each of these attributes is contrary to the flesh.

Why prayer groups often fail:
That is why so many prayer groups fail, even though they begin with the best of intentions. Most people who join a prayer group do not possess stamina, commitment, or dedication. In fact, what they usually have is a whole boatload of excitement and a ton of character flaws. These people join a prayer group thinking that they will spend the time pulling down great spiritual strongholds over the city as they pray in tongues. But in reality, all they are really doing in the beginning is edifying themselves, not interceding for others.
If they stick with it, this edification process will cause the character flaws that have hindered them in past to surface. The Holy Spirit will bring them face to face with the root that has borne the bad fruit – in other words, the works of the flesh in their lives that have caused them not to be a good mama, a good daddy, a good provider, etc. raging tempers may arise in those who seemingly never had that kind of temper before.
But the capacity for these fleshly traits was there all along; praying in tongues just caused them to surface. Now it is up to the people to continue in prayer, allowing the Holy Spirit to edify their reborn spirit until it is able to purge the very root of those traits away. If the prayer group members do not deal with these revealed faults, soon they will disband over petty arguments, false doctrines, or just plain selfishness. But if they keep on praying, the Holy Spirit will finally get them to the place where He can take the emphasis off their personal edification and release His power through them on behalf of others.
Stand steadfast in intercession:
Determine to stand steadfast in intercession, cooperating all the time with the Holy Spirit’s mortification process that continues within. As you edify and build yourself up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, you will attain a place in the Spirit where God can literally pour the deep intercessional groanings through you. That is when incredible, mega-amounts of Holy Spirit power begin to be released.
The amount of spiritual activity that goes into operation when God’s power is delivered to a person to genuinely stand in the gap is phenomenal. This kind of power authorizes a host of angels to take legal action in others’ and in your affairs to ward off catastrophes and change circumstances. But this level of intercession also attracts powers and principalities to challenge your authority. These demonic powers will move in on you with the vengeance of a freight train. Their target will be any weaknesses or character flaws that they can use to stop and destroy you, such as your susceptibility to ungodly lusts or just plain procrastination.
THAT IS THE REASON THE MONTHS AND MONTHS OF EDIFICATION THROUGH PRAYING IN TONGUES ARE SO IMPORTANT. DURING THAT TIME, THE HOLY SPIRIT EDIFIES YOUR REBORN HUMAN SPIRIT TO PUT TO DEATH ANY FORCES OF THE FLESH GIVING THE DEVIL AUTHORITY AND POWER TO HINDER AND CONTROL YOUR LIFE. HE BUILDS YOUR SPIRIT TO SUCH A PLACE OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY THAT THE ENEMY CAN’T STOP YOU.
Once you have reached that place of enduring prayer, the Holy Spirit will begin to activate incredible waves of glory – power that floods over your soul in the form of supernatural joy and hilarious laughter. These waves of glory are enjoyed by people who have mastered the art of enduring prayer and are being used by God to rescue others from physical disaster or eternal hell. THE SUPERNATURAL JOY AND LAUGHTER IS A REPORT FROM THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT THAT FAITH HAS OBTAINED THE ANSWER; SOMETHING HAS CHANGED, AND IT WILL SOON BE MANIFESTED IN THE NATURAL REALM.

Groaning within our righteous spirits:
So how can we be confident of final victory in this spiritual quest from selfish carnality, to enduring in prayer through the purging process, to becoming a prepared vessel that the Holy Spirit can use in intercession? I found an answer to that question. THE KEY TO OUR ULTIMATE VICTORY IS SUMMED UP IN ONE SIMPLE STATEMENT. GOD HAS GIVEN TOO US THE EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 2 Cor. 5:1-5 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT.
Now compare: Romans 8:22-25 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
All creation groans for its deliverance from the bondage of corruption in which it was placed at the fall of man. All of creation, right down to the last atom, came under a curse at that time. Now creation, pregnant with a new heaven and a new earth, groans in travail like a pregnant woman waiting to give birth. Then in verse 23, Paul switched the emphasis from creation to you and me. Everything in creation that is imperfect is in a form of intercessional groaning waiting to be delivered from corruption. That includes believers who have “the first fruits of the Spirit.”

