Prayer Summary for Thursday, December 17, 2015

Pastor Ray shared…

This morning I was thinking about praying in other tongues. We’re in here five days a week, week after week, and when we pray, we want to be led by the Holy Spirit and not be led by our minds, or what we’ve seen in the news. Sometimes our minds can try to override our spirits with doubt. You might hear, “What are you doing? Are you doing anything? Are there results from what you’re doing right now?” Those kinds of thoughts. Where does that come from? The Devil. But we know better. We’re to be led by the Spirit and to keep pressing and plowing. But no time spent with Him is a waste of time. So if we worship Him for 45 minutes, it’s not a waste of time. My thought was, “Just be sure you’re led by the Spirit and do what you know to do because you don’t want to waste a minute dillydallying around.”

So when I came in today, I flipped open brother Hagin’s book entitled, Tongues: Beyond the Upper Room. This is where it opened. I love this story. He’s talking about 1st Corinthians 14:14–15. “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. 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.”

What he was addressing was sometimes people think, “I can’t just will myself to pray in other tongues.” But that’s not true. Maybe it was that way for you at the beginning. You thought you had to have the Holy Spirit come upon you to enable you to pray in other tongues. That’s not true. We “will” to pray in other tongues. We “will” sing in the spirit or pray in our understanding. But brother Hagin went on to share his own experience with praying in tongues. He decided he was going to pray in other tongues for about an hour.

[begin excerpt] So I said, “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to kneel down right here and pray an hour in other tongues. I’m going to will to do it. I will pray with my spirit.”

Now here’s what you have to understand about praying in other tongues: The devil will fight you. He doesn’t want you to enter this realm of praying in tongues in the Spirit whenever you want to. Let me tell you—he’ll fight you. How does he do it? He does it in a number of different ways. But since this kind of praying is separate from your mind, one of the devil’s favorite strategies is to cause discouraging thoughts to come to your mind to get you off track.

That’s what happened to me the moment I started to kneel down to pray an hour in tongues. The thought came to my mind (and I knew it was the devil), “What if someone were to come in and ask what you’re doing? You’d have to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Devil,” I said. I grabbed my Bible and opened it to First Corinthians 14. “If someone comes in and hears me praying in other tongues and asks, ‘What are you doing?’ I’ll just say, ‘I’m talking to the Father and edifying myself!’”

Immediately the next thought from the enemy came. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”

“No, I’m talking divine secrets!”

“But do you feel any different than you did before you started praying?”

“I don’t walk by feelings, Mr. Devil. I walk by what the Bible says! And besides, it’s spiritual edification, not physical edification. So in case you can’t read, I’ll just read these scriptures to you.” Then I read to him various verses that answered all the devil’s accusations. When I finished, I said, “Now, then, Mr. Devil, you might as well go your way, because I’m going to pray an hour in other tongues!”

Then I shut my eyes and started to pray and pray in other tongues. There was no unction or anointing to my prayer; I was just praying with my spirit. After a while, I just knew I’d been praying for more than an hour. It seemed like it had been a very long time! So I opened my eyes and looked at my watch, and I’d only been praying for 10 minutes!

So I went after it again and just kept on plowing through, praying in tongues. Time slowly passed, and after a while, I just knew I’d prayed in tongues for an hour—probably for even an hour and a half! I looked at my watch. Only 20 minutes had passed. Oh, dear Lord! I plowed on. It seemed like I would never get through that hour of praying in tongues. I had no idea one hour could seem so long!

Somehow I struggled through that hour. As I got up and sat down in my chair, a voice from the outside said to my mind, “Well, you just wasted an hour! You could have been working on your Sunday sermon. You could have been out visiting people. But instead, you just wasted a whole hour. That’s what you’ve done!”

I said, “Mr. Devil, I have not wasted an hour. Let me read it to you again.” My Bible was still open to First Corinthians 14. I said, “I’ve been talking secrets with my Father. You’re mad because you can’t get in on the secrets!”

“But you don’t even know what you’re saying.”

“No,” I said, “but I wasn’t praying to myself. I was talking to God. He understood everything I was saying, and that’s all that’s necessary. Besides, I was building up my spirit. Just for that Mr. Devil, I’m going to get back down on my knees and pray for two more hours in tongues. And if you say anything else to me when I get through with those two hours, I’m going to double the time. I’ll make it four hours the next time.”

So I got down on my knees again and started praying in tongues. This time it was a little easier, and I made it through the next two hours without ever saying a word in English. I never felt the least bit of unction or anointing, but I still put in my two extra hours of praying in tongues. When I got up and sat down in the chair again, I’d prayed in tongues for three hours. I’d never prayed in the Spirit that long before.

