Las Vegas Faith Center - Gods Word, Faith Messages, Spiritual Coaching and Religion Studies

Un-Known Tongues

The Las Vegas Faith Center
Message from Sunday, June 13, 1999

“Un-Known Tongues”
by Tiger Todd - Sr. Pastor
(EDITED VERSION)

I realize that I’ve made my own road more difficult where this body of believers is concerned by helping empower you to become more than just sheep; by helping you to become shepherds in your own spheres of influence. Many of you have already seen that what you’ve learned here has affected how people perceive you out there. Although it would be easier for me, as your pastor, to just lead you around by keeping you as simple sheep, (and it would certainly create a larger church body), I’m still compelled to push the envelope for your empowerment, and believe God that you will complete all of your Jedi training.

No leading edge tool box of our Christ-empowered trade would be complete without knowing about every possible size and shape of prayer. We need to have a prayer arsenal that will prepare the groundwork for the power of God in any situation. We need to know the prayers that leave no stone unturned; ones that reach into every nook and cranny, so that nothing can harm us, discourage us, derail us, or stop us.

I want to begin in the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 6. I’m going to read this verse from a number of different translations. I’ll begin in the King James version, Verse 10. We’re talking about a spiritual arsenal, and also, about the whole armour of God. That’s pretty much summed up in Ephesians, and also in the Book of Colossians. Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

I used to stop there, thinking that described the whole armour of God. But the next verse, when you read them together, implies that this is the thing that makes the armour work. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; So, prayer is an integral part of the armour. That’s why I’m going to read from a couple of translations here, because it talks about different types of prayer. Let me read from the Amplified Bible. Pray at all times on every occasion, in every season in the Spirit with all manner of prayer and entreaty. In the New International Bible it says, And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. All kinds of prayer.

That starts us thinking about some of the different types of prayers we already know. We know that we don’t pray the prayer of baptism when we want to heal the sick. But if we don’t know the prayer, we just say, “Oh God, I’m sick”. Right? We’ve got to learn about this arsenal. Just because you have a gun or a sword or a knife, and you’re going into battle, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a very good soldier. It doesn’t mean you are going to be able to defend your country, or your family, or whatever. So we need to know about these things, and how to use them.

As we go through the prayers today, I just want to get to the ones that go straight to the top. In pushing the envelope, in pushing the threshold of how much you can take, and how much you can do, I just decided we ought to flat out push.

Turn to Matthew Chapter 6. It contains what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, but of course, this body realizes that it’s not the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…....It was actually the prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray. It’s the disciples prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is in John Chapter 17, when the Lord prayed. But as you’ll see here, Matthew 6:9, After this manner therefore pray ye: If it was his prayer, he would have said, “I pray”. At the very tail end of this prayer, it lists…“and forgive others their trespasses” so God will forgive you. That’s proof that Jesus could have never prayed this prayer, because Jesus never needed forgiveness. It wasn’t his prayer.The Church just called it the Lord’s Prayer. It was the one Jesus taught the disciples to pray. The disciples asked, How should we pray? Jesus said, YOU pray this way.
We do have a record of the Lord’s Prayer, which is actually found in John 17. “He lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, bless those”...And notice, it wasn’t a requisition prayer- a prayer where he needed something. It was a statement prayer.

I want to discuss this prayer to give you an idea of how NOT to pray, because apparently, people pray wrong. If you didn’t think there were differences between how other people prayed, then you wouldn’t need to call specific people to have them pray certain things for you. You could just have anybody pray. You could just flag someone down in the Mall, and say, “Hey pray for me”. That person would have no idea of what you were talking about. So obviously, there’s something about not just the prayer, but who knows the prayer. And you definitely want the person who knows what to pray, to be the one praying the prayer for you. Obviously!

Matthew 6:5. Jesus is speaking here. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.

One no-no in prayer is praying so that other people will see you: meaning, praying on-purpose. In this case, Jesus was alluding to people praying based upon what other people were going to think. “They’re thinking, “I’m really looking holy if I pray right here, right now”. It goes on to say, Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. Now wait. This prayer worked, but the reward they got was not spiritual, because the prayer was not spiritual. Lots of people pray. The reason why prayers don’t get answered is because God is a spirit, and He only answers the spiritual prayers. Do you understand that? God doesn’t send me a paycheck, because paychecks come in money form from physical sources. Physical sources supply physical things. Spiritual sources supply spiritual things. So if I’m praying a carnal, or natural, or physical prayer in order to be seen of men, or to be heard recounting what someone else prayed, then I don’t have any chance, or any hope whatsoever that God is going to answer that prayer.

