Praying in Tongues

Everybody knows to pray, that praying is good, and yet even when we go to prayer we don’t always know how to pray as we should. Meaning we know some things in our mind that need praying about or people who need praying for, including ourselves. But we know there is so much more going on than we could even think to pray out and pray out rightly. This is where praying in other tongues comes in.

Paul said, “I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Praying with your mind is praying in your known tongue or language out of your own knowledge and understanding. Praying with your spirit is praying in other tongues as the Spirit of God utters through you things unknown to you. Just as we can sing and pray in a known language, we can also sing and pray in an unknown language.

See, the Bible doesn’t say praying in tongues is unfruitful, it says, “my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful” (1 Corinthians 14:14). Praying in tongues is very fruitful in the spiritual realm. Spiritual things surpass intellectual things. It is from the realm of the Spirit that all things can be affected for God’s good and perfect will.

You do the praying as you yield your mouth to what is coming up from your heart. The more you do it the better you get at it. You don’t have to wait to sense some kind of inspiration to begin, you simply yield your tongue and the Spirit will inspire you. And don’t stop to try to figure out what you’re saying – that’s what it means for it to be “strange tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:21). Not strange to God or even strange to everybody everywhere – but primarily to you, the speaker. Because you are doing it by faith.

Faith in God’s Word, for it says “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance” (Acts 2:4). Faith that God hears you, “For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands, but in the spirit he speaks mysteries” (1 Corinthians 14:2). Faith that you’re praying in Jesus’ Name, for He said, “These signs will accompany those who have believed : in My name. . . they will speak with new tongues” (Mark‬ ‭16:17). Hallelujah!

If you always knew what the mysteries were that you were praying out, you could just pray them out of your mind in your known language; you wouldn’t need the Spirit’s help to do it. But we don’t always know how or what to say in prayer. Therefore the Bible says “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” We have many weaknesses as humans, but this is specifically referring to our lack of knowledge. “. . . for we do not know how to pray as we should” (Romans 8:26).

Even when we don’t know how to pray, faith yields to the Spirit’s inspiration and speaks out. When we do this we step outside our own limitations and tap into the omniscience of God. What a thought! When we pray in the Spirit we can pray with the certainty that we are praying “according to the will of God” (see Romans 8:27). Or as one paraphrase puts it, we are praying “. . . in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny.”

Can you see the value and potential of such an ability? It is beyond what we can currently comprehend. We can of course pray at any time in line with God’s will revealed in what His written Word has already said that we know. Oh, but there is such a degree of effectiveness in prayer that is only reached by praying with the Spirit’s help in other tongues!

Friend, you don’t have to know what you’re saying – God does! You’re not praying to your self anyways. You are praying to Him. God’s got to have some people who aren’t afraid of a little ridicule for being one of those “tongue talkers” in order to get His will prayed out in the earth on that higher, more effective level. Why do you think the devil hates it so much? A little persecution for the sake of the move of God? I’ll take the move of God any day and twice on Sunday! Praise The Lord!