PRAYER AND FASTING: THE POWER TWINS
THE KEY OF FASTING: You see if you ever learn to shut your flesh down, you will shut Satan down, because the only power he has is through the seduction and manipulation of the flesh nature, which includes the mental and emotional realm as well as the physical body.
Certain areas of your flesh nature that had not been put to death in the past had come to the surface. When these fleshy works began to surface, the anointing felt less, but in reality was greater than ever before. This is what Paul meant when he said in essence, “For I would rather glory in my infirmities (or weaknesses as a man) because when I am stripped of my dependency on my flesh, it places my dependency on the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 12:9,10). When we feel weakest in our own natural strength, we are usually the strongest, because unmortified areas of our flesh are in the process of dying.
Fasting and prayer in combination help cause those fleshly works to come to light in our lives more quickly. Tests and trials will also bring them to light, but I would rather not wait for the trials. Fasting and prayer allow the Holy Spirit to reveal those things hidden in darkness and to deal with them before the trials come. This in turn causes our character to be strengthened.
Fasting helps move mountains:
FASTING DOES NOT MOVE GOD; He is not the One stuck underneath an invisible ceiling. MY FASTING ALSO DOES NOT MOVE THE DEVIL; he is not the one with my problem. SOMEHOW FASTING DEALS WITH MY UNBELIEF. What in the world does fasting have to do with unbelief? Answer is here: Romans 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If Christ lives in you, you qualify that your spirit is life. It has entered into the ZOE, seated-in-heavenly-places-in-Christ, God-kind of life. But notice, the same verse that says my spirit is life also declares my body to be dead. What kind of “dead” is Paul referring to? See: Romans 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the BODY OF SIN might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. What is this “body of sin”? It is no less than the old nature inherited from the first man Adam before we were born again. This is the “sin nature,” the unregenerated spirit within us all before our spirit passes from death to life in the new birth. It was that sin nature that used to energize the lusts of the flesh, such as self-exaltation and the love of money.
So if Christ be in you, then positionally God has declared the sin nature, the “body of sin,” to be dead and your reborn human spirit alive unto Him. We understand positional truth pertaining to our spirit. For instance, we know that Jesus was made to be sin for us and that we were made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21). We are now seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Eph, 2:6). We are above and not beneath (Deut. 28:13).
However, we may know very little about positional truth pertaining to our flesh. THE ESSENCE OF THAT TRUTH IS THIS: THE MOMENT WE WERE BORN AGAIN, GOD DECLARED THE “BODY OF SIN” – THE SIN NATURE OR THE “OLD MAN” – TO BE DEAD. POSITIONALLY, THE FLESH HAS LOST ITS “POWER SOURCE” TO COMMIT SIN. IT LOST ITS RIGHT TO DOMINATE AND RULE OVER US ANY LONGER. SO WHEN YOU PRAY IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, WORSHIP GOD, AND CONFESS HIS WORD, YOU ARE ENFORCING THE POSITIONAL TRUTH THAT YOUR SPIRIT IS SEATED IN HEAVENLY PLACES WITH CHRIST JESUS. THE MORE YOU PRAY IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE MORE YOU EXECUTE THAT POSITION OF GRACE. ON THE OTHER HAND, WHEN YOU FAST, YOU ARE ENFORCING THE POSITIONAL TRUTH THAT THE “BODY OF SIN” WAS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AND YOUR FLESH NO LONGER HAS THE POWER TO RULE OVER THE OPERATION OF YOUR SPIRIT. THUS, WHEN YOU BEGIN TO FAST AND PRAY, YOU EXECUTE TWO POSITIONAL TRUTHS IN THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT. THAT IS WHY PRAYER AND FASTING ARE THE POWER TWINS.
Fasting does not move God:
Our fasting does not move God; it moves us to a place where we can receive from God. Fasting destroys the hold that the flesh has had on our lives so that, instead of operating out of the flesh, we can continually operate out of the Spirit! You see God is not the One holding the power back. If He had His way, every one of us would be operating in raising-the-dead type of power tomorrow!
HOW TO EFFECTIVELY PRAY IN TONGUES
It is not how loud or how soft you pray in tongues. The same is true with worship: it is not how loud or how quiet you worship; it is how much of your entire being you pour into every statement of adoration. You can’t truly worship the Lord while your mind is wandering off down the street analyzing some problem.