Do you recall the prayer we brought up in Acts Chapter 2? Or at the tail end of Acts Chapter 1? The disciples were gambling to see who was going to be the next disciple, and Peter, casting his lot along with the others, is praying, Lord, show us which one it is. God didn’t answer. The lot fell on Matthias. Well Peter had the lot in his hand. It was already there. God didn’t change the lot. Peter’s prayer was not answered, because it was a carnal prayer. Jesus was talking to these very same disciples when he taught them to pray, but of course, that was about three years earlier. A lot can happen in three years.

Verse 6, But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. As a reward, I’d rather have the answer to my prayers, than to care whether or not people thought I was holy. I could care less if people think I’m holy if I’ve got all the goods, the answers, the health, and if everyone I touch gets healed, and the dead are raised at my hands. I don’t care what they think of me. I do care what happens to other people. So apparently, the carnal prayer is having your mind on yourself. The spiritual prayer is having your mind on others, or on God.

But when ye pray, verse 7, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Have you ever heard someone praying, and they just went on and on and on? You felt you had to interrupt them so that Jesus didn’t come back in the middle of this lengthy prayer!

If you pray over food, that’s yet another type of prayer. Do you actually know the reason why you should pray over food? The Bible said that whatsoever you call blessed or sanctified, IS blessed and sanctified. And since you have to put food in your body, the number one step in being a good steward over your body is to bless the food you eat. It would be hard to eat stuff that wouldn’t be good for your body if you were saying, “Oh God, Bless this 12 pack of Bud”. If we prayed about the stuff we put in our bodies, we’d think a little differently about what we were actually putting in. Anyway, you pray over your food to bless the food. It’s that simple. Then you eat!

But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do. Do the heathen pray? Yes! And we’ll find out later who the Bible calls, “Heathen”!

Verse 7, For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knows what things ye have need of before ye ask him. In one of the requisition prayers, Jesus said, Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. That’s a form of prayer. It’s not the “Our Father” type prayer, or the praying over the food type. That one is going to God on behalf of the sacrifice of Jesus and what it produced, and saying, “Father, in the name of Jesus, I have need of this”. Well, does it say that God knows you have need of that before you pray? That’s not exactly what it says. It says, He knows WHAT you have need of. You might not know what you actually need. When you pray that prayer, YOU might be praying for something that you think you have need of, but the Father doesn’t think you have need of. God says He supplies all of our needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. So when you pray and submit yourself to that prayer, and aren’t concerned about what other people think; when it’s just spiritual communication between you and God, you’ll actually get in line with your real needs.

For so many years, I had no idea what I needed. I always thought I had the same need - a million dollars. Does anyone else have that need? I thought that was my need. But then I sold some stock in a corporation and got the money I thought I needed, and it was gone within a month. Apparently, I had a problem much bigger than that bunch of money I thought I had a need for. God knew my need before I prayed it, but I’m not going to get it until I end up praying the right prayer. Oh, I got the money I prayed for. God will give you what you want. He’ll warn you, “You don’t need that. That will ruin you. You’ll be in the same boat, and now you’ll have less yet”. And if you don’t heed the warning, you’ll get it. Oh yeah!

Don’t think that God won’t allow us to have stuff we desire that is not His will. He may advise you against it, but God will give you the stuff you pray for that is out of his Will. He did it for Israel. Remember? Samuel the prophet goes to God and says, “Israel wants a King”. God says, “It’s not my will for Israel to have a king”. Samuel says, “Yeah, but they want one, just like the Samaritans, the Amorites, and all the other -ites. They want a king”. God said, “It’s not my will. Go get them a king. It’s not my will”. He probably said that three or four times in that passage in First Samuel. They anointed Saul in First Samuel Chapter 10. Go pick a king. Here’s a guy. It wasn’t God’s will, but they did it anyway because people pressed and pressed and pressed him. God will give you what you need, but….take a deep breath…. the idea is to put yourself, spiritually, in a position where God can change what you know in order to get in line with what He knows, so that you then know what you REALLY need.

