Benefits of Praying In Tongues - Part 2 | Pastor Christine Miller

Hallelujah. As he was saying all of that, I was thinking of last week's message. Confession brings possession, right? Possession. So we have to speak the Word only. Speak the Word only. Amen. Hallelujah. Well, how's everyone doing? Good. Say, I'm alert. I'm alert. I'm awake. I feel good. I feel fine. Body, get in line. Body, get in line. Okay. I will endeavor to preach another 1,000 hours so you can enjoy your night. We've got some upcoming meetings that we want you to be at at home, so I won't keep you here late. But I do want to start out. I don't know if that's a good time. I guess you're right. That's not perfect, but awesome. Praise the Lord. Alright, let's just turn to 1 Peter chapter 4. 1 Peter chapter 4. This morning as I was reading my Bible, this scripture jumped out at me. And I just thought I should share it even though it's not entirely... Well, it goes hand in hand with the message. But in 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 7 it says, But the end of all things is at hand. How many know that is true? But look at part 2. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. That means don't be flippant. Don't be careless. Don't be casual. Don't be complacent. Don't be lazy. When I read that today, every now and then you read something and you know the Holy Ghost is highlighting it. It may not be highlighted with your marker, but the Holy Spirit is highlighting it because it just seems like it gets three times bigger than the rest of the page. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. You know, I think for some of us anyway, because we've been Christians for so many decades, when we would read something like this, the end of all things is at hand, we would think, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We've been hearing that for years. And it hasn't happened yet. You know, there are warnings throughout the New Testament about that kind of attitude. And so, the thing that I really appreciate about the Spirit of God is He's telling us, be serious and be watchful in your prayers. This is the time. Now, on Sunday I read this, and I'm going to read it again from Reverend Randall Greer. He said, recently the Lord told him to share this and we're the first to know. And he said, tell my people it's time to leave Egypt. I allowed my people to be displaced from the sanctuaries or churches built by men. As I said, I would spew them out of my mouth in Revelations chapter 3. You are entering into a new season. Now, let me clarify something with that. We weren't spewed out because I don't believe we were missing it entirely. It would endeavor to be a word in a spirit church. But I will say this, we could have done better. I think all churches could have done better. Don't you agree? But plenty of churches weren't doing anything. And he said, you are entering into a new season or era that you have not been before. This season is a time of preparation for the spiritual promised land that I will take you to. Just as I took my people from Egypt into the natural promised land called Israel, there was a purging and cleansing in my people in the wilderness before they could enter the land that I had for them. Remember, they couldn't enter because of unbelief. I think the church world has been in a state of unbelief regarding the move of God that was to come. And he said, all that was in Egypt had to be left behind in order to enter my plan divine. That is why many are experiencing old ungodly habits arising in their lives. These must be left behind and I am allowing a season for them to be judged and repented of. Those who continue to walk on in the flesh will not enter in. Those who cling to the world and not following my spirit will not enter in. A deadness will come upon them and I will no longer plead with them as I have in the past. They will die in the wilderness. Those who turn to me will experience a joy in the spirit like they have never known as they finally realize we are soon to go home. So do not be discouraged. Instead, be like Joshua and Caleb and declare we are well able to overcome and enter into the promised land. And of course the scripture he gave which is powerful, Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 and 2, If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. You couldn't put it this way, if you are born again. Seek those things which are above where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. Hallelujah. So this is an important admonition from heaven, that we are not to be caught up with what the world is doing and the world system and entertainment and all of that. It's crumbling anyway, those gods are crumbling. They are coming down. Thank you Jesus. And you know, be careful about watching the news too. Yeah, no doubt. Because now I mentioned this, we want the highlights in general of what's going on in the world. But I was watching Brother Copeland's Victory Thon one night. And they highlighted a segment about their America Stands Strong program which they hold that whenever there is an election and you get the word of faith perspective, the uplifting scriptural perspective. And because of that, there was a demand for more news which is very involved. To even have a 30 minute news broadcast is so involved. It requires a lot of skill, the right people, a lot of money. And so they had begun broadcasting news on their network. But one of the men that was sharing the vision said that somebody, I don't remember who it was, had a vision that there was a line spirit that was released and it had permeated every media avenue in this country, including