Is fervency in prayer a requirement?
You may ask, “What if I don’t pray real fervently when I pray in the Holy Spirit? After all, doesn’t James say: James 5:16 … The effectual FERVENT prayer of a righteous man availeth much? Yes, it does say that, but James is talking about the prayer of faith in that verse. The prayer of faith occurs when you line up your sights on some “mountain” in your life and say. “Mountain, move!” That kind of fervent prayer avails much when you have ground against hell or any other opposition until that mountain moves. But if you don’t have enough strength of character yet to do that, praying in the Holy Spirit will help bring you to a place where you can hold your ground until you receive your answer. So whether or not you are praying fervently in tongues does not really matter. It just depends on what God is doing in your spirit.

Pray to a state of peace:
Sometimes you can enter into such a state of peace that you just lay on the floor for two or three hours. Everything is so quiet; you don’t even want to move. At those times, the Holy Spirit begins to teach you things from His Word, and the truths He reveals seem so crystal clear. What a wonderful place in the Spirit that is! But most Christians don’t know anything about the place of utter peace that can be reached through praying in tongues. They have never stayed still long enough in prayer to get acquainted with it. It is not wrong to walk and pray in tongues, but there comes a time for learning discipline in prayer and for getting acquainted with the Holy Spirit. These can often best be accomplished by keeping your body as still as possible while your spirit prays out the mysteries of Christ in tongues.

The role of worship:
Edification does not necessarily include my emotions. If I want feelings, I worship, because that is designed to bring the godly emotions I need for fortification to my soulish realm. You can’t do anything better in the midst of a trial than to worship. Worship sustains you, stabilizing your emotions to go through the trial victoriously. (However, you don’t want to just be sustained through a problem; you want to go further in God and BE SET FREE from it. That is the job of the Holy Spirit, and that is where praying in tongues comes in, because all permanent change comes from within.)
That is why James said you are to count it all joy when you fall into temptations, testings, and trials. Rejoice in the midst of your afflictions, your infirmities, and your perplexities. Just count it all joy. As you turn all of your attention to God, releasing your emotions in admiration and worship of your Father, that joy will stabilize your soulish realm, which is the part of you the devil likes to operate against.
How to spend three hours with the Lord:
The most powerful way for a person to spend three or four hours in the Presence of God if that is all the time he has to do so in a given week. Do three basic things:
1. Worship and praise: Which supplies the sustaining power needed for the duration of our trials, trading our weaknesses for Christ’s strength.
2. Confession of God’s Word: Speaking to the “mountains” in our lives that need to be removed – sickness or pain, finances or torment, worry or fear, etc.
3. Praying in tongues: The supernatural language that not only edifies but supplies revelation knowledge.
It is not the general messages that you hear a minister preach for an hour each week that will change your life. The anointed teacher or pastor can only supply some of the information required for needed change. But the real change comes when in the privacy of your own home, you apply the Word to the problems you are facing. Your life is transformed in direct proportion to the private time you spend praying in the Spirit and in confession of the Word and worship.

Meditation on the Word and praying in tongues:
I consider it to be a blessing that my mind is unfruitful while I spend three or four hours praying in tongues. Why? Because I have learned to employ my mind with God’s Word while my spirit is praying. It has become automatic for me: when I sit down to pray in tongues, I pick up my Bible and start reading. My favorite practice is to take a book like Galatians, Ephesians, or Philippians and just read that book over and over again while I pray in tongues for hours. Often I sit in a chair or lie on the floor and pray an hour or two. Then I set my open Bible in a convenient place and start walking around the room praying. Ii pray for a while, my spirit listening in case the Holy Spirit says something through that channel of communication. Then I go back to the Bible and read the entire book through again, still praying in tongues. I am glad that my mind and my spirit can receive from God at the same time. The Holy Spirit takes all the accumulated knowledge that I have deposited into my mind through reading something in the Bible over and over, and He uses it for the day-and night meditation process. This is where much of the revelation knowledge I receive originates.