After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Now I always change this, because I cannot read it exactly the way it’s written. I always have to add the word “you” because it is a pronoun for “our Father”. We don’t pray to Jesus, we pray to Our Father. So I always add the word “you” to the prayer. It’s amazing what the word “you” does, even though it’s implied anyway. But it changes this sappy prayer into something powerful, full of faith, just like Jesus would have taught it. It changes the faith in it; it doesn’t change what it means. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now I add the, YOU give us our daily bread. (He said He would.) YOU forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (That’s true.) And YOU lead us not into temptation. God does NOT lead anyone into temptation. The Book of James says, Let no man say when he is tempted, he is tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. So, it couldn’t be that Jesus prayed, “Oh God, don’t lead me into temptation”. God wouldn’t! This, rather, is a faith statement. You DON’T lead us into temptation but YOU do deliver us from evil. For YOURS is the Kingdom, Father, and the power and the glory forever. Amen. NOW it becomes a prayer you can pray with some gusto! But if it was just a bunch of vain repetition, like the heathen pray…...Do you see what we’re talking about?

The churches are full of heathens. Sorry. They’re praying “Our Father” sooo fast, they don’t even know what it means. It’s vain repetition. They never stopped to find out it was a prayer, because they had made it so repetitious. Every now and then you need to change your morning program so that your body responds. We know this from working out in the gym. You might do the same workout for three weeks, but all of a sudden, you hit this plateau and things just aren’t working as well any more. Well, that’s the time to change your workout. That’s the time to frustrate your muscles so that they can grow. With too much vain repetition of the body, it just adapts. Sometimes we have to do something different. If something seems to get repetitive, it’s time to change it. When that get repetitive, it’s time to go back to the other thing, so it will be all new again.There is no power in vain repetition.

And YOU forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And YOU lead us not into temptation, but YOU deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen. For, if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Let’s get into some other types of prayers. Turn with me to the Book of James, Chapter 5. This is our “heal the sick” prayer for the church. It’s the “call on the elders of the church” prayer. This prayer says “if there is someone among you- you in the church, not outside in the world, and you are under attack by sickness or demons- then if you follow these instructions, you will be made whole and any sins will be forgiven”. The Bible has given a whole toolbox of tools, expecting us to learn about both the tools themselves, and the things that need to be fixed with those tools, so we can quickly use the right tool on the appropriate job.

It’s sort of like, I’ve been working on cars with this Craftsman tool set, and there are metric wrenches and SAE wrenches. You get used to using the right tool for the job. But if you’re working on someone else’s car, and say, “Do you have a 13 mm open end wrench?”, and they say, “Sorry”, and then hand me a crescent wrench, because that’s basically their whole tool box…sort of a one size fits all deal. Well, that crescent wrench doesn’t really fit “all”. I mean, it’s handy when you’ve only got one wrench. And the “Our Father” prayer may have worked a few times. It may have been handy to have, but it’s important that we possess all the new tools, especially where prayer is concerned. I saw Bob Vila on the Craftsman TV show demonstrating this new wrench that gets tighter as you turn it. That wrench, I believe, is the equivalent to the prayer I am going to show you today. It is the way to pray. This prayer is the right-tool-for-the-job wrench, in natural terms, in our tool box.

Verse 13. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: Notice that it is not the anointing that does the job. It says here, verse 15, And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. The prayer of faith is a great prayer.

For years, my Assistant Pastor and I used to wonder why people didn’t get into the “faith movement”. There are so many elements to the faith movement….the just shall live by it, without it it is impossible to please God, all things are made by it. When a saint gets sick, that’s an attack from hell itself. That’s not just a heathen out there simply reaping what he’s sown. That’s an attack. This kind of prayer can not only remove the sickness, but if he has committed sins, it can cleanse, free him from them. That prayer is actually in Mark Chapter 11, so let’s turn there.