Fox. And I just found out yesterday, I don't know who told me, that Fox was bought out by Disney. Which might explain why some changes have been taking place. So here's the point. I'm not trying to diss or say anything good or bad about any media network. According to this vision, every media has a line spirit permeating it right now. So you can't trust the media. I heard somebody, I don't know if I read it somewhere, but somebody from China had asked someone in the United States, why do you watch the news in your country? And they just scratched their head like, why are you asking that? And this person said, well, in China, nobody watches or pays attention to the news because we all know it's propaganda. And folks, that's the day we're in here in the United States. All the media is controlled by the devil and you can't trust lies. So what we have to do is we have to stay focused on what God is saying and what the Holy Spirit is saying and get our instructions from God and not from television. I can't emphasize this enough, or from Facebook. So just keep that in mind, that Satan is the God of this world system. Now I started out reading that scripture about being serious and watchful in prayer because we've been spending weeks, this is School of the Spirit, we've been spending many weeks talking about praying with other tongues, being filled with the Spirit, the value of speaking with other tongues. A subject that most churches aren't preaching on a Wednesday night. Actually, most churches don't even have a Wednesday night service. And they surely won't preach it on a Sunday. It is, you know, Brother Hagin came out with a book years ago called The Art of Prayer. And in the beginning, in the introduction, he talked about how prayer has almost become a lost art. Well, you're only going to get what you preach. And a lot of churches aren't really teaching people how to pray. They may be saying, you need to pray. Or they have a list outside or a bulletin board with pray for so-and-so, pray for so-and-so, pray for so-and-so. But it's easy for anyone to say pray. You have unbelievers asking for prayer. But how do you pray? How do you pray effectively? Because the Bible says in James, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. So there is a way to pray that gets the attention of heaven. But we're not going to talk about all the different prayer methods tonight. We're going to continue on just tonight in the little bit of time I have left talking about the benefits of praying with other tongues. Now we talked about before the value of speaking in tongues. And we referred to different scriptures. But I just want to give you a list of some things to think about. And also want to recommend again, if you don't have the book Tongues Beyond the Upper Room by Kenneth Hagin, this is the classic on the subject. No need for anyone to ever write another book on the subject again, in my opinion. This is the most exhaustive study on the subject. Very scriptural, very powerful. And because Brother Hagin himself personally had so many experiences in prayer, he can really relate things to us in a way that we wouldn't know any other way. I'm going to just quickly, because we talked about some of these benefits before. Number one, we talked about that tongues is the initial sign of being filled with the Spirit. And we know that there may be some that would differ with that statement. But I truly believe that when you get filled with the Spirit, you have the ability to pray or speak with other tongues. Now if you don't, it may be a faith issue. But the ability is there because being filled with the Spirit comes as a package deal with tongues. Number two, we talked about how praying with other tongues brings a spiritual edification. In 1 Corinthians 14, we read through that chapter. We referred to a lot of scriptures in that chapter. And it makes it clear that he who prays in an unknown tongue edifies himself. It basically tells us we're speaking to God and not to men. So if I'm praying in an unknown tongue, I'm not communicating with you. I'm not communicating with the devil. Aren't you glad? It's one way to bypass Satan. He does understand English. Or whatever your language is, your first language is, he would know those languages. But he does not know when you're praying with other tongues what you're saying. Oh, glory to God! We're praying mysteries, we're speaking to God, and we bypass the devil. I'm telling you, if nothing else, there's the benefit. And when you pray out in other tongues, you can't doubt. Because most of the time, you don't even know what you're saying. You talk about wisdom from on high. God gave us this powerful ability to pray with tongues so that we can get something done. We can't interfere with it with our natural minds. We can't doubt it. We can't complain about it. The devil can't get in on it. World glory! Number three, we talked about this. It reminds us, when we're filled with the Spirit, it reminds us of the Spirit's indwelling presence. Now, you can't hardly pray with another tongue and forget that you have the Holy Spirit with you. Because that's a manifestation of His presence. Think about it. There's very few things that you're going to actually see or witness that are a manifestation of the Spirit's presence, like praying in tongues. Every time I pray in the Spirit, I mean, I'm not making this up. I couldn't if I tried. It's coming up from my spirit. It's like a river of living water flowing up from my belly. And it makes it clear to me, I have someone helping me here. It's not me. I'm aware that the Holy Spirit is here. He gives us utterance. He gives us help. Number four, a benefit of praying in tongues is we're praying in line with God's perfect will. And we talked about this before from Romans chapter 8. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our infirmities where we not know how to pray for things as we ought. I'm just kind of loosely quoting this. In other words, we don't always know how to pray for something. And so when we pray in the Spirit, we know we're praying the perfect will of God over that situation. I'm so glad for that ability. You know, I've often thought about this because I've been Spirit-filled for over 35 years. I've often thought about people who don't have this ability. How far or how long could you actually pray? I mean, you can only pray so long in your known language and then you run out of things to say. And so you would walk away from your prayer time just feeling almost like unsatisfied, incomplete, disappointed. There's no satisfaction because you somehow feel like you're just not quite hitting the mark and you're not. And so after getting Spirit-filled, it opens up your world and you don't have to try to think of things to pray for all day. You just pray in the Spirit all day and it just keeps going. You know, when the Bible says pray without ceasing, that's really what it means. So we're praying in line with God's perfect will. Number five. Praying in tongues will stimulate your faith. Now, I've got two sets of notes here because I came up with some new things I wanted to write down. So I'm going to be like shuffling. So you all just stay engaged because if you don't, then it's all going to go f**k or plonk. Alright, in Jude verse 20, it says, But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, praying in the Holy Spirit refers in part anyway to praying in other tongues. It also, of course, could mean, just like in Ephesians chapter 6, where it talks about the armor of God, you know, praying with all manner of prayer in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit is another translation. So when we are praying in the Holy Ghost, it's mostly praying in other tongues. Certainly you can pray things in your known language by the Spirit, which is different than you just trying to think of things in your head. But praying in the Holy Ghost is praying in other tongues. And so, one of the benefits of praying in other tongues is you build yourself up on your most holy faith. Now, we can conclude then that as we're praying in tongues, we're stimulating our own faith. Now let me just make this clear. Tongues will not build faith or give you faith. Because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So you're not going to get faith from praying in other tongues, but you're going to build a capacity to receive more, to believe more, as you pray more in the Spirit. I think one of the reasons is because it takes faith to pray in tongues. It takes faith to open your mouth and speak out syllables that you don't know what the next word might be. And when you're doing this by faith, your faith is active and moving, and it helps you to receive other things in other areas by faith. So, when we pray in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit's directing the words that we speak. Amen? And He's helping us. Now I'm going to read something from Brother Hagin's book real quick here. I thought this was really good, and it's just worth reading, so stay connected. He said, if you're a believer, you already have faith. But now you must build yourself up on your most holy faith. Charge yourself up in faith. How do you do that? By praying in the Holy Ghost. And then he said, some people have heard faith teaching for years and years. They try to believe God to meet their needs, and they receive some results. However, many times they don't receive the results they ought to because they're not taking the time to build themselves up on their most holy faith, stimulating the faith they already have, praying in the Holy Ghost. You see, when you want to keep your body physically fit, you exercise it, and as a result, your body becomes more keen and alert. In the same way, if you want to keep your spirit keen and alert, you need to exercise it as well. And praying in other tongues is one of the greatest spiritual exercises there is, along with feeding your spirit on God's Word. And he goes on to say, here's a story. When I first began in the ministry and pastored that little country church I told you about, one of the women who went to the church suffered from severe ulcers of the stomach. She and her husband had a denominational church background. This woman's husband told me, I didn't tell my wife yet, but the doctors told me that my wife has stomach cancer and there's nothing further they can do. I've already spent more than $10,000 trying to get her healed. He said, that doesn't sound like much these days, but back in the 1930s, $10,000 was a lot of money. He said, after all, you could buy a Cadillac with all the bells and whistles for $875. You could rent a three-bedroom house for $10 a month. Your monthly electric bill was only about $1. Your monthly gas bill was about 50 cents. Well, you guys are more excited about that than I am. Nobody's awake. And a loaf of bread costs a nickel. He said, back during Depression days, men worked 30 days for $30. And a dollar a day was considered good pay. So for this husband to spend $10,000 to try to cure his wife's illness constituted a real fortune. The husband continued, we just about paid for our home, but I had to sell it and use the equity to pay my wife's medical bills. I also sold my automobile and all our furniture to pay for her medical expenses. And