Assimilating the Word into the soul:
When you read a book of the Bible over and over, you set yourself up for day-and-night meditation. You are feeding your spirit the raw material that the Holy Spirit needs to illuminate the entire book for you! Eventually the central theme will be born in you. Then all satellite verses will be pulled down in, along with the understanding of how they relate to each other. Understanding how verses relate to one another in a passage of Scripture is an important part of the meditation process, one of the first things the Lord taught me regarding meditation was never to take a verse out of context.
If there is a verse I am trying to understand, the Holy Spirit alerts me to find where the subject of the verses begins and ends and then to read over that passage many times. In this way, I assist Him in my meditations. The assimilation process will happen automatically, even when you go to sleep. For instance, suppose you read 1 John one hundred times. (By the way, that is a good beginning assignment for offering your soul for meditation. Anything in you that does not love people will go to war against that Book!) Then suppose that soon afterward, someone wronged you in some way, and you made a mountain of unforgiveness out of a molehill of offense. The mind of God that you assimilated from 1 John will help you sort out what is and is not important while you sleep. It will magnify the truth you assimilated regarding God’s love and level that mountain of unforgiveness.
YOUR KEY TO UNLOCK DIVINE MYSTERIES IS PRAYING IN TONGUES, YOUR DESTINATION IS GOD’S PERFECT WILL FOR YOUR LIFE, AND YOUR HELPER THROUGHOUT THE JOURNEY IS THE HOLY SPIRIT LIVING WITHIN!
THE DIVINE PROGRESSION TO AGAPE LOVE
Tongues for personal edification is not only for speaking mysteries and divine secrets and building yourself up with revelation knowledge, but it has just as much to do with purging me so I can learn to walk in agape love – the kind of love that seeks not its own and denies itself on behalf of others.
When you are bridging the gap with the blood of Jesus when the person does not deserve it; that is agape love. The result of walking in that kind of love is in: Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. Jesus was saying this: “If you will be children of the Most High, who is merciful even to the evil and the unthankful, and give agape love to others, then My Father will restore whatever you may have lost – pressed down, shaken together, and running over. While the thief is taking your money out the back door because you extended mercy, My Father will march in the front door with agape and restore to overflowing all that you lost!” that is why agape cannot fail (1 Cor. 13:8)! So how do we ever attain that place of agage where we are merciful just as the Father is merciful? The SCRIPTURES TEACH US THAT PRAYING IN TONGUES IS A MAJOR KEY TO HELP US AS WE JOURNEY THROUGH A PROGRESSION OF STEPS TOWARD THE AGAPE KIND OF LOVE.

Feeding the seed of agape prayer:
Even though God has planted the nature and force of agape love in your spirit, it may be so repressed and so dominated by your soulish emotions that you hardly know it exists inside of you. But when you pray in tongues, you bypass the operation of the physical soul and throw a lifeline to your spirit. Soon the edification process starts feeding that seed of agape in your heart, causing it to germinate and grow. The force of love in your spirit grows bigger and bigger until one day, it dominates the emotions of the soul instead of the other way around. This is called taking off the old man and putting on the new. Ephes. 4:22-24 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Perfect love casts out fear:
As you clothe yourself with your new man by giving yourself to the Word and to prayer, the Holy Spirit through your spirit edifies, purges, and develops your character until everything you say, think, or do is governed by agape. Look at: 1 John 4:17-18 HEREIN is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; BUT PERFECT LOVE CASTETH OUT FEAR: BECAUSE FEAR HATH TORMENT. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
The word “herein” points us to the next verse, which tells us how we will know when love is being perfected in us. So what is the sign that I am drawing? So what is the sign that I am drawing nigh unto God and approaching agape love? It is this: Along the way, I am shedding torment and fear as I enter into rest and refreshing.
Encompassed within agape is an abiding presence of peace. As you grow close to God and His love is perfected in you, that peace begins to dominate as fear and torment lose their hold. That is the first sign that you are being purged from phileo love to agape love. I can hammer it into your intellect. As much as possible, I can teach with the anointing of God straight to your spirit. But I can’t make that process toward perfect love take place in your life.
However, if I can talk you into giving yourself to praying in the Holy Spirit, then you will cause that process to begin in your own life. You will start to edify and build yourself up in your inner man through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then the Holy Spirit will begin the mortification process by building up your inner man to purge all those insecurities, intimidations, carnalities, and lusts that have hindered your life. This is how God’s love is perfected in you. As the Holy Spirit edifies your new nature, torment and fear begin to fall off you and you draw close to agape.
Covet earnestly agape love:
1 Cor. 12:31 But COVET EARNESTLY the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. Paul was saying in essence, “I want to show you a more excellent way. If you want to save yourself a lot of trouble, then you need to covet this kind of agape love with everything in you the same way you covet the best gifts.” Just how important is it to pursue agape love? Paul makes this statement: 1 Cor. 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but THE GREATEST OF THESE IS CHARITY.
What are the “best gifts”? Well you are called to fill one of the eight operations of God. For you, the best gifts are those that qualify you for the office or operation you are called to fulfill. Our flesh must be mortified. Agape love is difficult to conform to if you have even an ounce of flesh that has not been mortified. So it is one thing to preach about this agape and say that once we conform to it, we will never fail. But it is another thing to understand the process by which we can conform to that kind of love. This process is what we have missed. It is a progression through the edification of tongues that leads us to a place in the Spirit where we are finally strong enough to yield totally to agape love.
YOU MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT – YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT TO AGAPE UNLESS YOU FIND SOME WAY TO LET THE HOLY SPIRIT PURGE YOU OF EVERYTHING THAT IS CONTRARY TO AGAPE LOVE IN YOUR LIFE. IF I WERE YOU, I WOULD TAKE HIS WAY!