Verse 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. This is the faith of God. The prayer of faith is not “Father, in the name of Jesus”.... The prayer of faith is speaking the results of what you want with the faith of God to the thing, and then it comes to pass. That’s why when you call on the elders of the church, and they anoint with oil, and pray the prayer of faith, most of the time, it’s not, “Oh God, heal this body”. That would be a requisition prayer, not a prayer of faith. A prayer of faith is, “You’ll be made whole in the name of Jesus. I call you whole”. That would be just like when Jesus told the fig tree, Be thou plucked from the root. That would be like he told the mountain, Be thou removed. Be thou cast into the sea. And it should obey you. We know this is the prayer of faith because it concludes with the very same bonus plan that James Chapter 5 said it did. Verse 24, Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. We know that the prayer of faith shall save the sick, the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven. This is an awesome prayer. It works, however, when someone comes to you and relinquishes their authority. They open the door when they say, “Pray for me”, or “Heal me”, or “Deliver me from this thing”. That’s how this works. That’s why it says you have to CALL on the elders. As an elder, you can’t just go up to someone and say, “Oh I see you have leprosy, sir. Let me just pray the prayer of faith for you.” It won’t work. It’s not the right prayer.

We know that there are prayers of intercession. One of the greatest intercession prayers is on our tape, “Take the Blame”. I won’t talk about that prayer now, because we have that tape available to listen to. But that’s a form of intercession, when you were put yourself in the place between God and someone else because, obviously, God is not connecting with them. You become the conduit with which God’s power flows. That is intercession without you having to physically be there. That’s another form of prayer. I think the number one intercession prayer is the one on “Take the Blame”. We call it “the secret weapon” prayer.

Now look at the Book of Jude, verse 17. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. Hint: this is the prayer of the mature church. Constantly, throughout scripture, we see things like “harvest”, and the “fullness of time”, and in Galatians, where it talks about “the works of the flesh are manifest which are these”....and it listed mature fruit, ready for harvest. In John Chapter 4, Jesus said, Say not there are three more months till harvest, but look with your eyes, The fields are white with harvest. This is a “last time” prayer. That means, the fullness of time; meaning, you’re not just taking baby steps. You should be advanced, full, ripe fruit for picking, cutting up and making apple pie with it. This is the level of prayer mentioned in the Book of Jude. Whenever you see “last times”, it is not going to be an early dispensation “weenie” prayer like, “Our Father, which art in heaven”. This is a serious prayer, and that’s where we’re getting ready to push the envelope.

When I was taking math in school, we learned a step for doing calculus in Chapter 1, then learned a different step in Chapter 2, then another in Chapter 3. But in Chapter 6, we learned the short form which would have made Chapters 1-5 a breeze! Why don’t we just get to Chapter 6, or in this case, Chapter 7…...and just get right to the one that works! That’s not to say we won’t need our other tools, but let’s just get right to the advanced prayer!

These things are to whosoever will believe. The object is to get your “believer” up to a place where you can see yourself doing it. It’s not that the prayer is beyond you, it’s just that you need to become, just like we became first grade. Then they moved you on to second grade. If you didn’t make second grade so well, they kept you there until you got there. Then came third grade, and you moved on up. Well, we’re moving on up, and the key is move on up, but know that it’s the truth. See, most of the church world gets so whacked out, for lack of a better word, over really heavily spiritual things. They think that only the disciples and apostles were allowed to do those things, and all the while, Jesus was trying to make everyone disciples and apostles. Jesus said to the disciples, “Go ye and make disciples of all nations.”

Be a disciple. Be a disciplined one. Follow me as I follow the Lord. Learn the best prayers. If you don’t get them right away, don’t worry about it. You’ve got other prayers. You’ve got me. You’ve got a bunch of people that pray this way. But start practicing. There will come a day when you know them. Have some fun with this, and don’t be embarrassed. There’s coming a day when you are going to use it, and it will just come out of you. You’ll say, Wow, I’m glad I knew that! That’s a whole lot better than saying, Wow, I wish I‘d played around with that when Pastor told me to. I really could have used that prayer today.

Verse 18, How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Mockers who don’t have the Spirit. Who mocks us today? I’m not asking who mocks Christianity. Who mocks people like me? Christianity! OK? That’s who mocks me. We found out in Romans Chapter 9, it says, Not all those of Israel are Israel. Do you know what that means? Not all Jews are Jews. And it was a parallel to get us to understand that not all Christians are Christians. The parallel goes, There are carnal, natural flesh, natural Israel, who are Jews after the flesh born to a natural lineage, just as there are natural Christians born to an ideology. But they are not spiritual, i.e. those who stood in faith to become what God wanted them to become. None of them ever took a stand of faith. As you continue to read in Romans Chapter 9, (and also in James Chapter 2) it explains why Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob, who became Israel, became what they were. They stood in faith, and so fulfilled becoming who they were. That’s what made them spiritual.

