ONE BENEFIT OF speaking in tongues is, it enables believers to pray for the unknown—things their natural minds don’t know about. Praying this way is crucial to operating in the full scope of praying in the Spirit.
Praying in tongues provides a way to pray for things that you are not aware of and that you would never think to pray on your own. That’s why it’s so important. You just don’t know what to pray for as you ought (Rom. 8:26). Therefore, you need the Holy Spirit to help you pray out God’s perfect will concerning people and situations your natural mind knows nothing about.
THE UNKNOWN BECOMES KNOWN WHEN YOU RECEIVE THE INTERPRETATION
1 CORINTHIANS 14:15
15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
I think this verse has a twofold application. First, it literally means what it says: “I will pray both ways—with my understanding and also with my spirit.” But I believe this verse has a further application. You don’t always need to understand what you’re saying in tongues. However, when it’s necessary, the Holy Spirit will give you the interpretation of what you said in tongues. Then you will be able to pray by inspiration of the Holy Spirit with the spirit and with the understanding!
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit is continually searching for those He can use in prayer.
GOD LOOKS FOR AVAILABLE VESSELS TO USE IN PRAYER
The Holy Spirit will often alert you to pray in other tongues about a specific need or situation. Then once you yield to Him and get over in the realm of the Spirit, He may give you other things to pray for.
This happened to me one afternoon in Prayer School when I prayed for someone whose life was in danger. I had just gotten a note of victory after praying 45 minutes. Then as I kept praying, the face of a pastor I knew kept coming before me—a man who lived 1,200 miles away. I assumed I was praying for him.
In the midst of praying in tongues, I heard myself say a few words in English over and over: “Don’t leave yet. Stay there a little while longer.” Then I’d go right back to praying in tongues. I thought, “Maybe he’s thinking about leaving his church.” However, I didn’t know anything about the situation in the natural.
A few days later, I happened to go into a staff member’s office while he was talking on the telephone to this particular pastor. I said, “Before you hang up, let me talk to him.”
When I got on the phone, I said to this pastor, “I don’t know whether this will mean anything to you or not. If it doesn’t, just forget it.”
We should never accept a “word from the Lord” just because someone says it—people can miss it. The Holy Spirit is perfect, but He is manifested through imperfect channels.
I continued, “I was praying the other day in the Spirit, and your face kept coming up before me. Then a few words in English came out of my mouth. I kept saying, ‘Don’t leave yet. Stay a little while longer.’ ”
The pastor said, “Well, yes, Brother Hagin, I’ve already given my resignation to the church board. I believe it’s time for me to move on.”
I replied, “But God seems to be telling you, ‘Stay a little while longer.’ ”
The pastor said he would pray about it. I found out later that he stayed three more months at the church.
Later that pastor came over to me at one of my crusades and said, “Thank God for the Holy Ghost! When I resigned, I was supposed to leave in two weeks. However, I didn’t have a dime. I said to my wife, ‘I don’t know where we’re going. We have to move out of the parsonage, and I don’t know what we’ll do with our furniture. I don’t have enough money to store it.’
“But by staying three extra months, I was able to save $3,750 by the time we left the church. I would have been $3,750 short if I hadn’t stayed just a little while longer!”
I replied, “That’s good to know. I didn’t know if those words, ‘Don’t leave yet’ meant anything.” But the Holy Spirit knew, and He prompted me to pray about what was unknown to me for the benefit of that pastor.
You may try to figure out what you should pray about—but you’ll never fully know. Thank God, the Holy Spirit always knows the perfect will of God. And He will use you to bring about God’s will in specific situations and in people’s lives as you yield to Him, praying in other tongues.
There would be more testimonies like this if more people would pray in other tongues. Many believers pray a little in tongues to keep themselves in fellowship with God. But they don’t take time to wait in His Presence. That’s when the Holy Spirit can take hold with them to pray through on matters that desperately need to be prayed about.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit is continually searching for those He can use in prayer. When He finds believers willing to yield to Him and pray for as long as it takes in other tongues, He helps them pray out His perfect will concerning matters they often know nothing about.
I believe the majority of Spirit-filled Christians haven’t yet realized the profound effectiveness of this kind of praying. If they had, they would be doing much more of it.
The Holy Spirit knows what we should pray for—we don’t. Yet so many times when we get a burden or an inward witness to pray, we go right on about our daily business instead of stopping to pray. If we yielded more to Him and made ourselves available to pray in other tongues, even when we don’t know what we’re praying about, we would see more victories. We would also see many more dramatic deliverances in the lives of those for whom we pray.
Our prayer life is one of the greatest areas in which the Holy Spirit is our Helper. He helps us in all areas. But one of the most productive and most miraculous areas He helps us in is praying out God’s perfect will in other tongues for what is unknown to our natural minds.
Author
Kenneth E. Hagin
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