Praying and worshipping with our spirit

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.”

As we have seen in the previous section, when believers are baptized with the Holy Spirit certain signs occur as evidence that they have been filled. In all instances, they will begin to speak with other tongues, while some may have an additional experience of the tangible power of the Holy Spirit coming on them, which may cause them to have varied physical and emotional reactions, and still, others may also begin to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit from that point onwards. Nevertheless, the main evidence is that they will begin to speak with other tongues. And so because speaking with other tongues is the main evidence that we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, we will examine this gift in more detail in this section. For us to understand the gift of other tongues we need to understand one of the fundamental differences between the New and Old Testament saints, which is that New Testament saints are spiritually alive while the Old Testament saints were spiritually dead. The reason the Old Testament saints were spiritually dead was that they could not be born-again yet, as the New Testament saints are, for they could not yet meet the requirement of believing that God had raised Jesus from the dead and confessing Him as Lord, and thus they could only be born-again after Jesus was raised from the dead. And so because New Testament saints are spiritually alive, their spirits can commune with God, whereas Old Testament saints being spiritually dead were separated from God in spirit and couldn’t therefore commune with Him in that realm. The above-quoted passage of scripture reveals to us that New Testament saints can commune with God both with their understanding and their spirits. The Old Testament saints, however, were limited to communing with God with their understanding only. The operation of the gifts of the Spirit highlights this truth for us. There are nine spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament, i.e. the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, special faith, gifts of healings, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-10). Numerous scriptural examples reveal to us that the prophets under the Old Covenant operated in all of the gifts of the Spirit except two. The two spiritual gifts that they were precluded from operating in are the gifts of different kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. So why is that? The reason is that the gift of different kinds of tongues manifests directly from the spirit of the individual, and the gift of interpretation of tongues is reliant on the gift of different kinds of tongues being manifested. And so it is because the spirits of the Old Testament prophets were still unregenerate that they could not operate in either of those two spiritual gifts. As we can see from the above-quoted passage of scripture, God has given the New Testament saints a spiritual language called “tongues” so that they can commune with Him with their spirits, for God is Spirit (John 4:24). We know that the tongues that we are given, are given to us by the Holy Spirit, for the scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is the one who gives us the utterance (Acts 2:4). In other words He gives us our spiritual language. Therefore the believer who prays in tongues does so with their spirits and not with their minds. When a person prays with their understanding they cannot at the same time think about something else, because their mind is focused on what they are saying. Someone once said that our minds shut up to hear what our mouths have to say, and if you think about that statement it certainly makes sense. Nevertheless, when a person prays with their spirits in other tongues, their minds can think about other things while they are praying. The reason for this is that their minds have nothing to do with what is being said at the time, as it is their spirits that are using their vocal cords to pray in a language that their minds do not understand. It is interesting to note from this passage that although the apostle Paul prayed both with his spirit and his understanding, he placed praying with his spirit before praying with his understanding, thus indicating to us that he placed more emphasis upon praying with his spirit than praying with his understanding.

John 4:23-24 “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  (24) God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The apostle Paul not only spoke about praying with his spirit, but he also spoke about singing with his spirit (1 Corinthians 14:15). In other words the apostle Paul would also sing in tongues. So why is it necessary for the saints to sing in the spirit? Our Lord Jesus answered that question for us in the above-quoted passage of scripture when He taught us that because God is Spirit, that He is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit. So why is God seeking those who will worship Him in spirit? As we will see in a later section, when we pray in other tongues we pray God’s perfect will. And so it is that when we sing in other tongues that we worship God perfectly, which is why just as Paul placed praying with his spirit before praying with his understanding, so it is that he also placed singing with his spirit before singing with his understanding. Several years ago the Pentecostal churches specifically, used to make it a practice in their meetings, to not only worship the Lord with their understanding but also to give time to singing in tongues before the Lord in worship. More often than not, it was during those times that the gifts of the Spirit were manifested and the congregations experienced a tremendous blessing from the Lord. Sadly that practice has begun to wane over the last few years as worship with the understanding has taken centre stage, and there are very few churches today that make it a practice to worship God in the spirit. Don’t misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with worshiping with our understanding, nevertheless worshipping with our spirits should not be side-lined in the church, for it is that type of worship that our Heavenly Father is seeking.

Michael E.B. Maher

Doctrine of Baptisms

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