More food for your mouth.

This entry is definitely a continuation or an overlap of my ‘word’ entries, but given that this weekend was Pentecost, I thought the timing of this post was appropriate.

In my 10 years so far of being a Christian, I don’t recall being in any church that took Pentecost Sunday too seriously, but over here in Holland it’s a long weekend and the Monday is observed as a holiday. The article I posted previously by J. Lee Grady covers stuff I’m not going to repeat, and I hope you didn’t skip it. The timing of this post, and the fact I find it simply impossible to write about the words we speak and then not take an entry that ties into speaking in tongues for the believer—birthed this post in the following:

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of TRUTH.

In John 14:17 Jesus said the Holy Spirit will be with us AND in us. These are two different things. The Holy Spirit is with us corporately as a body of believers and He’s with the individual believer, on the inside of us. He builds up the Church, and He builds up the individual believer.

In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul tells the church at Corinth they collectively as a church are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Not every Bible translation makes that obvious. The Amplified translation brings out that the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit collectively, and the individual is the temple of the Holy Spirit individually. Compare this with 1 Corinthians 6:19 where we’re told our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

This is also part of the reason why when believers are baptized in the Holy Spirit sometime after their salvation experience, there’s different varieties of the gift of tongues available to them. Each version of the Holy Spirit’s “temple” has this phenomena manifested. In the corporate setting, the Holy Spirit distributes gifts freely as He sees fit, but we can seek after and desire to operate in some more than others for the benefit of the rest of the Church Body. One person can have the public corporate version of the gift of tongues, and another believer the interpretation (in a public setting). It’s true, that not every believer has the corporate version of the gift of tongues.

However, every gift of the Holy Spirit that operates collectively in the body of Christ has an “individual” version of for the believer. All may prophesy (1 Cor. 14:31), all believers can/may speak in tongues (Mark 16:17), anyone who believes may lay hands on the sick (Mark 16:18), and so on. When you’re not around other believers, do you really refuse to operate in a spiritual gift because you don’t think it’s the one you have? Of course not! But corporately in meetings like Church services, Bible studies, home meetings, some will be the one to demonstrate certain giftings instead of us.

That being said, there’s the gift of tongues that edify the collective temple of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 14: 5, and 22), and there’s a tongue that edifies the individual Holy Spirit temples. First Corinthians 14:4, 13-17 go into a bit of detail on this, and Romans 8:26-7 speaks of intercessional groanings and ‘praying when we know not what we ought to pray‘. Tongues for the individual is available to every believer. If you are saved, you are a candidate for it. It’s not something special only some have and others don’t—or that has passed away with the early church. Two types of the gift of tongues are for the Body of believers, for their benefit and edification, and one of them is accompanied by an interpretation. The tongue could be a natural language. The other types of the gift of tongues are for the individual believer, and the interpretation comes in the form of revelation and/or strength in the believer’s spirit. Every believer can benefit from this personal use of tongues, but misunderstanding and lack of familiar experience are the main inhibitor preventing many evangelicals from entering into this realm of the Holy Spirit.

But Brother Steve there’s other gifts besides tongues that the Holy Spirit distributes besides the gift of tongues. How can you say all are supposed to have one of the gifts above the others that the Holy Spirit gives?

As I’ve just said, the gift for personal use is something that every believer can have following the baptism in the Holy Spirit. If tongues were not of any significance other than being ONE of the gifts that accompany the baptism in the Holy Spirit, then in the book of Acts chapter 2, more gifts would have been mentioned, but there are none. It says they ALL began to speak with other tongues when the enduement of power (not the regeneration of the Holy Spirit they ALREADY had) came on them. Each instance the baptism in the Holy Spirit is talked about in Acts, the manifestation of other tongues accompanied it, and in Acts 19, prophecy did also. Both are revelation/edification tools that involve speaking something.

So, to keep in mind the framework I’ve been setting up lately in my entries on words and confession, I’ll say that the “confession” that accompanies the baptism in the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated in the book of Acts, is the gift of tongues—for personal edification. I have decided to use the term “inner-fortification [of the inner man]” interchangeably with ‘edification’, but you’ll see that’s naturally what I mean by that.

For more discussion about this, check the FIRE Nederland Podcast in the next week or so, where Dan and I discuss issues people have that prevent them from receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In general, people won’t desire to operate in something if they aren’t persuaded by the benefits of doing so, so allow me to mention a few more things related to praying and speaking in tongues, hopefully to whet your appetite and make you desirous for it.

The role of this ‘confession’ in personal revelation.

I was reading an article on the website of a well-known and well-respected preacher that undoubtedly some reading this are familiar with. In the article he was talking about how He heard the ‘audible voice of God’ recently, but went on to downplay it and teach that the Holy Spirit always speaks to us through the Word. I have no disagreement necessarily with that because the Holy Spirit and the Word are one (1 John 5:7), but I cringed as further on in the article he started to teach that his personal experience and understanding of how this worked is pretty much the only way God spoke to the believer. He went on to tear apart an example of a charismatic minister hearing God tell him specifically to give some funds to one of his students in his Bible school. I felt sorry for the author of the article for dismissing a simple and practical way the Holy Spirit works in our lives. I might make him and many others like him think I’m a flake if I said I “hear” from God regularly. Matter of fact, that’s what praying in tongues helps do in the believer’s life. If you don’t believe me, then do it a lot and see for yourself!

Can you imagine what we look like to the world when we tell them we can have a personal relationship WITH God Himself, and that He sent His Son to die for us, and that He sent a version of Himself—the Holy Spirit—to live in us—but we can’t hear Him? What on earth?! What kind of relationship is that if you can’t hear from the other person? Do you see how ridiculous this sounds to say the only way He speaks to us is if we read His book?