It’s talking about there being mockers out there, and most of them are self-professed Christians.They would be considered by the Bible as carnal Christians’-natural Christians walking after the natural system of Christianity, and not in the relationship with God. They would be the ones praying to be seen of others…and on down the list of all the other scriptures we’ve discussed today. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. How do you do that? By praying in the Holy Ghost.

If you are going to look for an example in scripture of who prayed more than anybody else in the Holy Ghost, it would be the apostle Paul. In fact, there is a scripture that says exactly that. Turn to First Corinthians Chapter 14. Verse 18, I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: because starting in Verse 1 it says, Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts; well, that’s what the King James says (with italics), but if you go to the literal Greek, it says, “desire spirits”. What the Bible calls “praying in the Holy Ghost”, is praying with the Spirit of God in you. It’s not praying with your mind, which would actually make you carnal. It would make you the natural man, because we’ve just discovered that you really are your soul. Regarding John the Baptist, in Luke Chapter 1: the angel says to his father, Zacharias, He will be filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb, and he will walk in the Spirit of Elijah. So, what spirit was in John the Baptist? The Spirit of Elijah! Who was John the Baptist? John the Baptist, OK? So if John the Baptist prayed in the Spirit, it would be in the Spirit of Elijah’s speaking and praying.

Praying in “the Holy Ghost” is praying with the spirit of God in you, and it can pray! Jude calls this “most holy faith”, and is the best defense against mockers, those that are carnal, and as we’ll find out later, wicked spirits. Now, the prayer to save the sick doesn’t have anything to do with wicked spirits. In this case, It had to do with an attack on that person, but we weren’t dealing with spirits directly. “Our Father, which art in heaven” doesn’t deal with that. Praying over your food doesn’t deal with that. We have a specialized prayer to deal with the enemies of God, and who better to deal with them than God in you. Who better?

There have been reports on what praying in the Holy Ghost, or praying in tongues, is all about. Should we, or should we not pray in tongues? Our Assistant Pastor pointed out something about the verse where Paul says, I thank God I pray in tongues more than you all. He said, Do you know that the apostle Paul received, penned, and wrote down nearly two thirds of the New Testament? Two thirds! I thank God I pray in tongues more than you all. Most of Paul’s life was spiritual, wasn’t it? Most of his Christian life wasn’t carnal. He didn’t thank God that he had built the biggest church, or that he had a good youth program and three vans and two Ford Explorers. He thanked God that he prayed in tongues more than them all, and that God spoke out of him more than anybody else. Today, I can look at those carnal Christians and the mockers, and I can say, “Thank God I pray in tongues more than you all”, because it is the spirit God gave me in here speaking, which is why we’re on par to do something like 13 books, including The Bible for Dummies. We’ve got all kinds of revelations spurting out. Well, these were just letters to the churches, but they have become the inspired word of God.

What do you think comes out of us when God speaks? It’s the Holy Ghost in YOU. So if we never speak in tongues, if we never pray in the Holy Ghost, God never gets to speak out of us, does He? You might get a word, and keep it quiet. So part of it is giving the spirit of God inside you the authority to do it.

Why are we to pray in the spirit? Well, we read one of the key things in Ephesians Chapter 6. We want to pray in the spirit because we don’t wrestle with flesh. We wrestle with spirits, so we needed a spiritual arsenal to deal with principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and wicked spirits in high or heavenly places. We needed this as part of the arsenal.