Once again, a voice from the outside said to my mind, “Well, you’ve just wasted two more hours now—three hours altogether. What good did that do you? Do you feel any better than you did before you started?”

I said, “I don’t walk by feelings or sight. I walk by faith.”

“Yes, but do you know anything you said?”

“No,” I said. “But I wasn’t praying to me; I was speaking mysteries to God.”

“What good did it do for you to pray in tongues if you don’t know what you said?”

“I’ve been edifying myself—building myself up on my most holy faith.”

“Yes, but you could have used that time to finish your sermons. Now the time is gone, and you haven’t accomplished anything.”

I said, “Mr. Devil, I warned you, didn’t I? I told you that if you said anything to me, I was going to double my time praying in tongues. So I’m going to get back down on my knees and pray another four hours in tongues!”

So I knelt down and went after it again in tongues. I had prayed for another hour and 45 minutes when suddenly I hit a gusher! That is the best way I know how to describe it. In other words, I began to pray both with my spirit and with my understanding under the anointing. Revelation just came rolling out of me as the Holy Ghost showed me things to come (John 16:13).

Until that moment, I was speaking in tongues with no unction or anointing, building myself up on my most holy faith. But when I hit that gusher, revelation just started rolling out of me. It didn’t seem like I had a thing in the world to do with it. But if I hadn’t started praying in tongues as an act of my own will, that “gusher” never would have come. [end of excerpt]

If you would like to purchase brother Hagin’s book entitled Tongues: Beyond the Upper Room, contact the LW Store online or call 763.315.7015.

Pastor Ray shared…

If he hadn’t persisted by shutting down the enemy and kept praying in other tongues, he never would have hit the gusher. The way he explained it was revelation under the anointing kept coming up out of him. He said it wasn’t him. And it isn’t us. It’s Him. It reminds me of the precious privilege and the importance of us in this one-hour time slot that we have to pray. We do the best we can do to follow after the Holy Spirit. Praying in the Holy Spirit and praying with our own understanding, singing in the spirit and singing with our own understanding, however He leads us. It’s not to bless us. It’s to pray His will for this earth. When we see things and think, “It’s going in the wrong way and needs to be changed,” we can use our faith praying in other tongues for change—even for worldwide events.

Erika shared…

Years ago, after reading brother Hagin’s account of praying in tongues, I had a situation going on in my own personal life. I thought, “I’ll do that.” The Devil came and said, “You can’t do that. He did that. Who do you think you are to do that? Just because some great spiritual leader did that, you can’t just go ahead and do it.” I thought, “I’m doing it.” I went down to the lowest level of our home. I began and it was exactly like he said. I just kept on pressing and pressing and pressing and absolutely I had a breakthrough. A breakthrough in my personal life, a breakthrough in that situation and it had nothing to do with feelings. It had everything to do with the Word of God, what He said and what He’s given us as the church of the living God. Every resource in heaven and earth, when you know not what to pray, pray in the Holy Ghost. Add your faith to it and I believe that the Church now is coming into a position and place where we use that which He has given us to a greater advantage for the world and the harvest.

Prayed…

Father, we thank You for Your Word
You gave gifts unto men
We lift up situations in families and the political scene
There is a great expansion there
Proceeding out into the great unknown
Taking your tongue in a new way, yielding more and more
It brings about a physical change in our bodies
Yielding more and more that way
It eliminates preconceptions
Revelations where we will know
Functioning in the spirit
Operations—over into miracles and great signs
We yield to You, Lord
Every limit has to get out of the way—the prayers are coming through
Every day, if it needs to be shaken, it’ll be shaken
If it needs to be shut down, it’ll be shut down
If it needs to be open, it’ll open
Processing and contending for furtherance and for greater
It’s a mystery but you know it and see it
No boundaries—can’t be held back or held down
Every element, every voice
Praying out into another day, watching over it
Episodes, episodes
It’ll change and will line up
It’s like chapters or different phases, an alignment
Mandates
Let it go, don’t be concerned about it, but keep lifting it and declaring it, keep pressing
It’s a different position, it’s not the same position… it’s a standard
We’re coming up on it
Loosed! A divine loosing!
Preparations need to be made
For the presentation
Expose… orders… over the base, the operation
Functioning in the right way, the directions
We’re ready! The Church is ready
Retake it… reclaim it
It’s a miracle, a sign and a wonder

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