with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
Who prays? Does the Holy Ghost pray? No! Does the Holy Ghost pray through me? No! He helps me pray.
Verse 15 helped me. Paul says, "I will pray with the spirit, and
I will pray with the understanding also __________ " So I said to myself,
"Wait a minute! Paul said, 'I will pray with my understanding.' Can I pray with my mind—my understanding—anytime I want to pray? Yes!
I concluded, "Anytime I want to I can say, 'Now I'm going to pray for 10 minutes and just start out praying with my understanding: Dear Father, I bow before You in the Name of Jesus. I lift my voice to Thee, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. I thank You for Your great plan of redemption.. ..' I could keep on praying to God for that entire time—just because I willed to do so!"
Then I read the beginning of verse 15 again. Paul said, "I will pray with the spirit." In other words, he was saying, "I can will to pray with my spirit just as much as I can will to pray with my understanding!" I never saw that in the Bible before that day, but I realized then that I'd been right all along to pray in the Spirit anytime I wanted to.
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.
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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 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 14.1 said, "I've been talking secrets with my Father. You're mad because you can't get in on the secrets!"
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"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
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). (Later we'll talk more about what He showed me during this time of prayer.)
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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 cornel
Praying in tongues like that is just like drilling an oil well. If the oilman never put forth the effort to drill the well, all that oil would just stay in the ground. The potential of hitting a gusher would still exist, but unless the oilman drilled for oil, no one would ever see the evidence of it.
You may ask, "Was it right for you to pray in tongues for those four hours and 45 minutes with no unction or anointing?"
Absolutely. Countless times over the years, I've prayed in tongues just because I wanted to. But it is important to understand that there is a difference between praying with tongues as an act of your will and praying with the anointing.
When we get over into that deeper realm of prayer, praying by the anointing of the Holy Ghost, that's when miracles happen and revelation comes! Thank God for praying in the Spirit!
That day it took me almost five hours to get into that deeper realm of prayer. But as I kept on praying every day in other tongues, I came to the place where I could get into that place in the Spirit in 10 minutes.
If you'll start doing the same thing—praying in tongues every day for extended periods of time—you will also learn how to quickly enter that deeper realm of prayer.
I remember a time when I was holding a meeting in Houston, Texas, and a spirit of prayer suddenly fell upon everyone in the auditorium. By the time my knees hit the floor, I was praying like a buzz saw in other tongues! I could hardly catch my breath as I prayed that way for an hour and 45 minutes. Then the Holy Spirit gave me the interpretation of what I was praying (not everything I was praying about, because I didn't need to know all of it).
In that interpretation, God told me what outreaches my future ministry should include. After that time of prayer, I changed my ministry completely and immediately began to head in a different direction. Step by step, I did what the Lord instructed me to do that day. And each time I broke into another one of those areas of ministry,
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everything worked so well, it seemed like Someone behind the scenes guided the whole operation— and He did!
So keep on praying in tongues every day in your private prayer time. But don't stop there. Keep praying until you begin to pray under the anointing of the Holy Ghost—until that supernatural language begins to flow out of you like a mighty river!