now we live in a little furnished apartment. This dear lady cooked meals for her family but couldn't eat the food herself because she just couldn't keep any food on her stomach. She'd eat a little baby food, but even then she would often vomit it up. This woman looked like skin and bones. Then the family began to attend the full gospel tabernacle. And I didn't see them for a while. One day I decided I'd go visit them, but I didn't expect what I saw when I walked into their house. Now remember, this is when Brother Hagin was young and unmarried, and he was not spirit-filled yet, and he was pastoring a country church. So this full gospel tabernacle came to his town, which you probably have read about. So he said, my eyes got as big as saucers. The woman looked up and smiled. She said, yes, this is me. I'm eating anything I want. In fact, last night I had chili for the first time in nearly 10 years. And it didn't bother me a bit, and I don't have any symptoms. My stomach is perfectly healed. Now here's what he said. He said, I had laid hands on this woman and prayed for her healing, and I knew other ministers had as well. I tried to teach her faith to the extent that I knew it at that time. But remember, I was just a boy preacher when this happened, and nothing seemed to help her. I asked the woman, how did you receive your healing? She said, I got baptized with the Holy Ghost down at the full gospel church. I was praying and seeking the Holy Ghost at the altar when the power of God came on me. I didn't exactly fall, but it was easier for me to just lie down under that power than it was to stay upright. So with my eyes shut, I just lay down between the altar and the platform and kept praising God in English. The woman continued. Even though my eyes were shut, I suddenly saw a beam of light about the width of a pencil come down through the ceiling and strike me in the forehead. Then I began to speak in this unknown tongue, and ever since then, I've been well. He said, I saw the woman again a year later, and she was still perfectly healed. I kept hearing testimonies like this woman's. Then later, I got baptized in the Holy Ghost and spoke in other tongues myself. In the years that followed, I saw this kind of healing happen again and again. I don't mean just one or two cases. I mean physical healing at the same time a person got baptized in the Spirit was a frequent occurrence. I met folks like this woman who had been seeking healing without success for a long time. Many had asked every healing evangelist who came to town to lay hands on them, yet for some reason they couldn't seem to get healed. But when they got baptized with the Holy Ghost, these same people were instantly healed. I just couldn't figure it out, but I was determined to try. I'm just that way. It may take me days, weeks, or months to find an answer to something I don't understand, but eventually I will find the answer. So I kept studying and meditating and asking questions. Finally, I got a revelation about what Jude 20 says. Building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. He said, speaking with tongues stimulates a person's faith, and believing God in one area helps that person believe God in another area. That's what happened to these people who needed healing. When they got filled with the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues, it stimulated their faith, or stirred up the faith they already had. See, that's the key. You have faith, but you've got to stir it up. And it helped them receive the healing that they were unable to receive before. So praise God. I thought that would bless you to hear that, because stimulating your faith is a powerful thing. You know, if you just thought, oh, ho-hum, I got filled with the Spirit, now I can speak in this strange language, and you didn't even know all of these wonderful benefits, you wouldn't have the motivation. But that's one of them. It stimulates faith. Another benefit of speaking with tongues is that it's a means of keeping free from worldly contamination. There's a lot of worldly contamination out there. A lot of ungodly and profane language, probably used at your workplace. It's on television. We try not to watch movies that have a bunch of profanity. But it's hard to avoid altogether. You know, if you just go to the beauty shop, or whatever they call it, the hair salon, barber shop, somewhere, you're going to hear something. And so, let's turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Again, that's a classic chapter on tongues. In verse 27, it says, If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two, or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church, and let him speak to himself and to God. Now, we've talked a little bit about the fact that an interpreter would, of course, there's a difference between praying in tongues as a prayer language, versus the gift of tongues and the gift of the interpretation of tongues. But the point we want to make with verse 24 is that you can actually keep silent and speak to yourself and to God in other tongues. You can do it. If you can pray in tongues, then you can actually pray silently, because I've done it. I remember, and this is a way how to keep yourself from being contaminated in situations where people are speaking in a way that's not good, and you can't control the environment. So, there have been times where I've gone through trials, and I'm not saying I did this because there was profanity going around me, but I would be going through a trial, and I had to keep on my toes spiritually, and I would go to a hair salon, and I'd be praying silently in tongues the whole time I'm