Pray in the Spirit

“Lord, it’s so amazing that I now love to pray, ever since I received your Spirit to live inside me,” Yosef said, as he lifted his hands to begin praying in tongues. Since he received the Holy Spirit, he enjoyed praying in tongues, because he could freely express himself to the Lord, with no one else listening in! You see, no matter how beautiful your words are in your earthly language, and how loaded with revelation they are, they’re no match for the pure language of the Spirit. Our human earthly vocabulary isn’t pure enough to talk with the Holy God that our heavenly Father is. That’s the reason the Holy Spirit gave us a language, pure and holy, with which to communicate in a way that’s acceptable to God: praying in other tongues.

Many only know how to pray in their understanding; that is, in their native language, but that won’t take you far enough. It’s for this reason that Paul, by the Spirit, wrote the words we read in the latter part of our opening verse. Praying with the spirit always comes before praying with the understanding. However, some Christians would rather pray with their understanding first and then pray with the spirit, if they do pray in the spirit at all. They’ve made praying with the spirit the “also,” and that’s the wrong order.

Before you pray with your understanding, pray intensely and profusely first with the spirit. In fact, your praying in the understanding would be more effectual if you’d pray first with the spirit. And praying with the spirit doesn’t mean shutting your eyes and being mute, hoping that, somehow, God is looking into your sincere heart to know what you want; no. It means praying in tongues; praying in the divinely-coded language of the Spirit. Your mind can’t interpret what you’re saying, but in the realm of the spirit, you’re speaking mysteries. What a privilege and blessing to be able to access and speak forth divine mysteries and secrets from the realm of the Spirit. Glory!