Hold your place in First Corinthians 14, and turn to Chapter 2 of First Corinthians. Verse 4, Paul is still speaking, My speech, and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, (i.e. principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, wicked spiritual rulers) that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, that’s why it’s called speaking in an “unknown tongue”, because it is supposed to be mysterious to your mind, which is really part of you. We might have a physical organ, the brain, but the mind is really what makes up you: the contents of your mind, your experiences, what you know and remember, it’s really, pretty much, you. The key is to allow your mind to get out of the way, and let God speak. And that’s hard for us to do, because we are so rational. We want to know what we’re speaking. And one of the keys to speaking in the spirit is, you don’t need to know what you’re saying, you just need to speak. Once that happens, the knowledge will slowly make its way into your natural mind, and as in Paul’s example, come out on paper, and become two thirds of the New Testament… or whatever else you’re supposed to do. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Well, that’s good. Christ in you, the hope of glory. God ordained the body of Christ to be able to do that, because when you get a spirit of Christ, (Christ in you, the hope of glory), it will stay a hope unless that Christ gets to do some stuff…unless it gets to speak…unless it gets to go and do…unless it gets to have the Spirit of the Lord upon it. In this case, we’re going to find out which spirit. Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. There is Christ in me, the hope of glory, but Jesus is the Lord Christ of glory. He’s the top, he’s the King of Salem, the Lord of Lords, right? So who are the other kings and lords going to be except those other Christ-ians that have a Lordship? They don’t have the TOP Lordship, but he is the Christ, the Lord of Lords. Did you get that? Paul would have been a Lord to Jesus, the Lord of Lords, wouldn’t he? And the wisdom is so that when you speak and pray in the spirit, the spirit of Christ in you allowed to pray, the principalities, the powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the wicked spirits, the devils, have no idea what you are doing. But God does, and if that spirit’s in you, you will. Therefore, they won’t be able to entrap you.

I’m going to send out a questionnaire… Would you like to know more about how to keep your kids off drugs? Would you like to know more about how to build a better marriage? These are all wonderful things, and great things you should preach, but if I can teach you tools to avoid all the traps of life, then none of those things might ever happen. Only when you can know the future, can you see a trap. And most of what happens to people on this earth, especially Christians, is that they fall into one trap after another. But if we could just be free from traps, we could be free.

One of the promises Jesus gave in his prayer, starting in John 14, through 16, was that he was sending the spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth is going to do several things. He’ll not show anything of himself, but is going to show us God, the Father, he’s going to lead us and guide us into all truth, and he said one more thing…he’s going to show us things to come. It dawned on me that most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, is the Spirit of God inside of you communicating with the Spirit of Truth that the Father sent.

How many of you here pray in tongues right now? Now, you’d agree that when you pray in tongues, you don’t all sound alike. You might sound similar, but you’ll each sound a little different because you each have a unique spirit of Christ in you. You’re all parts of the same body of Christ, but you each have a unique vocabulary.

If you’re going to pray in tongues, you’ll have to consider it to be something like a second language. And one of the things about a second language is, you can either speak that language with your head, or with your heart. Tongues work when you get to the “heart part”. You may have to start with the head part, your mind, but your goal is to get tongues to come out of the heart, where the subconscious mind is. That’s where the spirit of God lives. I’ll explain the difference between heart and mind.

In Spanish, you’ll learn, Hola, que tal? Bien, Roberto. Es tu? Bien! That’s speaking Spanish with your head, right?
And then you have French. “Bonjour, mon ami. Comment allez vous?” But if you truly speak French with your heart, instead of “Bone jo-er”, you go, aah aah, and utter a growly bonjour, and pretty soon, you’re French in your heart. And that’s really the difference - imitating! You’re imitating the spoken language by getting yourself off your mind. So stop being so studious, and get into it! If I’m into it, I could speak English and still sound French. So when you’re praying in an unknown tongue, just as you would be in a known tongue, French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew…you have to get the “heart part” started.

I’ll read this passage in First Corinthians, and then we’ll go back to Chapter 14, Follow after charity, (or agape love) and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy. Now, I thought prophecy was forecasting the future. Prophecy literally means “speaking for God”. Well, we have this idea that God’s way out there, and all the while, Jesus says, Know ye not that your body is the temple of God, that he is in you?

Prophecy is when God, who is living in you, speaks out of you. It can speak the future, because the spirit of Truth, who invokes the spirit, that communication with heaven, that main line, does show you things to come. So, yes, prophecy, a lot of the time, speaks to things in the future. But he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: the spirit of Truth for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying. Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine? And even things without life giving sounds, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.