[Jonathan Poland]

Whoa...
Officially the longest forum discussion post so far.
:)

[Brian Lucero]

Wow! Long and detailed document to digest. You must have put a lot of work into this. I definitely agree that we Christians are not praying enough and also not enough in God's will.

What an encouragement for Christians when we can realize the purposes God accomplished through a devout, meaningful, spirit-driven prayer life. And when we can use the tools God has given us to use, how much more powerfully can God work through us!

I do believe that tongues is a powerful spiritual gift God has provided to his children, but I am hesitant about a few extreme generalizations this document about tongues makes. Perhaps you can clarify if I correctly understood your document to saying the following?:

1. Not all Christians have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, since baptism in the HS is a distinct event from conversion. Though it is available any time after conversion.
(“The moment we receive Jesus as Savior, we can also receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit…”)

2. Speaking in tongues is THE evidence of being baptized in the HS; therefore, only those who speak in tongues have been baptized in the HS.
(“This is the supernatural language the Holy Spirit prays through us that we can use to pray hour after hour, as we desire. It accomplishes by the baptism in the Holy Spirit.”)
(“…receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with other tongues…”)

3. There are only 8 operations, or spiritual gifts.
(“Well you are called to fill one of the eight operations of God.”)
("There is only one operation we can fulfill immediately after we are born again: the eighth operation of diversities of tongues.")

4. Before getting/using the other 8 spiritual gifts, one must first have the gift of tongues.
(“So after receiving this first diversity through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we begin our climb into the spiritual qualifications for any or all of the other seven operations of God.”)
(“…receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with other tongues, which begins our spiritual qualification for any and all of the other operations to which we may be called.”)

5. We can't know God's full plan, or release God’s will, for our life but by the Spirit revealing it to us by praying in tongues.
("YOUR KEY TO UNLOCK DIVINE MYSTERIES IS PRAYING IN TONGUES")
(“How do I release the Holy Spirit… so I can find God’s perfect will for my life?”)
(“I found out how to allow the Holy Spirit to work God’s plan in my life as I pray much in the Holy Spirit.”)

6. We cannot be fully edified unless we do it by speaking in tongues.
(“How do I release the Holy Spirit to edify and build up my reborn human spirit to mortify the deeds of the flesh and offer my body as a living sacrifice so I can find God’s perfect will for my life?”)

7. Every believer should speak in tongues.
(“Every person in the body of Christ should receive the gift of the diversities of tongues.”)
(“hat is the purpose that his one operation fulfills: it is given for the edification of the saints”)

8. We cannot fully WALK AFTER THE SPIRIT unless we edify ourselves which can only fully be done by praying in tongues.
(“How do I walk after the Spirit?.... So now Paul is telling me that to walk after the Spirit, I must somehow mortify, or put to death, the deeds of the body through the power of my reborn spirit as it is edified and built up by the Holy Spirit.”)
(“Because I discovered how to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. I found out how to allow the Holy Spirit to work God’s plan in my life as I pray much in the Holy Spirit.”)