Frankly, even evangelicals who don’t believe in speaking in tongues or operating in the prophetic and prophesying fail to practice what they preach themselves oftentimes as there’s many decisions we’re to make in life that we can’t find a chapter and verse for in the Bible but undoubtedly many Christians know they’ve obeyed God’s will for their life in various ways in the jobs they’ve gotten, places they’ve moved to, ministry they’ve started. Actually I dare to say much ministry going on in the world today is man’s idea and not the Holy Ghost’s–but that’s another entry!

Hearing God is NOT some difficult thing only really special spiritual people get to do. This should be NORMAL for all believers! How can God live in you and you NOT learn directly from Him with an inner witness and something other than just reading His book?

But back to this stuff about the Holy Spirit being inside of you. I’m loosely basing my thoughts on texts from John 14-16 when I say this. For the sake that you don’t mistakenly think I’m pulling things out of context I highly recommend reading those passages and meditating on them for yourself.

When John tells us the Holy Spirit will teach us (the disciples were the ones being spoken to here), ALL things, they didn’t have all of Jesus’ words written down in a Bible yet for the Holy Spirit to bring revelation from. Jesus was not telling them the Holy Spirit would help them memorize the Romans Road or the Sermon on the Mount. They had to rely on the Holy Spirit bringing to remembrance what He had told them personally—not from mental or spiritual recollection of the Bible merely as a living text. The disciples had the Word Himself in their midst for 3 and ½ years to learn from personally. However, 2000 years later, since we did not have that exact same experience as them, it’s not a misinterpretation to take this text to say the Holy Spirit brings life to the written Word for us this way.

The very first few verses of the book of Genesis mention how the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the waters. He was involved when God SPOKE the Word and brought forth life and all therein. The Psalms mention how God knew us before He formed us in the womb. Before we ever set foot on the face of the earth and began to have some goo-goos and ga-gas, the Lord had a plan for your individual life. That is what the Holy Spirit brings to remembrance in us as we pray in tongues. The Holy Spirit living in you, repeats to you and gives you revelation and insight into the things God has spoken and decreed about your life before the foundation of the world, and Holy Spirit helps build you up and qualify you into that plan/will–remember before I’ve said I’m not a Calvinist in the traditional way it’s taught–I will post what I think about God’s sovereignty at a later date. God has a will for us that we can miss. He has set up in his unending wisdom a way to deposit that will on the inside of us, and then let us unpack at our pace, through praying in tongues–edifying ourselves in the spirit.

Jesus in that chapter of John was not exclusively talking about the Word of Jesus He spoke 2000 years ago—the Holy Spirit is capable of remembering words spoken no matter how long ago they were spoken—He is not bound by time–we are. Everything that ever has happened or will happen, has already happened and not yet happened (in a manner of speaking) from His point of view already. The moment that He was hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2 and the moment He speaks of in Revelation 22:17 inviting the Lord Jesus to come back—are on the same level plane in the history of existence.

Am I shaking your brain yet? This stuff is hard for us finite beings to understand since we’re linear and bound by time. The Spirit of God takes the things He has heard about your life and the plan God has for it, and reveals them to us. The fact of the matter is that the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, takes what He has heard, and repeats it or makes it known to us. When and where exactly did the Holy Ghost hear things to tell us? Did you know this includes things that are not ‘written in the Book’? This includes the calling God has for you. This includes whom you’ll marry. This includes what you should do today. But, my friends, He’s never going to contradict what He has allowed to be written down in this book we call the Bible. The Author of that Book is never going to give you revelation that contradicts the Book He penned through human hands! Remember, the Spirit and the Word are one (1 John 5:7). If you ever hear someone teaching some “new teaching” that they say God revealed to them, ask them for at least three Scripture passages to back it up!

Brother Steve, what does this revelation stuff have to do with the gift of tongues?

As I’ve said before, extended tongue praying is directly related to personal edification and revelation–and inner fortification. I’m just saying all this stuff to get you jealous to be doing it more in your life if you’re not already. This process of personal tongue speaking, God set up in His infinite wisdom to allow us to be the stewards of our own edification. He doesn’t force His will and His plans on us, but allows us to pray ourselves into His will and our calling at our own pace. Slowly or speedily, it’s up to us–the same way an athlete decides how much time he’s going to spend in the gym working out and developing his muscles. God doesn’t sovereignly “ordain” him to just get buff overnight. The athlete is in charge of how much he’s going to do this practice, and likewise every believer is a steward of their own spiritual edification.

If then, this is part of what speaking in tongues a lot does, then why would anyone NOT want to do it or find a way to relegate to some spiritual ecstasy or some weird thing only believers in the first century could do, but now we “don’t need” for the various reasons many evangelicals teach and preach we don’t need it for? I guarantee you, I’m not speaking gibberish and being “self-hypnotized”. Look at the fruit and the insight it results in in those who do it a lot, and try telling me that’s from the devil of someone hypnotizing themselves! When we fear things we don’t know explain or aren’t doing ourselves, we can come up with all sorts of silly misunderstandings about it, but God desires every one have this gift. It’s just people decide not to take it or believe that because of their understanding of God’s sovereignty and will, that if God wants us to have something He’ll force it on us or do it ourselves without our own initiative in the receiving it.

I’ve accepted it and after almost 6 years of being filled with the Holy Spirit I’m still just as excited to run deep into these realms of the Holy Spirit as I did the first week after getting baptized in Him. I’m taking in all I can get, and if others don’t want it, I truly can say it’s their loss.

Anyway, this seems like a fitting way to end this post.
Be blessed, and may God draw you into deeper and deeper realms of His Spirit.