there. Praying silently while they're washing your hair, while they're fixing your hair. I can be going up and down the grocery aisle, and I'm praying silently in tongues. Sometimes I pray out loud, and I don't realize it. Oh, well. Or how many times have I told you, thank God for cell phones, because now you can just pray in tongues driving down the road. You can't now, because you're not supposed to be talking while you're driving, but they'll just think you're talking to the dash. You can pray in tongues without even moving your lips if you wanted to, because it's the language of the Spirit. I remember hearing a story Oral Roberts told years ago, when he had had a heart attack, or had some kind of heart surgery. I believe he was in an operating room, and they were getting ready to do something, and he couldn't talk because they had all these tubes. I think he was on a ventilator, and he had tubes everywhere. And so he said, I prayed in the Spirit, silently, just between me and God the whole time. You can do it. Just like you can sit in that chair, and you can have a thought, is this service over yet? And nobody heard it, but you thought of it. But let me just warn you about something, since we're on that point. Not just once or twice, but many times, there have been people sitting in this church, not necessarily this building, but sitting in our church, and some of us could hear your thoughts in the Spirit. There was a time, they're not here anymore, but there were some people that used to come years ago, and they would always sit right behind Elizabeth, and she said, Mom, I can't sit there anymore, because I can hear their critical thoughts. They were on their way out because they were having problems, they were being critical. You know, the critical spirit will try to get on somebody. Don't let it get on you. And so, you can hear, sometimes you can hear things in the Spirit. A lot of the times when we're preaching, we get off on a tangent, and you wonder, why are they on that tangent? Because we're answering the thought that we heard. Somebody out there is thinking that thought. So, you can think your thoughts in English, silently, but you can pray in the Spirit silently. Praise the Lord. Amen. So, it's a good practice to get into, because it'll help to keep you from being contaminated. Seven, it enables you to pray for the unknown, which we've referred to before, and, you know, we just mentioned it earlier, in connection with another point, Romans chapter 8, tells us that we can pray for things that we don't always know how to. You know, I've read a lot of stories, it's not necessarily happening to me that I know of, but it could have, because you don't always know what you're praying. But, sometimes you get to find out what it is, where you'll pray, and you'll get a burden to pray, and you'll pray in the Spirit until you get the victory. Actually, I did have it happen one time, that I can think of just now, the word just reminded me, where I began to groan and travail in the Spirit, and, in the end, after I got done groaning and praying, and this was a particularly strong urge, then I began to laugh, and was filled with joy, so I had the victory. And later that night, because we were at a convention in Chicago, there was a, well, I don't know what they call them, I guess homeless, we used to call them bums, but, you know, a homeless man had been brought in, because there were teams of people witnessing throughout the day, before these night meetings, and he had come into the service, and ended up answering the altar call, and got saved, and called to the ministry. And the Lord said to me, that's what you prayed for this afternoon, that man. So, sometimes you'll know the fruit of what you prayed for, and other times you won't. But, thank God, He helps us to pray for things that we don't know about, but need prayer. People could need a rescue on the other side of the world, and who's going to help? Well, always be sensitive, in case God wants to use you. Number eight, praying in another tongue, an unknown tongue, can give you spiritual refreshing. Whoa, I need a vacation so badly! How many ever thought that was the answer, and when you came back, you were just as tired? Because it's a lot of work to go on a vacation. You know, and sometimes we think, well, I just need a nap, or I just need to sleep more, and that may be true, that may be, you know. But, in Isaiah chapter 28, verses 11 and 12, it says, for with stammering lips and another tongue, He will speak to this people, to whom He said, this is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing, yet they would not hear. I like the two words, particularly rest and refreshing. But notice, they're connected to stammering lips and another tongue. Stammering lips. You ever pray in an unknown tongue and you feel like you're stammering? Ba-ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. I mean, you could have all kinds of strange dialects, words. Years ago in the 90s, Larry Huggins was here and he taught about praying around the world in other tongues. He'd go into all these different dialects and tones in demonstration. It was amazing. You could be praying in a tongue that somebody does understand in another nation. And of course, there are tongues of angels, and who knows how many of those languages there are. Praise God. But, you know, praying in other tongues will bring the rest and the refreshing of the spirit. You know, how many times do doctors try to prescribe to people to rest? But God's remedy for rest is the best cure in the world. And it's free. And anyone who takes advantage of God's rest cure on a daily basis... I