Los arabismos en el reino de Granada. Mantenimiento y pérdida

I want you to notice verse 14 in connection with supernaturally communicating with God.

1 CORINTHIANS 14:14

14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding [mind] is unfruitful.

Once again, the Amplified translation reads, ". . . My spirit [by the Holy Spirit within me] prays . . . " Keep in mind that the Holy Spirit isn't the one praying. He is helping you pray by giving you utterance in your spirit.

Paul is telling us that God has given us a means whereby our spirit man can pray apart from our understanding. Our understanding doesn't have anything to do with praying in the Spirit. Is that kind of prayer necessary? It must be, because God made the supernatural provision for it!

Someone once asked me, "What good is prayer when you have no idea what you're saying?"

I replied, "But I'm not talking to myself—I'm talking to God!"

So once again, we see that the Holy Spirit is the One helping us pray in tongues, but we are the ones doing the praying. With that thought in mind, let's look again at First Corinthians 14:2.

1 CORINTHIANS 14:2

2 For he that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit IN THE SPIRIT he speaketh MYSTERIES.

What does Paul mean when he uses the phrase "in the Spirit"?

We know in this verse that he is talking about speaking in tongues. But we don't have to put our interpretation on what

Paul meant. The Bible defines what he means by that phrase, as does Paul himself!

Let's go to the letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians, where he said, "Praying always with all prayer and supplication IN THE SPIRIT, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints" (Eph. 6:18). If praying in the Spirit in First Corinthians 14:2 refers to praying with tongues, we have every reason to conclude that praying in the Spirit in Ephesians 6:18 refers to praying with tongues as well.

Now let's go back to First Corinthians 14 to get a better idea of what Paul means by the phrase "in the Spirit."

1 CORINTHIANS 14:14-15

14 For if I pray in an UNKNOWN TONGUE, MY SPIRIT PRAYETH, but my understanding is unfruitful.

15 What is it then? I will pray WITH THE SPIRIT, and I will pray with the UNDERSTANDING [mind] also . . . .

Notice the phrase "with the spirit" in verse 15. Most prayers that people pray are mental prayers and don't have a lot to do with the Holy Spirit. But Paul said here that he prayed both ways—with the spirit and with his understanding or mind.

As a young denominational boy pastor before I was ever filled with the Holy Ghost, I saw these different scriptures about praying with the spirit and praying in the Spirit. I asked different ministers in my denomination, "What does it mean to pray with the spirit or to pray in the Spirit?"

"Well," some of the ministers said, "that just means to pray with a little extra 'spizzerinktum.'" (Do you know what they meant by that?

They meant "to pray with a little extra energy or punch"!)

Sometimes we'd be singing a hymn from the church hymnal, and the song leader would say, "Now let's sing this next verse with the spirit and with the understanding." But all he meant by that was, "Let's sing the next verse with a little bit more energy— a little more 'spizzerinktum'!"

But that isn't what this passage in First Corinthians 14 is talking about at all. If your spirit were praying in English, your

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mind would understand what you said. Therefore, your mind wouldn't be unfruitful. But Paul is plainly talking about praying in tongues in this case, because he said, "For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth . . ."(v. 14).

Paul wrote both of these letters—one to the Corinthians and one to the Ephesians. In both letters, he uses the phrase, "in the spirit." And in First Corinthians 14:15, he also uses the phrase

"with the spirit." As you follow Paul's writings wherever he uses these terms, you find that he is either referring to praying with other tongues or he is at least implying praying in other tongues.

Now, of course, you could also pray "in the Spirit" by the spirit of prophecy. Praying by the spirit of prophecy occurs when the Holy Ghost takes hold together with you as you pray in tongues and you begin to pray by inspiration in your known language.

At times I've prayed with my understanding in English for an hour or more by the spirit of prophecy. I knew what I was saying, but my mind didn't have a thing in the world to do with it. The words just came rolling out of my spirit.

You can see examples of this kind of prayer in the Book of Psalms. The prayers of David, Moses, and other psalmists were given by the Spirit of God. No one spoke in tongues under the Old Covenant. As we saw earlier, tongues and interpretation of tongues are exclusive to the New Covenant. Yet these men prayed "in the Spirit," or by the Holy Spirit in the spirit of prophecy.

When you pray by the spirit of prophecy, you get your tongue hooked up with your spirit and pray by Holy Ghost inspiration in your own language, yet your mind has nothing to do with it. Your prayers are not something you're thinking up on your own. Instead, they come out of your spirit, inspired entirely by the Holy Ghost. This is not mental praying, or praying out of your understanding, even though you understand what you are saying. Rather, this is another way to pray in the Spirit.

Let's go back to what Paul said in Ephesians 6:18 and notice one more thing:

EPHESIANS 6:18

18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication IN THE SPIRIT, and

watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication FOR ALL SAINTS.

When we pray with other tongues, we are able to not only build ourselves up, but also to fulfill God's command to pray for all the saints. There is no way we could pray for all saints with our understanding because in the natural we don't know all the saints. But God has provided this means of supernatural communication, apart from our understanding, to enable us to do just that.