Should you speak in tongues all the time? NO! Tongues are for your own edification. Tongues are for you to deal with wicked spirits, not to be heard of other men. Paul said, When I come unto you, should I speak in tongues or should I speak with words and doctrine? Well, if you guys didn’t know what I was speaking about, it wouldn’t do you any good, would it? Therefore, that’s when NOT to speak, or pray, in tongues. Here’s another example: say you’re gathered together, and someone says, “Pray with us”. Well, if they aren’t speaking in tongues, you ought not to speak in tongues, because they wouldn’t know what you were praying. Any time you cause hesitation, faith starts leaking out that very same hole. And we need all the faith there is. So you pray in a manner where you can continue to keep their faith up.

Now, just like praying in secret, so is praying in the Spirit. Some of us went to the new Faith Center building one night, and God just asked me to start praying in tongues. So I started to pray in tongues. Now, we are all part of the body of Christ. We’re all members; different fractions of the whole. That spirit that is in there each has its own voice. If you have a spirit of Christ in you, and it hasn’t spoken, it just means that it hasn’t spoken. And I had to inaugurate that gift in the others. I had to inaugurate it in me long ago. I was pretty rebellious awhile back, when people asked, “What do you think about tongues”, and stuff like that? I’d say, “I endorse it”. Whatever you’re against, I’m for. But this is what happened to me. I was listening to a tape of someone speaking in tongues, and I just started imitating what I heard. That’s the best way to learn a foreign language, isn’t it? Total immersion. Most people learn Hebrew by going to Israel for three weeks and living on a kibbutz. They have to communicate, so they immerse themselves in the language, and pretty soon, they get it. That’s how our children learn to talk. We send them to school later to learn the wrong way. OK? But total immersion is what works.What worked for me is, I just kept playing a tape of someone else praying in tongues. I didn’t know what they were saying, but it got me to start imitating them just like I imitated Pepe Le Peu in the cartoon. Everyone can sound French by imitating Pepe Le Peu. Well, anyone can sound like they’re speaking in tongues, but what that’s doing is kind of like warming up for the real deal. Imitating tongues is inaugurating the gift; it’s opening the door and letting the spirit of God know that He can speak through you. Because sometimes we get tongue-tied.

Let me mention one more thing before I give you an example of the how-to’s and the what-fors of speaking tongues. The Bible says that when you pray in an unknown tongue, your understanding, or your mind, is unfruitful. That’s because of that strange little thing about the way we are made up. Your mouth always overrides your brain. It always overrides your mind. James Chapter 3 talks about the tongue. With the same mouth procedeth blessing and cursing. The mind/the understanding won’t work, because whatever you say overrides every other part of the system. The Bible says the tongue has tamed all flesh, all animals, all whatever. It says every beast in the field has been tamed by the mouth. By mankind. By his tongue. It is inferred in James Chapter 3. So interestingly enough, you could have something on your mind, but if you speak something out your mouth, the understanding stops. It has to. Let’s do the little test. In your mind, count from one to ten. Begin now. l - 2 - 3 - 4 - Now speak your name out loud. Your counting stopped, didn’t it? It had to. As soon as you speak, your thinking ceases.That’s how you can tell when a preacher is talking from his spirit, or just rehearsing something that he’s heard and heard and heard. In other words, he’s just running a program.

Your mouth makes your mind, or your understanding, unfruitful. Well, that’s a good thing in this case, because God has an answer, and He usually downloads it in about 100 times the quantity that you could probably handle. So if you want something solved in a day instead of 100 days, tongues is the way to go.

Quinton, Ron, are you up for this? Please join me. I want you guys to get in close proximity, because I’m going to speak in tongues. Jude called it praying. We’ve listed prophesying, and we’ve listed the spirit of Truth evoking something in tongues. Different processes. But some people would get offended if I just blurted out something in tongues. They’d wonder, Did God make him do that? No, I made me do that. But if the spirit of Truth wants to say something, he can make me do that if I have given him the authority. People just don’t just start prophesying in tongues if they haven’t already yielded to it, and are doing it on purpose.

Do you remember the prayer of faith? You believe you receive what you pray for, when you pray. That’s the prayer of faith. You say, “Mountain, be thou removed. Be thou cast into the sea.” And when you say “Amen”, you believe that mountain is removed and cast into the sea. That’s the prayer of faith. Then if Jude says the “most Holy Faith” is praying in the Holy Ghost, then you would be believing you receive whatever you prayed for in tongues. You’d have no idea what you prayed for when you prayed it. It could be mysteries from God, or the future, or answers you’ve been looking for.