love what Brother Hagin said about this. He said, if you take advantage of this, you will never have a nervous breakdown. Glory to God. Hallelujah. So I would be praying in tongues every day, guys. All right. How many know one of the signs of the last days is depression and anxiety? I mean, fear. Anxiety is just the fruit of fear. And fear is on the rise, and it's not going to most likely decrease before Jesus comes back. It's part of Satan's nature and character. So how do we bypass all of that? We get the rest from the Holy Spirit. And you certainly need the Word of God. You know, Psalm 91 and other scriptures bring the comfort that we need to our minds. But when you pray in the Spirit, you can get refreshed. And you're not, let me just say this, you're not going to be refreshed if you just pray for 5 or 10 minutes and you never really get into the Spirit, so to speak. You know, you can get to where you almost memorize your prayer language and you just, you know, are almost starting out in the natural. You've kind of got to get the motor going. But you can always tell when the Spirit of God starts to take hold together with you. That's when you're really getting into the deeper areas of the Spirit, and that's where the refreshing is. Hallelujah. Number 9. Praying in other tongues, one of the benefits is you can give thanks. Like I said, I've got two sets here, so let me see here. Back to 1 Corinthians 14, you don't have to turn there, but it says, Verse 16, Otherwise if you bless with the Spirit, meaning with other tongues, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say Amen at your giving of thanks? Now notice it doesn't say he who occupies the place of the unbeliever. It says uninformed. There are plenty of Christians that are just uninformed that you can actually bless your food with other tongues. But we're not uninformed now because I just told you. How can they say Amen at your giving of thanks since he does not understand what you say? For you indeed give thanks well. You indeed give thanks well, but the other is not edified. So what this is saying is, you know, you can invite someone to dinner and have fellowship, and if all of you are informed, you can actually bless your food by just everyone holding hands and praying in other tongues. It would probably be the highest and the best way of praying for your food because you're praying the will of God. If there's something in there that shouldn't be in there, out it goes. But if you're in a family gathering at Thanksgiving and half the people there are uninformed, they cannot give thanks when you pray in tongues. As a matter of fact, they might end up with hairs rising on the back of their heads and freaking out by what you're doing. So we exercise wisdom. I know some of my family may be watching. Now you know the real me. We pray in tongues over our food. Hallelujah. Number 10. One of the benefits of praying in other tongues is that it brings your tongue under subjection. This is really a great benefit. In James chapter 3 and verse 8, it says that no man can tame the tongue. Woe is me. It is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. Full of deadly poison. Why? Because the little member called the tongue boasts great things, doesn't it? It says a lot of things it shouldn't. You can be vicious with people. You can tear down what took a lifetime to build just with that little thing called the tongue. You can spend a whole year straight building yourself up spiritually. Building up a situation in your life by speaking the word over it. And then just in a week's time tear the whole thing down by speaking against it all. That's how powerful the tongue is. And what you say out of your own mouth you will believe way more than what somebody else says. Now certainly others can say things that end up getting inside of you and affect you. But what you say is more important. So sometimes when we're raised as children we hear something spoken and then the problem is then we start to repeat it with our own mouth. And if we do that it's gotten embedded in us so that we're believing and saying the wrong thing. And now before you know it you're destroying an area of your life with your own mouth, with your tongue. Brother Hagin said this. So, what does speaking in tongues have to do with this verse? According to this scripture the tongue is the most difficult member of our bodies to control. Notice it says no man can tame the tongue. But God can. So when you yield your tongue to the Holy Spirit and speak with other tongues you take a giant step toward fully yielding all your members to God. And if you can yield the most unruly member to God you can yield any member of your body to Him. Think about it. The Bible calls the tongue an unruly evil and a deadly poison. Many Christians assume that the sexual members of the body are the hardest to control. And they may even condemn other Christians who fail to control their sexual appetites while they sin just as grievously or worse themselves because of their uncontrolled tongue. Some people are always running around talking about fellow Christians and running them down. For instance, some preacher may fall into immorality and everyone in the church starts talking about it. Did you hear what the preacher did? Well, let me tell you all the terrible details. But putting out the other fellow's candle doesn't light yours. Criticizing and gossiping about others is a grievous sin too. The Bible says the sins of the tongue are an abomination to God. Proverbs 6.16 says, These six things does the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto Him. And verse 19 says, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. The bottom line is you have the potential to do more damage and more sinning with your tongue than with any other member of your body. But the more you pray in tongues, the more you'll learn to yield your tongue to the Holy Ghost. And the easier it will be to speak only words that edify others in every situation. So it's important that we get our tongues in subjection. And the last thing I want to bring out tonight is that praying in tongues is the introduction to the gifts of the Spirit. Which we haven't gotten into yet, but we will before the end of the year. And this is a statement Brother Hagen made many years ago. We've repeated it, Pastor Nancy's repeated it, but he said speaking with other tongues is the doorway into the supernatural realm of God. So a lot of times we think, well I just want to be in the presence of God. I just want to go deeper with God. I just want to know, what is God doing? Well, the doorway into the supernatural is praying in other tongues. And when you spend more time praying in other tongues, you're going to see more in the Spirit. You're going to perceive more. God's going to reveal more to you. And you're also going to prevent more things from happening that shouldn't be happening in your life. And I believe God wants us to develop in this way. Now, just one quick point. Praying in the Spirit is not the doorway to the fruit of the Spirit. It's the doorway to the gifts of the Spirit. The supernatural gifts of the Spirit. So you can't just pray in tongues all day and night and think, oh, now I'm going to be better at yielding to the fruit. I mean, it probably won't hurt, but it's not the doorway to the fruit. Fruit is given for holiness and character. Gifts are given for power. And that's why a lot of times you can see there are preachers that have tremendous ministries with great power, but they still may be ungodly in the way they live at home. They may fall into sin. You know, they get exposed eventually. And you wonder, how could that person that had so many miracles have left their wife and having an affair with somebody? Well, because the power does not equal the fruit. So what we're talking about tonight is praying in tongues and we're talking about power. It's the doorway into the supernatural, but we still have to walk in love. And the Bible says you could have faith to move mountains, you could do all kinds of things, but if you have not love, you're nothing. So we want to be careful that just because we speak much with other tongues that we're not neglecting our love walk. Amen? So in light of all of these benefits, how many think we should spend more time praying in tongues? So back to what Randall Greer said, the Lord told him, we need to be prepared for this era by spending more time in the Word and in the Spirit. And back to what I read in 1 Peter 4, But the end of all things is at hand, therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. That means praying more in other tongues. And I like verse 8, And above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. Amen. Why don't you stand? If you came tonight and you were wanting to have hands laid upon you for healing, then we invite you to come up right now. Anybody here that you want hands laid on? I know we'll have plenty of opportunities Sunday through Wednesday as well. All right, say Hallelujah. I'm so glad. I'm filled with the Spirit. Now, are you filled with the Spirit? Is there anyone here tonight that you would like to be filled but you're not? All right, come on up. Praise God. I want everybody to release your faith. It's really simple. The Bible says if we ask our Father to give us the Holy Spirit, He'll give us good gifts. He'll give us the Holy Spirit. And so, I'm just going to have you repeat a prayer with me. I'm going to lay hands on you. And I believe that He's going to give you utterances. And you're just going to hear syllables come up from your spirit. So you have to just be sensitive to speak out what you hear even if it sounds silly. Okay? All right. Say, Heavenly Father, I thank You that Jesus is my Lord. And because He's my Lord, I am qualified to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. I ask You, Jesus, now, fill me with Your Holy Spirit to overflow me. I believe that You hear me and that I receive Him now. And I now have the ability to pray with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gives me the utterances in Jesus' name. Father, I thank You for filling her with the Holy Spirit in the mighty name of Jesus. Yes. There you go. Yes, Lord, you're overflowing in the mighty name of Jesus. Now, this is what you need to do. The devil always tries to come and tell you, that's just your imagination, or you're just making that up, or that's a waste of time, or you just, you know, you shouldn't be doing that, you don't have time for that. What I would do is from this moment until your head hits the pillow, just keep praying. Just keep praying. Don't stop. And the more you do it, the more you'll get expansion. More words will come and it'll just keep expanding and growing. And the more time you spend doing that, no matter whether you feel anything or not, it's not based on feelings. All those benefits that I just talked about, they belong to you. Amen. I just pray all the time. And I'm so glad you're here tonight. We missed you. Yeah. Praise God. Hallelujah. This is a coastal church. We've had three people, three or four, filled with the Spirit in the last month. That is good. Let's all just, let's go ahead and end the live stream for tonight. God bless you. We thank you for joining us. And be filled at home.