1 Corinthians 14:14-15 “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. (15) What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding.”
Prayer is also required in order for our spirits to grow strong. I am not referring to praying with our understanding however, although it does help to pray with the understanding; for you will recall that we saw earlier that we are to pray with our understanding when we ask God for spiritual understanding of His word. Nevertheless in this section I am specifically referring to praying with our spirits. The Spirit filled Christian has the ability to pray both with their understanding and with their spirits. This truth is revealed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture, for the apostle Paul stated that he prayed both with his spirit and with his understanding. As revealed in this passage, we see that praying with the spirit is the act of praying in other tongues. When we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, God gives us a spiritual language that only He and our spirits understand. The blessedness of this gift allows God to directly influence our prayer life, so that we can pray in accordance with His perfect will for every situation that we bring before Him. These prayers are always heard by Him and are also always answered by Him. It is our spirits that speak in the heavenly language given to us by the Holy Spirit. In other words our spirits pray in their own language. When Paul tells us in this passage that our understanding is unfruitful when we pray with our spirit, He therefore implies that our spirits are fruitful. So why would our spirits be fruitful when we pray in tongues? The reason our spirits are fruitful is because they understand the language that they have been given. The spiritual words spoken are in fact God’s words, and just as the written word of God causes our spirits to grow, so these spiritual words cause our spirits to grow stronger as well.
1 Corinthians 14:4 “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul plainly tells us that the believer edifies himself when he speaks in a tongue. Obviously it is the spirit of the believer that is edified because it is only their spirit that understands the words that are spoken. The word translated “edify” in this passage can also be translated to “promote growth”. And so we see that when believers pray in tongues they are in effect promoting the growth of their spirits.
Jude 1:20 “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Jude teaches us the same thing that Paul teaches, for he teaches us that we build ourselves up when we pray in the spirit. In other words we become stronger in our spirits when we pray in tongues. This is one of the reasons that the apostle Paul was so thankful to God that he spoke with tongues more than any other believer, for he had learnt that praying in the spirit accomplished much, including helping him to grow strong in spirit (1 Corinthians 14:18). And so we can clearly see from this section that if we want to grow strong in spirit, we too will need to spend much time praying with our spirits.
Michael E.B. Maher
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