9. Praying in the Holy Spirit is accomplished only by, and synonymous with, praying in tongues.
(“I found out how to allow the Holy Spirit to work God’s plan in my life as I pray much in the Holy Spirit.”)
(“But you have to cooperate with Him by allowing Him to pray through you. When Jesus said that out of your innermost being shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38), He was speaking of the Holy Spirit. So the more you pray in the Holy Spirit. The more you water the seed that contains God’s plan.”)
(“For instance, I have made it a regular practice to read the Word while I pray in tongues. But what if you stop that flow and stop speaking those tongues out? Can you pray in tongues in your mind? Not effectively, because you actually complete the channel of prayer by allowing the Holy Spirit’s language to come out of your mouth. If you don’t speak out that language (and it can be just a quiet whispering under your breath), eventually your mind will shift over to something else and dismiss the tongues, and you will find you have stopped praying. You have cut short the flow of prayer coming through God’s channel of communication.”)
(“When you pray in tongues, you immediately put yourself in the Spirit,”)
(“The mysteries you pray out in tongues are for your benefit, not God’s. Every time you pray in the Spirit…”)


Much of your summary on the gift of tongues is VERY encouraging and much needed in the church today. However, I find several blanket statements like the ones above unfounded biblically and damaging to personal spiritual development. Perhaps my reasons why can be discussed at a later time. But I just wanted to confirm for now that I was reading/interpreting your summary accurately. Thanks again.

[Rodney Lucero]

1. Sometimes people get baptism of the Holy Spirit mixed up with the new birth. When we get born again, we receive the Holy Spirit in the creative process that caused us to become new creatures. But we did not receive Him in His fullness until we were baptised in Him.
2. There are other evidences of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues is usually the first, since it does not require much to operate. The other gifts will be used as God wills.
3. and 4. We can fill any of the operations of the Gifts of God, one or more according to God's will. Speaking in tongues is one of them, and it helps you bring out the other gifts easier because you are praying to God. God can certainly have someone use gifts, but they will have more power and be more effective when a person is baptised in the Holy Spirit.
5. We will not know God's full plan for your life unless you pray in the Holy Spirit. You can spend your entire life finding out God's plan, but not fully. Or you can pray in tongues and test yourself to if that God will show in your spirit what His plan is for you. Do you know right now God's full plan for your life?
6. You need to find out more what edification means to understand what this means when speaking in tongues.
8. What do you think it means to walk after the spirit? Only your human spirit (or if you want to call it soul) are made of spiritual substance, so only spirit can act with spirit.
9. Praying in the spirit has to do with your spirit man praying. If you speak in your regular speak when praying, your mind is in operation while you are thinking about what to say. how can you possibly know what to pray for totally about a situation. Only God knows all the details that need to be prayed out, and that can only be accomplised by speaking in tongues.
If you want to get the main book I got this information out of, it is: "The walk of the Spirit, the walk of Power" by Dave Roberson. Over 34 years is his whole ministry of speaking in tongues. And do a scientific experiment. Spend 1/2 hour a day speaking in tongues, such as going to and from work, or any other time, and do this for 7 days then tell me what happens to your re3velation of the Word and other spiritual matters that you may have questions about, and watch how God will speak back to you in your spirit. All a born again Christian needs to do to get baptised in the Holy Spirit is to ask for it. They won't always speak in tongues right away. It could take days, weeks, or months, depending on how much they beleive it and try to speak in tongues.

[Brian Lucero]

1. Not all Christians have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, since baptism in the HS is a distinct event from conversion. Though it is available any time after conversion.
My reading of the Bible points me to the conclusion that the since baptism of the HS happens at conversion, all Christians have therefore been baptized in the HS. But also, Christians may experience multiple fillings with the HS throughout their walk with Christ.

2. Speaking in tongues is THE evidence of being baptized in the HS; therefore, only those who speak in tongues have been baptized in the HS.
Again, I believe all true Christians have already been baptized in the HS at conversion, whether or not they speak in tongues.

3. There are only 8 operations, or spiritual gifts.
There are many more than only 8 spiritual gifts. The list in 1Cor.12 is not exhaustive, as there are other lists in the NT as well. Even still, the context does not seem to bind the total number of gifts to the sum of those described in the lists.

4. Before getting/using the other 8 spiritual gifts, one must first have the gift of tongues.
God grants any single gift or combination thereof in varying orders to different people. People don’t have to wait until some arbitrary time-threshold or qualification-threshold to start receiving any of the gifts. So any of the gifts may be granted at the time of conversion, in any order, and without first acquiring tongues.

5. We can't know God's full plan, or release God’s will, for our life but by the Spirit revealing it to us by praying in tongues.
I agree that the Spirit needs to reveal it to us. I don’t agree that He ONLY reveals it in powerful ways through praying in tongues. He reveals Himself and His plans to us in many ways, none of which are necessarily less revelatory than through the means of praying in tongues.

6. We cannot be fully edified unless we do it by speaking in tongues.
We can be edified in many powerful ways. Some people will be more edified when not praying in tongues.