I practiced this in Millie’s class last year. We went to teach a business class at Community College, and as I was on my way there, I thought, What a good idea for me to be prepared!! You can be prepared naturally. In your carnal thinking. You can pray, “Oh God, make sure that I don’t mess this up. Please make sure that Millie speaks to me again”. But rather, I used the most holy faith, and said, “God, I expect to know everything I need to know tonight”. From the point where I started driving to get to the college, I had no idea what was going to be happening in that classroom. It was a mystery at that point. So I used a mystery prayer,and said, “Spirit of Truth, I’m going to pray right now that what I’m praying for is the answer to every question the students have. I will know what their needs are, and I will be completely prepared for that class tonight. So I just let it out. Nonstop tongues from door-to-door, and then, Amen. When I got to the class, I knew who was dating who, among other things. I spooked them like they couldn’t imagine, because God had revealed all the mysteries to me. I didn’t know what I was praying, but I knew what I was praying for. My most holy faith was believing I knew, even though, in my mind, I couldn’t possibly know. So when people wonder how I can “read their mail”, how could I possibly know about..whatever, well, I cheat. OK? I pray first.

Remember the demons, where the disciples said, These ones won’t come out. Well, the Bible said they come out with prayer and fasting. But you’ve got to do this specific prayer. The disciples had the wrong prayer for the job. You’ve got to stay one step ahead of the principalities, the powers, and all the stuff like that. Anyway, I knew what businesses those students were in. Then they started with all kinds of extra questions that kept me there an extra two hours. I knew all the answers for those extra two hours. If they’d kept me there all night, I would have gotten into all their business.

So let’s do something real, on purpose, and what I want to show you is two-fold. Again, I’m teaching you how to do something. This is what Paul said you ought to do in church. But if you have a prayer where you’ve got a mystery you need solved, then you should, on purpose, pray in the holy ghost either somewhere else, alone, in a prayer closet, or with a bunch of other people that pray in tongues. One of the neatest things about tongues is, when you speak in tongues, anyone else that has a spirit of God in them (who has probably already inaugurated that gift), can’t help but have their spirit come alive too. Their spirit gets stirred up, and they start going off on stuff. It’s just this really neat thing. It’s spooky, if you’re afraid of it, but it’s really cool if you understand what’s happening. It’s like the fellowship of the saints at a spiritual level.

Let’s pick a mystery. OK. Will Y2K affect us? Will it matter? Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pray, and if it’s only like a two word answer, if it’s that simple, we’ll go for something like, Will I be elected President? (We’d be here for four hours praying in tongues.) We’re going to ask that to be the prayer that comes out in tongues; something that our minds don’t understand, and we’re going to believe that we receive the answer when we pray. Most likely, before the day is out, pieces of the answer will be revealed to our minds, That’s how it works. Shall we just do it?

Remember, you are yielding authority to the spirit. It’s kind of like, if you are walking in the Spirit, you won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh: meaning, you won’t do what your tongue wants to do. You’ll do what the Spirit wants your tongue to do. Are you with me?

Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, right now I want to pray the most holy faith. I want to know, In the year 2000 with computer systems all over the world, will Y2K affect us? Will it affect the people in this body? I will expect that we’ll know by the time we’re done with this prayer. We will know who it will affect, how we are supposed to change our lives so it doesn’t bother us, and what we are supposed to do in the meantime. We expect to know all this, and know it right now, I yield my body to you to pray in the Spirit.

I praise you that the answer was so short. We believe we receive the answer to this now. We thank you, God, for it. Amen.

As I prayed in tongues, everyone else praying in tongues just started to speak in a like manner. It just started activating. If you haven’t prayed in tongues, what you need to do is first get alone, so that you don’t think you’re making a fool of yourself, because your heart is part of getting your mind off of it. I had to be alone in my truck to listen to my tape. I’d rewind it over and over again, and tried to imitate the tongues.There’s nothing wrong with doing that to practice. If I hear a tape of someone speaking Spanish, I may not know what it means,YET! but pretty soon, I’ll start sounding like I’m speaking Spanish, and I’ll start feeling comfortable speaking the language. Just let the thing go. How do you know that it’s not just gibberish? Well, it absolutely is gibberish to your mind, but had the princes of the world known that it wasn’t just gibberish, they would never have crucified Jesus and gotten their butts kicked. That’s the bonus to it.