7. Every believer should speak in tongues.
Every believer should seek all the gifts, and therefore should SEEK the gift of speaking in tongues. However, not every believer should receive the gift of tongues or should be able to speak in tongues. There is not any one gift that every believer should have. (note: having faith is not the same as having the gift of faith)

8. We cannot fully WALK AFTER THE SPIRIT unless we edify ourselves which can only fully be done by praying in tongues.
Believers who don’t speak in tongues can walk after the Spirit. Walking after the Spirit does not mean we need to shut off our minds.

9. Praying in the Holy Spirit is accomplished only by, and synonymous with, praying in tongues.
Praying in tongues does not necessarily mean praying in the HS. One can pray in the HS without praying in tongues.

[Rodney Lucero]

There are 3 attached files from when I did reports for Bible School that explains Baptism in the Holy Spirit and Speaking in Tongues.
We do get the Holy Spirit at conversion, but it is not the same as Baptized by the Holy Spirit. You should find out what the word "baptized" means when it come to the Holy Spirit.
Do you know anybody who speaks in tongues who has not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Keep in mind, a person may not know he has been baptized in the Holy Spirit, or fully understand it.
When speaking about having tongues before operating in spiritual gifts, it is saying that tongues is the foundation to function more fully in these gifts. Gifts can operate without speaking in tongues, but just because a person does not do the speaking in tongues does not mean he is not baptized in the Holy Spirit.
The emphasis is not just knowing God's plan, but to KNOWING IT MORE FULLY.
We can be edified in many powerful ways, but speaking in tongues is a deeper level of edification.
How would you pray in the Spirit without speaking in tongues? I beleive we can pray in the spirit without speaking in tongues, but we are taling about a much deeper level by speaking in tongues.
How did Apostle Paul get all the deep revelations from God? He said, "I thank God that I soeak in tongues more than you all."

[Jonathan Poland]

I agree with you Brian.

I think it is dangerous to put God in a box and limit his activity only to certain operations, especially when those limits are not given to us in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that speaking in tongues is the evidence of Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that until we have spoken in tongues we should not expect to operate in any of God's other powerful anointings, operations, gifts, or whatever you want to call them. And besides, we have examples of it not happening that way from history. For instance, Smith Wigglesworth was operating in Divine Healing long before he ever spoke in tongues. He insisted that he was Baptized in the Holy Spirit already, until the Pentecostals persuaded him otherwise. John Wesley never spoke in tongues (by his own testimony--he was a cessationist), but who could deny the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit for evangelism on his life?
When we begin to box God (what he will always or will not ever do) without express Biblical warrent, we are playing a very dangerous game. It was for this reason that the Scribes and the Pharisees did not recognize Christ when he came in a way they did not expect. If we are not careful we might end up guilty of the same sin and miss Christ again, when he comes in a way that our Theology does not permit.

[Rodney Lucero]

You said that nowhere in the Bible does it say that that speaking in tongues is evidence of baptiism in the Holy Spirit: Here are 5 Scriptures:
There are five witnesses for tongues as evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

1. The one hundred and twenty. Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

2. Cornelius and his household. Acts 10:46 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God...

3. The Ephesian disciples. Acts 19:6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them;
and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.

4. The Samaritan believers. Acts 8:17-18 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them
Money…

5. Saul. Acts 9:17 And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother
Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest
receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
You also said nowhere in ther Bible does it say that we can't expect to operate in powerful gifts until we speak in Tongues: We did not say that you needed to speak in tongues to operate those gifts. This is just one of the gifts. We did say that in order to operate in a much more powerful way in these gifts, we need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
The examples you gave from history: Smith Wigglesworth, and others can get baptized in many different ways. God can cause it to happen without other people doing anything. People can get baptized whenever the Lord makes it happen. A person may not know the term "being baptized", though. Like I said before, A person can be baptized and not speak in tongues at his chosing not to. Speaking in tongues increases many functions, as I have stated earlier.

[Jonathan Poland]

I said, "Nowhere in the Bible does it say that speaking in tongues is the evidence of Baptism..." in other words, the sole primary evidence (i.e. "if you haven't done it, you haven't got it"). That is what Pentecostals teach, and what this author (Dave Roberson) seems to believe.

On the other hand, the Scriptures you listed teach no such thing. In fact, there is no Scripture in the Bible that teaches this Pentecostal doctrine.
However, from the sound of it, I would say that perhaps you don't believe in it yourself either. You said, "A person can be baptized and not speak in tongues at his choosing not to." That is not official Pentecostal doctrine. The Pentecostal doctrine of "Subsequent Baptism in the Holy Spirit by Evidence of Speaking in Tongues," is articulated well, in my opinion, in this Wikipedia article here:

"The doctrine of tongues as the initial evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit is uniquely Pentecostal and is one of the few differences from Charismatic theology which generally claims diverse evidences."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism under Theology, paragraph 2.

So, do you believe that there is one evidence, or diverse evidences? If there is one evidence, tongues, then how can you say that anyone is Baptized in the Holy Spirit unless they have spoken in tongues? If you think you can, what would your evidence be in that case? Would we not then be back to multiple evidences, not just one?
If you wish to say, "There is just one evidence that normally occurs, but it must not always occur," again, you must admit that you do not believe this teaching because it is in the Bible, because it cannot be found there.

Also, I refer back to Brian's pt. 4, and the quotes from the author that he listed there. Again, you seem to be at odds with the Authors view on that point.

[Brian Lucero]

Rod,

What's your concise definition of the 'baptism of the the Holy Spirit'?

Because chances are, what you consider the definition and evidences for the baptism of the HS are, we can show through the scriptures that it all happens at conversion.

[Rodney Lucero]

Brian, below is the the same response I sent Jon. And what are some of your verses that say we are baptized in the Holy Spirit at conversion?
I don't follow Pentecostal doctrine. They are too narrow in their beliefs. This has turned into another religion over the years. The Book that I took this summary out of explains in much more detail than the summary I posted. Dave Roberson says, "It is God's will that the moment we are born again, we lift our hands in submission and praise to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that is the very best way to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But the devil has managed to separate the new birth from the baptism of the Holy Spirit through divisions of doctrines so that now, as a rule, the two experiences don't occur together." Acts 1:16 “Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Shows here that this is a separate occurrence. I believe that being baptized in the Holy Spirit, whether it happens at initial salvation or later, depends upon several factors, such as what God is doing in that person at the time, where his belief system is, what kind of faith he has, what kind of doctrine he has been taught, etc. I have seen people get born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues all at the same time. The reason it says the speaking in tongues is the initial evidence is that it is the easiest operation of the gift to manifest first. Any of the other gifts can operate once a person learns about them and how to operate in them. There is a more powerful operation of the Holy Spirit when you get baptized, if the person was not baptized at salvation for a number of reasons. But also we must keep being filled with the Holy Spirit, or else it goes dormant.

[Rodney Lucero]

I posted these two replies to why speak in tongues on June 27 at 8:30 PM my time. You can read what I put there.
They start out as below:
Reply 1:
This is one of the best ways to explain what I believe about baptism in the Holy Spirit. Bottom line, I believe it is 2 separate events. They can happen at the time of conversion, or anytime after. In what the Scriptures, say and my own personal experiences hundreds of times in many different settings and people, this is what I see. So below and attached files, is an explanation from Kenneth E. Hagin who has been in ministry for over 60 years.
Reply 2:
Below are two more examples of being baptised in the Holy Spirit. One is from John G. Lake and his testimony, and then Smith Wigglesworth and his testimony.
Rodney

[Rodney Lucero]

I don't follow Pentecostal doctrine. They are too narrow in their beliefs. This has turned into another religion over the years. The Book that I took this summary out of explains in much more detail than the summary I posted. Dave Roberson says, "It is God's will that the moment we are born again, we lift our hands in submission and praise to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that is the very best way to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But the devil has managed to separate the new birth from the baptism of the Holy Spirit through divisions of doctrines so that now, as a rule, the two experiences don't occur together." Acts 1:16 “Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Shows here that this is a separate occurrence. I believe that being baptized in the Holy Spirit, whether it happens at initial salvation or later, depends upon several factors, such as what God is doing in that person at the time, where his belief system is, what kind of faith he has, what kind of doctrine he has been taught, etc. I have seen people get born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues all at the same time. The reason it says the speaking in tongues is the initial evidence is that it is the easiest operation of the gift to manifest first. Any of the other gifts can operate once a person learns about them and how to operate in them. There is a more powerful operation of the Holy Spirit when you get baptized, if the person was not baptized at salvation for a number of reasons. But also we must keep being filled with the Holy Spirit, or else it goes dormant.